In my position as a Legal Clerk at the criminal defense firm Nolan, Armstrong & Barton, one of my regular responsibilities was to write extensive “social histories” of our clients. The purpose of these documents was to place our client and the events surrounding their charges within the broader context of their life—tragedies and hardships, successes and contributions, and complicated family and social dynamics—in order to humanize them to the prosecuting attorney and/or judge and, hopefully, receive a more favorable plea or sentence. To do this, I interviewed the client and other significant figures in their life, and then synthesized that information into a sympathetic narrative that placed the client in the best possible light. The following is an example of one of these client histories.

J__ S__ was born August 7, 1943, on an airbase in Childress, Texas; his family moved to Arizona when J was still a baby. J’s father was in the Army Air Forces. He retired from the service not long after World War II ended, but had trouble finding other work. The S’s were terribly poor, and lived in an Army tent in the Arizona desert for two and a half years while J’s father worked in a  service station and tried to make ends meet. Then, when J was four years old, they moved to  Watsonville, California. 

After the move to California, J’s father became an experimental machinist and a born-again Christian. He stopped his heavy drinking and smoking, and went to church several times a week,  often bringing the children along. The S’s were still poor and rarely took vacations, but the children would sometimes go fishing with their father or take car rides with their parents into the desert. J was the middle child of three; he had an older brother, Bert, and a younger sister, Linda.  When J was 8 years old or so, his parents took on several foster children as well—foster parenting meant a government stipend. J was always expected to let the other children ride his bike or to give up something for them to use. Instead of getting frustrated by the situation, he often went down to the docks by himself to watch the boats. 

As they grew up, J and Bert became top-quality athletes. Though Bert was a year older, he was held back in elementary school and ended up in J’s class. When they got to high school age, they were in the Buchser High district, but Santa Clara High wanted the two athletes, and made concessions for them to attend there. J competed in baseball, football, basketball, and track until the school made a policy limiting students to three sports per year, and he was forced to drop baseball. J was an average student, earning Bs and Cs in school, but it was sports he was really interested in. When they graduated, J was named athlete of the year, and his brother Bert came in second place.  

It was at Santa Clara High where J met D__ F__, a pretty girl in his science class. D remembers J  as “quite a catch”: he was a star athlete, fun to be around, and friendly with everyone. Like J, D  had grown up mostly in California with a few years spent in Arizona. Like J’s, her family had very little money. The two began dating toward the end of 1960 and were married four years later.  

J was offered a football scholarship to SJSU, but his family could not afford the tuition; instead,  he enrolled in San Jose City College, and played football there for a year. At college he began working for a service station, moving before long to a luxury car repair shop. J developed such a  close relationship with the shop’s owner that the old man wanted him to take over the business someday, but J did not enjoy repair work that much. As the windows man at the repair shop, it was only a small leap into door and window installation on homes; then, when the window and door shop closed, J went to work for Golden Gate Drywall. 

Over the coming years, J worked his way up through the ranks at Golden Gate Drywall. He started in 1961 with an apprenticeship meant to last two years, but did so well that he was moved to journeyman wages after three months. He excelled at the job, and it became a running joke that  S was the man to beat if you wanted to prove the speed of a new tool or process. Foremen began to fight to have him on their crews. At the same time that he was establishing himself as a top worker, he was building relationships within the company. Being handy with motors, he was  frequently called upon to fix the owner’s houseboat, and wound up spending considerable time  with the “old man.” Before long, he was being invited on company trips and excursions, and became friends with many of the managers and clients. He was made a foreman in 1964, then a  superintendent; then, after 13 years with Golden Gate, he was made President of the company. 

The atmosphere at Golden Gate was one of friendly competition and camaraderie, and it suited J 

perfectly. It was an era when companies were founded on personal relationships: when a  handshake was the highest form of contract, and you didn’t do business with a man you couldn’t respect. Bill Thompson, the owner of Golden Gate Drywall, owned a houseboat and a private airplane which were used to entertain important clients and project managers; the company had its own duck club for frequent hunting excursions. As J ascended within the company, he was provided some of these luxuries as well, and expected to take good care of important contacts. As both an eager sportsman and a man of personal integrity, J thrived under these expectations. He became an avid hunter and earned his pilot’s license. He took clients to Mexico every year and even took a group of men to British Columbia to hunt big game. He was in his element, making friends, being outdoors—hunting, skiing, boating. He was always on call, in a sense, but J was not cut out for a nine-to-five desk job. Instead, he was able to turn his hobbies into a supremely successful career. J recalls that he built five multimillion-dollar high rises without so much as a  written contract. Many of his clients and colleagues from that time are still among his closest friends to this day. 

J and D had their son, C, in August of 64; their daughter, S, was born in 67. J adored his children and took them along on his trips at every opportunity. S remembers that her friends called her father “Santa Claus,” because of both his jolly demeanor and his generosity: if friends were along, nothing was ever bought for the S children unless their companions received one too. And friends were often along, joining the family on trips to Lake Shasta or elsewhere. D describes J as having been “generous to a fault”—something she admires, but which would ultimately cause problems for the marriage. People were constantly calling for favors or dropping by for a meal and bed, and J would drop everything in order to oblige. Having grown up with very little, J felt blessed by his luck and success, and he preferred to share his good fortune with others. He made no distinction between friends and colleagues; he genuinely liked the people he worked with and for, and he treated them accordingly. J would do anything for someone in need. He gave money to every charity that sent a letter: Make a Wish Foundation, Boy Scouts, Special Olympics. S  remembers a crippled man who would come door-to-door selling brooms, who impressed J with his persistence despite his disability. J would buy a broom from the man every time he came by the house; they had ten or fifteen brooms in the closet. 

J accumulated stock in Golden Gate over the years until he owned about fifteen percent of the company; he was exceptionally close with Thompson, the owner, who trusted him completely.  Thompson intended to keep J in charge of the company, though he had set it up in a living trust to take care of his own children financially. In 1987, Thompson invited J to lunch, and told him they  had “a problem.” Thompson’s children had discovered that they owned a majority of the company, and decided they wanted a chance at running it themselves. They wanted to keep J on as President with themselves having ultimate authority. But J was a man of his word, and he was not comfortable with the idea that he might make a promise just to be vetoed or overridden.  Thompson agreed that he would buy out J’s share and free him to leave the company and do something on his own. J took the money and, with Donny Bowen, a Superintendent at Golden  Gate whom he had known since his days at the service station, he started Aero Drywall. Within a  year, all the foremen at Golden Gate had left to work for Aero, and J was referring overflow business back to his old company. Still, J had the blessing of Thompson, and the two remained friends until the older man’s death. 

J ran his new business the way he had learned at Golden Gate: on the strength of personal relationships and personal integrity. He made it his goal to do not just his own job, but the client’s as well. He knew that if you do your work well enough, the work will keep finding you. He still made the annual trip to Mexico in his plane, and he began taking six to eight men to Wyoming on regular big game hunting trips. It was through this that he met Paul Gilroy, an “outfitter” who  arranged and acted as guide on many of the hunting trips, and became J’s friend for the next thirty 

years. J seemed to be able to make a connection with every person he worked with. The clients and managers often brought their children and wives along on trips; J strived to keep a family atmosphere within the company. Things blossomed within this environment, and Aero Drywall,  as well as J personally, became quite successful.  

Business suffered somewhat during the recession of the early 90s, and J was forced to shrink his company. He bought out Donny Bowen, who had injured his back, and cut back on other employees and projects. Even in hard times, though, J was careful to treat everyone fairly. He gave a loan to one bookkeeper he laid off, so that she could get started in business for herself.  Though Aero Drywall never returned to the level of success it enjoyed at its peak, the business continued on in its new leaner mode. J’s children began having children of their own, and J doted on them. He continued to ski and hunt and race boats, often with his children and grandchildren in tow. He taught his grandchildren how to hunt and waterski, just as he had his own children when they were small. 

By 2000, though, D had grown tired of being married to a man who never stopped working, and who would put everything on hold to help someone out. She wanted to live her own life, and she asked J for a divorce. At the same time, many of J’s old contacts had begun to retire or die out,  along with the old way of doing things. Business had lost much of its sense of personal connection and fun. J had been in the construction business for thirty years at this point; he was ready to give the younger generation a chance at it. He put his son, C, in charge of the company and moved to Oregon to give retirement a try.  

In Oregon, J found ways to spend his time—he built his own high-performance plane, and volunteered his time to fix and remodel the local high school. He would come back to California every month or so to see his grandchildren and check on the business. Even after the divorce, J  continued to help D with anything she needed; she recalls him crawling around under her deck to search for a rat that had started to smell, and fixing many things around the house for her elderly mother. After a couple of years in Oregon, J grew bored with retirement. C had run into some difficulties with Aero, and it was all the excuse J needed to go back to work. 

It was around this time—2003 or so—that J began to do work for the Palo Alto VA Hospital. A  general contractor J knew asked him to bid a job they would be doing there. After his first job,  several people suggested J bid again; after two or three jobs, he had earned a reputation as a man who does the job right and well the first time. Several doctors and other staff liked his exam rooms so much that they began requesting that he be asked back on future projects. Aero drywall was a subcontractor—they were not generally the ones directly contracted with the VA—but lots of companies hired Aero for their jobs, because of their excellent track record and the trust they had earned at the VA. J liked working there, and started to do it regularly; unlike some of Aero’s other recent clients, the VA paid their bills and presented minimal frustrations. He also felt strongly about the respect due to veterans, and was glad to be working for them. 

As J had done on all his jobs before, he tried to take care of the people at the VA. He would do little favors—hanging a picture, fixing a poorly hung door—whenever he could. He had his crew do little jobs for free, like painting a stripe in the parking lot when it was needed. J knew it smoothed things along if the employees and his crew respected each other and got along well; he was also especially glad to go the extra mile for the injured veterans, who he felt had given so much. On several occasions, J donated larger projects as well, like a gazebo in the memorial rose garden, and a paved pathway for it, later on. And as with every job J had held, he developed close relationships with the people he worked for and with. He would buy lunch for some of the vets,  and he became friendly with several of the employees at the VA. He would host Christmas parties to recognize them for what they do. Sometimes, those people would come to J for help; he never thought of what he might get in return, he just felt it was important to help out those who had less than he. Though J did many jobs for the VA, it was more a hobby than a moneymaker: his profit was generally fairly small, and when he could, he gave much of it back in donated labor.  

J feels the accusations are a sad misunderstanding. His generosity has been mischaracterized. J never expected anything in return for his kindness, from his first jobs to his last. He simply made it his philosophy to do right by others, and in his experience, things had always worked out when he did. 

KM, 6/15/11