The defining chapter in his life for Roger Trangsrud was an intimation of mortality that came without warning.
“Twenty years ago I had an asymptomatic heart attack,” recalls Roger, who is the James F. Humphreys Professor of Complex Litigation and Civil Procedure at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C.
“I underwent a quadruple bypass immediately. Recovering from that felt like an 18-wheeler had run over my chest. It took me six weeks to begin to function semi-normally.
“As a lawyer, I had a knot in my stomach my whole professional life that made me feel there was always something I should be doing. I continually felt that I was not doing enough. After the heart attack and surgery, that knot began to uncurl itself. That was a very settling experience. I became a less anxious person.”
Both before and subsequent to that, the steadying and nourishing influences in Roger’s have been love of his work as teacher and writer and of his family.
When their two children were small, Roger and his wife Elizabeth, who live in McLean, VA, enjoyed back country hiking and camping and took the kids to national parks out west and in high country. In his thirties and forties, he enjoyed cross country skiing, regular soccer games, and occasional downhill skiing.
“I was blessed with good health my entire life, our kids and my wife, too,” he says. Later, when their offspring were grown and married to non-camping spouses, he and Elizabeth joined the kids on the John Muir Trail to share alpine lakes and epic views. The couple likes to travel, which has included hikes in New Zealand and Norway. “Not so much camping now, because I don’t like to sleep on the ground and experience dawn at 40 degrees.”
“The significant part is I like my job,” Roger says. “It is fun interacting with young people, and my colleagues are bright and interesting. Law teaching is theatrical in ways; it’s not just a lecture, there’s a lot of Q and A, a lot of back and forth. I enjoy the fun and excitement of it. And it can be very flattering, like being a judge, when everybody stands when you come into the room.” “Freud said something like ‘people get mentally ill in a huge number of ways, but the ways to get healthy are love and work,’” says Roger. “That’s true for me: work that engages and provides satisfaction and being lucky to have people around to love and respond to.”