Wilbur C. Leatherberry: a CWRU lifer.

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Date: 22 September 2012
• Author: Entin, Jonathan L.
• Published date: 22 September 2012
• Author: Entin, Jonathan L.

Bill Leatherberry arrived on this campus straight out of high school in the fall of 1961 and, except for a brief hiatus at the beginning of his professional career, has been here ever since. When Bill got here, Western Reserve University and Case Institute of Technology were still separate entities; it would be six years until the federation that created Case Western Reserve University, at the start of his third year in law school. (1)

In 1961, when Bill started college, Louis Toepfer was vice-dean of Harvard Law School; (2) Morry Shanker was a rookie assistant professor; (3) Leon Gabinet was a lawyer in Portland, Oregon; (4) Lew Katz was a second-year law student; (5) Peter Gerhart was in the eleventh grade; (6) Frank Battisti was the youngest federal judge in the country; (7) John Glenn was an astronaut who hadn't yet orbited the earth; (8) the Cleveland Browns were three years away from winning the last sports championship that this city has seen; (9) Sherman Lee was the relatively new director of the Cleveland Museum of Art; (10) and George Szell was a little over halfway through his tenure as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra. (11) What a difference fifty-one years make!

Bill thrived here as a student, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and Order of the Coif. With credentials like that, he could have gone to a large law firm pretty much anywhere in the country. But Bill had strong commitments to public service and went instead to the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, where tie thought he could make a real difference to people who didn't have access to the kind of high-powered lawyers who generally had more affluent clients. After three years representing low-income clients in a wide variety of matters, he joined the staff of Congressman Louis Stokes and spent two years working oil legislative issues. (12) He returned to his alma mater in...