Florida Banking November 2021

STRAIGHT TALK FROM THE PRESIDENT’S DESK

MY TIME IN IOWA, PART II: MY LIFE BEGINS AT IOWA LAW

BY ALEJANDRO “ALEX” SANCHEZ, FBA PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

U pon my honorable discharge from the U.S. Air Force at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, I took an Eastern Airlines flight to my hometown of Miami to vacation for 30 days with my parents. I began my life as a civilian. No more uniforms. I could grow my hair as long as I wanted. I didn’t have to spit-shine my shoes anymore. After almost five years in the military, I would now become a full-time student at the University of Iowa, College of Law. So how was my transition into civilian life? I had short hair and still shined my shoes with my horsehair shoe brush that I had purchased from my roommate during my first year in the military. I arrived in Iowa City in early August of 1981. I noticed three things right away about Iowa: people were very nice, the ears of corn were like sugar, and like Florida, it rained many afternoons and everything was lush green. As I was settling in, I went to the Law School to register and pick up a stack of five books. Those books were thick and heavy. At the law school briefing by Dean Hines, he warned us to work and study hard. He added it didn’t matter whether we were Summa Cum Laude in undergrad, this was law school and focus and hard work was critical to our success. As I looked around the large stadium seating classroom, I could see terror in the eyes of all the students. I am sure I looked worried too. After the Dean’s lecture about the reality of law school, we exited the large classroom. At that point I met many of my future classmates. Most of them were concerned and worried about the Dean’s advice that party time was over from the undergraduate student days. I did not say a word to my classmates, just listened to their concerns about how tough law school was going to be. At one point in the conversation, I was asked: “Alex, do you agree that law school will be tough and we won’t have much time for personal affairs?” I answered, “Yes, law school will be tough, but I can’t believe I will only be a student full-time.” That answer

confused and perplexed my classmates. I don’t think they understood what I meant. Everything is relative in life; it all depends on your life experiences. While most of my law school classmates were in for a shock, I looked forward to just attending school and not having to work during the day while serving our country in the military. While the typical college undergraduate student was partying, attending football games, waking up at noon the next day and doing all the other things an 18- to 22-year-old does, my experiences were different. During those years, I worked during the day and some nights to fulfill my assigned military duties. My undergraduate courses were held at a military base school for military dependents, usually a junior high or high school. In Iowa, I felt as light as a feather as all I had to do was attend school. Day One came in late August that fall, and I got up, got dressed, and headed off to law school. My first class was the one that made all of us “shake in our boots,” as they say. It was the Civil Procedure class taught by Professor Alan Vestal. Professor Vestal looked like a law professor, and he spoke like one and had full command of the classroom. If I had been a Hollywood director and was looking for someone to play the role of a law professor in a movie, Professor Vestal would have been the perfect choice. Like in the old EF Hutton commercials, when he spoke, “everyone listened.” As I completed Day One at law school and headed home, we were saddled with a reading assignment of 50 pages per each of our five classes. That first night, and every night thereafter, we had a total of 250 pages to read and analyze. That storyline would repeat each night for the next three years, but freshman year was the worst and the toughest because we didn’t know what we were doing. As I opened that heavy civil procedure textbook and started reading the first assigned 20 pages, I paused and asked myself, “What did I just read?” I

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