I have a cousin named Kevin Russell. He’s about five years younger than me, but we grew up close to each other (in lovely Kalamazoo, Michigan) and spent a lot of time playing at each others’ houses as kids. I remember one day he gave my brother and I a Time magazine, pointing to paintings of naked women is the art review section. I was probably 10 years old at the time, and thought that was the funniest thing in the world. Kevin kept asking why we were laughing, but that just made us double up and laugh even harder. That quizzical look on his face is how I will always picture him.

I moved away when I was fifteen, but have heard about what Kevin has been up to, seen him at family gatherings – the usual stuff. He did well in college, even better at law school, clerked for a Supreme Court justice, and then went to work for the Justice Department. When he couldn’t stand another day there, he started his own practice.

Yesterday, Kevin argued his first case before the Supreme Court. Wow. It was a pay discrimination case, involving the Civil Rights Act, statue of limitations, and other legalistic stuff that I’m sure is important but don’t quite understand myself. My little cousin has done well for himself, and of course his whole family is proud. But that doesn’t mean I won’t always think of him as that little five year old with the innocent question-mark-of-a-face looking at me as if I were the fool that in fact I was.

Congratulations, Kevin. Keep doing the right thing – we need people like you.