Eric Lenck – 50th Reunion Essay

Eric Lenck

74 Madison St. #2

Hoboken, NJ 7030

lenck@freehill.com

917-912-9978

Spouse(s): Gail Lenck

Child(ren): Joanna Lenck

Education: U. of Michigan Law School JD ’73

Career: Maritime lawyer

Avocations: golf, recreational boating

College: Jonathan Edwards

As a psychology major at Yale, I hoped to gain greater insight into human behavior, spending many hours trying to connect with Freud’s theories. Fifty years later, Freud’s teachings appear to be on the ash heap of behavioral science theories and I am as confused as ever about the big questions. So, bereft of any pearls of wisdom on the human condition, I will simply write about some aspects of my personal life which come to mind: family, career, Yale friends, and mantelpieces.

Family has been a mainstay for me. I am very lucky to continue to share life with my wife, Gail. We met right after college at NIMH in Washington, DC, where she was working for an anthropologist and I was pulling all-nighters recording REM cycles in the sleep lab. I am also fortunate to have a wonderful daughter, Joanna, full of life and constantly on the go. She is my guru for navigating the river of new technology that keeps coming at us.

If the name Yale or Harvard appears on a diploma on an office wall, it is usually a marker of success and excellence. I learned from my first job as a lawyer that such an assumption can be dangerous. My father, a sea captain who had twice rounded Cape Horn on a three-masted windjammer, instilled in me a love of all things nautical. I knew midway through U. of Michigan Law School that I wanted to be a maritime lawyer. My career got off to a rousing start when I landed a job as the first associate to be hired in a newly formed New York maritime law firm. The three partners were all heavy hitters in the maritime field and they all had diplomas from Harvard Law School. My excitement turned to horror a year later when one of the partners was indicted as a coconspirator in a massive maritime fraud scheme. The other two had no involvement, but retreated to liquid lunches at their private clubs, sealing the fate of the firm.

The next maritime firm I joined had fewer of those impressive diplomas, but excellent attorneys and, most importantly, very decent people. Perhaps in reaction to my disastrous first law job, but more likely due to the supportive, collegial atmosphere of this second firm, I practiced law there for 40 years! When other maritime firms were closing their doors due to a declining maritime industry, we grew from 8 to more than 30 maritime attorneys.

The friends I made at Yale are an important part of my life. I have been in close touch with roommates Steve Haworth, Ted Van Dyke, and John Nelson over the years. Our families have spent many good times together. The four of us have taken golfing trips to Ireland for our 50th birthdays, Scotland for our 60th, and Canada for our 70th. The current debate is whether our next trip should be for our 75th, and not our 80th, just in case. Special thanks to friend and classmate Dr. Paul Gennis for his guidance when I was dealing with prostate cancer. More recently, I have been reconnecting with other classmates from JE. I continue to marvel at how smart, interesting, and decent all my friends from Yale are and feel very lucky to have these relationships.

Having recently landed on the beach of retirement, I am feeling my way forward. My main project for over a year has been a book entitled Legal Guide to Recreational Boating, to be published by Cornell Maritime Press in 2019. We recently moved to Hoboken, New Jersey, where there are lots of young people. It is fun to be around these millennials, but I see now that I have to come up with some new stories to connect with them. Very few of them have ever heard of Calvin Hill.

There is one Yale story, however, that will stand the test of time. It is the tale of Steve Haworth and the 6-inch wide fireplace mantel in our JE suite. Unassisted, he was able to vault up to this precarious ledge, stretch out sideways like a human plank, and maintain this perch for a full minute. Have your children or grandchildren give it a try. It is not easy. It requires a perfect storm combination of a lean body, ramrod-straight posture, Iron Butterfly’s “In a Gadda da Vida” blasting in the background, and maybe some of Randy Straff’s weed from California.