Tom Bulleit - Bulleit Proof

I hand the administrator my finished test, grab my pistol, duck out of the tent, and get back in the Jeep. Weeks later, I receive the results. As I expected, I’ve aced the LSAT.

I now humbly offer this advice to anyone deciding to take the LSAT. Study, sleep the night before, and bring a pistol. Worked for me.

1969

BACK IN THE WORLD.

That’s what we call our return.

Few of us call it coming home.

We depart for Vietnam as one person and come back another. Many of us are unrecognizable even to ourselves.

We’ve changed—emotionally, spiritually, physically. We return with broken bodies, smashed spirits, shattered hearts, confused minds. We escape the battlefields of Vietnam, eluding the horror and chaos, only to land in new, unfamiliar chaos, an internal war—back in the world—a world we thought we knew.

For me, to be honest, the military worked. If you could remove the tragedy of war—of course you can’t; but if you could —what remains is a gift. The military changed my life, for the better. I learned discipline, responsibility, and self-confidence. Some of this the military literally drills into you. I left Kentucky a married boy stumbling through life, lacking focus and any real conviction, but having made a promise. I have a goal, vowed to keep my promise, but I don’t have an actual plan. I come back into the world a married man with relentless focus. I feel as if I’m walking through life with a sandstone draped around my neck, a stone of ambition. I am driven, motivated, impatient, uncertain, and scared. In other words, I have matured.

Fear drives me. I fear that I will fail to make a living, that I will struggle to find my place in the “real world,” and most of all, that I will disappoint my parents, especially my father. And I fear that I won’t keep my promise. That fear drives me most of all.

My parents have aged. My mother moves slower and seems quieter, her faced furrowed with lines caused by worry. It’s not my going to Vietnam that has done her in, I realize. It’s the waiting, the daily terror of receiving another telegram, this one about her son, about me. My father, always a recalcitrant man, appears subdued, bordering on distant. A lifetime smoker and drinker, he has become even quieter and smokes and drinks even more. This is how he dulls his pain, by chain-smoking, sipping from his shot glass or beer bottle, shutting himself off from his own terrors, his own memories.

So, motivated by fear, I enter the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville determined to fulfill the promise I made to my father. I leave nothing to chance. I absolutely attack my courses. I become a warrior in the classroom and a fiend in the library. Some nights I close the place, along with the janitor. I don’t want to succeed. I want to excel. I achieved outstanding grades in high school, followed that by tanking in college, setting records for futility, except for becoming a standout at every party, now, I see, a dubious distinction. I declare myself retired from that life. Back in the world, I’m a different person. I am a law student, a married man, and I will become a lawyer.

In 1971, I finished law school near the top of my class and was named associate editor of the Law Review. I pass the Kentucky bar and receive a job offer with the Honors Program of the Office of Chief Counsel, Internal Revenue Service, a jaw-breaking title that means I’ll be moving to Washington, D.C., as a lawyer for the IRS. My mother cries when I tell her, my father nods stoically, which I interpret as a gesture of pride, or perhaps relief. Stephanie and I pack all of our belongings into our car, I say goodbye to my parents, and we move east, settling in Reston, Virginia, a quiet suburb, about an hour and half commute from the District. Driving from Louisville to D.C., Stephanie dozing, her head resting against the passenger-side window, a stunning revelation pulsates through my brain—

I’ve completed my undergraduate education.

I’ve served in the military.

I’ve become a lawyer.

I have fulfilled my promise to my father.

I’m now free to unearth Augustus’s family recipe and become a distiller.

Two questions.

How?

And—

When?

* * *

I see me walking into my office in the heart of D.C. I once again wear a uniform—crisply pressed dark suit, subtle pinstripe shirt, conservative tie, short haircut, gripping my leather briefcase. I look like a lawyer. Hell, I could be an advertisement for a lawyer.

I represent the IRS. I represent the Establishment. I am the Establishment. But in a bigger newsflash, at least to me, I love it. I love the law and I love being a lawyer. An early riser, I’m always among the first to arrive in the office and almost always the last to leave. I put in long hours, not only because I have a killer commute and I want to wait until traffic subsides before I drive the 90 minutes home to Virginia, but I enjoy being there. I love to work. Work, I find, grounds me, energizes me. Plus, I like grappling with the minutia, the ambiguity, the complexity of tax law. I get lost in it. I’m not bored for a second. In fact, the law turns me on, intellectually.

But all around me, as I settle into the law, and lawyering, and embrace my role in the Establishment, I see a world that’s teetering on the edge of turmoil. It’s 1972 and one day in early spring, 15,000 protestors convene in Washington, not far from my office, to protest the Vietnam War, one of dozens of protests that happen weekly across the country. At year’s end, police arrest five men for burglarizing the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel. Then a series of earth-shattering events practically careen into each other over a short three-year time frame from 1972 to 1975—the Supreme Court passes Roe v. Wade , the Watergate Hearings begin, the House votes to impeach President Richard M. Nixon, Nixon resigns the presidency, the Vietnam War ends, Saturday Night Live begins.

In the midst of all this, in 1974, Stephanie gives birth to our daughter, Anne Hollister Bulleit. We call her Hollis, and I don’t know if it’s the era she’s born into or her independent spirit, but I soon identify her as a child of strong will and opinion, and uncommon athletic ability. I’ll soon recognize her gift for creativity. We connect, Hollis and I, from her first breath.

* * *

Shortly after Hollis arrives, I decide that one law degree isn’t enough so I enroll in Georgetown Law School to earn a Masters of Law in Taxation. I continue to work fulltime, attending classes at night and on weekends. I study whenever I can find a spare half hour. I relegate sleep to the backburner, deciding it’s highly overrated. I prosper academically and two years of mind-numbing very late nights and extremely early mornings, in 1976, Georgetown awards me an LL.M degree.

* * *

I love the law, love being a lawyer, but I’m restless, slightly homesick, and itching to be my own boss. Over what will become a year of conversation and negotiation, again driven by fear, this time the fear of the unknown, I leave the security of the Office of Chief Counsel in Washington, pack up Stephanie and Hollis, and move to Lexington, Kentucky, where with two close friends I form the law firm of Arnold, Bulleit, and Kinkead.

Time flies, a year turns into two, into three, the calendar closes out the decade, and we enter the Eighties. Our little boutique law firm expands. What I call our start-up expands from a couple of offices and a reception area, to an entire floor, to taking over the top two floors of our building. We add a dozen or so lawyers and, over time, I find myself with top billing. Each of us specializes. Shelby Kinkead, a descendant of the first governor of Kentucky, over six feet tall, a charming and elegant man, serves as our general counsel and litigator. I, less tall, yet dapper, write contracts. As a point of information, the difference between elegant and dapper is height. Shelby and I share the work—long hours—and before I know it, checks roll in, we cash them, and my fear of failing to make a living as a lawyer on my own eases. At least to a degree. I always live with a level of fear gnawing at me, driving me. Fear is my motor. The truth is, I enjoy the hell out of being a lawyer.