David Feigenbaum – 50th Reunion Essay

David Feigenbaum

38 Rangeley Road

Winchester, MA 01890

david.feigenbaum@gmail.com

617-521-7817

Spouse(s): Maureen Meister (1979)

Child(ren): Peter (1984); Stephen (1989)

Education: Harvard Law School JD 1972

Career: Corporate lawyer, what is now K&L Gates, 8 years. Intellectual property lawyer, Fish & Richardson, 38 years and counting.

Avocations: Photography, historic preservation, cooking, gardening.

College: Branford

It was late summer in 1966 when I moved into the Branford triple numbered 800 with my sophomore roommates, Bill Waldman and Bill Rice. My father dragged cartons of my stuff up two flights and dumped them in my bedroom facing High Street, immediately under Harkness Tower.

Years later, as part of the reconstruction of Branford, 800 became linked to another suite hidden on the other side of a masonry party wall. The connection was achieved by punching a door-sized hole through this bulwark to create a sextuple with two entry doors at opposite ends. The goal was noble: to ensure two “means of egress” on two separate stone staircases in case of fire. The architectural result was disappointing: a disjointed patchwork of common rooms, bedrooms, and closets.

I learned of this mess by coincidence one September day more than 40 years later. After lugging two boxes of my son’s stuff up the steps from the basement summer storage room in Branford, I made my “ingress” through one of those two “means of egress” and navigated to his sophomore bedroom. The window opened onto High Street, and in a glance I knew I was standing in the room where I had spent my sleeping hours four decades earlier.

The scene outside was familiar. Yet one feature that had dominated the early weeks of my fall term was gone.

Recall that during the summer of 1966, 44 new bells were being added to the original 10 in Harkness Tower to form the Yale Memorial Carillon. Today, high up in the stone structure they are played frequently by the carillonneurs for the pleasure of listeners far below.

Not so in September of 1966, however, as the installation of the bells was then being finished for a dedication ceremony in early October. The diesel crane used for the work had been parked directly outside my window. The upper opening of the crane’s vertical exhaust pipe was so close to my room that the rusty metal tube seemed almost reachable by my outstretched hand. A flapper sealed the top to keep water out. Every morning, Monday through Saturday, the contractor would fire up the diesel engine at 7. And the rhythmic banging of the flapper against the top of the pipe—clang, clang, clang, clang—would awaken me. Ugh.

When the day of the celebration arrived, wood folding chairs—fewer than a hundred—were arranged in the main Branford courtyard facing the tower. The gathering was inspiring in the best Yale tradition. Speeches were made. And a brief carillon concert followed. Kingman Brewster sat with the doddering female donor. Her act of generosity settled subconsciously in my adolescent brain and has often reappeared consciously. Her wish to enhance the lives of others has resonated in many choices I have made in the subsequent decades.