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2 | Dumb and Dumped

S

oineAMe iMg sLAde goRton eMeRged from the womb wearing

wingtips and horn-rimmed glasses, with a set of 3–by-5 index cards

outlining his goals for kindergarten. The truth is he wasn’t always

so self-assured. At 22, he was indecisive, smitten and silly. During his

senior year at New Hampshire’s branch of the Ivy League, he was about

to acquire a degree in International Relations yet clueless about what to

do next. Everyone said he should go to law school, so he applied to several

and was accepted by two of the very best, Yale and Stanford.

“Yale had a bunch of what seemed to me to be outrageous require-

ments, so I turned them down. Stanford offered me a full ride, but it

never crossed my mind that I would actually go west, so I turned down

Stanford too.” By summer he realized he’d made a huge mistake. The

fallback position was moving back home to Evanston and starting law

school at Northwestern. Years later, when Sandra Day O’Connor was in

Seattle for a seminar after her retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court,

Gorton told her his story. “You turned down a full ride to Stanford!”

O’Connor said, shaking her head. Gorton could have been at Stanford

with her and William Rehnquist, a future chief justice.

“It was a hell of a mistake for me to go to Northwestern and live at

home at the age of 22. I didn’t get along with my parents and I had a girl-

friend at Smith College whom they detested.” The girlfriend transferred

to Juilliard in New York City, so Slade promptly transferred to Columbia.

His father was furious. “That’s it!” he said. “You’re on your own. Do what

you want, but you’re not getting any support from us.”

The girl dumped him practically before he was unpacked and Colum-

bia wouldn’t give him a scholarship because the Gortons had money—

much less than perceived but at least the aura of money. Now he was re-

ally on his own. It turned out for the best. He landed a construction job

for the summer and learned some important lessons in the workaday

world. When school started, he worked a 12–hour weekend shift at the

magnificently gothic Riverside Church, running the elevators and mind-