MAY 24, 2024 – The other day while in conversation with our eight-year-old granddaughter about writing, she asked me how many diaries I had. “Lots,” I said.
“Ten?” she asked, seeking greater precision from me.
“More than that. If I had to guess, probably several dozen.”
“You should count ’em,” she said.
We then went on to other subjects, starting with what she might want to take on our June train trip to Connecticut. But Illiana’s question stuck with me, and later, for the first time ever, I counted my journals. They included 10 old spiral notebooks, which covered two of my high school years. The rest of the journal collection consisted of 66 200-page, hardbound books. From November 1984 through November 2017, I made consecutive daily entries, none covering less than a page, most extending to several pages, all in cursive.
In December 2017 I began skipping days. It was a slippery slope. Over the past two years, I’ve made only sporadic entries.
If I were famous, biographers would have a field day. Since I’m not, my journals are dust collectors, but at least they’re in chronological order. That arrangement will facilitate a well-organized disposition when the dumpster is put in place on the driveway behind our house.
Only rarely have I cracked open one of the volumes and read any of the entries. Usually, it’s when for some reason I remember an incident or episode that occurred years ago and am curious to see how I described it or reacted to it.
After taking count in the wake of Illiana’s question, for kicks I pulled the volume containing the May entries exactly 20 years ago. I’d long forgotten the significance of May 24, 1994, but as I read what I’d recorded about several unusual encounters, the details all flooded back.
By way of background, at the time I managed a niche business within the corporate trust department at Norwest Bank before it merged Wells Fargo. Part of my commission, as it were, was to figure out how to re-deploy the expertise of my group of professionals in combination with the vast payment operations of the trust department. After considerable research and national networking, I saw significant potential in administering claims and settlement funds in securities fraud and mass tort cases.
In addition to developing a de novo (from scratch) operation, I saw a chance to accelerate our business by acquisitions, particularly small claims administrators (usually affiliates of accounting firms). But then I learned that administration of the Dalkon shield case, one of the largest mass tort settlements of all time, was winding down. Federal Judge Robert Merhige, Jr. of the Eastern District of Virginia had presided over the multi-year, multi-billion-dollar settlement and had overseen the enormous entity that had been established to administer the claims. Surely the good judge, who took such great pride in his accomplishments in the case, would rather sell it—to us, since there would be no other bidders for it—than to disband it. And because there would be no other bidders, no doubt we could acquire it for bargain price.
Inquiries were made, contacts established, and by mid-May 1994, we were in close touch with the head of the administrative center, one Mike Sheppard. He arranged a meeting in Richmond with him and the Judge himself. I asked Dan, a manager in my group, to join me. He was a former investment banker and had been helpful in working on our business plan.
On May 24, 1994, Dan and I met with Fordham University Law School Dean Georgene Vairo, who was Chairperson of the Dalkon Shield Trust. She’d agreed to meet with us to discuss our concept of acquiring the administration center. My journal entry described our lunch with Vairo:
Georgine is a former campus radical, and though she’s congenial enough, she impresses me as being tougher than nails. I would guess she is [my oldest sister’s’] age. I think we left her with a positive impression, and I expect she will help us to the extent she reasonably can.
Later that afternoon, we took Amtrak to Baltimore where we met with the owner of a claims administration firm. We’d arranged the meeting on the pretext of sub-contracting with his firm if we could get ourselves appointed to administer the settlement claims in the Alyeska case (Exxon Valdez oil spill), in which our close contact, Brian O’Neil of our hometown firm, Faegre & Benson, was co-lead counsel for the plaintiff class members. But at the right moment in the conversation, we popped the ultimate question: We’d like to buy his business. According to my journal entry,
He received it well (i.e. He’ll talk to his wife). We’ll see what comes of it.
So far, we’re batting 1.000, but tomorrow comes the big show—our audience with His Majesty, the Honorable Robert Mehrige.
After Baltimore, we caught another train into Washington, where we rented a car for the drive to Richmond. We arrived on the outskirts late in the evening . . . famished.
We stopped at a “Waffle House.” I had never patronized one of these Southern fast food joints. Having satisfied my curiosity, I don’t need to stop in again. The greasy, I mean greasy spoon was smoke-filled, and the safest spot seemed to be at one end of the counter. From this vantage point, we had an excellent view of the short-order cook frying up food in the griddle. It was gross. He’d set metal collars on the griddle, ladle grease into the “corral,” and dump some hash browns into it. Meanwhile, he fried eggs and next, lots of meat, on the rest of the griddle. Our order took forever, and for a place with “waffle” in its name, it couldn’t produce one up to “code.”
We reached Richmond and our bedrooms at about 11:45.
(Cont.)
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
