Dear warm heart,
Marvel thine love!
Celestial joy! Rare affection!
Happy torment! Glorious to be us!
Precious man,
‘Tis pleasure to care through fortune
Where laughter and wealth reverberate,
But it is still treasure and delight,
‘Though life possess tempest and melancholy.
Stay pure.
Then from oneself soar.
Janet Hayes, my wife, gave this poem to me only a few days before she passed away from metastatic breast cancer. She carried a lethal cancer for several years through radiation, chemotherapy and four major surgeries, nine surgeries in all, while carrying on impressive milestones in her career.
Executive Director
Judicial Division, American Bar Association
Executive Director
California Women Lawyers Association
Advisory Committee,
Center for Justice and Judicial Studies, University of Nevada
Executive Director
Conference of Delegates, State Bar of California
Executive Director
Litigation Section, State Bar of California
During several positions at the State Bar of California, Janet most enjoyed the Litigation Section, raising its membership well over 10,000 members to become the largest organization of lawyers in the California State Bar.
She helped create and manage the respected ‘California Litigation‘ publication [described here: calawyers.org/spotlight-on-the-california-litigation-journal/] and the robust ‘Litigation Review’, both ongoing and respected publications that began and remained strong under Janet’s leadership. She created ‘Champions of the Courtroom‘ in order to reveal critical contributions of lawyers and the important work that informs democracy of its labor toward justice. She compiled and published the rules of the California State Bar, enjoying the aid of her State Bar assistant Wayne Currier, her event planner and ally Ron Johnson, and her longtime friend Doron Weinberg, a confident civil rights attorney.
Janet enjoyed co-hosting ‘A Week in Legal London‘ with staff of London’s Royal Courts of Justice and with her friend Michael McKenzie QC CB, Master of the Crown Office, Royal Courts of England and Wales, one of the UK’s top legal professionals. Inviting lawyers to explore the roots of law, including commencing the California Bar’s Oxford University Summer Program, Janet urged attorneys to see the practice of American law evolve in their hands as it evolves in English common law.
Janet urged those who practice law to see that they are firstly Officers of the Court. They first cooperate in order to bring truth to the bench. She worried that competitiveness overwhelms the greater task of justice where an adversarial approach in the practice of law could too easily trump the courtroom.
She brought the profession together during the O. J. Simpson murder trial at a conference of over 600 lawyers to meet Johnny Cochran and F. Lee Bailey in person at the Silverado Resort in Napa, California. Gerry Spence, famous on TV in his western jacket and cowboy hat, gave his keynote on trusting the highest virtues both as a person and a lawyer. Thomas Jefferson was ‘reincarnated on stage’ to recite his thoughts and remind us that our tremendous values are always required in modern USA.
Janet kept every issue framed in creed and ethics. Her agenda reflected the purpose and charter of the Bar and its critical tenets too often forgotten across the nation.
Benjamin Dreyfus and Charles Garry, famous for defending the Chicago 8, were Janet’s favorite lawyers, her warmest personal friends and her employers at Garry, Dreyfus, McTernan & Brotsky. These lawyers made their career stepping forward for the most despised. They and Janet felt that the more chastised or poor or disadvantaged the client, the more important the role of the attorney. They insistently defended the underdog in cases such as the Black Panthers‘ Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, the Pentagon Papers case involving Daniel Ellsberg, and the Jim Jones People’s Temple massacre.
Years go by. I miss her.