David Bishop Howorth – 50th Reunion Essay

David Bishop Howorth

1420 South 10th St.

Oxford, Mississippi 38655

david.howorth@gmail.com

662-816-4923

Spouse(s): Martha Peacock Howorth (1970, d. 2016)

Child(ren): Katherine Somerville Howorth (1977); Emily Hartwell Howorth (1981)

Grandchild(ren): Harper Holloway Bouman (2010); Margaret Bishop Watkins (2013); Nina Somerville Bouman (2013); George Beckett Watkins (2016); Peter Augustus Bouman (2016)

Education: University of Mississippi, JD, 1975

Career: Dewey, Ballantine, Bushby, Palmer & Wood, New York City, (1975-1990); Foster, Pepper & Shefelman, Portland, OR (1990-2000)

Avocations: Bridge. Sleight of hand. Greek, Roman, and Victorian literature. Linguistics.

College: Davenport

I was one of the first to arrive on the Old Campus, having caught a ride with a graduate student who needed to be in New Haven early. There was only one other classmate in my Farnam entryway my first night there, but the next day a couple of Californians arrived in the suite across the hall from mine. One of them was Ed Mitchell, who has remained one of my best friends ever since. My meeting Ed that day was the first concrete evidence that Yale had been the right choice for me.

I’m sure many classmates will reminisce about courses and professors that inspired them, but as much as I enjoyed many of them, I can’t say that any changed my life in any measurable way. One reason is that I made a mistake in choosing my major, a mistake that I realized too late to rectify conveniently. Why does an atheist major in Religious Studies? My usual answer is that it is for the same reason a medical student might become interested in infectious diseases, not out of love of the thing studied, but out of concern about its effect on people. One nice thing about the major was that there were very few of us, so the students and teachers all knew each other. The department was also very accommodating in letting me count courses outside the department, even those not cross-listed, toward the major requirement. But I was dismayed by the senior seminar, where we read material that meant nothing to me, although I admired William Christian, who led the seminar and was as kind as he was scholarly.

Trite as it may sound, what meant the most to me at Yale were my fellow students. The most important friendships of my life were formed there. I have yet to miss a reunion, and I usually arrive on Thursday. And for better or worse—certainly for worse as far as my studies were concerned—I became a great bridge player. I suppose bridge is the only area in which I can truthfully claim to have distinguished myself at Yale.

After graduation and a stint working for a wholly ineffective antipoverty program, I went to law school. I became an associate, and then a partner, at a big, prestigious New York City law firm. But during the eight years or so I was a partner there, I often thought of something William Sloane Coffin said, I think at Woolsey Hall at the beginning of our freshman year: “A lot of you are going to go into the world and try to grab the big brass ring. But when you’ve grabbed it you may realize that all you have is a big brass ring.” Since I wanted to be able to spend time with my daughters while they were growing up, the family pulled up stakes and moved to Portland, Oregon, where I was the head of the litigation department in the branch office of a Seattle firm.

All the years I spent practicing law mean little to me now, although I did enjoy representing the Portland Trail Blazers when we twice did battle with the NBA over the meaning of one of the exceptions to the salary cap provisions, prevailing both times. The interpretation on which we prevailed enabled us to sign center Chris Dudley, Yale ’87.

I’ve lived a happy life with one significant exception, the death of Martha, my wife of 45 years, in 2016. Since we were the same age, and I was a man, I had always assumed that I would be the first to go, but, sadly, that’s not how things turned out. But our two daughters, two sons-in-law, and five grandchildren are a happy reminder of our years together. It will surprise no one when I say that everything else in my life seems trivial compared with my family.