Immediately following graduation from Yale, I went to law school.  I spent one year as a law clerk in the Federal Court of Appeals in New York, and then went to work for the firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, where I have been ever since.  I have learned a great deal from my clients and from the talented lawyers I have worked with and against.  However, all good things eventually come to an end, and on March 31, 2013, having reached our firm’s mandatory retirement age of 70, I am scheduled to retire from active practice.

My first marriage, to Catherine Tolstoy Arapoff, an artist, ended in divorce in 1985.  We have two children, Andrew (a litigation lawyer in Los Angeles) and Cathie (a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School).  Andy’s two children, Elizabeth and Jack, are as yet my only grandchildren.

In 1986 I married Marcia Mayo Hill, an interpreter at the United Nations, whose principal career since her retirement in 2004 has been as a master swimmer, swimming competitively at both regional and national levels.  All of you who have seen us together know how much I owe to Marcia, who has made my life anything but ordinary.  We have four children, Frank (a second-year medical student), Guy Jr. (a graduate of SUNY Albany), Beverly (who died at the age of one year following a failed heart operation, and whom we remember constantly), and Elena (whom we adopted in Moscow following Beverly’s death).

I am very much in the market for good ideas about what to do in retirement.  For the time being, my principal idea is to go back to what I have always loved to do, namely, learn new things.  Starting the day after retirement, I intend to take the set of textbooks on Anglo-Saxon that my father bought many years ago, and start learning the language.

This essay would be incomplete without mentioning how much I have learned from reunions and other activities of our Class over the years.  Perhaps the most educational thing about Yale for me has been the journey we have all taken together since graduation.  I look forward to continuing that journey at our 50th Reunion.

The following story will illustrate what I mean.  Ian Robertson is a very good friend, and a stalwart of our 50th Reunion effort.  Our paths did not cross in college.  Recently Ian told me that, during our freshman year, he saw me waiting in line for dinner in Commons, and felt very sorry for me.  As soon as Ian said that, I saw myself then as Ian saw me, an awkward, clueless 16-year-old, and for a moment I felt sorry for myself too.  Then I remembered that the story does not end there, that Ian and I have since gotten to know each other, and that now, half a century later, he and I are fast friends.  That would never have happened but for our continuing involvement with the Class.

 

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