Alright, all this talk about Cliff and beer along with some prodding from Marco has motivated me to make a post. My name is Ryan, and I’m Cliff’s friend from law school. Since I don’t skydive, and was never really fond of internet forums, I have held back posting something until now. I’ve enjoyed reading what everyone else has to say so much, that I feel it would be unfair to not share a pic and story with all of you. I also look forward to meeting many of you this weekend in Staten Island. Here’s the story on the pic: It was the last day of classes at the end of the Spring semester - right after the last 1L final (property law). Our school had scheduled to have a keg setup in the courtyard and Cliff and I had made a pact to get at least buzzed when we were done with the test. He had originally planned to leave right after the final to make the DZ before it got late, but the weather was unusually crappy that day. We had a great conversation about dark vs. light beer because Cliff was refusing to drink the Miller Lite the school had provided. Cliff was going on about quality brews, and I couldn't shut up about how many carbs they had. I knew how much he hated diet conversation. We paused long enough for the picture to be taken - right before Cliff gave in to me and finally walked over to the keg of Miller. We then continued the discussion until the keg ran dry and we noticed everyone else had gone home. I flew out to DC the next day to begin my summer clerkship, and Cliff spent a week doing law review tryouts. I remember getting calls and crazy emails late into the night from him complaining about how ridiculous the law review competition was, or how he had figured out something in one of the problems that no one else would have gotten. I tried to remind him about the time difference between PST and EST but he didn’t really seem to care. When he found out that he didn’t make law review, he called me first. After letting me know the news, he said “well, I guess it’s good that you didn’t waste a week of your summer doing tryouts, because if I couldn’t make it, then you couldn’t have.” Most people would have probably been offended by the statement, but not me. I understood everything Cliff ever said to me, and was never offended or hurt once. There was no question about it, he was right - if he couldn’t make law review, I definitely couldn’t make law review! We joked about the tryouts a little bit, and chocked up the situation to some crazy conspiracy by the school to only select a “certain type of people” for their law review, and how they were against engineers like us succeeding because we already had so much going for us. The theory was similar to the one explaining why we didn’t get into their top 10 law schools. That was the great thing about Cliff, he could always recover well. After not getting in to Stanford, or not getting straight A’s the first year of law school, or not making law review – he always came back and fought harder. I’m still waiting for him to come back now…
