I was pleased by your March 9 editorial tribute to law professor Dan Pollitt, whom I met in 1935.
I was a conventional kid and was always impressed by his willingness to drop everything and do the unexpected. On one occasion, we were sitting on his porch when he said, "Let's go visit Bob Brazee." Bob was an old friend who lived in upstate New York, and we lived in Washington, but we left that day, thumbs out, and hitchhiked the 300 or so miles to Bob's home in Oneonta. Then we hitched across New York and Massachusetts to Falmouth and took the ferry to visit another friend, left there to spend a night in New York City and then thumbed back to Washington, having spent maybe $25. To him, it was a routine vacation.
In addition to his spontaneity, I admired his ideas. Even as a kid, Danny worried about minority rights. He always favored the underdog. He might have become a wealthy corporate attorney but chose to work for those who couldn't afford him. He always carried a copy of the Constitution in his pocket and spent his life trying to see that our courts and institutions lived up to it. I will miss him.
