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“Super Lawyer” Leaves
Legal Career to For Immediate Release: RICHMOND, Ind. — A popular branding phrase heard around Earlham College for many years has been “Awakening the teacher within.” Walter Bistline never attended Earlham, and though he’s been a member of the faculty for only a few months one still is hard pressed to find a better example of “awakening the teacher within” on campus.
“They (his former partners) won’t let go completely,” says Bistline, still listed in the firm directory at Porter & Hedges in Houston. “They keep thinking it’s just a mid-life crisis or something and that I’ll be back,” he adds, chuckling. “But, I have no intention of practicing law again.” Not that being a lawyer didn’t have certain rewards, says Bistline, acknowledging that his second career as college art instructor would be difficult without the financial success he realized as an attorney (or, he emphasizes, without an extremely understanding wife, herself a “reformed” lawyer). But for 25 years, and despite being “pretty good” at it, Bistline insists his heart was never in the legal profession. “My story really isn’t that unique,” says the 1972 graduate (B.A., English) of Emory University in Atlanta. “I got out of college and didn’t honestly know what I wanted to do. So, enjoying college life and not quite ready to give it up, like a lot of new graduates even today, I thought, ‘What about law school?’” Willing to try anything once, Bistline says he took the LSAT test on more or less a whim and did well enough to gain admission to Boston University Law School, from which he received his law degree in 1975. For the next 25 years he would work in the frenetic, high-risk, high-pressure world of investment banking and corporate finance in Manhattan, Dallas, and Houston. But, “day in and day out, I never really thought of the law as anything more than a good job,” says Bistline, seated now within his humble office adjoining the metalworking studio on the second floor of Runyan Center — even with the door closed, the sounds of hammer against metal punctuate the conversation. “Finally, I looked at things and decided that for a lot of reasons I wasn’t happy, that I didn’t want to be a lawyer for the rest of my life.”
Long an avid amateur photographer, Bistline says that for several years in the early ‘90s, as necessary diversions from work and city life in Houston, he and his wife enrolled in a series of art appreciation courses and began collecting works by young Texas artists. “Somewhere in there it all kind of rekindled my interest in photography,” says Bistline, explaining the couple’s choice of the Mexico excursion came about, in part, because the trip included a photography workshop. “And that was it,” Bistline says. “I had a great experience… one that reminded me, I think, of how much photography had always been a part of my life and how much more I enjoyed doing that. It was then I really started asking whether there wasn’t a way I could someday do something other than practice law.” Of course, there are always options in life, acknowledges Bistline, depending upon the sacrifices one is willing to make. In this situation — he and his wife being “pretty conservative people” — Bistline says he understood that he would have to continue working as a lawyer for up to 10 more years, during which time the couple would tighten their budget and save money for Walter’s eventual return to school and subsequent life after the law. In 2001, at age 50, Bistline enrolled in the three-year MFA curriculum at the University of Houston, continuing to balance obligations to his law firm and clients with his work toward a third degree. “I think it was probably a real struggle for the faculty (at U. of H.),” says Bistline, “looking at admitting this 50-year-old lawyer to the MFA program. I can tell you, I know I was the only candidate that had to go through an interview. But, it all worked out and I appreciate that. I enjoyed a wonderful three years there.” For his approximately three months so far at Earlham, Bistline also has praise. Especially for the recently renovated darkroom spaces in Runyan’s arts area, as well as the genuine enthusiasm and creativity he senses in his students. In addition to leading the College’s formal photography classes, Bistline each Thursday conducts an “independent study” session for advanced students. Participants post samples of their work, examine those of others in the group and exchange critiques. Bistline, who in only four years (and only the last two as a “full time” photographer) has seen his photographs included in more than two dozen solo and group exhibitions from Houston to Washington, D.C., to Aix-en-Provence, France, to Shanxi Province in China, says he hopes quickly to reorient the photography portion of Earlham’s fine arts curriculum that has focused traditionally on photojournalism and the documentary style. “Not to discount photojournalism and documentary entirely,” Bistline says. “They certainly have a place. But, I think the entire art faculty believes that all of the courses should be reworked, and I think there is room for a more varied approach.” — EC — Contact: Kevin
Burke, director of media relations
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Earlham
College · 801 National Road West · Richmond,
Indiana 47374-4095 |