LEX FUGIT

HON. ROLAND OLZARK

I didn't title this post with a "Lex Fugit" as Judge Olzark is still with us.  He became a licensed attorney in Michigan in 1954, and enjoyed a long career as a Wayne County Circuit Judge and, additionally as a visiting judge in many Michigan courts.

In addition to this website, I am admin of a Facebook group called "I Went to Catholic School in Metro Detroit", where our members post about Detroit area Catholic schools past and present.

So, this post is something of a "crossover" piece, kind of like when the Jetsons visited the Flintstones, Green Acres met Petticoat Junction, or something.

While doing some research for that group, I was looking through the 1944 and 1945 editions of the Detroit Catholic Central Shamrock yearbook.  Roland Olzark graduated from CC in 1945.

In the 1944 yearbook, I came across an article and pictures about a student musical production called, "At the Stage Door Canteen".  And, who do I see doing a solo, but Seaman First Class (and Junior class member), Roland Olzark!  The picture is cropped from a page that had another picture above, with both captions below.

Also, that same year, Mr. Olzark was Featherweight boxing champion, pictured at the top of the post.

During his Senior year, he played on the football team that played Boystown in the first Boys Bowl at Briggs Stadium before a crowd of a crowd of 43,539-for a high school football game, yet. Roland is fifth from the right in the middle row.

Judge Olzark has remained involved as a CC alum.  Here he is pictured at a 2009 meeting of the CC Shamrock Bar Association, with Catholic Central's legendary Fr. Richard Elmer.  At one of our later meetings, it was my honor, as chairman of the Shamrock Bar, to present Judge Olzark with the Judge Richard Hathaway Distinguished Lawyer Award.

 

MICHIGAN LEGAL LANDMARKS 2-JACOB BERNSTEIN’S LAW SCHOOL DIPLOMA

 

For many years I worked for the law firm of Bernstein & Bernstein (not Sam). The firm started business in 1923, I believe in the Majestic Building in downtown Detroit.

When I started there, some time after 1923, the firm’s main office was on the 16th floor of the 3000 Building what was then the Prudential Town Center in Southfield.  

In 2009, the firm moved to its present office on 12 Mile Road in Lathrup Village.  

The item shown above is the 1923 Detroit College of Law diploma of Jacob Bernstein, one of the original Bernsteins.  By the way, Sam Bernstein was Jacob’s nephew. There are several unconfirmed stories as to why Sam never worked for B&B.  I won’t relate them here.

Jacob was born in 1900 and died much too young in 1945.  His son, Newton, ran the firm when I started with the firm, and still came in to the office after his 2005 retirement.  He died in 2009, before the move to Lathrup Village.

I never saw Jacob’s diploma while I worked at the Town Center.  It apparently had been stashed behind a file cabinet, and forgotten about, for decades.  It was discovered during the move.

It is now hanging in the firm’s main conference room.  A great piece of firm history, lost for many years, but fortunately not forever.

 

LEX FUGIT-JUDGE JACK DILLON ’44-BELMONT BOY

(Note: This post first appeared in a former blog of mine in April of 2010.  That blog is no longer on the web, but this post certainly belongs here. This profile of  17th District Judge John "Jack" Dillon was originally written for the Detroit Catholic Central Alumni Magazine.  Judge Dillon passed on September 18, 2013. Belmont is the location of the CC campus at the time Jack Dillon attended the school. MB)

Catholic Central’s Novi camus is grand by every measure. From the beautiful, wooded grounds and carefully tended stadium and athletic fields outside, to the state of the art classrooms and labs inside, everything about CC impresses. The chapel’s stained glass window and the many “halls of fame” remind students of the past, and the School Seal in the floor of the entry hall has started one of the new traditions of Detroit Catholic Central-Novi.

While the halls of CC celebrate the school’s rich tradition, every current Catholic Central student’s experience is defined by the Novi campus. Novi is Catholic Central’s fifth home, and the life of a Shamrock was very different back at Breakfast Drive, Outer Drive, Belmont and Harper. In the age of IPhones, IPods, laptops, Facebook , and acronyms like WiFi, HDTV, and LOL, it may be good to reflect on what it was like to be a CC student in the days of the DSR, LSMFT (in the stairways and lavs) and World War II (acronym WWII).

I had the honor to sit down recently with John “Jack” Dillon of the CC graduating class of 1944, who went to CC during the Belmont years. A breakfast interview that wife Jan and daughter Marybeth thought should have taken about sixty minutes, turned out to be much too short at three and a half hours. The talk came easy, as I thought it would. Jan and John Dillon had started raising their family on the next block from where I grew up, and John Dillon was the first judge before whom I had appeared (as a lawyer).

While one of my primary interests was his high school experience, the discussion often turned to those matters most important him: his family, his faith and his service to the community as a District Court Judge in Redford.

Jack Dillon and his brother Bill ’42, both went to CC after attending grade school at Visitation. Jack, the youngest of five children, was the son of James Dillon, an Irish immigrant, and Ford worker who had left school after fifth grade. His mother, Irene, also worked as a seamstress to support the family.

Visitation Parish had its own High School back in those days, but the family thought it was important for Bill and Jack to go to CC. Jack remembers that none of the boys in his grade school class that stayed at Visitation High School ever went on to college.

It was not easy for the Dillon boys to get to CC in those days. The family home was near Davison and West Grand Boulevard, and Catholic Central was located behind Blessed Sacrament Cathedral. No car pools, no kids with cars back then. That was all right, as there was no parking lot at CC for anyone to park in, anyway. The Dillon boys came to CC by DSR bus—two buses and one hour travel time each way to get the four miles to school. Bus fare was six cents, which included the one cent transfer-- amounts of money that will buy exactly nothing these days.

Enrollment was between four and five hundred at the time, and virtually all classes were taught by priests. Those that weren’t were taught by Basilian Scholastics. All students took two years of Latin, the only foreign language offered, with the really smart students taking four years. “Electives” were virtually non-existent. Most students took all the same classes. Jack was an honor roll student and a member of the Science Club, but could only remember a single science lab in the building.

Jack Dillon was a basketball player during all four years at CC but while the gym was brand new it was not attached to the school. While most of the CC community remember that Catholic Central never had a home field on campus before Novi, during the Belmont years, the campus was landlocked, and football players had to take a bus to get to practice.

LEX FUGIT PODCAST'S NOT SO DRY RUN

Today, the panel for the upcoming Lex Fugit podcast met for its first "rehearsal" at Jacoby's, on Brush St, across from what legal veterans still call the Old County Building.

The regular members are, from left to right:  Ron Steinberg, Mike Butler, Paula Cole and John Cothorn.  Before our wonderful server, Rachel, took the picture, she cleared our table of empty glasses and bottles of mineral water, fresh fruit and vegetable juices.

We plan on starting broadcasts in April.  Our "studio" will be the Detroit Bar Association's Lawyers Lounge in the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, fka the City-County Building, aka the CCB.  Thanks to the Detroit Bar Association for its invaluable assistance, and sponsorship.

The program's format will include a guest panelist for each episode.  We will talk about the practice of law, past and present, in Michigan's Courts.  The stuff you can't make up.

One thing we did not settle on was a musical intro for the show. "Lawyers, Guns and Money" is not in the running.  Too cliché.  This is going to be a high class operation.  My nomination is "Cocktails for Two", by Spike Jones and his City Slickers.

Way back, when the Wayne County Mediation Tribunal was right up the street in the Millender Center, serving as a mediator/case evaluator included a free lunch at Jacoby's.  Those were the days.  So, if we ever do a "remote", the second floor at Jacoby's is the place.

We will be on the air shortly.  Until then:  "Good night and good luck."