During the 1980’s, Dirk Vandever became the youngest President of the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association since its inception in 1884. He was 37 years old. Dirk tells the stories of lessons learned, discoveries, and how his professional relationships evolved his practice in the years before and after this remarkable year of his career.
This transcription snippet includes highlights from Dirk's time as President, haircut woes, and what it was like to be the youngest president in the organization's history.
Interviewer: What was the trajectory of your practice between the time you came there in 1987? What were you doing?
Dirk: The Popham Firm always did both plaintiff and defense work. For the first 15 years of our practice, we did both. In the last 15-20 years, I've done just plaintiff's work. One reason I was thrilled about this work is that my father was electrocuted following safety instructions, and at the time, there was a $25,000 cap on wrongful death. That seemed so unfair. Tom Conway, Tom Sweeney, and Ernie Fremont gave me opportunities to represent people who had been killed. For example, we represented a young man electrocuted by Kansas City Power and Light Company.
I also worked on cases for the asbestos union and got the first verdict in Missouri for an electrician who died of lung cancer from asbestos exposure. This got me involved in various areas. For the past 5-10 years, I've been trying cases with Andy Gelbach in Warrensburg, including bad faith litigation against insurance companies. I've also worked on significant national pharmaceutical cases and medical device litigation. It's been a diverse and exciting time, and I feel as energized today as I did 24 years ago when I was president of the bar.
Interviewer: So, you've gone to the plaintiff's practice in the last 15 years?
Dirk: That's correct.
Interviewer: Any particular specialty there?
Dirk: It's personal injury and wrongful death. For the last 5-10 years, I've tried cases with Andy Gelbach involving personal injuries or death, and bad faith litigation against insurance companies. I've also been involved in significant national pharmaceutical and medical device cases. I still enjoy doing what I'm doing.
Interviewer: It's a really intriguing profession. There's no question about it.
Dirk: It is. It's a great life for a dilettante because you get to learn different things. We are retained to become experts in one little area. I tend to think of myself as a slow student who hires an expert to tutor me in a particular area. It's fascinating because you become an expert in various fields and then move on to the next case.
Interviewer: So, you've come up with a brilliant idea for the bar directory. You get a lot of credit for that one. Once you did that, did they make you the treasurer or something?
Dirk: Yeah, actually, because I was so young at the time, I may have been in my twenties when I started. I pushed my way in, and I think you, Larry, and Lance Welch said, "Have him come in." So, I started working with Bobby and became the perennial doctor of the budget. At some point, when you didn't know what to do with me, you made me the treasurer. I was probably in my early thirties when I became the treasurer.
Interviewer: And were you in the young lawyer section when you were a young lawyer?
Dirk: I was. I was only one year out of the young lawyer section when I became the president of the Senior Bar Association.
Interviewer: That's incredible. How did you make your way up to the president?
Dirk: There's a nominating committee every year, and people get an opportunity to say yes or no. I kept doing the budget thing over and over again. Bobby believed there was an umbilical cord between her and me. I was next in line for various positions, always with the same duties as treasurer, even when I became president.
Interviewer: Did you co-chair the benchmark as Vice President?
Dirk: I did. We had co-chairs with some judges. One of the great experiences of my life was putting on a seminar with Lance Welsh and Bill Sanders. They did a trial demonstration on the importance of demonstrative evidence. Bill Sanders was so skillful with his verbal pyrotechnics that he created demonstrative evidence without using any.
Interviewer: Did Lance use any?
Dirk: Yes, he did. They both did very well, as expected. Lance kept his trial notebook close so no one could understand what was inside.
Interviewer: Let's show these pictures. This scrapbook is probably the best physical memento given to any of us. Bobby Lou Nailing compiled it for every bar president. One of the greatest non-physical mementos was the Bobby Lou Nailing finishing school. She showed me a picture of myself before becoming bar president and said, "You look unsophisticated."
Interviewer: Did she make you get a haircut?
Dirk: Yes, she did. The hair helmet was in vogue at the time.
Interviewer: What were your projects as president?
Dirk: In 1987, we celebrated the 200th anniversary of the Constitution with a bar play called "Silly and Philly" at the Folly Theater. Judge Tim O'Leary and Bobby Lou Nailing were the leads. It was a fantastic show with a thunderous ovation. I went up to add praise but instead advised them not to quit their day jobs. They haven't forgiven me since.
Interviewer: What about the tenets of professionalism?
Dirk: We did have those. One of the greatest things was the volunteer attorney project. President Reagan gave 100 awards to private enterprises, and the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar was the only bar association to receive one. This was due to the work lawyers did in the volunteer attorney project and homeless shelter. Later, I was involved with women's shelters and children's shelters. I went to Washington, DC, to receive the award from the president. It was a momentous event.
Interviewer: And thinking back on that 1987 year, what were some of the humorous things that you recall? You know, there were so many humorous things. I lost track.
Dirk: So many of the humorous things. Many of those humorous points were in the context of Bar Association meetings and just being able to have the camaraderie. One of the things that happened afterward, and when you talk about humorous, if you look through this book, Bobby Liu, who created all of the things, would say things like—here is the funniest thing that she did. She got a picture of me when I was much younger, and she said, "Right here, if you can see this, I'm pressing my hands together for some reason. I'm not really certain why, but what it says is I must, I must, I must improve my public speaking." So, what happened is that she gets a bunch of pictures from my high school where I was such a camera hog and such a microphone hog that she said, now, you know, we don't want to overdo it.
She must have taken 50 pictures of me going on and on. For example, she'd say, "Dirk gives a speech at federal court, Dirk gives a speech at state court, Dirk gives a speech in front of the Liberty Memorial, Dirk gives a speech in front of the legal secretaries, Dirk gives a speech in terms of the Paralegal Association."
In fact, I don't know that I have this, but I saw this, and it was spawned by something Bobby said about me being a microphone hog. My two-year-old son had made a drawing, and I swear it was a direct result of what Bobby said about me being a microphone hog. He drew a picture of his father as a hog with a microphone in front of it, saying, "Oh no, not another speech." Bobby said it was delightful at first. We really enjoyed the fact that every single event—whether it was a bar association, a CLE, a committee meeting, or the Sons of Anarchy—didn't matter what it was, if somebody called up the bar association and said, "Is there somebody available?" she said it was comforting to know that we could pick up the phone and think, "Gosh, Dirk will be ready to go and give a speech at a moment's notice." As the year went on, that comfort turned to alarm and concern, thinking, "My lord, does he do anything but go to chicken dinners and give speeches?"
I wonder whether or not, when he leaves this, he is going to suffer some type of emotional breakdown. Within days of Norm Sanders taking over, being sworn in—it was December 1987—I was reading a case about an appendicitis case. I believe it was a medical negligence case, and I was reading a record. It demonstrated that the signs and symptoms of appendicitis were a loss of appetite and pain in the right lower quadrant. I was reading this and thought, "I'm developing a loss of appetite and right lower quadrant pain." I not only developed the symptoms, but I developed the disease, and had appendicitis, had emergency surgery. Bobby Liu came in and said, "Dirk, I told you so. You've got to emotionally prepare yourself for the fact that you've got to go back now to the practice of law and not think so much about trying to just get in front of people and give speeches all the time."
Interviewer: So the appendicitis put you on notice.
Dirk: It put me on notice.
Interviewer: Yeah, that's a great story. So, you had a great year, it looks like to me, and then you left and got your appendicitis over with.
Dirk: I did.
Interviewer: Tell me about the practice of law since then, how it's changed, and what your view of it is.
Dirk: Well, the practice of law and how it's changed—we've alluded to it before—and I am hopeful, Jerry, that really the reason that there is an observation that it has changed from a more professional, collegial type of profession to one of a business is in part due to the fact that, as we've said, there are so many more lawyers that not only the lawyers but their clients frequently act and expect their lawyer to act in a certain way. Maybe a belligerent way, maybe a self-fulfilling prophecy, and maybe a situation where you think that you've got to arch up, you've got to be mean-spirited.
One of the things, and maybe I'd close with this, is one of the stories that I remember to this day. If you have an opportunity to cut somebody to the quick, you've just got them. You have the ability to put the sword in so deep that they'll never recover, at least on that particular occasion. To my everlasting shame, during one of my early depositions, that is precisely what I did. The lawyer on the other side kind of set herself up, and I did. I plunged the sword deep, and it was palpable to everybody in the room. I felt great for about a second, and then I thought, "That was totally unnecessary. There was no reason for me to have done that. That did not advance the ball at all for my client." Three weeks to the day that happened with the lawyer on the other side, that lawyer got on the three-panel for becoming a judge. I thought, "Well, now that's interesting. I have just dealt an unnecessary slight to my opponent, who is now perhaps—she didn't ultimately become a judge—but who is now perhaps going to ascend to the bench. If there is any blame that will ever be ascribed to some hostile behavior, it will not affect me but will affect my client." It was a direct result of what I did. Ever since then, I have tried—I feel kind of ferocious and have that type of energy going—but I've always tried to think about that. I've tried to think about what Hollis did with diffusing everything with humor instead. If you try to be mean-spirited to somebody, it really doesn't help that much either. You're ultimately going to feel really bad about it yourself, you're going to alienate the other lawyer, and who knows when that other lawyer may not become a judge but may be in a position to help you. What have you done ultimately for you or for the profession? I'm hoping that those lessons will be learned and carried on, and that our profession is what it really should be, which is one of honor.
