|
----------------------------
Tom Koester '61
---------------------
My
family and Tom’s were close friends. We often spent time
together. Tom delivered my engagement candle to the Chi
Omega sorority house when I announced my engagement with a “passing” — Kris Gjerde Flynn ’64
Tom
and I were close friends at Crawford. We had a number of classes
together and were Kingston Trio fans with guitars. We played at being
the Kingston Trio many evenings together. By the way, despite
being a faculty brat, Tom didn't go to the Campus Lab School for some
reason. At some point he was skipped ahead a year after 7th grade,
putting him in my 9th grade class at Horace Mann and all three years at
Crawford —Bob Richardson ‘61
THEN
From the March 11, 1960
San Diego Union
NOW (well -- 2023)
Tom plays a solo set of original tunes for the 2023 Alaska
Folk Festival one day after turning 70-years-old
(Photo from the Juneau Empire April 11, 2023)
Tom
Koester was interviewed on July 28, 2008 at his home in Juneau, Alaska.
He was the attorney for the State of Alaska for the Vern Weiss case and
discusses his experiences with the mental health trust litigation and
settlement.
Vern
Weiss filed a lawsuit on behalf of his son, who required mental health
services that were not available in Alaska. Other beneficiary groups
joined Weiss v State of Alaska in a class action suit stating that the
state breached its fiduciary responsibility to manage Trust land. The
case was ruled on in 1984 by the state Supreme Court, which ordered that
the original trust be restored.
Here’s the opening paragraph of the interview: I
was born in Nebraska in 1944 and grew up in San Diego, California,
where my dad was a Professor of Education at San Diego State University,
and subsequently the Executive Dean at San Diego State. I went to San
Diego State as an undergraduate, and then to California Western School
of Law and graduated in 1975.
Click below to read, or listen to, both hour-long interviews.
https://jukebox.uaf.edu/interviews/362
https://jukebox.uaf.edu/interviews/363
|