Vermont Bar Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2 Vermont Bar Journal, Fall 2016, Vol. 42, No. 3 | Page 28

Interview with Tom Garrett
Jennifer Emens-Butler (VBA): I am in
the office of Legal Services Law Line of Vermont in Burlington, and I am here to interview Tom Garrett, who is the Executive Director, and who is retiring very soon. We
want to tell the membership a little bit
about your legacy, so we are going to start
from the beginning. Tom, how did you get
to Vermont?
Tom Garrett: How did I get to Vermont?!
I came to Vermont in 1971, stopping first in
Putney. I came to Free Vermont.
VBA: After you went to law school in
Connecticut?
TG: I hadn’t gone to law school.
VBA: Oh, you hadn’t gone to law school
yet, oh alright, we will have to back up
then. Where were you born? We are really
going to back up now!
TG: I was born in Palatine, Illinois. I come
from a farm family who farmed in western
Illinois for a century. My father took a different route. He was a lawyer who worked
in Chicago and I grew up in a suburb.
VBA: Ok, so where did you go to undergrad?
TG: University of Chicago.
VBA: Did you know at that time that either farming or lawyering was going to be
in your future?
TG: No, I wouldn’t have picked either of
them! I didn’t have any clear ideas about
what I would do next when I was in college. It was exciting enough to be at U of
C. I was interested in film early on. I probably got interested in film history and film
studies while I was at Chicago, but when I
graduated in 1966 after majoring in English, there was a war going on and I ended
up in the Navy for 2 years.
VBA: After you graduated?
TG: Yes. I did not go to Vietnam. I spent
my time on the East coast and when I got
out of the Navy I lived in New York City on
the Upper West Side. I worked in advertising for a while, then I went to Graduate
School in NYC, studied Philosophy, and delivered laundry on the Upper East Side.
VBA: How did you pick New York instead of going back to Illinois?
TG: Instead of going back to Illinois?
When I left Palatine that was it. I had no
interest in going back. I think I just wanted
something more exciting.
VBA: Right.
TG: Yes, well I landed in NYC, ended up
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on the Upper West Side.
VBA: Delivered laundry to pay your way
through Graduate school?
TG: Yes. And the GI bill.
VBA: So you went to graduate school
before you went to Law school?
TG: Yeah, I studied Philosophy in graduate school in NYC.
VBA: So when did you decide to go to
Law School?
TG: That came later. I left NYC and
went to Free Vermont and the back to the
land thing. It wasn’t until after I had gone
through several years in Putney and Westminster west, where basically I lived communally and I was a hippie in Putney and
Westminster West.
VBA: I would think that law isn’t the first
thing you think of when leaving a commune.
TG: No. Everything was about living off
the land, tie dying t-shirts, gardening, canning, keeping the Saab on the road, and
freezing in the winter.
VBA: So, how did you decide to go to
Connecticut to law school?
TG: I got involved in a school board dispute where I spoke up at some meetings
and