My Dad

Earlier this month my dad had his birthday. He would have been 95. He died too young at age 61. 

He was the most important person in my life and he is still my moral compass. "What would dad have done?" is a question I ask myself often. Lawrenceville '41, Peleliu '44, Okinawa '45, Carleton '49, Yale Law '52, Cleary Gottlieb till '84, father of 6, husband to our mother for 42 years, grandad to 9 kids.

Then there was his civic work to make this world a better place. Board Member on the Staten Island Mental Health Counsel, President of the New York County Lawyers Association, President of the Carleton College Alumni Association. He dedicated two of his month-long vacations in consecutive years away from his family in the mid-60s working in the deep south to institute voter registration after the passage of the Civil Rights Voting Act, among other things. My mother was a stalwart angel, a partner to him, as she took care of six young children during those hot, steamy New York July days, seamlessly even while she was probably worried sick about his safety.

He taught me the lessons about the slippery slope, that the best is the enemy of the good, and that the law is merely the minimum of morality. He showed me through his manly but loving and sensitive manhood how we men should strive to proceed through a man's life as a man, both intellectual yet physical if presented as such.  I miss him still.