Washburn Law Journal
Professor Jim Wadley: Teacher, Artist, Polymath, Renaissance Man
Volume 49, No. 3 (Spring 2010)
J. Lyn Entrikin Goering(1)
The polymath tries to exercise all parts of the brain. It is more than just acquiring general knowledge . . . . [T]he polymath is also a poet, a composer, an artist, or a novelist perhaps.
In the heart of the true visionary lies a realm of reality known only to those who share in the dream. To these souls, the spirit of . . . adventure lives on(2).
Jim Wadley was my law school professor, my faculty mentor, my party-wall neighbor, and most of all, my longtime friend. He left us all too soon. On January 1, 2010, cancer claimed his life, but never will we lose his effervescent spirit. Joy Erekson, his aptly named younger sister, remembered him during his memorial service, celebrating his good humor as well as his many talents and broad range of interests. Telling a story well suited to this man who so loved to laugh, she speculated (with a broad smile that reminded me of Jim's) about what he might have liked others to say about him while viewing his body lying in repose at his funeral service: "Hey, look! He's moving!"
In that moment, Joy's words, along with the collective chuckle rippling through the crowded temple sanctuary, perfectly captured Jim's sense of humor and irreverence. It was exactly what he would have wanted us to share at his memorial service-happy memories of how much he loved life, even to the point of laughing in the face of death. Some of us gathered there to remember him on that gray, snowy day would learn for the first time of Jim's favorite Halloween custom: lying in wait in a makeshift coffin on his front porch, jumping up with glee at the last moment to scare the living daylights out of the many trick-or-treaters who came calling every year at the Wadley home. That vision of Jim having fun with young children made Joy's story all the more meaningful. Surely Jim was there with us in spirit, enjoying the moment just like Tom Sawyer did when he attended his own funeral. Jim wouldn't have missed laughing along with the hundreds of us who gathered together that day to remember how much we loved and admired him as a husband, father, professor, colleague, neighbor, and friend.
To this day, I remember seeing him for the first time, ambling casually down the aisle of Room 102, books tucked under his arm. It was the summer of 1985, and one of my law school friends and I enrolled in his Property II class, now better known as Real Estate Transactions. In those days, he was tall and lean. He wore plain old blue jeans-a rare sight to behold in a law professor, and I couldn't help but like Professor Wadley immediately. He was no-nonsense, down-to-earth, and knew his stuff. Everyone in the class knew it, but not because he was overbearing and intimidating. He was just quietly self-confident, organized, and well-prepared to teach us what we needed to know.
The atmosphere in his law classroom was palpably different than in most. This man genuinely cared about teaching and cared about us as fellow human beings, joining him in a learning adventure. Yet I remember more legal doctrine from that intensive summer course than I do from most: metes and bounds property descriptions, the Public Land Survey System used to subdivide land in the early Midwest, and the professional ethics of representing both buyer and seller in a real estate transaction. His class was interesting, practical, and fun, and we learned all the more because Professor Wadley made his classroom a safe haven. With tongue figuratively in cheek, he tacitly poked fun at his faculty colleagues who adopted a different classroom approach: For more years than I can count, his office door prominently displayed a photo of two outhouses, one labeled "Faculty," carefully poised atop another labeled "Students." (Think about it.).
He was an artist, a music maker, a rappeller, a bishop, a tribal judge, a scholar, a craftsman, a teacher, and a true friend to all. He was generous, kind, funny, and multi-talented. Without fail, whenever I visited his office as a novice law professor to share my delight in a new teaching insight, he would offer support, encouragement, enthusiasm, reading materials, teaching resources, and creative thoughts about how I might improve and develop my nascent idea. Each year I asked that he continue as my faculty mentor, and he graciously agreed. I will be forever in his debt for his willingness to lend an ear, offer encouraging words, and share his wise counsel.
Jim had a talent for both art and music. Of all the books Jim recommended over the years to me and to others, his most beloved was Betty Edwards' Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Written by a longtime art professor, the book teaches not just how to draw, but how to think. Creative thinking was one of Jim's many passions. His office was a font of creative thinking. The walls displayed a wide variety of his own original artwork in oil, watercolor, pastel, and acrylic, as well as his own handcrafted musical instruments he often played with students and other friends who frequented his office. On the other side of our party wall(3), I often heard the soft strum of a mandolin, the clear tone of a pennywhistle, or Jim's voice raised in song or gentle laughter.
One time in early October, between student conferences, he stepped into my office door with a bright idea-a common occurrence over the years Jim was my neighbor. He had just learned that a Brasilian publisher was compiling international contributions for a publication titled Abuse of Power. Would I help him write a chapter on a case then pending before the U.S. Supreme Court addressing whether the State of Kansas could tax fuel sold by a tribal gas station located on a Native American reservation? Swamped with upcoming memo-grading deadlines and other projects, I told him it was simply impossible for me to take on anything else. When he gave me his skeptical "there's no time like the present" look, I hesitantly asked when the chapter was due. His answer? "We have until the end of this month-that gives us lots of time!"
He refused to let me off the hook. To Jim, absolutely nothing was impossible! The collaboration was feverish. He wrote the part about Native American law. I wrote the part about taxation as an abuse of power. On the last day of the month, a Saturday (coincidentally Halloween), we put the finishing touches on the chapter in my office, jointly editing the footnote copy on my computer with Jim sitting across my desk wondering aloud why I was obsessing over every citation. (I patiently reminded him that I was a legal writing professor, after all, and the citation format needed to be right!) We barely made the deadline. The chapter was later published verbatim alongside several others written in Portuguese. He was right, of course-nothing was impossible with a little sweat equity and a positive attitude!
On another occasion, we collaborated on a presentation for a Washburn Law student-faculty colloquium organized by Professor Charlene Smith. Jim selected our presentation title: "Getting Grey Matter to Think Right (Or is it Left?) About Legal Matter." Jim was fascinated with creative perspective and right-brain thinking. He frequently encouraged students and colleagues alike to shift their own perspectives by joining him in rappelling adventures at Echo Cliff, neighborhood parades, painting demonstrations, or trips to Guy and Mae's Tavern in Williamsburg, Kansas for slow-cooked ribs wrapped in foil and served on sheets of newspaper. He loved teaching Creative Thinking, and we often discussed the possibility of someday team-teaching a course called Effective Thinking. He would teach the creative thinking part, and I would teach the linear thinking part. (Part of his motivation, I'm sure, was to encourage me to do more right-brain thinking.)
To Jim, seeing things from a different perspective was one of the great joys of living. Life was an adventure. He simply loved to learn, and one of the many ways he did it was deliberately shifting his own and others' perspective. He often told me that we needed to teach our students not so much to think "outside the box," but rather to think more creatively "inside the box." He was quite possibly the most brilliant yet unassuming and down-to-earth person I have ever known. Secure in his own skin, he had little patience for those who patronized others with their intellectual prowess. He was a true teacher who relished the joy of learning from his students and colleagues alike.
As a faculty mentor, he could not have been more wise and supportive. When the chips were down, he cheered me up, encouraged me, and nurtured my independent spirit. Beyond his role as a mentor and professor, he championed in countless ways the cause of those who were down and out. Individuals from all walks of life visited him regularly in his office, and he counseled and helped them all with a joyful and generous spirit. He was a gem-a veritable "diamond in the rough" in our midst. Some of us will never know how truly blessed we were to have him among us for so long.
This was a man who truly left his mark on the world in a host of unimaginable ways. As a law professor, above all he cared about teaching his students. His classes were enjoyable because students knew he was genuine. Professor Wadley quietly refused to play "hide the ball," which every law student recognizes as a frequent phenomenon in law school classes. When I was a Washburn law student during the mid-1980's, his open disdain for mandatory grading curves caused the student body to coin the well-known phrase, "There are no D's in Wadley." Students flocked to his classes because they knew they could relax and learn there-without the high-anxiety atmosphere that was all too often a characteristic of other law school classrooms. Jim often told me that he believed law students should be graded in a manner similar to other graduate students-if they were bright enough to be admitted, he reasoned, they were bright enough to earn mostly A's and B's in law school(4).
Carol Christensen, a long-time friend of Jim and Frances Wadley, generously shared with me the notes she had collected from Jim's family, friends, and colleagues during the difficult few days after his spirit took wing. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of former law students, colleagues, friends, and family members posted messages and fond remembrances online. Among them, two descriptions of Jim were so often repeated they bear special mention here.
One was Jim's "amazing" and remarkably broad range of talents and interests. At this, anyone who knew him will nod in firm agreement. Jim was blessed with remarkably diverse and innumerable talents. He loved to teach, write, and read, traits he held in common with most law professors. Yet Jim's teaching and scholarship interests were extraordinarily diverse: Entertainment Law, Native American Law, Water Rights, Agricultural Law, Real Estate Transactions, Admiralty and Maritime Law, Intellectual Property, Creative Thinking for Lawyers. But he also loved nature, travel, art, music, and poetry (especially "cowboy" poetry). He loved Native American culture, and he loved building things. He loved his family and his church community with a deep and abiding commitment. How he found time to do everything with such an amazing zest for life was a mystery that I'm sure only his beloved family truly understands.
The other was the frequent reference to Jim as the ultimate "Renaissance man." During the Italian Renaissance, the philosophical ideal as expressed by philosopher Leon Battista Alberti held that "a man can do all things if he will." In the fifteenth century, Renaissance humanism encouraged men to strive for knowledge, developing their potential to the fullest possible extent. Indeed, Jim Wadley was a terrific example of a Renaissance man. He seemed able to do anything well(5), and he was willing to do it all. As if that were not enough, he encouraged everyone around him, especially his junior faculty colleagues, to believe in themselves and their own limitless potential to succeed at things they'd never before tried. As several of his family members observed during his memorial service, Jim genuinely believed that everyone shared his many talents, and he wanted each of us to believe it, too. Friendship with Jim was empowering because he urged those he cared about to become the best they could be, and he consistently demonstrated his enthusiasm for living life to the fullest.
* * *
These last few months I keep listening for banjo or mandolin music emanating through our shared office wall. I keep thinking Jim will step around the corner and stop by to talk awhile or to share a funny story. But since he left us, the cozy southeast corner of the second floor that we shared with Professor Rory Bahadur has been strangely quiet. With time and patience, I know I will once again hear Jim's music, just as soon as I learn to "tune in" to his newfound ways of sharing his gifts of music, creativity, polymathic knowledge, infectious curiosity, and good humor. (I'm still working on that right-brain thinking skill he tried to teach me these last few years.)
Jim was one of a kind-truly a creative genius. His multifaceted talents have long enriched Washburn Law School and helped make it a special place to learn and to teach. Jim, we miss you. May your unique spirit of adventure live on until we meet again. In the meantime, we'll be seeing you-and listening for you-in all the old familiar places(6).
FOOTNOTES
Click footnote number to return to corresponding location in the text.
1. Professor of Law, Washburn University School of Law.
2. Tom Lacey, Polymath Society International, "Polymath: n. A person of encyclopedic learning." MERRIAM-WEBSTER'S COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY 962 (11th ed. 2003).
3. In an email message Jim sent me last fall while I was a visiting professor at Bowen School of Law, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, he suggested with typical good humor, "When you get back, we may have to take down the party wall and have a party." Much to my regret, we lost Jim before we had an opportunity for that party.
4. Jim's perspective on law school grading was illustrated in the funeral program with the following printed verse:
The Grade by Carol Lynn Pearson
God does not grade
On the curve,
I'm sure of it.
But we sit around
Like high school students
In an important class
Whose teacher has drawn
On the blackboard
The tiny wedges
For the A's and B's
And the great bulge for the C's.
We sigh in veiled relief
As the person down the row messes up
Because it makes us look better
And probably means an F
For him, which is good,
Because while we have
Nothing against him personally
It means an A is more
Available to us.
And we secretly sorrow
When the person in front of us
Does really well
Although we like her okay
Because there goes another good grade,
Darn it, and we're looking worse and worse
And slipping further down the curve.
And God, I think
Sits at the front of the class
Holding A's enough for all
Watching us work out our salvation
In fear and competition.
5.Perhaps the only exception was the daunting task of keeping his office free of clutter. He told me many times that he made it a practice to "clean" his office at the beginning of every semester whether it needed it or not. (He meant the top of his desk.) In one of the last email messages he sent last fall while I was visiting in Little Rock, he dutifully reported the local news: "Ro Lasso [a former Washburn colleague and now Professor at John Marshall Law School in Chicago] was here for a visit and came by to comment on how cluttered my office was. He did concede that it was better than [Professor] Elrod's and [Professor] Duncan's."
6. One of the most moving events during Jim's funeral service was the display of a series of family photographs projected on a large screen, while Jim's jazz band, The Flamingos, played some favorite numbers. The last of these was I'll Be Seeing You [in All the Old Familiar Places]. The lyrics, reprinted below, were written by Irving Kahal in 1938. (I'll keep listening for your banjo music, Jim.)
I'll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places
That this heart of mine embraces
All day through.
In that small cafe;
The park across the way;
The children's carousel;
The chestnut trees;
The wishin' well.
I'll be seeing you
In every lovely summer's day;
In every thing that's light and gay.
I'll always think of you that way.
I'll find you
In the morning sun
And when the night is new.
I'll be looking at the moon,
But I'll be seeing you.
