This guest post was written by The Hon. David Mills ’67.

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I am eighty-three years old today, and I was twenty-two in September of 1964 when I walked into my first class at Boston College Law School. The school was still in the old building across from Saint Ignatius Church. My first class was Real Property with Professor Richard G. Huber, a rite of passage for every first-year student. We entered nearly two hundred strong; by second year we were about one hundred twenty, and most of us made it through to the end. 

To this day, I believe I could not have found finer
professors or a better place to begin learning to love the rule of law. Frank Larkin was Associate Dean. Our Dean, Jesuit Robert F. Drinan, S.J.—often described as “peripatetic ”—was, in my experience, a very good man. Frank’s office sat down the hall on the second floor. His indispensable right hand was Charlie Pepper, who typed faster than anyone I have ever seen. Charlie came to know most of us simply by transcribing the hundreds, if not thousands, of letters Frank wrote to law firms, judges, and potential employers on behalf of BC Law graduates. We often joked that Charlie Pepper wore out more IBM Selectrics than any typist in modern history. Each letter was tailored to the student it concerned, and each contained Frank’s signature phrase: “fully mindful of the treachery of superlatives.” I adopted that phrase myself in the many letters of recommendation I later wrote for my law clerks, interns, and colleagues—letters typed by the generous and competent people who endured my dictation over the years in both public and private offices. When graduation approached in the spring of 1967, I cannot say that Frank and I had an immediate friendship. Yet he seemed to know every graduating
student—our backgrounds, our interests, our hopes, and our intentions.

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