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June 21, 1998
MS. GERE: Good afternoon, Judge Green. How are you?
JUDGE GREEN: Fine thanks, Sally.
MS. GERE: Good. Today is June 21, 1998, and we are resuming your oral history
for the project for the Historical Society for the court. We last left you as you were filling out
papers for your nomination for the federal bench. I think we had gotten you through the process,
at least of filling out the papers and staying up all night to do that. I guess the next question I
would have for you is, what happened after you submitted the papers? Did you have a
confirmation hearing? I guess you had to have a confirmation hearing.
JUDGE GREEN: The papers, I think, had to be submitted. What is the date? If it
is dated.
MS. GERE: I’m not sure that it has a date on it. It doesn’t appear to have a date.
JUDGE GREEN: They required us to get this done. They had gotten the papers to
me, as you probably recall, late in the day, with an admonition to get them filed absolutely no
later than 9:30 a.m. on the following day. I’m sure that I told you about the difficulties I had in
trying to remember anything that I had ever done.
MS. GERE: And Mr. Green retrieving files and Eleanore Soltanoff typing and
doing more typing.
JUDGE GREEN: We all did this all night. Eleanore herself delivered the typed
thing before 9:30. She was quite able-bodied at that point, I’m happy to say. We didn’t hear
anything. I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t know what had happened about it. I heard, first of all,
from people who said, “Congratulations, the FBI has been talking to me,” or “the ABA
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representative has been talking to me, and I understand. I wish you all the luck.” I said, “That’s
nice.”
MS. GERE: You never heard anything officially from the White House or Warren
Christopher?
JUDGE GREEN: Not anything.
JUDGE GREEN: John Pratt and I were not terribly good friends at this point. I
mean, certainly I’d worked with him a long period of time, because I had been on the Board of
Directors of the bar of which he was president.
MS. GERE: He also was under consideration at the same time?
JUDGE GREEN: Yes. We both were. We were the only ones who had been
recommended at that point, that we knew. There were two vacancies. His was for Holtzoff’s,
and mine was for Burnita Matthews’. So we thought for the longest time, of course, John had
always thought, that this was not how you got appointed anything; that you didn’t have
somebody call you on the telephone and say, “Would you like to be a federal judge?” He thought
this was absurd, and that I should have been less naïve.
MS. GERE: To be more realistic about the likelihood of this ever coming to pass.
JUDGE GREEN: We finally had a phone call, from someone who was in the
Department of Justice, who was supposed to shepherd through candidates for the bench. The
same one who had failed to get the papers to us. He said, “I just wanted to say, what’s going
on?” I said, “I would like to know what’s going on myself, because I haven’t heard anything
from the White House, or anything at all.” And he said, “Well, have you paid your duty calls on
your senator?” I said, “No, as a matter of fact they told me not to do anything, except keep my
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mouth shut.”
MS. GERE: And you were following that instruction.
JUDGE GREEN: Yes. I said, “I will certainly make an appointment right away if
so.” So that was the appointment that John Pratt and I both made. John Pratt was very well
acquainted with Joseph Tydings, and Tydings was an official backer of his. Nobody was an
official backer of me but the Assistant Attorney General, as far as I could see.
MS. GERE: Did Judge Pratt also live in Maryland? Is that how he was tied-in to
Senator Tydings?
JUDGE GREEN: Yes. As a matter fact, also because of the Gesell Committee.
Tydings was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I had assumed that he knew us,
because we were the ones who were working on the recommendations that they were trying to
put the new procedures and law into effect. Those changes did in fact come to fruition–for the
Superior Court to be set up, to provide for it being a city court and to get local matters out of the
federal court. But of course it didn’t come to pass until we were on the bench, in full. We
visited Senator Brewster and Senator Tydings.
MS. GERE: You visited the Senators?
JUDGE GREEN: The Maryland Senators. Senator Brewster was one. I also made
an appointment the same day with Senator Tydings. With Senator Brewster, they called me in
first–I’m sure you’ve heard all this before–John Pratt was there early, but I had an earlier
appointment than he did. It was 10:30 or 11:00, and we were about a half-hour apart. So they
called me to come in to see the Senator. I didn’t think there was any sense in letting John Pratt
sit there and wait, so I said, “Mr. Pratt is here for the same reason that I am. We are both
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candidates for the bench, and I think you might as well talk to both of us at the same time. It
would save the Senator some time.” They said, “Oh, that’s fine.” So John Pratt went in with me,
and it turned out I had been smart–not a very good idea at the time, but I thought it was a decent
thing to do.
MS. GERE: It seemed like a good idea.
JUDGE GREEN: Yes, but it turned out that the Senator was drunk, and I didn’t
expect that at that early hour of the morning. I really didn’t recognize that he was drunk. He had
gotten up from his seat behind the desk and was sitting on the outboard side, resting there. I do
that sort of thing too, periodically, and I’m not drunk. I really didn’t realize that he had been
programmed, no doubt, by his staff. “This is Mrs. June Green, and she is one of your
constituents. I’m sure you will want to tell her that you are backing her for the bench.” I’m
confident that’s what was done. I said, “Senator, I’m sure you are acquainted with Mr. Pratt from
the Marine Corps experience,” because I had checked him out, and both of them had been in the
Marines. He said, “Oh yes, and Mrs. Green I’m delighted to know you.” It seemed a little odd. I
have no doubt that he would have known Mr. Pratt thoroughly if Mr. Pratt had been there at his
appointed time, when the Senator would have been programmed to meet him. But that was an
afterthought that I had, as I didn’t really know what was going on at this point. The Senator was
saying, “Where do you live?” and all of these things, and “Oh yes,” as though he knew it all. I
said, “I brought my biographical data. Would you be good enough to introduce me to the
Judiciary Committee when they are ready. If you haven’t any objection, I believe there’s a pink
slip or a yellow slip or something that you’re supposed to sign.” I said, “If you don’t mind
signing that, then maybe we’ll be able to have a hearing.” He said, “Oh yes indeed.” I said,
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“And for Mr. Pratt too.” “Oh yes,” he said, “I have it.” Well, he didn’t have it. Anyway, I made
sure he signed it for both of us. I think John Pratt gave him biographical data, too, but I’m not
sure. The Senator then promised to introduce us to the committee. I might say he never showed
up.
MS. GERE: He didn’t?
JUDGE GREEN: But anyway, then I went to see Senator Tydings. He was
walking down from a meeting with a whole group of federal judges from all over the country.
He was very important. He didn’t wish to be bothered with this female. John Pratt, as I say, was
already fixed up with him. I had thought that maybe in view of the fact that I’d been working on
the Gesell Committee three years, and working with other members of his staff, that they might
have heard of me once. In addition, Tydings had been U.S. Attorney in Maryland at one point, at
which time I had been in his office, because I was trying to settle a case that I had, and in fact did
settle it. He was very courteous at the time, with my opponents of course. I had seen him at
various times. He said, by the time I finally got him to simmer down and speak to me, waiting
until the—
MS. GERE: Until the other people were out of the way—
JUDGE GREEN: Finally, he said, “You’re not really from Maryland, are you?
You’re from the District of Columbia.” I said, “Senator, if so, I’ve certainly voted illegally,
because I voted for you.”
MS. GERE: Touché.
JUDGE GREEN: By this time I didn’t give a damn. I thought it was ridiculous. I
said, “I voted for you every time you ran. Furthermore, we’ve paid taxes to Maryland for all the
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time that we have been married, although we’re not always there because we also have had an
apartment for many years in Washington.” He said, “Where do you live?” I said, “The house in
which I was born.”
MS. GERE: And it’s in Maryland.
JUDGE GREEN: He said, “Do you know the Williams? Because I proposed to
my wife on the sofa in their house when I was in the legislature.” I knew he was divorcing her,
too, at that point, so I didn’t really want to discuss it. I said did he know that Mr. Williams had
died, and that Mrs. Williams was still living there and so on.
MS. GERE: The Williams lived out here?
JUDGE GREEN: They lived in Winchester, Maryland. They were similarly
located to Kitty, and John Davis, my sister and brother-in-law. I had known her all my life. She
was a pain. She was always calling me up, with some legal things that were not going to pay
anything but were difficult.
MS. GERE: So that’s not a very auspicious start. At one interview, the Senator is
not really comprehending what’s going on and at the other, a Senator who doesn’t even know
that you live in Maryland.
JUDGE GREEN: Right. I think there had been a time, finally, when I had a phone
call to appear at the White House. Did I tell you about that one? I’m sure.
MS. GERE: I don’t think so.
JUDGE GREEN: I figured, well I’ll finally get to meet the President, because I
never had. John [Green] said, “How are you going to get there?” I said, “I’m going to walk.
Good Lord, it’s only a block.” He said, “It’s raining.” “So?” He decided that this was where I
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was going to get let down, and they finally would tell me who else was supposed to be picked.
MS. GERE: He thought they were inviting you to give you a—
JUDGE GREEN: A brush-off. It seemed that John went down the street behind
me, quite a little distance but still keeping me in eyesight.
MS. GERE: Mr. Green did? He followed you down the street?
JUDGE GREEN: Yes, he told me afterward. He was out there when I came out,
standing in the rain. He had been behind a tree or something, so he wasn’t too noticeable. He
said, “What happened?” He said, “Here she came all jaunty,” and I said “I don’t know, I haven’t
the slightest idea.” And I didn’t, because I never got to meet the President.
MS. GERE: You didn’t?
JUDGE GREEN: No. I went in there and I talked to Barefoot Sanders.
MS. GERE: Oh yes. What was his position? He’s now a federal judge, right?
Down in Texas?
JUDGE GREEN: Right. But he was pretty close to the President.
MS. GERE: I guess that’s right, because Johnson was from Texas.
JUDGE GREEN: The other fellow, it was a name that was similar to one of the
ones that we knew in Washington, but I’ve forgotten his name at the moment. He didn’t get to be
a judge, so I didn’t remember. Barefoot I did, of course. Nobody would forget a name like that.
MS. GERE: True.
JUDGE GREEN: They just batted the breeze with me. They were young and
attractive, and we were just talking and I finally said, “What goes on?” and they said, “Search
us.”
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MS. GERE: We’re just supposed to see if you have two heads or something.
JUDGE GREEN: Right. I think they wanted to see if I had any sense of humor, or
something of the sort. I didn’t even get to meet the President, he didn’t even want to see me. I
had never seen him. I came home, finally. After this I didn’t hear anything either.
MS. GERE: How long are we talking about here? A period of months?
JUDGE GREEN: Yes, a period of months. Finally, first of all, I heard the way
that we were nominated. I was in court, the Superior Court. Of course it wasn’t called the
Superior Court. I’ve never been in the Superior Court. It was the General Sessions Court. I was
waiting for a case to come up. The clerk, whom I had known for as long as he’d been there, and
beyond. He came by and walked over, and said, “Your Honor.” I looked at him, and I thought,
“smart aleck.” When I finally realized that they weren’t going to get to me very soon, I said,
“What is that?” He said, “Look in the paper.” This is how I heard.
MS. GERE: That you’d been nominated, it was in the paper?
JUDGE GREEN: It was in the Evening Star.
MS. GERE: You were the last one to find out.
JUDGE GREEN: Exactly. Most people were taking credit, you know. John Pratt
was notified. Nobody told me. Nothing at all. Eleanore was going crazy in the office because
the phone calls were coming in.
MS. GERE: And she couldn’t reach you, you were in court.
JUDGE GREEN: This was the situation. I’d been nominated. We weren’t going
to get confirmed though unless we had the clearance from our senators. I finally learned, way
later, like maybe five years ago, that what was really holding it up was that the President did not
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want to name a particular person in Mississippi to the bench. The chairman of the Judiciary
Committee was from Mississippi. It was his boy. Johnson finally decided that he would name
him. I met him when we both went to judge’s school, and he was a nice old duck. He’s been
dead a long time. When I finally was notified, and John Pratt also by this time, he and I were
calling each other to find out what was going on, whatever we knew. They were having a
judicial reception for the local judges, for the federal judges, at the White House. This was
before we were appointed, I mean, confirmed. We got a telegram here, from the White House:
“Please, we want you to come to the reception for the judiciary.” This was the first time I knew I
was really going to make it.
JUDGE GREEN: Did Mr. Green believe it then?
JUDGE GREEN: No.
MS. GERE: He still didn’t believe it?
JUDGE GREEN: He believed it when I was going down the street to take the oath.
MS. GERE: Oh ye of little faith. Oh, well. I’m sorry to interrupt. You got this
invitation to the reception?
JUDGE GREEN: They said, “We’ll give you a formal invitation but we were
afraid that you would make some other arrangements, so please be there if you can, and your
husband.” I said, “My god, I’m finally going to meet the President.” And I did.
MS. GERE: Did you talk with him?
JUDGE GREEN: No.
MS. GERE: Just going through a reception line?
JUDGE GREEN: Yes.
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MS. GERE: Did he evidence any recognition? I guess obviously he knew that
there were all judges there, and you were described as his nominee.
JUDGE GREEN: I thanked him for considering me. The first person I saw, who
greeted me, was a judge from the General Sessions Court who was there. In fact, I took his
chambers when he moved to the front of the building.
MS. GERE: Judge Waddy?
JUDGE GREEN: Judge Waddy, thank you. Judge Waddy came up, threw his
arms around me and welcomed me, so nicely. He was so delighted. I had been before him so
many times and we had been very good friends. I was also very fond of his wife and son. We
shook the President’s hand, and said, “Thank you.”
MS. GERE: After that what happened?
JUDGE GREEN: I never saw the President again in my life, his life. That was the
first time I’d ever seen him.
MS. GERE: As your confirmation process went on, what was the next step?
JUDGE GREEN: Since they said that it had been held up because we had not
made our duty calls, I thought the morning that it was scheduled that I should stop and introduce
myself to Senator Eastland, who was the chairman of the Senate Committee. He had an admiral
in his place, that he was fascinated with currently.
MS. GERE: An admiral as in military?
JUDGE GREEN: Yes. He didn’t want to have anything to do with me. I said, “I
just wanted to introduce myself,” and told him that I was there and just thought I’d like to—
MS. GERE: Tell him that you were the potential nominee.
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JUDGE GREEN: He said, “Would you get on in there.” I said, “Yes sir,” and I
got the hell out of there as fast as I could and went on into the hearing room. There wasn’t
anybody in there. I looked for Senator Brewster, and he had not arrived. He never did come.
Senator Tydings was there, and he made a glorious speech for both of us. There was no other
senator there. We had the presidents of the different bar associations that showed up, and they
wanted to be heard, and he said, “Silence, silence.” I remember that the president of the District
Bar said, “I would like to tell you that we have always been in favor of them and we still are.”
Period.
MS. GERE: And here’s my statement.
JUDGE GREEN: That’s what they did, and he could not say that to Tydings, so
Tydings did put it in the record. The reporter for this thing was one I had used in my practice all
the time. I was so pleased to see the smiling face. He sent me a copy afterwards. I do not know
where, I have not found that one yet. But anyway he did, and said he always thought I’d end up
there.
MS. GERE: Did all of your family go with you to the hearing.
JUDGE GREEN: No, only John.
MS. GERE: Just Mr. Green?
JUDGE GREEN: That’s all. When I looked around the room I thought, there is
somebody that maybe is going to be opposed, I do not know who it is. It turned out it was just a
staff member, and he did not say anything. I saw Aldens Low, who had offices in the
Washington Building, and Joe, his associate, was there. Joe Parker, I think his name was. He
used to have mostly Virginia cases and he always sent me all the Maryland cases that he got. He
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was there in case anybody wanted to raise any problems. Nobody did. They just said get on with
the thing, and it lasted about five minutes. Nobody asked us anything. We did not have to say
anything.
MS. GERE: Neither you nor Judge Pratt, no one really got to speak. You did not
get to speak.
JUDGE GREEN: I tried to say thank you to those who had come, but, as I’ve said
very often to lawyers, stop when you’re ahead. So I shut up and we got out. They passed us
unanimously, the whole Senate, that afternoon.
MS. GERE: You and Judge Pratt both were confirmed at the same time.
JUDGE GREEN: He was a little older than I, and that’s how he outranked me.
MS. GERE: That’s how he got to be senior to you. Interesting.
JUDGE GREEN: Because he was a little older, about three years I think,
something like that.
MS. GERE: How much time did you have between your actual confirmation
hearing and when you took the bench?
JUDGE GREEN: I think this was the sixth of June, something like that. As you
know, I started on the bench on the 18th. I would have started right away, except Judge Pratt
took that week, the week before me. Because both of us were ready to go to work, and I had a lot
of things that I had to parcel out to people. I managed to get there, and I started right away on the
18th. You do know, I’m sure I told you, my father was not with us at that point because he had
died a number of years before. He died at the time I was at Lumbermens. But mother wrote me.
And I asked Judge Matthews if she would perform the induction, and she said she would be
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pleased to do that.
MS. GERE: Where did they have it?
JUDGE GREEN: In the ceremonial courtroom.
MS. GERE: In the federal courthouse.
JUDGE GREEN: But nobody had speeches in those days. And they never allowed
you to have a reception afterwards. Colleagues would shake your hand, and the one thing that
they did was that the Marshal, once you were robed, the Marshal would escort you to the vacant
spot on the bench. Then, I believe that it was Judge Curran, who was Chief at that point. He was
quite a character. He’d asked me whom I was having swear me in, and I said with his permission
it might be nice to ask Judge Matthews, because we were old friends. I was taking her job. He
said, “I think that would be very nice.” I don’t think he really liked it. He gave me no assistance
in finding office space, or parking place, or anything at all. I asked his executive assistant,
because the one place somebody said I could have would not take our car.
MS. GERE: Because the parking space wasn’t big enough?
JUDGE GREEN: It was not big enough for the car. I asked him and he said,
“Don’t you dare ask my assistant for anything. You’re going to have to find it yourself. I said,
“What?” I didn’t know whose places they were and what was I supposed to say? He wasn’t
going to be of any assistance. And he wasn’t. He said, “You find out where your car will fit, and
then you find out whose space that is.” I found about three, and one was a judge in the Court of
Appeals, I think. I did not know that at the time. It finally turned out that one space belonged to
a secretary to Judge McLaughlin, who was one of my colleagues. I wrote to her and said that I
knew that it would seem foolish that we had such a car that was so long that it was taking space,
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but it was because we were traveling so much and commuting such a distance that we felt that
this was necessary. I very much didn’t want to put her out. She didn’t have a big car. She was
very nice, very gracious about it. I guess she didn’t have a chance of not being, if you come right
down to it. But Curran was no help at all.
MS. GERE: Where was your first chambers in the courthouse?
JUDGE GREEN: I didn’t have any. My first ones they built, this was where the
Circuit Executive for the Court of Appeals took over that space. They built a few of the
courtrooms, not new courtrooms, but a few chambers down on the fourth floor, and it took quite
a long time. I had no courtroom still, so that every day I didn’t know where I was going. I could
not tell people or the lawyers where to come meet me. The first trial that I had I had set up for
the Hearing Examiner’s Office, because we still had an auditor and probate and all of those
things in the court, since they didn’t go until the 1970s–1972 or ’73. I used anybody’s chambers
who was either out sick or on vacation. Nobody had offered me anything for my family to wait
when we were getting ready to be sworn in. I do know that one of my friends who had been on
that trip to Germany, Arthur Ballin, had sent me flowers, and they were in Judge Matthews’
chambers.
MS. GERE: Why was that? People just didn’t give any thought to it, or it was
unusual to have a woman?
JUDGE GREEN: It was unusual to have a woman. Judge Matthews made herself
scarce. She never went to lunch with the other judges. Never. I didn’t do it that way, never had,
and mainly because of John’s having said to me, way back on my first day at Lumbermens when
I called him and said that all the lawyers were going out to lunch together, and he said, “So?” I
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said, “I think I oughtn’t do that,” and he said, “Why?” I said, “I did not know that you would
care to have me be seen with all these men.” He said, “If you make the difference they’ll make
the difference. Just make up your mind and go.”
MS. GERE: That you were just going to be one of their colleagues.
JUDGE GREEN: That’s right. That was a very big help, because I think if he had
not been that type it would have been an insufferable situation.
MS. GERE: Because at that time the only colleagues that you could have were
men.
JUDGE GREEN: That’s right. People were always wondering why. They’d ask
me why I did not have some woman join me when I came in, but there was not anybody. When
Joyce [Green] asked to come in, because she’d found that Bill Ehrmentraut was leaving, she was
the first one that I would have considered.
MS. GERE: So once you went on the bench, the custom was that the judges ate
together, correct, in the judges’ dining room—?
JUDGE GREEN: Surprisingly enough, Judge Hart, who was known to be the very
most difficult person, disappointed at having a woman, was the one who took the trouble to come
to me and say, “I want to take you to lunch with everybody. I think it is invaluable. There are
times that you will hear about cases that you’ll find useful, and to find what your colleagues have
done with them. So I want you to come.” I accompanied him that day, and I do not think he ever
said a word to me, at the whole table, for years. I think he was a little deaf in the first place, and
if I did ever say anything to him he never heard it. I do not really think that it was intentional, but
we were very good friends before he left us, and in fact he gave me one of the ships out there.
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He wanted me to have that, according to his wife.
MS. GERE: Who were your first two law clerks, and how did you choose them?
JUDGE GREEN: My first two law clerks were Tony LaSpada, who is in practice
in Tampa, Florida, and Ann DuRoss, who was many years with the Department of Justice as an
Assistant U.S. Attorney, on both the civil and criminal sides. She is now with the FDIC, and she
has been now for about 10 years.
MS. GERE: Doing their appellate work.
JUDGE GREEN: Correct. I think so. In the first place, as soon as they announced
that I’d made it, Len Walsh, who was on our bench at that time, had been Chief Judge in the
Court of General Sessions, before he came. I used to see him many, many times, because he was
very informal in his chambers, and he always had a pot of coffee going and invite lawyers to
come in, and so on. He was a very nice person and I liked his wife. We would not see each other
too often except in official conferences and things like that, because I was a lawyer. But anyway,
he telephoned me and said, “I have your law clerk.” I said, “What’s that?” He said, “I want you
to hire Tony LaSpada. I think that you need to have somebody who’s experienced when you start
off, who knows what the ropes are. So I want you to hire him. He’s been with me for a year.” I
said, “All right, send him up to see me in my office.” He came in, I told him that I was planning
to have two law clerks, because Oliver Gasch had very kindly been in touch with me and he was
one of the first people who offered me any assistance.
MS. GERE: Judge Gasch was on the bench at that point.
JUDGE GREEN: He was on the bench. He said, “I’d just like to tell you that they
say you’re not entitled to anybody but a law clerk, one law clerk, and a messenger. And I’m
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telling you, you don’t want a messenger. You want a junior law clerk. They have said, the AO,
that you can’t do that,” and he said, “I am doing it. And I would like to tell you that you can do
it, too. Just tell them they won’t be getting the pay of a law clerk, but they will be a bailiff.”
MS. GERE: I remember that, now that you mention it, that there was a disparity in
the salary between the first year and the second year.
JUDGE GREEN: I said I wanted him to have some continuity of service, because I
felt, I had been, after all, working with people in my office and practice, and I knew how much
difference it made to you to have continuity in service. I said that I would have one who they
would have to start for one year, to put this into effect, and I would have one that I chose myself,
that would be for two years. As it turned out—
MS. GERE: In that way you would always have one person who had been there at
least a year.
JUDGE GREEN: Who was experienced, a little bit experienced. Tony left and we
understood where everybody stood, and then I got a phone call from Len Walsh, and he said,
“Look here. My secretary,” and I believe it was Mrs. Cave, “thinks that I have done a dirty trick
to you. I called to tell you, don’t take Tony. He really was just a bailiff in the court, he wasn’t a
law clerk. And she doesn’t think that I was straight with you,” which he certainly wasn’t, but in
any case. He said, “Just tell him that you’re not going to take him.” I said, “Len, I have given
my word. He’s a law clerk.” He said, “I don’t think you ought to do it.” I said, “It’s a little
late.”
MS. GERE: But Tony had gone to law school, right? He was a lawyer.
JUDGE GREEN: Oh yes. A brash young fellow, as it turned out. Ann DuRoss
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was not known to me but she was one of the people who had applied.
MS. GERE: Just a regular applicant, she had just submitted an application.
JUDGE GREEN: Yes. I had set up a time for her to come to my office, because I
was still in practice, at this point, trying to get everything fixed up. When she came she brought
another woman with her, and she was her classmate. This, as it turned out, was Colleen Kollar.
She said that she’d told Colleen, because they were very close. They had gone to law school
together, and they had done everything together. She was the blonde one and Ann the darkhaired one. Both very attractive young women, and smart. I had a great difficulty, because I only
had the one space then, of which one to take, because they were so similar. I came to the
conclusion that Ann had made the appointment, and Colleen sort of tagged along because she
said, “Why don’t you try too, and see which one she takes.” Because they knew I only had one
space. I thought so much in fact, I took Ann, and asked Colleen whether she would be interested
in going with Catherine Kelly if I could talk to her. Catherine was then on the Court of Appeals,
the D.C. Court of Appeals. I called her, and she said yes, as a matter of fact, she was looking for
somebody. Colleen got the job with Judge Kelly. I was particularly welcoming to Judge KollarKotelly when she came all these years later to this court. She’s a very nice person. Of course, I
had known her husband, because he had been before me on a number of criminal cases.
MS. GERE: He was with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
JUDGE GREEN: Yes he was. He was doing a very nice job. I have last seen him
with the Hinckley case.
MS. GERE: Oh, he’s involved in that?
JUDGE GREEN: Well, he didn’t involve himself much, but he’s a partner of
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Barry Levine at Dickstein. He was arguing some slight point, a legal point, and that was about
all. But we didn’t get the histrionics that we had with the other ones.
MS. GERE: You brought your secretary, Eleanore Soltanoff, with you?
JUDGE GREEN: Yes. She had only started with me, in private practice. She had
started in January, I think it was, or February. She knew that my secretary was leaving, because
she worked for Shinberg & Shinberg on the same floor with us. Jenny had told her that her
husband had kicked up so much rumpus that she was going to have to leave. All of a sudden
Eleanore came in, and she said, “I understand that Jenny is leaving and I’m applying for her job.”
MS. GERE: I can just imagine Eleanore doing that.
JUDGE GREEN: She said, “I know you have not gotten anybody else yet.” She
always did our notary work, I’d go see her a lot of times, in Shinberg’s office, for notary stuff, for
clients. Eleanore started with me, I believe it was in early January of ’68, it may even have been
February. But in any case, John had just come in with me as well, at the beginning of the year, so
she was working for both of us. All of a sudden, she was working at the courthouse.
MS. GERE: At that time the disparity in pay for secretaries was probably not so
significant, as I believe it is now.
JUDGE GREEN: She felt that it was a big step up to have gone to the courthouse.
At that point I think it was, because people were just getting settled after the war, and people
were coming back, lawyers who had been away, and veterans and so on were coming back to
their offices. I don’t think that anybody was paying very much. I know, for instance, that I think
it was a step-up to Eleanore when she left Shinberg and came to me.
MS. GERE: I guess with the federal government, the retirement benefits were
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better.
JUDGE GREEN: Yes, all of those things.