Lawyers at Play

By Kurt Chandler

As one Wisconsin attorney explains, the essential work of any lawyer involves solving somebody else's problems. Even on the most gratifying cases, that responsibility can make for some awfully stressful days, as most lawyers will attest.

To ease the pressure-cooker demands, Wisconsin lawyers have found a curious assortment of things to do after the workday ends. Sometimes the off-hour pastime is a budding second career, sometimes it's a long-standing hobby, and sometimes it's just plain fun. Here, your peers define the frequently foreign concept of "Lawyers at Play."

Dennis Boyer, ghost story writer

He's got a story about a ghost that inhabits a cheese factory in New Glarus, one about spirits in an abandoned brewery in Potosi and another about a phantom herd of grazing cows, which appears now and then in a Richland County pasture.

Dennis Boyer writes ghost stories, not the Stephen King variety, but stories that he's collected as he's traveled the byways of Wisconsin. A lawyer since 1980 with the state office of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Boyer's traveling job has taken him into coffee shops and taverns in nearly every county in the state.

And he's heard the strangest things from the people he's met - stories about a phantom fisherman along Iowa County's Mill Creek and a half-pig, half-human creature in Adams County.

"I've been storing up these anecdotes for eight or 10 years," he says.

A few years ago, Boyer, a graduate of the West Virginia University Law School, took some time off to care for the firstborn of two sons while his wife, Donna Weikert, also a lawyer, worked for a teacher's union. As his son napped at home in their farmhouse near Dodgeville, Boyer began pulling together some of the anecdotes. The stories grew into two self-published books, Ghosts of Iowa County and Iowa County Folk Tales.

In his latest book, Driftless Spirits, published last year by Prairie Oak Press in Madison, Boyer relates 46 tales of the paranormal, using ghost stories as a device to examine folklore in southwestern Wisconsin.

Unlike urban horror stories in which ghosts are typically seen as threatening, rural phantoms are regarded almost like patron saints or guardian angels by local residents, says the 47-year-old author.

"In hearing these stories, I started to wonder if people were commenting on a passing way of life," he says.

Driftless Spirits includes stories about apparitions, including the tale of a World War Two-era trapper whose incorporeal form old-timers periodically see roaming the countryside - and Boyer's own farm.

Boyer, who says he "concedes to the possibilities" of the supernatural, admits to having seen something "out of place" one night among the gravestones of a cemetery near his home.

Boyer's childhood prepared him well for his storytelling. Born to a Pennsylvania Dutch family, his relatives were conscientious in handing down family oral histories dating back to the Revolutionary War.

Due out this fall from Prairie Oak Press is Boyer's Giants in the Land, a collection of Wisconsin tall tales in the tradition of Paul Bunyon or the Rhinelander Hodag.

"There's nothing in here that's even remotely plausible," he says. "These are fun stories told by people after they've had maybe too many Tom Collinses."

Boyer's work as a writer provides a creative outlet that his legal career does not.

"In my job [as AFSCME's government relations counsel], I tend to deal with fairly weighty stuff all the time." It's refreshing, he says, to sit down with folks, crack open a beer or two, and listen to them spin tall tales.

"I'm having far more fun than I ever imagined."

Rick Smith and Michael Reyes, jazzmen

Ask Rick Smith what he was doing before he went to law school and he pleads guilty to enjoying the freewheeling life of a hippie.

"I was living kind of free and easy," confesses Smith, 46. He traveled around the United States and lived in South America for a while, teaching English in Colombia.

"Law school was the turning point for me, in that it caused me to become serious and focus on the idea of a career."

Although he's practiced law since receiving his J.D. from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1981, Smith has remained true to a few of his hippie-day roots, particularly his love for music.

"Like a lot of kids in the '60s," he says, "I played a little guitar, and I always liked the saxophone."

Michael Reyes, meanwhile, has been a more studied musician. Raised in the Cleveland area, with family roots in Puerto Rico, Reyes studied music in college and played guitar for most of his life.

"I was always influenced by a lot of different musical styles," says Reyes, 36, "music from the Caribbean, rock 'n roll, rhythm and blues, flamenco, Latin jazz."

While also attending law school at U.W.-Madison, Reyes began producing concerts. When he moved to Milwaukee eight years ago, he started organizing musical workshops within the Hispanic community.

The devotion to music held by Smith and Reyes led them by chance to become jazz impresarios in Milwaukee.

Both had been invited to sit on an advisory committee to the Artist Series at the Pabst Theater. And through that committee, both were invited to join the board of directors for the Friends of WYMS, an FM radio station that broadcasts jazz six days a week.

To raise funds for the station, Smith and Reyes produced a CD of some of Milwaukee's most notable jazz players, musicians such as trumpet player Brian Lynch, pianist David Hazeltine and saxophonist Frank Morgan, a protegé of Charlie Parker. The WYMS Jazz Sampler went on sale in October 1996. (Copies can be purchased by contacting the station at (414) 475-8890. All proceeds go to the station.)

Recruiting the players, booking studio time, coordinating the recording sessions and designing the CD took a full year. "It was a marathon project," says Smith.

In 1996 Smith and Reyes coproduced a concert featuring the Gato Barbieri Quintet. Out of that grew Yemay Productions, a concert promotion company (named for the African goddess of water and rhythm), run by Smith, Reyes and attorney Scott Wales.

"Jazz is vital," Smith declares. "I'm real interested in young players who are playing vital, new jazz."

Reyes, through Yemay and other ventures, has been successful in bringing a diverse blend of musical acts to the area, including a concert titled the Thunder Drums Tour - two percussion virtuosos from Cuba who performed early this year only in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Milwaukee.

"I find music to be almost therapeutic," says Reyes, who lives in Glendale with his wife, Rosemary, also a lawyer. "I find inspiration through music, from the various genres. I've fortunately been able to work my schedule around so I can get involved with other activities."

"There are some lawyers who just work all the time, they're consumed by their work," says Smith, who lives with his wife, Valerie Ko-Smith, and their two daughters in Wauwatosa. "Of course, if you ask my wife, she would probably say I am consumed by my interest in jazz."

Indeed he is. When he's not promoting concerts or producing CDs, Smith is learning to play the alto sax.

Mary Triggiano-Hunt, snowmobile racer

As if the life of an attorney isn't fast-paced enough, Mary Triggiano-Hunt finds it necessary to race snowmobiles - often in excess of 100 miles per hour.

By weekday, she's the managing attorney of Legal Action of Wisconsin's Milwaukee office, providing free legal service to low-income clients.

But by weekend, when the snow flies, she and her husband are off to the plains of northern Minnesota, setting speed records across the surfaces of frozen lakes.Triggiano-Hunt credits (or perhaps blames) her husband for her thrill-seeking off-hour pastime. In the late 1970s, before the two met, Ken Hunt designed and raced snowmobiles for Polaris in Roseau, Minn. After relocating to Wisconsin, he went to work for John Deere in Horicon and continued to race. Triggiano-Hunt became a member of his pit crew.

Eventually, he coaxed her into joining him on the circuit. "Three years ago he put me on a sled and I started racing," she says. "It became part of our lives."

She began doing "speed runs," racing down a quarter-mile drag strip. And before long, the two of them were on the Polaris A-team, setting records.

"We started kickin' butt," says the 34-year-old Triggiano-Hunt, who lives in Oconomowoc. In 1995 she set a world record. "I went about 114 mph in a quarter mile. That's about 8 seconds down the track."

"It's exhilarating, but it ends real quick because it's such a short track. So you want to do it again."

In the last four years, the husband-wife team has won 45 first-place and 24 second-place finishes, including six world records through the National Snowmobile Speed Run Association. In 1995 Triggiano-Hunt was named NSSR Rookie of the Year.

Born and raised in Racine, Triggiano-Hunt graduated from law school at the U.W.-Madison in 1988. She went to work in 1994 at Legal Action, a federally funded agency that assists low-income clients in civil cases, mostly involving public benefits, housing issues and family law.

"I really saw that there was a need out there for people without money who needed our assistance. Attorneys sometimes have the key to the solutions to people's problems. The underprivileged often don't have means, wherewithal or resources."

Gliding across an icy lake on a snowmobile releases her from the stress of a job she truly enjoys.

"Even going 114 mph, though, is not as exhilarating as being able to help clients and knowing that you've done something for those clients that may help them turn their lives around."

And what does she do for thrills in the summer, after the snow has long melted away? "I ride a Harley," she says.

Of course.

Amy Sanborn, equestrienne

The sport of dressage is performed, not played. A uniformed rider mounts a horse inside a 20x60-meter arena bordered by a short, white, wooden fence. The rider salutes the judge, and for eight long minutes, leads the horse through a series of as many as 30 choreographed maneuvers, commanding the animal through slight movements of her hands and legs.

When it's done right, dressage is detailed, precise, elegant - a four-legged equivalent to figure skating or gymnastics. When it's done right, horse and rider become one.

Amy Sanborn has been doing it right for nearly 20 years; so right, in fact, that she has won several state championships and now competes at the national and international rank. Ten years ago, she was chosen to spend a summer of training at France's national equitation school.

"I've been around horses since I was two," says Sanborn, whose mother raises horses on a 120-acre farm near Verona, southwest of Madison. "I'm not overly confident in the law, but riding and training horses is one area I feel extremely confident in."

A graduate of Cornell Law School in Ithaca, N.Y., Sanborn, 33, divides her time between the farm and her law office in Madison. But her legal practice is transitory. Two years ago, she formed Silent Partner Legal Services, a freelancing, lawyer's "temp service." She markets herself to small firms as a practitioner-for-hire, employed on a temporary basis to practice general law when a firm is short-handed or has a scheduling conflict, for example.

Practicing law, riding horses and caring for her two sons - ages 10 months and two-and-a-half years - thoroughly fills her days. Yet Sanborn also finds time to teach high-impact aerobics and kick-boxing at a Madison health club.

"That's just for fun," she laughs, "and it complements the riding. You need to be strong, you need muscle control to communicate with the horse in a subtle way."

Dressage is her true passion. To support her sport, she also trains and breeds horses, and coaches young riders.

"I'm probably not going to get rich and famous practicing law," she decides. Rather, her lifelong dream is to compete at the level of an Olympian.

"My goal isn't necessarily to be on an Olympic team," she says, "but I really want to be of that caliber and make the list of candidates."

Martin D. Stein, comedian

Martin Stein doesn't tell lawyer jokes. Well, okay, maybe one or two. After all, he is a stand-up comic, and much of his material does draw on his own professional life.

So, in his shtick, he pokes fun at himself.

To wit: I'm a pretty good personal injury lawyer. I have my own ambulance.

And: If I can't settle your case in 30 minutes or less, the next whiplash is free.

Biggida boom.

Born and raised in Philadelphia and a graduate of Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Mich., Stein, 33, now lives in Mequon with his wife, Pamela Kahn-Stein, a Wisconsin native who's also a lawyer. ("I'm a cheesehead by marriage," says Stein.) Three years ago, he decided to take a night course to learn how to perform stand-up comedy.

"I took the course not to become a stand-up comedian, but for my trial skills," he says. "I wanted to be a little more animated. Trials are so boring. And there are too many lawyers out there who take the practice of law, and themselves, too seriously. Either they need a sense of humor or a bowl of bran cereal."

As a final exam for the course, each student was given 10 minutes on stage on amateur night at the Comedy Cafe in Milwaukee.

"I did pretty well," Stein says. And, lo and behold, the club began booking him to do steady gigs.

His first gig was in July 1995. Since then, he's performed at a number of clubs around the state and Milwaukee's Summerfest for the past two years.

"I think comedy has made me a better lawyer," says Stein. "I'm much quicker on my feet. I connect better with jurors. I can stand back and look at being a trial lawyer more objectively."

Being a comic and a trial lawyer both require a high measure of performance. Stein must be in complete control of an audience in both venues - on stage and in a courtroom.

Has he ever crossed the line and slipped into his shtick in the courtroom?

Litigation is no laughing matter, he says. "I take my job very seriously. I don't go into a judge's chamber cracking jokes. And I've never been told by a judge that I'm disrespectful in court."

Yet he believes there's room for lawyers to lighten up a bit, to lose some of the formality, the stiffness, the officiousness that often characterizes the profession.

"Some of the funniest people I ever met in my life are lawyers," he says. But too often, as soon as they enter a courtroom, their humanity is replaced by an air of self-importance.

"I don't want to end up as a lawyer who looks like he goes to sleep in his blue suit and red tie," he says, borrowing from his act. "I want to present myself in a more relaxing, engaging way."

Gerald Jolin, sculptor

As a small boy, Gerald Jolin would follow his father into the forest near Shawano to help him size up trees that would be sold to lumber companies. And sometime in his early school days, he learned to carve.

"I'd done that as a hobby way back," says Jolin, now 83. "I jocularly say I worked my way through grade school by sculpting wooden guns and trading them with my classmates for lunch."

But as he reached adulthood, Jolin was temporarily sidetracked by the profession of law. He received a J.D. from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1940 and went into general practice in Hortonville. Three years later, at age 29, he was elected judge in Outagamie County, the youngest county judge ever elected in Wisconsin.

Jolin served on the bench for nine years and resigned to return to private practice in Appleton. With four growing sons bound for college, he could no longer afford to support his family on the wages of a county judge.

While living in Appleton, he began to chisel tree trunks and branches into sweeping, graceful sculptures.

He moved with his family to Houston to practice finance law in 1972, at the height of the oil boom. And in 1979 he teamed up with a program for the mentally handicapped in Michigan, developing woodworking workshops for clients. Drawing on the principles of art therapy, Jolin taught mentally handicapped adults how to build salable, wooden benches from recycled wood. Over the next few years, 100-plus participating clients produced more than 15,000 benches.

After retiring from law in the late 1980s, Jolin continued to sculpt. He's donated many of his pieces to nonprofit groups, including hospices and shelters for disadvantaged children. This past summer, he began working on a sculpture for the Gray Panthers, carving a 14-inch-thick palm tree that he salvaged from the Gulf coast in Texas. Also in late August, Jolin and his wife, Marion, moved to the Florida Keys, where a son lives aboard a houseboat.

Over the course of his legal career, Jolin has regarded his interest in woodcarving as a necessary "left-brain, right-brain" diversion.

"You get an itch for a change," he says. "I certainly have had an itch to carve. It comes back on you, like malaria. It rises up on you again and again."

Gary Dalebroux, farmer

To call Gary Dalebroux's 500-acre homestead in Kewaunee County a "hobby farm" is doing him a great disservice.

But it's his own choice of words.

"I always tell my clients that instead of golfing or fishing, I go farming," Dalebroux says. "That's my time away to think, to relax, to enjoy what I enjoy doing. That's why I call it a hobby farm."

Dalebroux really has never left the farm. All through school and into law school at U.W.-Madison, he pitched in on the family farm, literally a stone's throw from where he and his family now live. And when Dalebroux and a law school classmate hung out a shingle after graduating in 1975, he started up a dairy farm with his two younger brothers to supplement his income.

But the rigors of running a law practice and a dairy farm were too great. He quit farming and concentrated on his practice. For awhile.

"I missed the farming," he says. So in 1985 he started raising corn and soybeans.

The bulk of his clients are farmers, naturally. "I understand their business; I understand the problems they face. I talk their language."

The oldest of six, Dalebroux, 46, is a self-confessed workaholic. He rises before dawn and rides a bicycle seven miles along the county roads to check his crops. By 7:30 a.m., he's changed into his pinstripes and sits in his office in Casco. After office hours, back on the farm, he often works past sunset. In springtime, it's not uncommon for him to be planting corn until 3 a.m.

"Instead of bowling and coming home at 3 in the morning, I can come home from farming at 3, and my wife doesn't wonder where I was."

Both the farm and the law practice have become family affairs. His wife, Erika, a licensed title agent, runs the office. Their youngest child, one-year-old Hope, already is thrilled by rides on the John Deere tractor. Kim, 18, has spent plenty of her days picking rocks out of the fields. And the oldest, Troy, 22, is now a law student himself at U.W.-Madison.

Does Dalebroux prefer farming or lawyering?

"I love them both," he says. "There are times when farming presents challenges difficult to accept. The weather's your biggest enemy. Draught, rain ... it's depressing to see your hard work go for nothing.

"Similarly, not everything goes right in a law practice. And getting outdoors, seeing the fruits of your labor, that can offset the bad days at the law office.

"One helps keep me sane when the other has its bad days."

Wisconsin Lawyer