DID YOU KNOW Past President Frank Raichle was a wonderful raconteur and told great stories about his trials and his life in and out of court?
The Wonderful Wit of Past ACTL President Frank Raichle
The College is proudly comprised of real characters, but perhaps no one as monumental as past president Frank Raichle (1898-1986). His wit and wisdom were legendary as was his remarkable life. As a tough Buffalo, NY youth, he boxed under the improbable name of Kid Gavilan (which nickname was taken in the 1940s by Gerardo Gonzalez, world welterweight champion from 1951-1954). Headed towards West Point and an army career, Frank became enamored by a chance attendance at a murder trial and instead started down the path to a trial lawyer. He became a renowned trial lawyer whose practice ran from anti-trust cases to the defense of some of the important criminal cases of our time. As a Special District Attorney, he led the indictments and successful prosecutions of over fifty notable persons and corporations in Buffalo which was then plagued by scandal and corruption. He was a partner with Bill Donovan and defended Roy Cohn and many political defendants. When he summed up a case, it was standing room only in the court room. But it was his wit that made him legendary, inside and outside of court.
Frank was once heard to remark that his wife’s ability to well outdrive him on the golf course was very bad for family discipline. A law school dean met him at a Bar meeting and asked Frank for suggestions on how the dean might improve the quality of legal education at his school. “Frank thought about it for a minute, looked at him with that mischievous grin, and said, ‘There is one solution. Close the school’.” [Summer 1986 Bulletin]
He was a special kind of character: a courtroom warrior with wit and wisdom who in Kipling’s words, knew that it was “a lawyer’s life to meet with triumph and disaster and to treat those two imposters just the same.” He was selected as President of the College in 1967.