Jim Meeks, 1938-2017: Remembering a Fifty-Year Friendship

Abstract

This paper was prepared for publication in the Ohio State Law Journal’s commemorative issue honoring the late Professor and Dean Emeritus, James E. Meeks. Instead of tracing Meeks professional career, which was impressive, but will be covered by others, this paper describes in some detail the 50-year friendship between the author and Professor Meeks. This close friendship began when Meeks joined the Iowa law faculty in 1964. Meeks was then a bachelor and the author’s wife played a matchmaker role in helping him find a suitable spouse for a marriage that was in its 50th year when Meeks died in 2017.

As a couple, the Meeks then became part of a larger group of close friends, who were all former college roommates of the author and his wife. The Meeks started a family in Iowa City, but eventually moved away in 1978 when Professor Meeks was appointed Dean of the Ohio State School of Law. These strong friendships endured. This group of friends not only travelled together on vacations, but they all ended up owning cabins on a unique island in a North woods lake, where they saw each other on a regular basis every summer. Meeks and the author were long-time fishing buddies, and tales of their fishing adventures are woven through out the paper.

Keywords: History, Eulogy, In Memoriam, Law Professors, Law Deans, Festschrift, Commemorative, Personal Friendship