Edwin J. Buckingham III – 50th Reunion Essay

Edwin J. Buckingham III

3602 Albans Road

Houston, Texas 77005

edbuckin@gmail.com

713-416-7751

Spouse(s): Cheryl Pantalone, (1971)

Child(ren): Emma Buckingham (1988)

Education: Yale College, BA 1969; Yale Law School, JD 1972

Career: Attorney with Shea Gould (2 years) and Celanese Corporation (3 years); North American general counsel for Solvay S.A. of Belgium (36 years)

Avocations: Birding, fencing, reading

College: Trumbull

My life has not been the product of some grand plan, nor has it given me any earth-shaking insight. Rather, it evolved through a few major decisions, often influenced by chance, and perhaps a consistency in a number of smaller decisions that ultimately added up to a lot.

There is no question, though, about the greatest influences on me; those have been family. First, my parents, who raised me in the offices and backshops of the small Midwestern newspapers they worked on, then owned, and who taught by example, not rhetoric. And then Cheryl, my wife, and our daughter, Emma, have been at the heart of my life, enriching it in so many ways. Cheryl and I met and married while I was at Yale Law, and we’re still together, still in love; her passion for art and the theater have led me to countless experiences, especially attending plays and frequenting museums (she is still a docent at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston). As a child, Emma introduced me to birding, and when she took up fencing as a high-school junior, she brought me back to a sport I had learned at Yale. Her fascination with ancient Greece prompted us to visit ancient sites there and led her to a program in Classical Archaeology at UNC, where completion of her PhD. this year was delayed by receipt of a Fulbright to pursue further research in Athens.

Most of this came about because I was a Yalie, albeit an accidental one: I hadn’t thought of going to college outside of the Dakotas until a friend asked if I’d thought about Yale and then gave me a catalog. Even the path to law school started with a remark by an executive at the St. Petersburg Times, where I was interning, that they lost their best candidates to the law. I decided to look into it and ultimately chose Yale Law over Columbia Journalism, which led to meeting Cheryl and all the rest.

Of course, that decision also set me on my career, and another major decision brought us to Houston, where I started the North American law department for a venerable Belgian company. Along with that came many years of repeated trips to Europe, friendships with people from a variety of cultures, and, strangest of all for a kid from the prairies, a knighthood; after I became a Chevalier of the Order of Leopold, a Belgian friend told me there are only three things to know about the decoration: you never ask for it, you never refuse it, and you never wear it.