Tribute: eulogy, William B. Sprong, Jr., United States Senator (1966-1973), Dean of the College of William and Mary School of Law (1976-1985).

• Author: Sullivan, Timothy J.

It all began with bourbon and tuna salad. Now a few of you must be wondering what I could possibly mean. How could Bill Spong's triumphant William and Mary years have anything at all to do with bourbon and tuna salad? But that is the way they did begin, and you should know the story.

On a brilliant, autumn Saturday sometime in October of 1975, I drove from Williamsburg to Portsmouth. I was the very young chair of the William and Mary Law School Dean Search Committee. My job--and it seemed to me mission impossible--was to convince Senator Spong that he really, really did want to become dean of a law school facing severe adversity.

Bill invited me to meet him at his home. We sat down to lunch at the kitchen table. His beloved wife Virginia provided the tuna salad, which was very good; Bill supplied the bourbon--which was also very good. His daughter Martha hovered--so it seemed to me--skeptically on the fringes of the room. Tommy would occasionally catapult through the room in pursuit of an errant soccer ball.

Bill and I talked, he was interested, and the rest is happy history. Bill Spong did come to William and Mary and his leadership first healed a crippled institution and then raised it to a level of national distinction that none of us dared to dream. He built a place of genuine intellectual excellence--but he did more. He built a law school of which George Wythe would have approved. And that is not a casual compliment. George Wythe's approval mattered a great deal to Bill. Bill's inspiration shaped a place where would-be lawyers learned not only their duty to their clients, but duty to humanity. The Law School became a place where professional success was, and is, defined not only by hours billed, but by a client's burdens lifted, and by a client's anguish eased.

During much of Bill's deanship, I served as one of his associate deans. We became friends--more than friends really. Our association deepened in ways that; made our relationship one of the great treasures of my life.

He was also my teacher. I learned life lessons that I have never forgotten and for which I have never failed to be grateful. As a teacher, Bill was almost magical. He taught without seeming to teach. We learned without realizing that we were being taught, until afterwards, when we were left to discover--with manifest joy--the power of the lessons he had lodged deep within our hearts.

As some of you know, Bill did not drive. When he was here, I was one of those who...