Brainerd Currie: Man

It was only last year that I was reviewing Brainerd Currie's Selected Essays on The Conflict of Laws for the Duke Law Journal, and memories of happy encounters with their gentle author were surging through the reading of his original and profound and constructive work. Now as I write of Brainerd Currie, whose life began in Georgia in 1912 and came to a close in North Carolina in 1965, it seems impossible to dispel sadness in coming to terms with the harsh loss of such a friend. Yet one hears his soft-spoken words, no less real because they are imagined, and they alleviate the hurt of loss with their sweet raillery: I expect better of my friends than that they should mourn me, for mourning is no way to celebrate a fine friendship.