Adam Schiff never knew it, but the first time he met Jack McCoy was back in Nineteen Forty-three.
Adam had just turned twenty-three, and was visiting Chicago, to court his beloved Ruth, and to meet her family. That he would win her hand was actually never in doubt.
Ruth's father, Abram Schinkel, became very fond of the young man, already studying Law, and well on his way to becoming a Manhattan attorney.
Adam Schiff often liked to take walks on an early Sunday afternoon; and he enjoyed that Sunday walk here in Chicago as much as the walks in Manhattan.
Church was just letting out; Irish Catholics in their Sunday best, spilling out from towering cathedrals, and out onto wide sidewalks.
One family caught Schiff's attention; the wife keeping one step behind her husband. The man was big, burly, with blue eyes and blondish hair. He held a little boy in his arms, and the child couldn't have been more unlike his father, with jet black hair and dark brown eyes.
"Good afternoon, sir," the man spoke, a touch of Irish lilt in his voice.
"Good afternoon to you too," Schiff replied. "Your son?"
"My Firstborn," the man looked down at the dark-haired boy in his arms, a father's pride in his eyes.
"C'mon, Jack! Say hello to the nice man."
"Hi…" came the shy response; the little boy safe in the comfort of his father's arms.
"Hello there," Adam Schiff grinned back.
"That's quite a boy you have there," he added.
"I know!" immense pride lay in the man's eyes. "He's gonna take the world by storm. Just you wait and see."
"I bet he will," Schiff nodded back.
That was it. A chance meeting in Nineteen Forty-three, and Adam Schiff had no idea how large Jack McCoy would loom in his life all those years later…