Alumni Focus

An Essay by Zanita Fenton

Howard Aibel '51 recently retired as a partner of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae. Previously he served for 28 years as ITT Corporation's general counsel, and prior to that he was internal antitrust litigation counsel at General Electric.

Fenway Park pulsed with the sounds of 33,000 fans lucky enough to score tickets in the middle of a pennant race. They pleaded and yelled and stomped and groaned at every pop-up, called strike, or double play.

The attack on Pearl Harbor impelled many Harvard Law School students to join the fight of their generation. Those who came back were changed men who had changed the world.

"I'm just an amateur," insists Harold Dondis '45, writer of the Boston Globe's chess column for the last 37 years. In fact, Dondis is so modest that it's not until ten minutes into a discussion about his favorite game that he offers, matter-of-factly, "I did beat Bobby Fischer one time."

Eugene Wade graduated from Morehouse College, Harvard Law School, and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. But he almost flunked out of high school. And that experience drove him to start his own charter school company, helping kids like himself--poor minority children in inner cities.

While no HLS grad made it to the finals of the recent Harvard University presidential search, three alumni have attained the top title at other universities.

In 1998 Pamela Coukos '94 became an associate at a firm that barely existed.

Jamie Metzl '97 took the inspiration where he could find it. After swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles, and in the middle of a 26-mile run, his body was screaming at him to stop.

If Diana Derycz-Kessler '91 ('92) made movies, she would be shooting two films simultaneously, bankrolling another, and throwing in a cameo appearance to boot.

Like most Democratic staffers on Capitol Hill, Leecia Eve '90 is appreciative that Senator Jim Jeffords '62 decided to bolt from the GOP and tip the Senate balance of power to the Democrats.

You wouldn't expect Rob Chesnut '84, the deputy general counsel to the largest online marketplace in the world, to be spending his day worrying about lawn darts.

By the time Michael Fredrickson '82 turned 50, he had taken on many roles: Rhodes scholar, draft resister, English professor, farmer, attorney, lumberjack, auto mechanic, folk singer, and owner and performer in a singing telegram service.

Regardless of how people feel about the outcome of the presidential election controversy, most would agree that the openness of the proceedings helped ensure greater legitimacy.

Ira Burnim's clients are not like the rest of us. They don't want any help. They're just not worth the money, the time, the trouble. They're better off locked away, out of sight.

In 1993 Dick Roy '70 walked away from his position as a high-powered attorney, intent on never again collecting a paycheck. Roy had decided, after more than 20 years practicing law, to cash in his six-figure salary to save the earth.

Sometimes it seems that Daniel Williams '86 is still on the case. When he talks about a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal and the defense strategy and the public relations campaign and the possibility that a client he represented for nearly ten years could be executed, Williams speaks like an advocate girded to continue the fight of his career.

Tom Gallagher '69 doesn't gamble, but he certainly knows gaming. The president and CEO of Las Vegas' Park Place Entertainment, the world's largest casino and resort company, has been at the helm for just one year, but he is in many ways a veteran.

HLS Celebrates Second Worldwide Alumni Congress in the City of Light.

After an editor at Oxford University Press read Unbending Gender, a book her own company published, she quit her job. In a way, it was the ultimate compliment for the author, Joan Williams '80, a professor at American University's Washington College of Law.

Burt Neuborne '64 has often been in the public eye--leading the charge for ballot access in New York State, arguing for Holocaust reparations, presenting cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.