Getting up in the middle of the night to get someone out of jail

Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, pronounced her "tough as nails" after an hourlong meeting with her. Responding to criticism that Ms. Miers had never been a judge, Mr. DeWine praised the breadth of her practical experience in the White House and in her long career as a private lawyer. "She is somebody who has gone out late at night to get someone out of jail," Mr. DeWine said she had told him.

This quote brings my mother, the lawyer, to my mind. She, too, would get up in the middle of the night to get someone out of jail.

Perhaps because she was a woman in a time when not many women practiced law, my mother's clients were poor, either black people or hillbillies from West Virginia. They would call her at any hour of the day or night. Our family resented the calls. We thought they took up too much of her time. But I realize now that she loved this, loved the practice of law, and loved her clients.

Her clients named their children after her, came and cut her lawn, baked cookies for her, visited her in the hospital, drove her around in their pickup trucks (She was a terrible driver).

My uncle said they should have had the funeral at the First Baptist Church (the black church in town). It would have been mobbed.

I'm all for Harriet Miers.