by Richard W. Millar, Jr.
Judge Francisco Pedro Briseño is this year’s recipient of the Orange County Bar Association’s highest honor—the Franklin G. West Award. When I was asked to write about him, I discovered that he was already the subject of two Daily Journal profiles, one in 1992 and one in 2002. After racking my brain to find something new, I can tell you that he is older now.
Frank’s father was born in 1913 in Guadalajara, Mexico. He worked as a horse trainer for large estates. Sometime around 1923 his father and his family walked from Guadalajara to Laredo, Texas. (That would be one very long walk and the family history is sketchy on the details.) A couple of years later, the family moved to Bauxite, Arkansas to work in the mines. As a Mexican in Bauxite his father was required to attend segregated schools where he was taught that schooling was unnecessary. He later moved to Salina, Kansas for work in the grain mills, poultry farms, and railroads.
Frank’s mother, whose parents were from Mexico, was born in Kansas City, Missouri. Her family later moved to Salina for work on the railroads. The schools in Salina were not segregated and further education was encouraged. As a result, Frank’s mother developed a lifelong interest in literature and politics.
His parents married in Salina in 1933 and later moved to La Puente. Their first child died at age two. Frank’s sister was born in 1936, and he followed in 1939. Frank remembers his father being picked up in the morning for work in the walnut groves and the wonderful smell of walnuts.
In 1944, his father found work as a longshoreman in San Pedro and the family moved to Gardena. One day, in the late afternoon, he was with his mother and they had been picking string beans all day alternately kneeling and standing in mud, both hot, sweaty, and itchy. Through it all she was smiling, but he began to think that there had to be something better to do.
From the fourth through the ninth grades, the family lived in Gramercy Place, a small enclave in the Mexican barrio at the edge of Gardena. He remembers his mother listening to the news on the radio and it was because of radio that Frank learned to listen, a trait that has stayed with him as a judge.
His father led a life of physical labor and the “consequences of that never abated who he was,” says Frank. After the war, his father would get up at 4:00 a.m., go outside (they had neither an indoor bathroom nor a water heater) and would start a fire to get the coffee going. But his father’s spirits were always high and he was never “down.” His father’s pride in physical labor and his experiences in school created tension with his mother who valued education and wanted Frank and his sister to get an education.
After he graduated from Gardena High School, Frank attended Long Beach State for a year and then El Camino Junior College. There he saw a recruiting poster of a young Marine officer which said something to the effect that “you, too, can become an officer if you have a degree.”
That was a “game changer” to use current vernacular, and spurred him on to graduate from Long Beach State in 1961 despite the fact that college was very difficult, both academically and financially. He did two six week stints at Quantico and “loved it.” After graduation, he went to Los Alamitos for his physical exam and while the doctors passed him, the dentist did not because he had two cavities. Frank called a gunny sergeant in Los Angeles that he knew and was told to come see him, and he passed Frank who now says that the years from 1961–1969 were among the best times of his life.
After a three year tour of duty as an infantry officer, he was stationed at the Marine Air Base in Tustin, and he was able to go to night law school at Loyola as the Marine Corps was short of lawyers and encouraged it. There was, as there always seems to be, a catch. He was only allowed to take the bar once and then he would be off on another assignment. He took the bar examination in August of 1968 and a month later was in Viet Nam which was then fully engulfed in war. The bar exam became the last thing on his mind.
After a few months, his wife sent him the “thick envelope” from the State Bar and he knew immediately that by some “miracle” he had passed. (The days of thick or thin envelopes have probably been replaced by email for all I know.) He was able to be sworn in by his Battalion Commander although his fellow Marines were not particularly impressed that he had passed some “bar.” With his newly-minted status, he inquired about a transfer to the Judge Advocate General’s Corps but was told he would leave as he came in—an infantry officer. The Marines, he says, did not in those days look at the JAG office with great favor.
He returned to Tustin on November 7, 1969, and was told he was “done” that day. “Whoa,” he thought, “ I am going to have to get a job.” He checked with the personnel department at the D.A.’s office and was told that there were two openings but that day was the last day for applications. He hurried over in full dress Marine uniform (probably in retrospect not a bad thing), filled out an application in pencil and interviewed with Ed Merrilees. He and Dave Brickner got the nods.
On January 13, 1977, (notice how he remembers certain dates) he got another nod in the form of a telephone message from the office of then Governor (and now again) Jerry Brown asking if he was interested in a judgeship. To corroborate this during our meeting, he slid a plastic sleeve encasing the telephone message across his desk to me. Some things are worth keeping.
In April of 1979, he received another call from the Governor’s office asking if he would be interested in Superior Court. He quickly said “yes,” not knowing that local political winds were blowing an anti-incumbent gust and that in 1980 some 22 judges were being challenged. Luckily, as he puts it, Judge Mark Soden was among those being challenged and concerned lawyers rallied behind him and the other challenged judges so Frank was able to ride those coattails. (I found that Frank is quick to attribute his accomplishments to luck which is admirable, but certainly not completely true.)
Frank is married with two grown daughters and four grandchildren ranging from 16 down to seven. He is, at least as this is penned, the longest serving Orange County Superior Court Judge. He told me that one of his goals was to out serve the late Raymond Thompson a judge from 1944 to 1974 who drove a Bentley. He won on length of service, but said he can’t afford to even rent a Bentley for a day. With the West award, his life has come full circle, although he may not recognize it. As a Marine poster inspired him, he is now the “Poster Child” who inspires the Orange County legal community.
Mr. Millar is a member of the firm of Millar, Hodges & Bemis in Newport Beach. He can be reached at millar@mhblaw.net.