A Tribute to Yonna Windham Shaw

• Publication year: 2014

A Tribute to Yonna Windham Shaw

Joseph E. Claxton

Mercer University School of Law

Mark L. Jones

Mercer University School of Law, jones_ml@law.mercer.edu

Charles R. Adams

A Tribute to Yonna Windham Shaw

By Joseph E. Claxton^* Mark L. Jone^** and Charles R. Adams III^***

She cares, but she does not coddle.¹

Already in my career Yonna has significantly helped my connection to important lawyers in the state. She is the primary reason I will make it a point to visit Mercer Law School.²

Just over forty years ago, Mercer Law School's Dean Edgar H. Wilson asked Professor James C. Rehberg and a very junior professor named Joseph E. Claxton to join him in interviewing an applicant for a position on the law school's staff, a position which at that time (1974) was described simply as "Secretary" to the Mercer Law Review. The young applicant was named Yonna Windham Shaw. With some background as

a legal secretary,³ Yonna, at the tender age of twenty, began working with the Mercer Law Review on September 3, 1974.⁴ Neither Yonna nor any of those who interviewed her could have imagined that she would weather crises immeasurable⁵ to become an institution at the Law School, and would ultimately become "the heart and the soul"⁶ of Mercer Law Review well into the twenty-first century. Yonna now has surpassed the late, much-beloved Georgia Albritton⁷ as the longest-serving staff member of the Law School during the period since World War II—and almost certainly during the entire 142-year history of the Law School, if not the University as a whole.

We have had the great privilege and pleasure of working with Yonna in many endeavors over the years, including, in addition to the Mercer Law Review, her work on behalf of The Journal of Southern Legal History and the Legal Writing Institute.⁸ By title,⁹ but far more significantly by ability and skill, Yonna Shaw has long since become one of the most important members of the Mercer Law School community.

I came to teach at Mercer in 1978 as a 27-year old nerdy Jewish guy from St. Louis who had spent the previous few years practicing law in Atlanta. While I grew up in the mid-west, I found it easy to adjust to life in Atlanta.... Relocating 75 miles south to Macon to teach at a
Baptist school, however, was a bit intimidating.... Fortunately, I was introduced to Yonna. I enjoyed her warmth, friendliness, and sense of humor. She made me feel very much at home.¹⁰

Yonna has evolved into a master administrator, a woman who brings organization to potential chaos, manages a budget with aplomb, and one who has inspired the affection and respect of scores of students, staff members, and faculty members. Her professionalism is outstanding.

When we prepare our survey article each year, we are writing for (and to) Yonna. We do this to demonstrate to her that as writers and lawyers we continue to strive to attain the goals she infused in us many years ago. We do not wonder what the transient Eleventh Circuit Survey Editor is going to think of our article. Rather, will it pass Yonna's muster?¹¹

The purpose of this Tribute is to tell something of the extraordinary story of Yonna Shaw, from the standpoint of many who have known and worked with her across these four decades. This project started out as a secret from Yonna, with much covert planning and plotting among coconspirators that (while of course she found out about it within days) resulted in two initiatives to honor our beloved Yonna.¹²

The first initiative was executed at the Law Review Banquet on April 10, 2014, when Dean Daisy Hurst Floyd presented Yonna with a splendid bronze plaque bearing the title "The Walter F. George School of Law of Mercer University and The Mercer Law Review Recognition of

Distinguished Service Presented to Yonna Windham Shaw."¹³ The plaque, which will be placed in the Law Review suite, reads as follows:

With deep appreciation for 40 years of distinguished service to the Mercer University School of Law and to the Mercer Law Review. Yonna Shaw has been a mentor, friend, and indispensable administrator for hundreds of Law Review members, as well as a very effective representative of the Law School while working with innumerable authors, lawyers, and judges. Yonna Shaw is an inspiring exemplar of professional excellence and a true servant of legal education.

It is perhaps only out of respect for professional decorum that we omitted the term "mother figure"¹⁴ from the above listing of roles that Yonna has filled for the hundreds of Law Review members.¹⁵ However, this role surely becomes evident in the execution of the second initiative, which was announced at the Banquet and is memorialized in this Tribute. We sent to all of the Law Review members who have served during Yonna's tenure a questionnaire asking for their recollections

about 'life with Yonna."¹⁶ A representative sampling follows,¹⁷ but we will first add our own observations.

Professor Joe Claxton is one of Yonna's very close Mends and to this day, extremely pleased with the decision he made in 1974:

Yonna has become my friend, and that friendship is one which always will have deep meaning for me. She has been a rock through good times and bad. I have placed my trust in Yonna on innumerable occasions and have learned that her loyalty to the Law School and the many students with whom she has worked is without limit. I am so very proud of the fact that I participated in her hiring those many years ago.¹⁸

Professor Mark Jones, the current Mercer Law Review advisor, discusses the guidance that he received from Yonna and that he came to depend on:

Lawyers are familiar with the expression "Who will guard the guardians?" But for me the more pressing question upon assuming the position of Faculty Advisor was "Who will advise the advisor?" The answer was, of course, rather clear - "Yonna will advise the advisor for Yonna is the institutional memory and the font of accumulated experience of the Law Review." And thus it has proved to be whenever I have had some Law Review related issue on which I needed instruction or matter on which I needed guidance and wise counsel. Yonna's authority, then, is inherent but by no means overbearing. Others in such a position may perhaps be tempted to regard the activity they shepherd as some kind of fiefdom, into which one enters only on their terms. It is not so with Yonna, and I have appreciated the
opportunity for genuine dialogue as we have worked through some issue, problem, or other situation.¹⁹

Professor Charles Adams discusses Yonna's tenure at Mercer:

One of the things first-year law students learn about is the law of "fixtures." They learn that a "fixture" is something securely attached or appended, the removal of which would cause permanent damage. Very early in her

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