“ It goes back to 9/11. I was in my house studying for my law school classes…. I turned on TV to take a fast break…. I saw the images of the first plane hitting the tower…. then the second plane hit… I learned that my country was under attack from foreign terrorists. I wanted to honor all the people who had been murdered on 9/11 and do my part to protect America from ever again suffering such a heinous attack…. I felt the way to accomplish that would not be by sitting behind a desk, but by fighting the enemy face to face in the battlefield.”
Captain James Van Thach: An American Hero
By Robert Golomb
It can be reasonably assumed that upon their graduation most of the several hundred students of Touro Law School’s Class of June 2002 were preparing to take their upcoming bar examinations and looking forward to starting their careers in the public or private legal sector once (and if) they passed them.
Such as a general rule is the professional path followed by most law school graduates across America. But that generalization has its exceptions, a most notable one is Captain James Van Thach.
Thach, who had served in the Army reserves beginning his 1994 freshman year at St. John’s University, was commissioned a Lieutenant in 1998. In 2002, because he had a law degree, the Army offered Thach the position of attorney within the Army’s legal division.