I applied to law schools while attending seminary at Abilene Christian University's Graduate School of Theology (or ACU). I was invited to attend Cornell Law School and jumped at the chance (especially after being wait listed by Harvard!). After all, Cornell is an Ivy League School and I'm the grandson of Kentucky share croppers!
A year later I became the president of the Cornell chapter of the Christian Legal Society, and through it, came to know David French.
David had been a professor at Cornell the year before my wife and I arrived in Ithaca, New York. He was a David Lipscomb alum (a church of Christ school like ACU. In fact, we shared a great prof in Randy Harris) and a graduate of Harvard Law School. At that time he was working for a law firm in Lexington, Kentucky. Later, he would run FIRE (a religious 1st Amendment organization) and then joined the Alliance Defense Fund (or ADF for short).
I went looking for David because a friend had an important 1st Amendment question and he recruited me to join ADF as an allied attorney. The first time we met in person was last summer at an ADF training session. David then told me this story. He had served on the admissions committee the year I applied to Cornell. My application package had been shipped to the committee to review. David scanned it and wondered why I had not been automatically admitted but then he noticed the comments from Cornell personnel: "Too conservative"; "Don't need a member of the god squad"; "a Bible thumper!" David boldly proclaimed to the committee that they were discriminating against me because of my religious beliefs. They backed down and 3 years later I graduated from Cornell Law in the top half of my class (missed the top 1/3 by .01).
This past week, I accepted an offer to work full-time for ADF but while I prepare for orientation in beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona, the man who went to bat for me is bravely serving our country in Iraq (hence, the picture).
David and his wife Nancy support former Governor Romney's presidential bid (as do I) and Nancy is one of the frequent contributors to the web page Evangelicals for Mitt. This week Nancy asked for help in collecting care packages for David's squadron. I plan to do all I can and encourage you to do the same for the brave man who stood up for me and all the selfless men and women who are standing up for all of us everyday. Check out the link and sign on now!
