Mason Ladd--In Memoriam

I shall always have fond thoughts of my dear friends, Dean and Mrs. Ladd. I got to know them only recently--in the last six or seven years before his death. I was sorry I did not know them sooner. Of course, I always knew of the Dean\u27s enormous contributions to the law of evidence. But I did not know, until I met him, that this was accompanied by an equally remarkable warmth and genuineness, a deep caring, and a charismatic presence (particularly on the podium). Nor did I know of the loving support and charm of Mrs. Ladd, an equal partner with the Dean in every way, a woman of keen intellect and massive good sense in her own right. Both had twinkles in their eyes even in the most adverse of times. It was the Federal Rules of Evidence and the effort to carry knowledge of them to the bench and bar that brought us together. Dean Ladd and I found ourselves bumping into one another on the lecture circuit just prior to and following the Rules\u27 passage into law. We invited each other to programs, and it was in unlikely Las Vegas, at a University of Iowa sponsored program, that we first got to know each other well on the personal level. Mason would have been proud and deeply touched to hear that he was being honored with a symposium issue of the law review he loved, at the school he loved, by friends and contributors of such stature as those who join me here. It would have pleased him to be the cause of a major assemblage of important papers, furthering evidence scholarship as he did throughout his life