Guest Opinion | How a Victim of Racism Changed the Trajectory of My Life

His name was Bryant and he is the reason that I became a lawyer. I never knew his first name. In the Corps we only knew each other by our last names unless you picked up a nickname along the way.

Mine was Pappy.

Bryant was an African American from Georgia. He had served with the U.S. Army in Vietnam and had earned an Air Medal as a Helicopter Door Gunner.

After his military service he had returned home but was not able to adjust to civilian life and had joined the Marines. He was what we called a “re-tread.”

If you had told me in high school and college that I would become a lawyer I would have told you no way. I had come out of the Drama Department at Van Nuys High School where my name was on a plaque along with Robert Redford and Stacy Keach. I had studied acting in college with the late Jeff Corey. My goal was to pursue a career in the entertainment industry.

In the early 1970’s racial strife was rampant in the military. Aboard the Camp Pendleton Marine Base there were many “good old boys” who proudly displayed Confederate flag emblems on their cars. There was even an active cell of the KKK on the base.

I was a Supply NCO attached to the Infantry Training School (ITS) at Camp San Onofre at the northern end of Camp Pendleton. One day some other Marines came to me and said “Pappy can you help this Marine, his name is Bryant and he is going to go UA (Marine speak for AWOL.)” Now in those days if you went UA you became a fugitive because the war in Vietnam had not yet ended. Bryant had been ambushed by the KKK one night and beaten so badly he lost a testicle. I agreed to help not knowing at the time that Bryant would become my first client.

At ITS Marines wore the everyday utility uniform, a green shirt with an Eagle, Globe, and Anchor on the left breast, green trousers, a tan web belt with a brass buckle, and shined black leather boots. The ITS instructors wore blue helmets and they were all combat veterans. The first thing that I did was put him in a tailored dress green uniform with his Vietnam campaign ribbons and his Air Medal so that the instructors could see that he was one of them, a fellow combat veteran. They began to treat him much differently. I got him evaluated by a civilian doctor and guided him through the process for securing a Medical Discharge.

On his last day before going home on a Medical Discharge he approached me in front of the Mess Hall and told me that he was returning home to go to Junior College on the G.I. Bill. We shook hands and said Semper Fi to each other. I never heard from him again and have often wondered over the years how life turned out for him.

That day changed my life. I had made the system work for someone that it was not working for. I got more fulfillment from that than I ever did from any theatrical production. And that is when I decided to go to law school after I got out of the Marine Corps and become a lawyer.

During my legal career I have defended many active duty military and veterans. I have often looked back and remembered that day standing in front of the Mess Hall at Camp Pendleton and saying good-bye to Bryant.