May 01, 2007

Obama's Summer Lovin' / Law Firm

by PG

I missed this information when the Chicago Sun-Times published the article in January:

After Michelle's law school graduation, she joined the kind of "successful corporation'' -- Chicago's Sidley & Austin -- she wrote about at Princeton. Her specialty: marketing and intellectual property. If she had stayed longer, "she would have been a superstar,'' said Sidley senior counsel Newton Minow. "We were all crazy about her.''

Her first year, in walked Obama. Michelle was tapped as the young summer associate's advisor. "I remember that she was tall – almost my height in heels -- and lovely, with a friendly, professional manner,'' Obama recalls in Audacity of Hope. "Michelle was full of plans that day, on the fast track, with no time, she told me, for distractions -- especially men.''

Michelle tried to set Obama up with friends, but he wanted to take her out. Finally, she relented, and by the time Michelle called Williams to say she was dating someone new, Williams could tell this was something different, something special.

"She said, 'Guess what? I've got this great guy in my life. His name is Barack,'" Williams recalls. "It was clear she was pretty crazy about him. We had known each other when we dated other guys. You go through this whole 'he's not ready for commitment' [thing] . . . .But this guy was none of those things. [Barack] was a good, solid guy."

Four years later, in 1992, when the couple walked down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ. Michelle's childhood friend, Santita Jackson, daughter of the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., sang at the wedding.

Of course, these kind of matches still can (and do) happen, whereas the advent of Lexis and Westlaw has made love stories like that of the Alitos nearly anachronistic.
Martha Bomgardner, a young librarian in the U.S. attorney's office, overheard his quiet and upright-sounding answer: "I don't think that's something to talk about."

"Oh, this is a smart one," she thought.

She told friends she would marry him by the following April. But he was uncommonly shy, and despite multiple daily trips to the library, did not ask her out for 13 months. "He is judicious," she said recently with a laugh.

They had dated about a year when he got an offer from the U.S. solicitor general. The office is arguably the most respected law firm in the country, representing the U.S. government before the Supreme Court. Alito left for Washington in August 1981. "I thought that would be the end," Bomgardner said.

Four years later, Martha Bomgardner would become Martha Alito and Samuel Alito Jr. would be on a very different course.

May 1, 2007 03:48 PM | TrackBack
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