Editor’s Note: Joseph Preis, managing partner of Irvine’s Godes & Preis LLP, wrote this Leader Board for the Business Journal in honor of Veterans Day. Preis served four years on active duty (1990-1994) and five years of broken time in the reserves (1996, and 2002-2005). He deployed with Battalion Landing Team 1/9 to the Persian Gulf (1991), Philippines (1991) and Somalia (1993-94). After being honorably discharged following his first enlistment, he served (reserves) in one of the Corps’ few airborne units, 4th ANGLICO (1996), and following the attacks on 9-11, he served (reserves) as the “Assistant to the Staff Judge Advocate,1st Marine Division (Rear)” (2004). He is also the founder and president of Soldiers of the Sea, Band of Brothers Inc., which is dedicated to “bridging the gap between SoCal’s businesses and Marine communities.”
Love of country may not be popular of late, but it should be. Few on the planet are afforded the same opportunity, and responsibility, that we enjoy here at home. While dissent and disagreement are a part of our national fabric, I would invite any disenchanted American to spend time with those who have worn her uniform and to visit the places where we have deployed in harm’s way.
As my friend and fellow Marine veteran Stewart Navarre often reminds me, “There are no lines outside of any embassies but our own.”
I was born to a nurse and a Naval aviator, himself born to a Marine, and whose uncle, Pvt. Francis James Pedrotti, remains interred as a member of the Marine detachment, U.S.S. Arizona.
This is not uncommon. Most with whom I served were the sons, grandsons and nephews of other veterans. National defense tends to be a family business. Accountability and integrity loomed large in veteran households, and our fathers did not suffer fools.
I followed my grandfather into the Corps, enlisting at 17, with my mother hesitantly co-signing the contract. Paris Island was an immersive experience. There was no respite from the orchestrated chaos or the relentless pursuit of perfection.
Combat training was pervasive and perfected by close order drill, pugil sticks, boxing, knife fighting, marksmanship, the “pit” and the omni-present “instant willing obedience to all orders and self-reliance.” Attrition was high and, like our fathers, the Corps didn’t suffer fools.
We learned to live without excuses, to take extreme responsibility, to be completely reliable and to “locate, close with and destroy the enemy.” Most of us parted ways after bootcamp, off to our respective occupational schools and then the fleet.
We deployed aboard ships with bunks stacked six high and spent time in places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and the Seychelles, both before and after deploying to far less hospitable lands. We became intimately familiar with the fine sands and extreme heat of Saudi Arabia, the gritty volcanic ash of Olongapo and the wreckage of Mogadishu. Few things were as “miserable” as patrolling in Somalia at night, and few things were as “joyful” as receiving a letter from home.
We took care of each other, relied upon one another, and we were absolutely our brothers’ keepers. We went ashore in helicopters, amtracs, boats and LCACs. We slept “in” the ground, under poncho liners and often surrounded by sandbags. We ate MREs and enjoyed the occasional treat of dehydrated ramen and cans of tuna when they arrived in care packages. We were “bitten” by every creature imaginable, and we constantly threw-up our malaria pills.
Most of all, we were doing what we volunteered to do, surrounded by people who loved us and would risk their lives to save our own.
It was a great life.
Discharge to Community College
In 1994, I was honorably discharged. After a brief stop in Houston with my former barracks roommate Rick Johnson, I returned home to Miami, my old construction job, and I enrolled in Miami-Dade Community College, where the G.I. Bill stretched the furthest at the time.
Serving in the “Ground Combat element” had a negative impact on my hearing, causing me to sit up front in every class. Many of my professors were veterans. Applying the lessons learned in the Corps, I graduated near the top and was accepted to matriculate at George Washington University in D.C.
However, life took a rather curious detour one night as I celebrated in South Beach with a few friends, occasioned by a chance encounter with the director of admissions for a California law school.
I took the L.S.A.T. two weeks later, was awarded a merit scholarship several weeks after that and headed back to SoCal in time for the fall semester. I switched from daytime to night classes after my first semester and got a job working for one of my great mentors, Bob Coviello, whose Marine brother had served in Vietnam.
Following graduation, I married my dream girl and then took and passed the California bar exam. I was hired by a fellow Marine veteran, Tom Scully, at a prominent local law firm.
Reenlistment After 9-11
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I watched as the two planes hit the towers. Convinced that my country could not go to war without me, I re-enlisted into the reserves and was mobilized from January to October of 2004.
I was not alone – there were many “retreads” eager to get back into the fight – including Scully. I had just recently been recruited to another firm, where Managing Partner and fellow veteran Harvey Oringher ensured my family’s financial stability during my mobilization.
When the Corps discovered that I was a civilian attorney, I was reassigned to the SJA office. Quickly realizing that the tax revenue I was generating far outweighed any other contribution I was making to the War on Terror, I left the Marine Corps for the final time in 2005, at the venerable (and terminal) rank of Sergeant.
In 2006, I met my friend and fellow litigator Jim Godes, who, like me, was born to a veteran.
We were recruited to a large international firm where the head of our practice group, Jon Kane, was a decorated Vietnam veteran. Kane both encouraged and approved my representation, pro bono, of the first former Marine to ever be prosecuted by a civilian court for alleged violations of the Law of Armed Conflict during the Battle of Fallujah.
Together with former Marines Kevin McDermott and Douglas Applegate, and our friend Vincent LaBarbera, we were dubbed the “Marine Dream Team” by the press, and our client was acquitted by the jury after less than three hours of deliberations.
In 2010, Godes and I founded Godes & Preis LLP to provide “big firm talent and experience at a more flexible and entrepreneurial platform.”
We have hired countless veterans over the years, including fellow Marines and War on Terror veterans Oliver Dreger and Benjamin Reynolds, who as a young Corporal was wounded in Iraq.
Our team, veterans and non-veterans alike, represents some of SoCal’s best-known companies, in high-stakes business and employment litigation.
Active in the community, members of our team have served on numerous charitable boards, and in 1999, together with my friend and fellow Marine veteran, Tom Richards, I founded the Soldiers of the Sea, Band of Brothers.
We host an annual black-tie Marine Ball where legendary Marines like J.D. Lehew, Scott Montoya, Ademola Fabayo and R.J. Mitchell, come together with legendary business leaders like Nick and Maria Percival, Gary Crisp, Jeff Salamon, Kent Valley and Tim Day, and hundreds of active-duty Marines and others, all in an effort to bridge the gap between the business and Marine Corps communities.
Our country is worth bragging about, worth preserving, and very much worth fighting for. It remains the premier destination on the planet for folks to come, take control over their lives, raise their families and prosper to their heart’s content.
And it’s where a young knucklehead from Miami was provided an incredible opportunity to serve with America’s finest and countless educational and business opportunities that followed.
Though veterans certainly stick together, it isn’t to the exclusion of non-veterans, as above all else, we want our Country to prosper “for . . . perpetual posterity.” I have traveled the globe and can confirm that there are indeed no lines outside of any embassy but our own. Stay rugged. Semper Fidelis.
