Vincent C. Immel: Here Is To A VERY Scary Man

We lost one of the good ones at the end of last month. When I remember Law SchoolI remember him. I started Law School in 1984 after a brief (unplanned) respite being a bank teller, restaurant manager and add salesman. They had just started marketing "The New Coke" (oops) and I was starting Law School in the fall. In preparation I watched reruns of "The Paper Chase" and watched crusty,hateful professor Kingsfield butcher and bully and mold the intelligent but easily cowed "Mr. Hart". I was scared and exhilarated at the prospect of this "Socratic Method" and being fairly quick thinking thought that I would fare well not having understood that God had gifted me with a quick tongue and a... quirky intelligence.

When we arrived it was to rumors and rumors of rumors about "Professor Immel". He was a legend. He was a nightmare. He made girls cry. He drove people to quit school. He once killed a man in Mexico and of course he shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die. Oh to inspire such legend. He called on his class methodically arranging them alphabetically and then calling on them from Alpha. Being a Becker I was filleted in the first week but that was a blessing because no one knew how to prepare. You could read your case, read all the cases in the foot notes and read other cases that those cases sent you to, read the commentators, read the contracts outlines and... it would not really help. He would pull out something that seemed esoteric but would of course cut to the heart of the principal he was seeking to illuminate to our facile minds.

I was too scared of him. I watched in awe through the years as my smarter and more mature and more self confident classmates invited him out and invited him to parties and... he always came. I had forgotten until his Memorial Service that whenever he laughed his shoulders would roll and he would throw his whole body into it. But I was intimidated and always watched from a distance and I regret that timidity sincerely because he was a guy of substance. It was not that he was so smart. He was. It was not that his mind worked so well and quickly. It did. It was that he had a passion for his students and for teaching them as well as he possibly could and brought it...every single day for decades. He brought it BIG.

He never married. he often used the example of his girlfriend Esmerelda but... we never saw her. I d wish he would have married because i would have liked to see what his offspring turned out like. At his Memorial his niece referred to him as "Uncle Vinnie" and it was hard to think that way of a man you held in such fear and awe. The Service was at The Cathedral Basilica on Lindell and it was a fitting place. Several hundred of us were there in a gathering of the faithful and there was a shared sense of loss but more then anything else a celebration, in that beautiful Church of a man with a passion who was doing what God had intended him to do. His obit has many of the details:

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/deathsobituaries/story/E8DDE4512CF266A28625767D0005D86F?OpenDocument

Also they set up a guest book where people could share memories and it is worth reading. I know this boring if you never met the guy but he was an example of a life well spent.

http://www.legacy.com/gb2/default.aspx?bookID=6189184432009&page=13

The picture is from the Math Organization at Bowling Green University in 1937. He is in the front row on the right.