In my ongoing family scanning project, I came across my date books from 1978 to 1996. They’re a weird sort of bullet-point version of my life from college through the first few years of my legal career. Here’s one entry reflecting a day that has stuck with me ever since.

In February, 1983, during my senior year at Swarthmore, I worked with a bunch of other students to put on a forum on human rights in Asia with speeches by dissidents from Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines.* One of the speakers was Benigno Aquino, a former senator and dissident from the Philippines.

As it turned out, a student was needed to drive Sen. Aquino to and from the Philadelphia airport. I volunteered, borrowed a car**, and got to spend several hours with this brilliant and engaging man. Forty years later, I don’t recall what we talked about, but I recall his charisma and his determination to do right by his country.

Six months later, he would be dead, shot on the tarmac when he arrived back in his beloved country.

I’m so very grateful for the privilege of those couple of hours of conversation.

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*H/t Matt Sommer for remembering details I had forgotten.

** I borrowed Adam Greene’s car and somehow managed to break an entire bottle of red wine in the backseat footwell. I can’t believe they would have given the extra wine to a student, but somehow I ended up transporting it, took a sharp turn and created a huge mess. I’m confident Adam is not among my single-digit readership, but 40 years later, I’m still very very sorry, Adam!