CHAUTAUQUA–When Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court, the Bush 43 administration considered several possible successors.

One of them was the author of the 2024 memoir Quiet Counsel: Looking Back on a Life of Service to the Law.

Meet Larry Thompson, who picked a fitting title for his book.

Thompson, who from 2001 to 2003 had been deputy attorney general under Attorney General John Ashcroft, received a call from the White House asking whether he’d consent to being considered for the Supreme Court.

Thompson writes that the call never came, and he learned long afterward why. Quoting a book by a Supreme Court reporter, Thompson writes that “even though I was a good friend of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, some conservatives worried that I ‘lacked a clear legal philosophy and would move left like Justice Kennedy.’ Now the reason why I never received the call was clear. … Again, no regrets. As a practicing lawyer, I represented individual clients sometimes facing prison or business entities sometimes facing extinction. I felt no need to speak out on hot-button issues of Second Amendment rights or abortion.”

Thompson shared that story and several others with the Aug. 4 Advocates for Balance at Chautauqua, or ABC, audience.

Sometimes accomplished people are really quite full of themselves. They’re really impressive and important, and if you don’t believe that, just ask them.

That’s not so with Thompson. Although he’s quite accomplished, what’s immediately striking about him is what a nice, genuinely decent person he is.

That may have something to do with the fact that he, like his Supreme Court justice friend, wasn’t exactly to the manor born. The Hannibal, Mo., native writes that he grew up in a poor-to-working class section of the Mississippi River town. His mother was a cook. When he was 15, his father, a railroad laborer, died in a train accident.

His book is good for anyone, especially aspiring lawyers, to peruse.

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Mark Schneider has another perspective on history.

He’s a historical re-enactor at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia and spoke in full regalia to the Aug. 18 ABC audience as the Marquis de Lafayette.

It’s a fitting role for the son of a French mother and an American father. The Long Island native plays the role quite well.

Schneider’s obvious enthusiasm for his work continued to show at a second event, this one at the Chautauqua Women’s Club.

Still in full regalia, he observed that “with living history, you can bring history to life.”

He recalled that the Marquis de Lafayette met James Monroe in 1777 while recovering from being wounded in the American War of Independence.

As president, Monroe invited the Marquis de Lafayette, a Frenchman, to return to the United States in February 1824. From there, his tour of the United States followed, Schneider said.

That tour brought the American War of Independence hero to, yes, Chautauqua County.

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On its website, https://www.abcatchq.com, ABC posts videos of most of its speakers.

ABC was formed in 2018. Its mission is “to achieve a balance of speakers in a mutually civil and respectful environment consistent with the historic mission of Chautauqua” Institution. ABC is its own Section 501(c)(3) organization, legally separate from the institution.

With that in mind, let’s pick up where we left off 17 weeks ago.

Chautauqua Institution began the 2025 season with a hopeful sign that renewed enthusiasm for diversity of thought was in the air.

That continued during the 2025 season with, for example, Chautauqua leadership graciously attending multiple ABC events.

If substantial hopeful signs continue, then how far we will have come.

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Dr. Randy Elf’s Aug. 20, 2020, ABC presentation, on “How Political Speech Law Benefits Politicians and the Rich,” is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3ebymA7xOo.

COPYRIGHT © 2025 BY RANDY ELF