José A. Cabranes, U.S. Circuit Judge for the Second Circuit, Portrait Dedication [32:35-34:05]

I was in the class of 1977 and 1979 and 1991. I was 17 at the Yale Law School and I got through only because of people like Jose. I was at dinner the other night with three law school classmates, Sonia Soto-Major, Drew Rice, and Rudy Arrigan. We were joined by a writer who was helping Justice Soto-Major with a book about her experiences at Yale and elsewhere. The writer asked whether we had been comfortable at Yale and whether we had found Yale to be a welcoming place. The question was being asked to understand a four people, three of whom grew up in the projects, in the South Bronx, East Harlem and the South side of Chicago, and one of whom was from rural New Mexico. To boot, the four of us had grown up without fathers because of early death or wanderlust or alcohol. We also grew up poor with all the limitations and privations associated with poverty before the advent of the war on poverty. When being poor, often meant genuine hunger and want. The kind of hunger and want that is now not so common in America but still abounds in much of the world. Three of us knew Spanish before we knew English. Two of us were Vietnam veterans and one of us was a high school dropout and former juvenile delinquent. So were we comfortable at Yale and did we find it welcoming?