When the Laughter Dies Away

It all began as a kind of media joke, a city councilman in funny little Compton who had taken the California State Bar exam 42 times and had failed it every time, and here he was, trying again. We made the most of it in tones that implied he was either dense or masochistic and we could hardly wait for the results of the 43rd test, because sure as the Lord made little green apples, he was going to fail again. He did.

That made the 11 o’clock news, too. We saw the guy, a brawny black man named Maxcy Dean Filer, just two years short of 60, saying that’s OK he was going to try again next year and he was going to keep on trying no matter what, and we speculated that failing the exam 43 times must be some kind of record, although no one seemed to know for sure.

Some felt sorry for him. He must have wanted to be a lawyer awfully bad to keep going back and plunking down the $310 necessary to take the test. And he must have felt a little silly because two of his sons actually were lawyers and he was working for one of them as a part-time law clerk for $500 a month.

I kept thinking what kind of man would do this and why? It’s bad enough just to have failed 43 times. Why willingly allow that failure to be exposed for all the world to see? We’re supposed to limp away after losing a race, not stand there in a glow of defeat. Audiences are for winners.

I went out and talked to Maxcy in his son’s storefront law offices on West Compton Boulevard the other day to ask some whys. He’s a big man, 6-foot-3, 200 pounds, and has the kind of deep, resonant voice you never get tired of listening to. I kept thinking he’d make one hell of an imposing figure in a courtroom, but it seemed unlikely he’d ever get there. At age 58, even the brightest goals tarnish.

Maxcy was born in Marianna, Ark., at a time when the nation was in a depression and blacks were still riding in the back of the bus. One of four children in a family that just barely got by, he quit school and joined the Army to put his sister through college, and it wasn’t until he got out of the Army that he got a high school diploma of his own. He wanted to be a dental technician and was working and going to school in the 1950s when the first faint whispers of the civil rights movement were heard across the land. Maxcy joined the movement, and it was then that he decided he wanted to be a lawyer, because lawyers were in the forefront of the revolution.

He went to a small, private law school that doesn’t exist anymore, got a degree and took his first Bar exam in 1966. He’s taken it twice a year ever since.

“I came close at first,” he says,” but then the test began to change and writing ability became important. The Bar says you’ve got to write in a lawyer-like manner, and I have no idea what that means. I’ve taken English courses but I’m from Marianna, Ark., and I just can’t write that way.”

He took jobs that kept him close to the legal world and continued taking and failing the Bar exam, meanwhile marrying and raising seven children. At one point, he was putting two of his sons through law school at the same time he was putting a daughter through college and had to work at two jobs to come up with the extra money their education was costing. The sons are lawyers now.

“Sure they were hard times,” he says. “I had to make loans to pay off loans, and we didn’t eat steak or buy cars, but my sons were going to be lawyers if that’s what they wanted.” Then, with quiet pride: “I paid off every dime I owed, and the payments were never late.”

These are rare qualities in a man, to be caring and responsible at the same time he pursues his own star, and the people of Compton must have perceived that when they elected Maxcy to the council in 1976 and have reelected him ever since.

“I’m a good councilman,” he says, “because I believe the people, not pressure groups, come first. I study an issue and make up my own mind, no matter what.”

The Bar exam? “I’ll just keep right on taking it,” Maxcy says, “because I want to be a lawyer.” He gestures toward a picture of home-run king Hank Aaron on the wall behind him. “It’s like being in the minor leagues and saying, ‘Someday I’m going to be in the majors.’ Well, someday I’m going to be a lawyer.”

I like Maxcy Filer. He was there when his family needed him and he’s there now when the people need him. A media joke? Not likely. Every quest begins with a dream and only fools suffer dreams to mockery. Don’t give up, Max, don’t ever give up, and in the end you’re liable to find that the joke was truly on us.