The Answer Man

The 25th Anniversary of the CondoListserve warrants sharing this 2018 remembrance of its Founder, Jim Strichartz

I met Jim in 1986. We shared a stage at a seminar called “Neighborhood Wars.”

Trying cases for five years had taught me that The Law is whatever the judge in a case says it is. So, I warned the audience that The Law causes injustice just as often as it cures it.

But Jim disagreed. He said that The Law is black and white. Just apply The Law to a problem and you’ll get the Right Answer – and a just outcome –  virtually every time. The problem, as Jim saw it, was that most lawyers weren’t willing to make the effort to master The Law.

Well, Jim made the effort. And his ears served as bookends to an extensive, exhaustive law library crammed with every legal principle that might conceivably affect a homeowners association. No matter the question, Jim knew the Right Answer.

As Jim’s reputation as “The Answer Man” spread, the lines of answer-seekers grew ever longer. But the need for black and white answers to association problems far exceeded Jim’s capacity to provide the answers these seekers sought. Jim’s solution to his capacity problem was ingenious.

First, he championed manager education. Jim drove the rapid expansion of the Washington State Chapter of the Community Association Institute. And these classes taught managers enough about The Law to know when to call a lawyer.

Problem is, they all called Jim. He couldn’t begin to answer all the questions they’d pose. And yet they persisted because they knew that, if you wanted the Right Answer, Jim was the lawyer to ask.

Jim’s workaround was brilliant. He created a listserve for association lawyers. Then he recruited national luminaries and local lawyers to join it.

He figured that managers in a hurry would start turning to other lawyers to get the answers they needed. And he knew that these inexperienced lawyers would usually test their answers on the listserve first. So, when a local lawyer posted something on the listserve, Jim instantly responded. The lawyer would make the correction Jim suggested, and then send the answer on to the manager.

You see, what Jim cared about was that these managers get the Right Answer to the question. And the listserve allowed him to fix others’ mistakes, so that the Answers the managers got were actually Right. That other lawyers got credit for the answers he’d fixed didn’t matter to him.

For the longest time, Jim’s faith that the Right Answer would produce the Right Result seemed unshakeable. And then something happened at an annual meeting in Everett which shattered the illusion.

Now, the Right Answer to the question “Can a board appoint someone to fill a vacancy created by a resignation?” is a simple “Yes.”  So, when Luther, the corrupt president of an Everett association, asked Jim that question on the eve of a board election, Jim gave him the Right Answer.

Luther then used that information to trade seats with another board member. So, instead of having to stand for election that night, Luther’s slick maneuver would keep him in office for another two years.

I was there at the annual meeting that night to support an elderly group of owners who had amassed the votes needed to oust Luther by defeating his re-election. But, just before the voting began, Luther stood to address the owners. With Jim at his side, Luther told the audience that the seat he now occupied would not stand for election for another two years.

Jim’s Right Answer had just produced the wrong result. He knew he’d been had. But there was nothing Jim or I could do about it. And so imagine the owners’ surprise when Jim turned to Luther and, in that Old Testament voice we’ve all heard, boomed “No! You stand for re-election tonight.” Of course, Luther promptly got trounced.

Jim called Luther out that night because Jim served the community, not the board, and the community needed Luther gone.

Jim cared deeply about those communities he served. And he cared deeply for two tightly-knit communities that his efforts brought into existence: The WSCAI family and the condolawyers list-serve family.

But his life teaches us that it is not enough just to care. He taught us that the Right Answer to the question “What is Compassion?” is this:  Compassion is not a feeling, but rather an act called forth by a feeling.

As Jim entered the Third Act of his life, his attention finally shifted from taking care of others to taking care of himself.  As he once put it to me, he had decided to stop feeling sorry for himself and to finally do something about his weight.

Because Jim equated caring to action, he took action. By the time he boarded a ship for a well-earned victory lap around the planet, he’d brought his weight down to 210 lbs.  Stephen Marcus and the rest of the lawyers he loved gave him a standing ovation, listserve style, for becoming “half the man he used to be.”

And, in March, Stephen added this postscript:

Jim, you are my idol.  Humble and extremely bright were obvious, but amazingly, I can now call you “Skinny Jim Strichartz”.  We are proud of you and want and need you around for a long time.

But, in April, Jim left us.

And his passing has left us to wonder what the Right Answer to this question is: “Does Life end at Death?”

Surely the Answer Man would know. But now we must turn elsewhere to find the answers we seek.

Might I suggest that those of us who hunger to know the Right Answer to that that question consider the answer that the Pixar movie “Coco” provides.  Which is that, while death marks a passing, a life does not truly end until its influence upon others is no longer felt.

By that standard, the Right Answer to the question “Did Jim’s life end at Death?” Is “No. Rather, Jim has merely entered into immortality.”

And that’s one Right Answer that I hope we who continue to draw insight and inspiration from Jim can all take some solace in.