2L Noel Pace takes
INNOVATIVE APPROACH
NOEL PACE WITH CLIENT HOSEA SMITH
to Solving Veteran’s Health Problems
By Emily Horowitz and Catharine Skipp
MI A MI LAW maga zi ne | FA LL 201 4
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oel Christian Pace was born to serve, and lead. When University of Miami President Donna Shalala hosted his promotion ceremony to full Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve on Veteran’s Day 2013, he was following a long and distinguished family legacy. Pace’s father and four uncles served in the military, with one uncle earning a Purple Heart in World War II when his ship was torpedoed by a German U-Boat. Another uncle earned the Silver Star in the Korean War, hitting the beach at Inchon, and surviving the frozen Chosin Reservoir. The 6’3” paratrooper and Army Medical Department Special Operations officer, who has served in Korea, Colombia, Chile, and Honduras, has his own storied past.
At the age of four, he began playing the violin, and would later become an all-state first violin in his high school symphony orchestra. He would also earn multiple varsity letters in swimming and play water polo in the New York Empire State Games. As a middle-school student, Pace performed well on standardized tests and was selected for his school’s creative problem solving gifted program, although, it was noted, he needed to improve his library reference skills. His mother, Geraldine, a middle school family and consumer science teacher, suggested that the 12-year-old volunteer at the local library. During brief breaks from reshelving books, the Fayetteville, New York native (U.S. President Grover Cleveland also spent his youth in
Fayetteville) took an interest in reading the biographies of successful business leaders, scientists, and politicians. “I was so inspired by the character Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, and Ernest Hemingway, who served as an ambulance driver in World War I. The stories were fascinating,” Pace said. “I loved reading about General ‘Black Jack’ Pershing, who, as a white officer, served with the all-black 10th Cavalry Regiment [Buffalo Soldiers] and earned his law degree while serving as a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps instructor at the University of Nebraska; and President Teddy Roosevelt, an environmental conservationist and former Colonel with the Rough Riders who helped liberate Cuba; and President Eisenhower, former Supreme Allied Commander in