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ORALHISTORYOFTHE HONORABLE RICARDO URBINA
SECOND INTERVIEW
8MARCH 2011
This is the second interview of the Oral History of U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo
Urbina as part of the Oral History Project of The Historical Society of the District of Columbia
Circuit. The interviewer is Gene Granof. The interview took place in the chambers of Judge
Urbina at the Federal Courthouse in the District of Columbia on Tuesday, March 8, 2011 at 1:00
p.m.
Mr. Granof: Good afternoon, Judge. Last time we got you through the fourth grade, and you
told a wonderful story about how your parents, and particularly your mother,
drilled you to catch you up, and so academically, from then on, you were pretty
solid?
Judge Urbina: Yes. I was pretty solid because I had established roots mostly as a result of my
mother’s diligence, and also I had developed a level of confidence that permitted
me to understand that effort and results had a direct correlation.
Mr. Granof: Things seemed to be going pretty smoothly for you from then on.
Judge Urbina: Yes. Smoothly, I would say, the fourth grade through the eighth grade. The
school system I was in at the time ended at the 8th grade. I had Christian Brothers
in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, and they were wonderful teachers. One
of them in particular I think probably had an influence on me that lasts even into
the present. Certainly its effects last even into the present. His name was
Brother Francis, and he seemed to recognize traits and qualities and
characteristics in me that he was prepared to talk about, and that at first prompted
him to want me to consider the religious life. In other words, he was very
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interested in recruiting me to become a Brother. I was very flattered of course,
being young and impressionable.
Mr. Granof: When did he come into your life?
Judge Urbina: Sixth grade.
Mr. Granof: So he was your sixth grade teacher?
Judge Urbina: Yes. Sixth and seventh grades. Actually, I had him for a course in the sixth
grade, but he became my main instructor in the seventh grade.
Mr. Granof: Up to the sixth grade, did you have a single teacher, and then from the sixth grade
on, you moved from subject to subject?
Judge Urbina: Yes. The teacher would move. Different teachers would come in to teach
different subjects. He taught religion, and he taught math. And then another
Brother, Brother Benedict, taught English and civics and so forth. When I went
home and mentioned to my parents that Brother Francis wanted me to think about
going away the following summer for a retreat with a view toward entertaining
the religious life, they flatly rejected that. As perhaps we discussed earlier, they
did believe that the Catholic school methodology for teaching was very good and
that the teachers were thorough and motivated people, but they did not want me in
the religious life. So the second influence, and probably the most powerful
influence he had on me, was as an athlete. He saw in me some quality as an
athlete and, although I didn’t see it because I was not what I considered to be
outstanding, I ran track. He was very much involved in organizing the Catholic
Youth Organization, Catholic Youth Association, track meets and things of that
sort. And so I became a part of that system of training and athletics.
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Mr. Granof: Let me back up just a bit. When did you decide that you wanted to run track?
Judge Urbina: Probably in the sixth grade. In the sixth grade is when I was invited to begin to
join the track meets. And then in the seventh grade I became more serious about
it. My parents agreed. Although at first they were reluctant to let me do anything
that might distract me from my studies, but then my mother actually thought that
it was a good idea, and my father, who had been a runner back in Honduras, was
cautiously encouraging about it, as long as it didn’t detract from my study time.
So in the seventh grade I began to run track meets. I never won anything, but I
enjoyed it, and I did well enough to feel that I was making some progress. I was
small. I did not grow to my current size, height at least, until I’d say probably my
second year in high school. So I was small, and although I was wiry, I wasn’t
what you call strong like some of the big guys were. So in the seventh grade I ran
some track meets, and then in the eighth grade, I began to run more successfully.
Never winning, really, but qualifying to run in what they call seeded heats, which
means that the runners in the seeded heat were the ones who had already qualified
to run on that level, and so I got to run some relay races.
Mr. Granof: Not everybody ran track at the school, so there must have been some choice,
initially, to say “I’m going to try this”? You must have been reasonably good at
it, or at least felt it was something you could do.
Judge Urbina: Yes. Brother Francis thought it was something I could do. Now, my oldest
brother had run track when he was in high school, but my other brother was a
basketball player, and he wanted me to play basketball. He wanted to be my
coach for basketball, but I didn’t show any talent for basketball, so I chose to run
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track in the hopes that it would be something that I would enjoy and that I could
attract girls. So that’s what I did. From grammar school, moving to high school,
that became something that I was familiar with and something that I decided to
pursue.
Mr. Granof: So the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades went pretty smoothly?
Judge Urbina: They did. Again, the studies went well. In the seventh grade I took exams that
qualified me for a full scholarship to a school called Bishop Laughlin, which was
also in New York City but not in Queens, where I lived. I was really very proud
of getting into Bishop Laughlin because it was a very good school academically.
So when I learned that I had qualified through the testing to get a full scholarship
there, I was very happy.
Mr. Granof: Your parents must have been happy.
Judge Urbina: Well they were happy, but they didn’t want me to go to school there because I
would have to take a bus and two trains.
Mr. Granof: Where was it?
Judge Urbina: It was in Brooklyn, and I lived in Queens. And they didn’t want me traveling on
the trains, so they were protective, and I think that what they felt was the time
factor was not going to work in my favor in terms of the travel time. Around that
time, though, while I was in the seventh grade, a high school just opened in
Queens, again a Catholic high school. It was taught by the Brothers of the Sacred
Heart, a religious order that was brought from France to the United States by the
Jesuits, so they were very Jesuit-oriented. My father had studied with the Jesuits
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and liked them. So I applied to go there, and that’s where I wound up going.
Monsignor McClancy Memorial High School is what it was called.
Mr. Granof: So you entered there in the ninth grade?
Judge Urbina: Yes. I went there in the ninth grade. That would have been 1959.
Mr. Granof: Did you start doing track there?
Judge Urbina: Well, the track coach actually encouraged me to join the track team, and I did
join. As soon as I got there I joined for cross-country, but I didn’t enjoy it. I
didn’t enjoy the long-distance running; I didn’t enjoy the long-distance workouts.
What I really wanted to do was to play basketball, and so I dropped track and I
competed with students to get on the Junior Varsity, freshman, basketball team.
But I was not talented in basketball, or if I did have talent, I certainly didn’t show
it or cultivate it. So after not being too successful that first year in high school in
basketball, I dropped out. Actually, no. The track coach was very disappointed
that I had stopped running track, and he knew that I hadn’t been successful that
first year in basketball. So he went to the basketball coach behind my back and
asked the basketball coach not to entertain my interest when I returned my second
year but to refer me to him, the track coach. And that’s what happened.
My high school was an extremely strict high school. Most of the students were
first and second generation, mostly Italian, Polish and Irish. A few Latinos. No
dark Latinos like me. The Latinos that were there were mostly from Central and
South America, probably of well-to-do families. It wasn’t a well-to-do school,
but it was a highly sought after school in terms of the education. The school was
only two years old when I started there.
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Mr. Granof: So did they have the junior and senior classes?
Judge Urbina: No. It was in my second or third year — I think it was in my second year — that
the first senior class graduated. Of course none of that impressed me at the time.
I figured a school is a school is a school, and the fact that there weren’t very many
people of color, the fact that it didn’t have much of a history, I didn’t pay that
much attention to it because the school was so demanding, the Brothers were just
so demanding in terms of academics. Every week for five weeks we were tested
in every subject. Each subject had a potential of ten points, so you’d take exams
in every subject every week. At the end of the five weeks there would be an
exam, and how many points you scored out of fifty on that exam would be added
to how many you scored on the weekly exams that preceded the five week final
exam, and that would be your grade. We had three years of Latin, four years of
math, and three years of science. It was a rigorous academic high school. You
come from New York?
Mr. Granof: Yes.
Judge Urbina: Well, as you might remember, the Regents Exams were very popular in terms of
standardized tests. And I think the school was very conscious of that, trying to
make sure students did well, because the faculty felt that it was a college-prep
course.
Mr. Granof: Did most of the kids go to college?
Judge Urbina: Yes. Almost all the kids who graduated at that time went to college out of that
school. Not all the kids that entered the school graduated. Many kids were
thrown out because of disciplinary problems. There was a zero tolerance for
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smoking or even violating the dress code. The principal would come and measure
your cuffs. Seriously. If your cuffs were more than seven inches in diameter,
which would mean they were pegged, they’d send you home. The second time
you were expelled. Of course this was not a problem for me, but the fellows with
all the big hair, if the principal caught a student with long hair attending class, he
would simply come to the classroom and cut the extra hair off. The school
disapproved of that kind of greasy big hair flared out beyond the temple.
Mr. Granof: And this was, let’s see, you said 1959?
Judge Urbina: 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963. Those were the four years.
Mr. Granof: So that really was before Vietnam and the whole cultural revolution.
Judge Urbina: Yes. It was before that.
Mr. Granof: Did you wear a suit and tie?
Judge Urbina: Yes. Suit and tie every day. A suit and tie every single day. You could not come
to the classroom unless you were dressed in a suit and tie, a blazer and tie. These
were very scary times too. I’m sure you remember them.
Mr. Granof: This was an all-boys school?
Judge Urbina: Yes. I say scary times because, if you recall, this is around the time of the
Cold War and all the threats, the nuclear threat. Even when I was in grammar
school, we’d have these drills where we’d run out into the hallway. I don’t know
what that was supposed to accomplish because if there was a bomb, it was all
over. But we thought about it, and we talked about it, in grammar school and in
high school, and I think in the back of our minds there was the thought that any
day could be the last.
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Mr. Granof: It was a scary time.
Judge Urbina: They were scary times, and I remember that. I remember going to bed at night,
and of course, you’d say your prayers – “If I should die before I wake” — that was
a serious thought because there was always this notion that a bomb could drop
while you were sleeping, and it would be all over.
Mr. Granof: Do you think you got that from school? Did school encourage that, or was that
really just the news?
Judge Urbina: It was the news, and every once in a while you’d turn on a TV show and they
would portray something of that sort, and it would really leave an impression.
I’m not suggesting I was running around terrified all the time, but this was
something in the back of our minds. And at the same time as that uncertainty,
there was always the very strong impulse to do well in whatever you were doing.
It was an interesting time. Around my sophomore year, I firmed up my intention
to go to college. There was a guidance counselor at the school, and at least at that
time, my sophomore year, it was just a matter of trying to do as well academically
as I possibly could and then finding the money to go to college. I believed that
my parents would find the money to send me to college, but they were counting
on me to do well academically. That was my end of the bargain. Well,
fortunately, I did well academically. I had an A average, which is good, and I
started doing well as an athlete. After quitting track my first year, my track
coach, the track coach that wanted me as his athlete, persuaded me to come back
on the team. I started running as a sophomore during the second half of my
sophomore year. I had grown a bit, I was lifting weights, and was a little bit
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stronger, and I wasn’t so intimidated by the bigger guys, because there are always
those fabulously mature guys that look like sprinters and young gods. One thing I
did learn was I could do the workouts. The coach was — I wouldn’t call him a
disciplinarian — but he was a very skilled technician. He knew exactly what to
do; he had experience as a track coach before he came to McClancy.
Mr. Granof: Was he one of the Brothers?
Judge Urbina: No. He was a layperson. He had a wonderful, beautiful wife and two kids. He
always exuded such confidence in himself, in not only what he was doing but
with the rest of the team members and with me. One of the things he did for me
in particular was to deal with the psychology of running in a way to help me
develop self-confidence. He would talk to me about my potential, and whenever I
doubted him, he would prove me wrong. He would order me to do a particular
workout with the rest of the group, and I could do it; many could not. And then
he’d say, “Well, you probably were using 60 percent of your capabilities. Next
time I give you this workout, I’m going to ask you to do it in the following way,
either more repetitions or faster.” And next thing you know, I was really
beginning to believe him that I did have some potential. And at the end of my
sophomore year, I ran a relatively strong half-mile, for a sophomore, and I used
that summer between my sophomore and my junior year to lift weights and to run,
to work out, and to think more seriously about the possibility that track might be a
scholarship.
Mr. Granof: You said you were running the half-mile mostly?
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Judge Urbina: Yes. I ran the half-mile, and I ran the quarter-mile. I ran cross-country as well
because they needed somebody for that.
Mr. Granof: I wonder where you ran cross-country in Queens?
Judge Urbina: Van Cortand Park in the Bronx. And that’s where we’d compete every weekend,
in Van Cortland Park. Took the train up to the Bronx. But the workouts were
always on the track, round and round and round we’d go.
Mr. Granof: What were the times like for a high school sophomore doing the quarter-mile and
half-mile, if you remember?
Judge Urbina: I do remember. I remember my fastest half-mile in my sophomore year I think
was 2:08. I think my fastest quarter-mile was maybe 55 or 56 seconds, which
were times that weren’t going to win me any championships, but they were such a
leap from where I was even at the beginning of that season when I was running
2:15, 2:18 for the half-mile. I had been running 63, 62, 59 for a quarter; now I
was running 56. I thought, well, you know, this whole phenomenon of working
hard and getting a result, this guy — my track coach — knows what he’s doing. So
I matured a little bit over that summer, physically and otherwise, and I started my
junior year fully invested in doing well academically, because now I had a goal,
and doing well as a track athlete. And in New York there were these Catholic
High School Association championships in Madison Square Garden. That was
the big event for the indoor season.
Mr. Granof: That was a big event.
Judge Urbina: Indeed it was. I used to love running in Madison Square Garden. They even had
a band that would play as people ran around the track. It really was a circus.
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Mr. Granof: I can imagine what a kick it must have been, in New York, at Madison Square
Garden, which is so iconic.
Judge Urbina: Exactly. I loved all of that. So at the end of the indoor season, they have these
championships, CHSA championships at Madison Square Garden. I had not run
in any of what they call seeded heats throughout the season, although I had made
marked progress, and a couple of the coaches had already started watching me, a
couple of college coaches and several of the high school coaches had started
watching. But I hadn’t done anything spectacular up to that point, so my coach
tried to get me in the seeded heat because there was this fellow, JohnWeber, who
was from Chiminade High School. Weber was the premier half-miler at the time,
and my coach said, “You can beat him.”
Mr. Granof: He was from where?
Judge Urbina: Chiminade High School. Do you remember Chiminade? A Catholic high school.
I forget exactly where it’s located. But my coach said, “You can take him,” so he
tried to get me in the seed with Weber, but the officials wouldn’t let me in
because I had not qualified to be in the seeded heat, so I had to run in the
unseeded heat. They ran that heat, and he won the seeded heat, and everybody
presumed that the people who placed in that heat were going to be first, second, or
third. Then they ran my heat, and I won my heat, and I won it two-tenths of a
second slower than Weber had. So a lot of eyebrows went up. Then the outdoor
season came and I continued my progress to the extent that I won my first two
championships with a 1:57. I think it was at Randalls Island, which is part of
New York City.
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Mr. Granof: So your times really went down.
Judge Urbina: Yes, I was improving, and now the limelight had shifted a little bit. People were
beginning to take notice. It’s interesting because it doesn’t happen nowadays
because I don’t think track has that kind of appeal anymore, but in those days it
was not unusual to see track on the front page of the newspaper.
Mr. Granof: You know, that’s my impression, that track was much bigger in the 1950s and
1960s than it is today.
Judge Urbina: Yes. It was on television all the time. They had these relay rivalries between the
various colleges, and it was kind of interesting and fun.
Mr. Granof: It gets a big play during the Olympics, but that’s about it.
Judge Urbina: That’s really it. So as I phased into my senior year, I ran cross-country again and
did reasonably well. I was less resistant to the long-distance running. I could see
it added value. You know, in the beginning I said why would I want to run this,
I’m not going to be a distance runner. But now I could see it had value, even
though I wasn’t great at it. I was good, but I wasn’t great at it. I knew it had
value because it was making me stronger. After cross-country, we started running
indoors, and now things started happening. This is when things really
materialized for me. I was totally undefeated my entire senior year. Every race I
ran, whether it was an 800, whether it was a quarter-mile, I mean not relays, in
terms of times, I was on a relay that didn’t win, but all the individual events I ran,
I won. I set records in the 1,000 yards and I set records in the 800 yards. My
high school record still stands. In fact, the interesting transitional twist is this: I
ran the national championships at Madison Square Garden my senior year, and at
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that track meet — for high school, it’s held during the day and then the colleges
have the night — in the afternoon a lot of college coaches come to see the high
school runners. So I ran the 1,000, and I won and set the record at the time.
Immediately after the meet, two alumni from Georgetown approached me and
said, “You know, we’d like to talk to you. We talked to your coach, the coach
says it’s all right. Would you and your coach mind coming across the street to the
hotel?” And I said fine. And that’s how I met Steve Benedek, my college coach.
It’s a funny story. Steve Benedek was an Hungarian refugee who had fled from
Hungary because he was being hunted by the Communists. He was a resistance
fighter. He also was an Olympian in the Pentathlon, so he was an established
athlete. When he came to the United States, he came with nothing but his
reputation, and his reputation got him a spot as a coach at Georgetown. He didn’t
speak English very well, but he was just stunningly handsome, and just stunningly
short. Beautiful blue eyes with tan skin and kind of a lot of wild beautiful hair. I
walked into the room, and he’s not there. The alumni say, “The coach is waiting
for you, just step right inside.” So I walked through the door and there’s the
renowned Steve Benedek sitting in a chair, and he’s just staring at me. Mind you
I’m 17, just turned 17. He waves me over, and I walk over, and he looks at me
and he jumps out of his chair and says, “Do you want to be a champion?” But he
says it really loud and scary. I said, “Excuse me?” And he says, “Do you want to
be a champion?” So next thing I know, I am practically frothing at the mouth,
jumping up and down, and saying yes, I want to be a champion. And then he
scolds me because he says to me in his broken English, “Ricky, you looked
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behind your shoulder when you were going down the home stretch. You do not
do that.” And I appreciated that, I appreciated him being critical, even though it
was a victory. So I was really impressed with this guy. There were the best halfmilers
in the country at Georgetown at that time, and of course I knew who they
were, and some of them would still be there if I went there the next year. Back at
the high school, my guidance counselor said, “No, you don’t want to go to
Harvard,” which was also recruiting me. They don’t give out scholarships, they
give you what they called a work-study, but it’s like a scholarship, as you may
know. I actually had about thirty scholarship offers my senior year. My high
school discouraged me from going to Harvard because they said if you go to those
non-Catholic schools you’re going to lose your religion.
Mr. Granof: I had heard that, that Catholic schools, certainly in the 1950s and 1960s, were
pushing kids into the Catholic college system, Notre Dame and Georgetown, but I
don’t think that lasted into the 1970s and 1980s.
Judge Urbina: No. The times were very different. You know when I went to Georgetown — I
started in 1963 and graduated in 1967 — there was not one basketball player of
color on the team.
Mr. Granof: Hard to believe.
Judge Urbina: And the coach was heard to say, and not clandestinely, that he didn’t want to
contaminate the sport. I was the first athlete of color ever recruited by
Georgetown, and when I was recruited, there was some resistance among the
administration to the coach having done that without going to the administration
first to clear this unprecedented commitment.
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Mr. Granof: Well, Georgetown, being in Washington, must still have had, at least part of it,
that flavor of segregation.
Judge Urbina: Well, I’ve read the reason why Georgetown’s colors are blue and gray is so that it
would not offend either side during the Civil War.
Mr. Granof: I didn’t know that. Still, Georgetown, academically, in the 1960s, its reputation
was as a good school.
Judge Urbina: Oh, it’s a wonderful school. And Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service was
well integrated by the nature of the training it provided. The college had no
women. Not one. That changed, I think, just before or just after I graduated. So
yes, it was a conservative institution, and the happiest years of my young life were
there. I mean I must say it was heaven. It was just absolute heaven. I had a
wonderful time socially, and I thought academically they did an outstanding job.
Most of the credit for my collegiate academic success belongs to my high school
experience.
Mr. Granof: Because they really pushed you?
Judge Urbina: They really did. They really opened up my mind. They really expanded my
thinking. They really planted a lot of seeds, which are still growing. That was
my high school.
Mr. Granof: So you had a wonderful high school education academically?
Judge Urbina: I did. I had a wonderful high school education academically. Socially, it was
limited because it was track and then home. I didn’t hang out. I never got in any
trouble. I’ve been asked how I avoided getting into trouble. It’s because I was
much more afraid of my father than I was of the police. If I ever got into any kind
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of trouble, I would have told the police “Execute me right on the spot. Do not
take me home.”
Mr. Granof: Did your parents come to the track meets?
Judge Urbina: Yes. In the beginning my father was still uncertain about it. It was my mother
who in my junior year said, “You should let him do this.” In my junior year,
when I won my first championship, there was a big article in the Long Island
newspaper, so I took it, I put it down in front of my father, and said, “There it is,”
and from that point on, he was very much in favor of me continuing on. He
considered me to be a chip off the old block because he was a successful runner at
one point.
Mr. Granof: What did the guys do?
Judge Urbina: Well this was interesting. We had dances. I wasn’t in all the cliques. I’d say
there was a very active social life, but for the students who got from the first
through the fourth year, it was limited because of the demands that the school
placed on us. There was, interestingly enough and contrary to what I see
nowadays, a lot of encouragement to be involved in extra-curriculars and sports. I
think the typical Jesuit mindset was they really felt that cultivating the body was a
very important part of cultivating the mind. So between the extra-curriculars and
studies, most of the social life was on the weekends. I occasionally would go out
with my friends or girls on the weekends, but it was all very modest; it involved a
shop or a movie or something, but life was pretty much aimed at doing well in
school.
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Mr. Granof: It appears that doing well as an athlete and then you were doing well
academically, that had to do something for your self-confidence.
Judge Urbina: It did. It really did. And it not only helped me with my self-confidence, but it
also provided me with an image, a self-image, that I was able to grasp and hold
onto for the remainder of those years. By that I mean I was a dark-skinned
Puerto Rican; spoke Spanish before I spoke English; I was in an environment
where there was nobody that looked like me; and it was difficult socially because
there weren’t very many African-American or Puerto Rican girls, so I was limited
in who I could date and who I could go out with, especially in those days. So
there were things that could have affected me adversely in that respect, but I
developed a self-image that was very positive. Because of track in particular.
You know, running around in circles and following the coach’s orders and getting
good results and then reading your name in the newspaper really helped my selfconfidence.
Mr. Granof: That must have helped you with your peers as well.
Judge Urbina: It did. In fact, I developed a clique of friends – maybe clique is not a good word.
I developed a group of friends who remain close and have a couple of “reunions”
a few times a year – we’re celebrating our 52nd anniversary reunion this October.
Mr. Granof: That’s wonderful.
Judge Urbina: That picture right there [pointing to a picture in his chambers] is one of them.
That fellow [pointing], he married a nun just before she took her final vows while
she was about to complete her studies. She left the convent for him and they had
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ten children. A few of them are doctors, a few are lawyers, and the others are
teachers or public servants.
Mr. Granof: It sounds like high school really was just made for you in terms of the academic
experience, the athletic experience, and even the social experience.
Judge Urbina: Yes. I developed a lot of respect for many things. You can respect something
because you’re supposed to respect something, or you can respect something or
someone because they’ve earned it. I went into the experience having respect for
what I was about to encounter, and I left the experience feeling respect for what it
had done for me.
Mr. Granof: What was your relationship with your brothers at this time? Were they involved
at all?
Judge Urbina: I’m trying to think whether they were then back from Korea. One was in the
Air Force, and one was in the Marines. Yes, they were back in the latter years.
They weren’t there during my high school years, the end of high school,
beginning of college, they weren’t back. My oldest brother and I were always
very close. In fact, it was he who I called to make sure that I wasn’t missing
anything from some of the things we talked about last time, and he’s been my
mentor and my role model since I was a child. And my other brother, who is just
a wonderful, warm human being, very funny and very tough, he also was on the
scene, but he didn’t go to the track meets. He always kind of led his own life, and
it didn’t overlap too much with mine. It does now, but it didn’t then.
Mr. Granof: So you move on to college, to Georgetown. You’re recruited for your athletic
ability, but certainly you had the academic ability as well.
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Judge Urbina: Yes. They wouldn’t recruit someone who they felt would not be able to make it
academically, and my grades were good so they felt safe.
Mr. Granof: You’re starting at Georgetown and you have to decide what course of study to
pursue. In those days, I think, there was less flexibility in the curriculum
generally, and fewer choices, but you still had to make some choices.
Judge Urbina: Absolutely. And actually one of the big choices was right from the get-go. When
I was a kid, I had made the mistake – doctors in those days would come to your
house when you were sick, remember that?
Mr. Granof: Oh yes. They all had M.D. license plates.
Judge Urbina: That’s right. Whenever the doctor would come, I’d carry his bag down to the car.
My parents thought that was the cutest thing, so they decided I was going to be a
doctor. So when I applied to Georgetown, I applied to be in their pre-med
program, and after about a year-and-a-half of that, it just ate me alive. Organic
chemistry. There were some courses in which I did very well and other courses in
which I did not do very well, and I was so used to being successful academically.
Organic chemistry just ate me up alive. I determined that as good as my academic
background was, I just didn’t have the science part of it down well enough, so I
decided I was going to have to switch.
Mr. Granof: You lasted a year-and-a-half into it?
Judge Urbina: Yes. I think the initial reaction I had to quitting was disappointment because I
knew my parents would be so disappointed. And then I just scrambled to try to
find something as a substitute. A couple of the guys on the track team who had
just graduated or were about to graduate were going into law school. So I talked
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to them, and I decided that there were things about the law that I really found
interesting. I had very good experiences in writing when I was in college. I had
English teachers who enjoyed my writing, and I had some experiences where
public speaking was involved. So I said maybe the law is a match. So I took the
LSATs and I did well enough to get into Georgetown Law School on my own.
There was no affirmative action involved. So that’s the course I pursued.
Mr. Granof: What courses turned you on that you really enjoyed the most?
Judge Urbina: When I switched out of pre-med, I decided I would major in English and Spanish,
English with a Spanish major. Spanish, of course, was something I was
acquainted with, but I had never studied it formally. I wanted to be able to speak
it because I thought it would be beneficial to me to be able to speak the language
and assert myself as a Latino in a more credible way. So that was nice. In that
niche were a lot of courses I really found fascinating. The history of
Latin America, Mexico, the whole conquest of Peru. I realized for the first time
that I had a very strong kind of anthropological interest in people, in life, in
history. I thought this was fascinating.
Mr. Granof: Also there’s a wonderful tradition of Spanish literature.
Judge Urbina: Yes. There was that too. I had some problems reading some of it in Spanish, but
it was good, it was very good. Do you speak a foreign language?
Mr. Granof: Well, I can’t say I speak French, but that’s what I took in college.
Judge Urbina: So you know exactly what I mean when I say that when you learn another
language, even if you decide not to speak it later on, your mind goes through
something. You have to switch the verbs around. You can say things in one
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language that are difficult to translate, so it gives your mind a certain degree of
exercise and acuity. So that was that. And then there was English. I really
enjoyed English. The teachers were very demanding, but once again, I had had
wonderful teachers – one in particular who I hated, but now when I think back
was probably one of the most valuable teachers I had in high school – who
required us to write a composition of 250-300 words every week with no form of
the verb “to be.” If there was any form of the verb “to be” in it, he would pick it
up and tear it, and you would get zero, which would put a serious dent in your
grade point average.
Mr. Granof: Why did he not want you to use any form of the verb “to be”?
Judge Urbina: You know, nobody ever had the courage to ask him. We just did what we were
told. But now that I think back, I imagine he wanted us not to be so dependent on
the verb “to be.” He wanted us to find more dynamic verbs so that we didn’t get
accustomed to writing by just creating a predicate, putting something in the
middle as the form of the verb “to be” with predicates on either side. He wanted
us to be creative and to massage language a little bit better. That’s what I think he
wanted. I really enjoyed the English courses.
Mr. Granof: It doesn’t sound like I had anywhere near the kind of rigorous education that you
did in high school. It wasn’t until college that I was really forced to learn how to
write.
Judge Urbina: It’s interesting. You’re probably wrong. You probably did know how to write
very well. I’ll tell you something I’ve noticed. The law clerks that I’ve hired who
have had math and science backgrounds are wonderful writers. Wonderful legal
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writers. They seem to have the mechanism for getting to the source of things and
explaining it in simple terms. I’ve had two former math majors as law clerks, and
I’ve noticed their writing skills in both instances.
Mr. Granof: I’ve always admired people who can just sit down and write and there’s a logical
flow.
Judge Urbina: And that’s the best we can hope for. I think people who tell you that they can sit
down and write like that all the time are not telling you the truth. I may have a
day where the thoughts flow. Someone once said, “I don’t like writing, but I love
having written.”
Mr. Granof: Judge Kennedy told me that.
Judge Urbina: Really?
Mr. Granof: Yes. I said, “How do you feel about writing,” and that’s exactly what he said. So
you’re in college and you decide after about a year-and-a-half that pre-med is not
what you really want to do, and you switch to an exciting major, Spanish, with
some English, taking some English courses, and you also say you’re going to go
to law school. When did you make that decision?
Judge Urbina: Let me go back and make sure that I clarify one point. When I took organic
chemistry that first year, I pretty much decided while I was in the second semester
of that course not to proceed further with it. However, I didn’t drop out of premed
until later because I told myself that what I was going to do was to go back
and take organic chemistry again because I dropped out of the course. But I did
continue to take the math and other pre-med courses, but even that became so
onerous that by the-year-and-a-half, two-year mark, it was over.
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Mr. Granof: So when did you decide that you wanted to go to law school?
Judge Urbina: I think it probably was at the end of my junior year, once I had spoken to
teammates or former teammates who were in law school. They seemed to be
enjoying their experience. I had never seen the law school. I don’t think I had
ever taken a law-related course other than social studies, something like that, so I
was pretty much taking the whole thing as a matter of faith, that this would be the
thing for me. And as it turned out, I was right and I was wrong. We’re not into
that phase yet, but just to give you a little preview, at the end of 1967, my last
year in college, I had to make up my mind if I was going to compete for the
Olympics, whether I was going to try to train for the Olympic trials. The Olympic
trials were here, and then the Olympics were in Mexico in 1968. So in 1967 I got
married. I started law school. I was working 25 to 30 hours a week, and I was
training so as to qualify to run the Olympic trials here. I don’t know whatever
possessed me to think I could do all those things at once.
Mr. Granof: I was going to say, how did you train and be in law school the first year? And
plus getting married.
Judge Urbina: So my point being that the decision to go to law school as it turns out was a very
good one, but it was an uninformed one because first of all, I didn’t really know
what law school entailed. I found out. And second of all, training for the
Olympics and going to law school at the same time, had I had a realistic concept
of what that meant, I probably wouldn’t have done it. I would’ve picked one or
the other.
Mr. Granof: How did you do it?
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Judge Urbina: Well, I found a coach. My college coach was no longer available.
Mr. Granof: Is that because he was involved in other things?
Judge Urbina: The University was getting rid of him because of contentions between him and
the administration. They were making way to introduce another coach.
Mr. Granof: You still have tremendous admiration for him.
Judge Urbina: Absolutely. I love him dearly. He has a big ranch out in Olney, Maryland,
which, among other things, is a day camp and a horseback-riding academy. For a
person who came over to this country with nothing in his pocket, he’s now a
multi-multi-millionaire. He’s a very dynamic man. I’m glad that everything has
worked out for him. But I was looking for a coach, and I found a fellow, and he
agreed. Actually, I found two — one at first and then another to train me. Of
course I could train only about four days a week because of the other conflicts. I
think being able to compartmentalize things in life has its advantages and
disadvantages because when I thought of my training, I would think of my
training and nothing else. When I went to school, I would think of school and
nothing else. When I went to work, I would think of using this job to maximize
the benefits of this job, and so forth. But I did not spend enough time stepping
back and looking at the relationship between all those things plus my new bride,
and so it was a very unhappy year for me. I did qualify to run the Olympic trials.
I ran the Olympic trials in California, and I missed by one stride. My first year of
law school was not representative of what I felt I could do. Problems in my
marriage developed. I blame myself, not anybody else. So it was rough.
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Mr. Granof: Tell me about your college career in track, which clearly was successful enough
to put you in contention for the Olympics.
Judge Urbina: It was successful. When I was recruited for Georgetown, Georgetown recruited
seven individuals, all of us on full scholarships. We had to pay for nothing. And
of course I looked at the experience as a job, this was my job, just like my parents
said being a good student was my job. This was my job. I took it very seriously.
With all due respect to the other people that came in with me, by the time I was a
senior, I was the only one left in that group of seven. Three had failed out, three
had been injured irreparably. The coach’s techniques were harsh. He had that
kind of European “pain is good” attitude, which was okay, I survived it. I had my
injuries too, but some of the other guys, they just weren’t ready for that, and some
of them wound up with back, leg, and other problems. But in the meantime, my
first year I was on the cross-country team that won what was then called the Big
East Championships. My freshman cross-country team won that. And then as a
freshman it takes a while to build back up. It’s probably the same in other sports,
but even if you do very well as a senior in high school, then when you enter
college, you’re not expecting that first year to rise up the ranks right away; you
kind of have to re-establish a base and let your body catch up. So I did well as an
athlete; there was nothing spectacular.
Mr. Granof: It’s interesting that you were still running cross-country.
Judge Urbina: Oh yes, this coach insisted. Even the sprinters ran cross-country. Even the
sprinters would do 15-mile workouts.
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Mr. Granof: What were you running primarily, other than cross-country? Were you still doing
the half-mile?
Judge Urbina: During cross-country season you just run cross-country. But then indoors it was
the 1,000, the 880, the 1,500, an occasional mile, and relays. Georgetown,
especially when I was a sophomore, Georgetown had the most – when I got into
my sophomore year – the most amazing array of half-milers. Just an amazing
array. That was considered to be Georgetown’s specialty, the half-milers. Of
course, Villanova also had great athletes. There was a tremendous rivalry
between us. We won various championships. At one point during my freshman
year, the varsity two-mile relay team — I was ineligible to join that squad because
of my freshman status — ran a world record in the two-mile relay. I joined them
the next year, and the team continued to win various championships. I was on
teams that ran record times in the mile relay. By the time I was a sophomore, I
was running 1:50.1, 1:50.2 relay legs indoors, which was good. And Villanova
had great athletes, Tommy Sullivan and Noel Carroll and Ian Hamilton – all these
guys from Ireland. It was wonderful. Then my junior year is when I got out on
my own because, as I said, the coach put me in featured races running solo for
various championships. That’s the year I won those races; that’s the year I won
the Nationals; I was NCAA champion. Everything fell into place. It was very
nice. And, of course, in the meantime you’re a big man on campus. It was very
nice. I didn’t have to pursue any women, they all seemed to like me. The
teachers knew you. And Georgetown was grateful. The track team was then the
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athletic team. We had world recognition. We had some of the finest runners
anywhere, and the school got a lot of publicity as a result of that.
Mr. Granof: If you were to point to something, what would you point to as your best athletic
accomplishment?
Judge Urbina: I’d say my proudest athletic accomplishment would probably be that race in
Madison Square Garden, the one with the picture of me crossing the tape that’s on
the cover of the book my son gave me. My nemeses at the time were two twins
who went to Seton Hall. They were just fabulous runners. The last lap one of
them passed me and opened up about ten yards, and then I caught him and passed
him on the last turn. I think that race was my finest because it called upon me to
use the perfect synchronicity between my energy, my strength, and my relaxation.
I was confident. There was never a moment in that race when I didn’t think I was
going to win. Even though he passed me in the last lap, I knew I was going to
win this race. And it was a record, it was a national record. But I think probably
my best accomplishment as the world sees it was winning the NCAA
championship.
Mr. Granof: And that was in what race?
Judge Urbina: That was in the 880. Cobo Hall, in Detroit. That’s probably recognized, as far as
objective standards, winning the nationals. But the race, the ICA4 championship
was probably my proudest.
Mr. Granof: Which leads me to the question I’ve always wanted to ask runners, which is how
much of running is psychological?
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Judge Urbina: I’d say a lot of running is psychological, and I appreciate that now more than ever
because now I have a better understanding of exactly how psychological it is.
You have to be able to fine-tune your body. You have to be able to build your
cardiovascular and muscular strength in a way so that a runner can access one’s
greatest capability. That’s why the coach, for example, would have us run
sometimes 100, occasionally 130 miles a week. It’s so that the body would be
strong, the cardiovascular system would be strong, so that when you called upon
it, it would be ready to perform. I had many friends who were very talented but
who, when they got into a race, could not handle it. Psychologically, something
would happen and their muscles would tighten up, and they just could not get
their body to perform. It was difficult to get through. It was difficult to
understand as to why that happened. I could see running poorly in a workout and
running well in a race, but sometimes these guys would have wonderful workouts,
but they could not match it in a race. So that leads me to believe that a lot of it is
psychological. I think that the body has to be capable of obeying your mind when
your mind asks you to relax, no matter how tense the situation. And if your body
can “relax” – and I use that word in quotes because I don’t want it to mean the
conventional kind of relaxation – if you can tell your body to relax, everything
comes in tune and your body becomes most capable of responding to what your
mind tells it to do.
Mr. Granof: The other question: how did you manage to balance a difficult academic schedule
with the demands of being a national championship runner, which as you’ve said
may entail running 130 miles a week? How did you do that?
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Judge Urbina: Well, not without some consequences. In the beginning, I was able to do it by
just being exhausted all the time.
Mr. Granof: I was going to say, when did you sleep?
Judge Urbina: When you sleep, you really sleep. It takes adaptation. For example, we would
work out twice a day. We would work out at 7:00 in the morning and then we
would work out approximately 3:30, depending on your class schedule in the
afternoon. That would happen during the cross-country season and the outdoor
season. During the indoor season, we would work out once a day.
Mr. Granof: How long were these workouts?
Judge Urbina: The cross-country workouts were long; they were two, three hours long. The
indoor workouts were not as long but they were rigorous. You would run a
quarter-mile and jog a 110 and run a quarter-mile, and you would do that over and
over. During the outdoor season, the morning workouts were light. We would go
to the upper field, do a lot of stretching, we’d do some quarter-miles, and we’d do
this and that, and then the afternoon workout was more rigorous. We would run
some time trials or we’d do some volume work. But to answer your question,
again, a lot of it would have to do with pacing yourself. That’s why social life
had to be very carefully monitored because you needed down time. Nutrition was
an issue, not because there wasn’t food at Georgetown. There was plenty of food,
but for example, sometimes if you’re starting a workout at 3:30, 4:00, the
cafeteria closes at 7:00. If you didn’t feel like eating right after you worked out,
we’d wind up getting in the car and driving to the Hot Shoppe – there used to be a
Hot Shoppe across Key Bridge, remember that one? – and loading up on a bunch
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of food at 10:00, 11:00 at night, then hitting the sack, and waking up the next
morning. When you’re young, as you know, you can do a lot of things, and when
you think back on it, you say, how the hell did that happen. But, let me tell you
this, my senior year, I ran a race at Madison Square Garden on a Friday night. I
remember the race because it was a feature event. I ran against a fellow called
Toomey, who was a Marine and was a fabulous runner and who I had beaten a
couple of times. The papers had kind of played up the rivalry, although we were
friends, and I beat him that night again with a record time. I took a plane that
night, flew out to California, and the next day I ran against the Italian
international champion in a similar event. He beat me. I took second place. I
wasn’t able to muster up the finishing speed I needed. I went back, got on the
plane, and on the plane I got so sick, the stewardess – they called them
stewardesses then – took pity on me. She came over, and covered me up; I was
shivering, trembling. I got back to the campus, and I had mono, and a serious
case of it. So I stayed in the infirmary for several days. I was just worried to
death because I knew I was missing valuable training time, but the bottom line is
athletes break down, and I did.
Mr. Granof: So you were balancing all of that. The discipline must be incredible. I don’t
know if you want to talk about it, but how did you manage to get married?
Judge Urbina: Well, you know, it seemed like I had an agenda. One of the things on my agenda
was to get married. I don’t know why. Nobody was pushing me, not my wife-tobe
or my family, but it seemed to me that that was on my agenda, to establish
stability, to go to law school, and try to get into the Olympics. So I was dating a
61
nurse at the Nursing School at Georgetown, and one day a nurse from Camden,
New Jersey came down to stay with another friend of the nurse I was dating. One
thing led to another, and next thing you know I started going out with the friend
that came down from Camden, New Jersey. She and I hit it off, so she would
come down periodically, and I would go to Camden periodically, and we struck
up a romance. So when I graduated in 1967, we got married.
Mr. Granof: Where you had the time for romance is something that mystifies me.
Judge Urbina: It mystifies me too. It’s amazing to me. I try to think back on how it came to
pass, and to tell you the truth, I can’t reconstruct it exactly. I know we were very
much infatuated with each other, I’ll tell you that. Sometimes during the
summers we would spend time together, and we had some quality time, but we
really didn’t know each other as well as we should have. She was a nurse here in
town, and she stuck by me the whole way. You asked the question earlier, and
maybe we’ll end on this one at this point because I can elaborate more, but you
asked how I was able to do a number of things. One of the things I needed to do
that year, 1967, was to get sponsorship, to get an organization to sponsor me, pay
for my way to various meets so I could compete, pay for my equipment, shoes
and things in preparation for the Olympic trials.
Mr. Granof: Was this when you were in law school?
Judge Urbina: The summer before starting law school. I needed to find an organization so I
could depend on it placing me in the meets and make me competitive. I applied
to the New York Athletic Club, and I don’t know if you remember from the book
I showed you —
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Mr. Granof: Vividly. But that’s a whole topic that I think is fascinating.
Judge Urbina: So that was one of the things I had planned on.
Mr. Granof: How did your parents feel about you getting married?
Judge Urbina: They liked my choice, and they liked the idea. They thought it would create a
type of stability that would be good for me, especially since I was going to be
going to law school. They liked her very much and liked her family, and her
family liked my family, so all things in that regard seemed just fine.
Mr. Granof: This is probably a good time to end. Thank you for all of your time.
