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I have been around a while.
Raised in Plainfield, New Jersey in the 1950’s, I still remember standing on line at our local library to check out books. What then took several minutes on the best of days now takes a matter of seconds at today’s digital self-checkout stations.
My father was a commercial artist, my mother a school secretary in one of Plainfield’s elementary schools.
The 1960 presidential election ignited my interest in politics and in Appendix V of Do We Have A Center I share a few memories from that election.
In 1963, I graduated Plainfield High School. I was a good student with a nice group of friends and felt nothing like the stress I read about in today’s high schools. In retrospect, I see it as an innocent time, understanding now – but not then – what a difficult world it still was for minorities, gays and women longing for roles other than wife and mother. It was also a time of widely shared prosperity.
In November of 1963, my first year at the University of Pennsylvania -- tuition for the academic year was a little over $1,400 -- John Kennedy was assassinated. Somehow, for my generation, that moment was a watershed, the moment we understood that nobody --not even this handsome, witty, much loved President -- enjoyed the protection of the gods.
My own life, however, proceeded on a fairly even course, as it has really to this day. I graduated in 1967 from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts degree cum laude with special honors in history for an essay on the American Revolution. Then in 1970 I graduated from Columbia Law School, practiced for a few years in San Francisco with an old-line (now defunct) San Francisco firm (Chickering & Gregory), and then returned east joining the Law Department of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in January 1975. I stayed for 30 personally fulfilling years, the last ten as Chief of its Commercial Litigation Division.
I retired in 2005 to pursue an interest in constitutional law. In retirement, I first wrote several law review articles dealing with our elections process, focusing particularly on gerrymandering. I then wrote my first book, Making Sense of the Constitution, published in 2012, followed two years later by Law and the Gay Rights Story. I was pleased that they were both well-received.
In 2016, I closely followed the general election campaign. I describe my reasons for writing Do We Have a Center in the book’s Introduction.
On a personal note, I have been married to my wife Lydia for forty-four years. We have been blessed with two wonderful children and four unsurpassed grandchildren. I am currently a citizen representative on the bioethics committee of the Robert Wood Johnson Hospital. I also serve as co-chair of the Law and Literature Committee of the New York County Lawyers Association.
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