Michael Hiller
Hello Dina, Greg, Adrienne, Kelly, Kathryn, and all his family and friends, I apologize it's taken me so long to write something. I wrote something to Kelly right away; however it often takes me a while to put something in public. I don't like losing people, and it took me three years to put something in the State Bar Journal for my dad because...it took me three years to process his loss. Like John, he was a lawyer and my mentor.
There are a lot of good serious things to write about John but I'm going to focus more on a few humorous things. 1. When he first hired me, he said "well you're a little bald, so people will think you're more mature so you're hired."
2. Dina used to beg me to get him to button his top button, or at least straighten his tie when he went to court. Good luck with that!
3. One night we were working late and I had gotten tired of is taking his dress shoes off, and walking around in his socks. So I hid his shoes on top of the refrigerator, where he would probably never look. Three hours later I went home and forgot to tell him. He didn't call me, but when I got to work on Monday there was a cut-out from a magazine taped to the outside of my office door. It was a dinosaur about to eat a person with the following: "this is you" circled in red, with an arrow pointing to the next "meal" of the dinosaur(me).
The late Pat Green, our beloved paralegal, started laughing and then it hit me - John had to go home in his socks because I had hidden his shoes. He hadn't found them yet, so I showed him the hiding place. Fortunately he had another pair of shoes to get him to work that day! We had a good laugh for sure, although he acted like he was mad most of the day.
I don't want to analyze the humor above, but all three of these stories illustrate John's personality well: 1) he was wise but had a great sense of humor 2) he didn't care about personal appearances but who the person was on the inside; and 3) he may have been my boss, but he knew how to establish and maintain a healthy personal relationship.
Never mind that he grew up in a strong conservative household, and I in a liberal one, none of that mattered and we were able to communicate on just about any issue, political or otherwise. We have lost a wonderful man. May God rest your soul, John Graml.
PS When I first learned how to spell John's name, Pat Green said, "he needs to buy a vowel". It may have been family law and divorce, but we sure had fun.
Michael H.