Jerry Falwell Jr. is in the news again, for salacious reasons that have nothing to do with electronics (I hope).

It seems like he’s having a bad week, and I’m certainly not going to pile on.

But mention of his name reminds me of the time I spoke with the son of the famous evangelist, and it was in my professional capacity as an editor, no less.

As I recall, I answered the phone one day — I can’t remember which year it was, but it would have been sometime around 2004 — to find a very professional voice on the line.

“Mr. Buetow?”

Yes.

“Would you have time to speak with Mr. Jerry Falwell Jr.?”

Umm, sure.

When JFJ came on, he was very polite and to the point. A gentleman in our industry — a printed circuit designer — had developed a concept for putting identical components on opposite sides of a board and running vias through to shorten the length of the connections. The designer, with whom I had spoken from time to time over the years, had offered the concept to Liberty University, where Falwell was vice chancellor. Mr. Falwell Jr. wanted my thoughts on whether Liberty should invest the monies to patent the idea.

I don’t recall what I told him, but a check of the USPTO shows that Liberty did follow through. A colleague reminded me representatives from Liberty actually attended PCB West one year as well to promote the mirror pinout concept. Still, I doubt they made much money off the idea, which has been overcome by other advances in component packaging anyway.

Whatever my advice to Mr. Falwell Jr. was, I hope it didn’t put him in a bad position with his trustees. I’m fairly confident it has nothing to do with the predicament he finds himself in now.

And if he calls me again, I’ll still be happy to talk. Provided we stick to electronics.