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The following feature story appeared in the campus publication MOSAIC in January, 1996.
Stephen Thomas '75
Bringing a poet's sensibility to international law
Stephen Thomas arrived at Trinity in 1972 as a freshman from Illinois with an independent streak. An aspiring poet and rock musician, he wondered why music and poetry had drifted apart in Western culture. As an undergraduate Thomas followed his own compelling muse, enrolling for a year at the University of Iowa's poetry workshop and winning a prestigious Watson Fellowship to study folk music in Scandinavia in the year after his graduation.
The urge to strike out independently remains strong in Thomas, who now heads his own international law firm, Thomas and Associates in Peoria, Illinois, which maintains affiliated offices in Shanghai, Taipei, and Newport Beach in California.
A Lawyer's Preparation.
"I've found that the study of poetry is actually a pretty good preparation for lawyering," said Thomas. "Language is power. When the jury said OJ was not guilty, he was not guilty." Much of Thomas's legal practice involves intellectual property, especially the complex issues faced by American firms that wish to market hardware and software in China and other areas of the Pacific Rim.
At Trinity, where Thomas was an Illinois Scholar, he found supportive faculty, interesting peers, and the freedom to pursue his own agenda- which meant spending two of his four undergraduate years off campus. "Trinity was a wonderful experience. There were good people all around and Trinity never forced me to follow a particular, pre-determined pedagogical course."
Thomas said he enjoys particularly warm memories of two of his teachers, the poet and English professor Hugh Ogden, and Miller Brown, a philosopher and the instructor of Thomas's freshman seminar, which introduced him to many of the foundational concepts influencing the study of comparative literature. "Steve's a wonderful man. Even as a freshman he had very perceptive things to say and he was always an interesting student," said Brown.
Trinity's curricular freedom was paired with genuine rigor. "As a freshman, I conned my way into Hugh Ogden's poetry workshop. He transmitted to us a real sense of abiding respect and love for poetry and the activity of writing," Thomas recalled. "Hugh really understood me and my interest in the lyrics of songs. He put me to touch with the historic tradition of English language poetry."
A Gifted Generation.
"Steve was part of an usually gifted generation of students, many of whom have made significant careers in the arts," Ogden said. "As a poet, he had great facility for writing lyrics and putting them to music. His writing was very tight, with a gem-like concern for individual words and their relationship to one another," said Ogden.
Trinity faculty helped Thomas to shape his course of study, which eventually involved two years off campus. "Hugh and Miller, especially, gave me a lot of good advice-they encouraged me both to leave Trinity when that seemed beneficial and to come back again. As a result, I think I got about as much out of my education in college as most people do out of graduate school in poetry."
Ogden encouraged Thomas to apply for a Watson, which supports a year of independent travel after college. "I originally wanted to study the connections between folk songs and stories and traditional Lebanese culture, but the Lebanese civil war began that spring. I knew that Scandinavia also had a lively folk culture, so I changed a few words and applied to travel there instead."
"It was a wonderful year, but I think it spoiled me in a way. I don't really like to stay put in one place and I really don't like to be accountable to anyone else," Thomas said. Graduate school afterwards at the University of California at Irvine was an anti-climax, and although he earned an MFA, Thomas decided that "poetry and university teaching seemed to be a dead end solution for me. So I went to law school at the University of Southern California."
Discovering Asia.
Thomas made his first journeys to Asia as a lawyer; the law firm he was working for at that time had a major Japanese client. But his deep interest in Asian culture and philosophy grew more directly out of his involvement in the martial art of hsing-i, an Okinawan form of karate that is also practiced in China.
After 10 years based in California's Orange County, Thomas decided to return to Peoria. "It's a nice, nice little river town. I grew up here and I've got my big Lebanese family all around. I wanted my two boys to grow up knowing their 150 or so cousins."
For Thomas, the move to Peoria commits him even more deeply to "the back and forth life." He still likes, however, to design his own course of study. "When I was at Trinity I had a huge afro and a big beard. But I discovered that over time those things tend to fall out. So I've internalized them."
- Andrew Walsh