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Professor Lawrence A. Jegen, III, passed away on May 17, 2018, at his home in Indianapolis. He was 83 years old. He taught at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law for 56 years before his retirement in 2018. He joined the faculty in 1962 as an Assistant Professor, was promoted to an Associate Professor two years later, and became a full professor in 1966.

“It is hard to understate the impact that Professor Jegen made on the lives of others during his remarkable 56-year career at our law school," said IU McKinney Dean Andrew R. Klein. "Using the word ‘legend’ might sound like hyperbole, but today it does not. The outpouring of affection that I have heard from generations of McKinney Law alumni is overwhelming. This is a sad day for our law school family, but also a moment to remember the incredible difference that a teacher can make. We will miss Professor Jegen, but never forget him.”

Professor Jegen was named the Thomas F. Sheehan Professor of Tax Law and Policy in 1982, a title he held until his retirement. During his career, Professor Jegen taught in the areas of civil and criminal law, federal and state taxation, business and estate planning, and philanthropy. He was renowned as one of his generation’s top tax scholars. Professor Jegen was, by appointment of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, a member of the Commissioner’s Advisory Committee from 1981 to1982, and he received nine Certificates of Recognition from the Internal Revenue Service for contributions to the education of Internal Revenue Service personnel. Further, due to his contributions to the enactment of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, he attended the signing of the Act, at President Gerald Ford's invitation, in the Rose Garden at the White House on Labor Day in 1974.

"Larry was a great mentor, colleague, and friend," said Professor Emeritus Thomas B. Allington. He taught at IU McKinney from 1970 to 2007. "We shared an office suite in the old law school building and had many long talks and arguments about tax law and teaching law students. I learned a lot but never caught up with him."

Professor Jegen served as Internal Tax Counsel to Indiana University, as a representative of Indiana University to the National Association of College and University Attorneys, and as a co-founder and former co-director of the Annual Tax Institute for Colleges and Universities.

Indiana Court of Appeals Judge Margret Robb, '78, recalled the roast that the IU McKinney Alumni Association held for Professor Jegen in honor of his, at that time, 25 years in teaching. In addition to former students telling stories about Professor Jegen, the man himself joined as well, telling stories to the delight of the crowd, she said.

"You have to be an enormously confident person to laugh when you hear stories about yourself, and join in the telling," Judge Robb said, recalling Professor Jegen's wonderful sense of humor. "We're all going to miss him. We already do."

One of Professor Jegen's first students, Robert H. Everitt, '65, told a story that provides an example of that sense of humor, and Jegen's willingness to go to great lengths to set up a joke. A student asked for permission to bring his spouse to the last class of the semester. The student had been talking about Professor Jegen at home, and the student wanted his wife to have an opportunity to witness Jegen's teaching style first hand, and the professor agreed.

Professor Jegen told the class he wanted to discuss a particular case that had recently been decided. No one in the class had read it, and Professor Jegen's frustration grew as he called on students who didn't know about the decision. "This is embarrassing to me as a teacher, and I'm sure it's embarrassing to you as students," Everitt recalled Professor Jegen saying. "Why, I'm sure that even a layperson would know about the facts of this case and why it's so important." Professor Jegen proceeded to call upon the spouse, whom he had coached about the case ahead of time. The spouse knew all about the case, to the mortification of the class, Everitt said.

The list of Professor Jegen’s honors and accolades is as extensive as it is impressive. He received the Thomas Hart Benton Mural Medallion, which is the highest award granted by Indiana University, in 1993 and in 2005. He received the President’s Circle Commemorative Medallion for exceptional support of Indiana University in 1999. He received the IU President’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 1989; IU’s Teaching Excellence Recognition Award in 1997; and IU McKinney's Black Cane Award for Most Outstanding Law Professor six times. Professor Jegan was honored by the law school's Alumni Association on five different occasions; received IU's Trustees Teaching Award in1997; and was chosen as a Teacher of Significance in a general poll of all Indiana University undergraduate and graduate students in 1980.

In 2018, an endowed chair, the Lawrence A. Jegen, III Chair in Tax Law, was created in his honor.

“Larry will be sorely missed, but I am so grateful that, through the Jegen Chair, we had a chance to tell him how much his students and colleagues admired him,” said Michael D. Freeborn, ’72. He is a partner at Freeborn & Peters in Chicago, and a member of IU McKinney's Board of Visitors. “By the time I graduated in 1972, he already had almost a decade of experience teaching, having started in August 1962. To think that he then continued in that noble profession until last December is astonishing — a total of more than 55 years. I was privileged to attend some of the best schools in the nation — not just McKinney, but also the Air Force Academy and the University of Chicago. In my 22 years of formal education,I never had a better professor.

“Upon graduation, I wanted to be a tax lawyer. Although I never actually had the opportunity to practice in that area, I know that I could have excelled at it — all because of Larry. He had a teaching technique to assure that each student understood the point he was making. He would say, in that commanding voice of his, ‘Do we agree, my friend?’ And he would insist on an answer before moving on.

“We have lost a great and unforgettable man. Do we agree, my friends?”

Professor Jegen received the first Quality for Indiana Taxpayers, Inc. tax award for outstanding dedication to the improvement of tax administration in Indiana in 1990; an international award from the Association of Continuing Legal Administrators for Excellence in Continuing Legal Education in 1990; and the Dr. John Morton-Finney, Jr. Excellence in Legal Education Award from the Indianapolis Bar Association in 2000. He was named a Sagamore of the Wabash by three different Indiana governors in 1980, 1988, and 1997; and was honored by the Indiana Senate in March 2015 with the passing of Senate Resolution 37, which outlined the many highlights of his teaching career and his significant contributions to the profession.

Professor Jegen received a bachelor's degree in philosophy and literature at Beloit College in 1956, a juris doctorate and a master's of business administration degree in accounting from the University of Michigan in 1960, and a Master of Laws degree in taxation from New York University in 1963.