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The Honorable Lillian Y.Lim '73 Shares her Story of Success
I arrived at Brown University in the Fall of 1969. My first flight on an airplane was the flight that took me from California to the East Coast for the beginning of my freshman year. The way I remember that red eye flight is that gigantic white men towered over me as they stood in the aisle, smoking, drinking alcohol and talking loudly. They seemed like alien creatures. I had never traveled alone before nor seen up close so many adult white men in one place. I was so unsophisticated about travel that I shook the taxi driver's outstretched hand and simply said "thank you" after he drove me from the Boston Airport to the Boston Bus Station, for the second leg of the trip to Providence. He had just trudged two blocks in the rain and wind carrying luggage into the bus terminal for a 5 foot tall, 17-year old, Filipina American who was unaware of a concept called "tipping". I said, "thank you", he blinked, said, "you're welcome" and trudged away. I like to think that this cab driver forgave me my ignorance. Even though he was white, he had the look and the sound of an immigrant too - and, I hope I reminded him of the promise our country has for the children of immigrants.
I really had no idea of what to expect at Brown University. When I came to Brown, even though my system shut down into survival mode at the newness of it all, I did observe that there were very few students of color. As I recall there were about 50 students, undergraduate and graduate, of Asian descent. What was particularly disconcerting was that sometimes I would see a fellow Asian-appearing student and he or she would avert their eyes as if I reminded them of how they looked. Fortunately, there were other Asian American students in the class ahead of me that looked around and saw in my freshman class the added critical mass of numbers on which an organization could be built. These student leaders included Philip Lu, Graham Tanaka and Mike Mochizuki. Also, a Japanese-American guy from Hawaii, whose name has totally disappeared from my memory, but whose face I can clearly remember and whose voice still echoes in my mind with the words: "Well, I just broke that stereotype about Asian American males!" given his ability to consume vast quantities of alcohol, sing the alma mater loudly, if not well, and to describe, in a gentlemanly way, his romantic exploits. Others I recall include Bob Char, Linda Chen, Brian Shimamura, Erik Zen, Teng-Fong Wong, Ellen Law and then grad students Bob Lee (now Professor Lee), Ken Chan and Bill Der. There were many more whose optimistic and fiercely intelligent faces fill my memory but as time has gone on, their names escape me. We had many "grown-up" supporters too, including our faculty advisors Professors Sakoda and Kao. My memory of Professor Sakoda was of a man who felt betrayed by a country that tore him away from his graduate studies at Berkeley, and then wrongfully detained and relocated him simply because he was of Japanese descent. He swore he would never live in California again. He was also fond of telling us that once we had a mortgage to pay, our left-leaning righteous liberal rant would mutate into our parents' conservatism. Professor Kao Ying Mao, in contrast, struck me as an urbane, sophisticated Chinese academic who had the benefit of an international education. He encouraged many of us to "think outside the box" that assumed every reasonably intelligent Asian was genetically suited to be mathematicians and scientists and generally unsuited for any profession that demanded communication skills and leadership.
The ethnic student organizations formed at a time of general student activism and a growing discontent shared by our country as a whole with the Vietnam War. For me, I never felt more conscious of my Asian identity than when I came to the first place in my life where we were so few. Many, from outside the University community, were hostile to those of us who looked like the "enemy" since our nation was fighting in Vietnam. These sometimes negative experiences contrasted starkly with the welcome extended by the local Rhode Island Chinese community to Brown students of Asian descent. We were invited to their traditional celebrations and dinners. We were invited to their Church and involved in tutoring their youngsters. To be candid, however, I sometimes speculated many of these local Asian residents were simply checking out my male classmates as potential spouses for their daughters. More seriously, there also seemed to be an unspoken bond between the University employees who were, of course, working for a living, and student workers like me who had to work to sustain myself through college. They counseled me, fed me, furnished my first off-campus housing and loaned me their cars. They were my family away from home.
 The single most significant gift that Brown gave to me was the expectation that I should and, with perseverance, would be treated fairly and confidence that people working together for a common good can accomplish much. When I witnessed the founding of the Asian Pacific Bar of California in 1981 and the founding of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association in 1988, what I saw was the same spirit and enthusiasm that created Brown's AASA and the same confidence that led to the Third World Coalition's continuing demands on our University to remain committed to excellence and diversity. My own appointment as a California Superior Court Judge in January 1986 was simply a reflection of those same ideals.
Since my appointment, I've enjoyed being a Judge who can remind our litigants, jurors and public that not all judges look like Judge Wapner of "The People's Court". I've had the opportunity to broker a statewide meeting among Indian leaders, State Court judges and Indian Resource people; to lead a conference dedicated to women of color in Court leadership; to be a mentor and "Tita Lil" to many high school, college and law school students as well as young lawyers; and to facilitate the education of our judges on issues of access and fairness. Currently, I am participating in an ad hoc committee to establish a "Fred Korematsu Day" as an acknowledgement of Asian-American contributions to law and society as well as the continuing need to preserve our civil liberties. Nevertheless, after all of these years, I really haven't changed much from those early days at Brown. I'm a little shorter, a fraction - oh, heck, maybe a couple of fractions wider and a little less knowledgeable only because there is so much more to know. If you can help me remember the names that go with the faces I still recall from those glory days at Brown, please contact me at LillianYLim@yahoo.com.
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