James Jay Schweitzer – 50th Reunion Essay

James Jay Schweitzer

4625 1-2 MacArthur Blvd. NW, Unit B

Washington, DC 20007

jimschweitzer@comcast.net

202-213-1441

Child(ren): Godson: James Cameron Larkin, son of Rick Larkin (Morse ’69), 1980

Education: University of Virginia Law School, 1973

Career: 1989–2016, private practice; 1977–1989, Capitol Hill (Leg. Dir., Rep. Liz Holtzman; Counsel, house subcommittee on immigration; Counsel, house judiciary committee; Counsel, Iran-Contra committee); 1974–1977, Counsel for Puerto Rico

Avocations: Travel, sloth

College: Morse

My life since our 25th hasn’t changed all that much. I continued in my law firm for a little more than another decade before retiring, although I did take one client with me and plugged along with them until bailing completely at the end of 2016.

My feelings about Yale and our classmates haven’t changed at all.

In the class book for our 25th, I wrote that “The great thing about Yale a quarter century ago was that you could be a total goof-off and still get a great education just by being around your classmates.” Fortunately, I’ve been able to maintain close friendships with many of our brethren for now more than 50 years. And that has enriched my life immeasurably.

Living in DC has been a major plus on that score since many of our classmates have ended up here and many others pass through for business or pleasure. I see John Yarmuth and Quent Lawson frequently. Yarm, of course, is in town most weeks trying to get our government to function; Quent and I head to Pete’s New Haven Pizza near us regularly. I see Greg Lawler, Reed Hundt, George Chopivsky, and Fred Goldberg for meals occasionally, and Frank Ashburn took care of my cataracts. My high school era friend and two-year Yale roomie, David Jacobson, now living in Israel, keeps in contact and reappears in town as well.

For reasons unclear to my doctor, I’ve remained mostly healthy despite a regimen of no exercise or fruit and plenty of adult beverages. Of course, I do appear to be growing horizontally and shrinking vertically, and am bald and quite deaf without my trusty hearing aids. I did have a heart valve replaced in 2017, but recovered quickly. My recovery was hastened (although my liquor cabinet was depleted) by separate week-long caretaking visits from Morse buds Robb High and Don Galligan.

Travel has been my great joy in these later years, often accompanied by folks from the class. In the fall of 2017, I joined Galligan, Lawson, Pat Madden, Dave Stretch, Ralph Sando’s widow Joyce, and various spouses and others in Portugal for several weeks, continuing a tradition of travel with classmates that stretches back decades. I continue to stay in regular touch with Rick Larkin in Connecticut, my junior- and senior-year roommate and the father of my wonderful godson Jamie. And each November for the past 20-plus years, a group of 25 or so from around the country gathers for a weekend in New York to reconnect, revert to freshman-year behavior, and watch The Game.

We’ve lost Bogaty, Sando, Mackey, Quinn, Henrickson, and innumerable others, and unfortunately the rest of us will be following, if not shortly soon enough. It’s been a fine run since we arrived on the Old Campus, though, and with no siblings or other immediate family, I feel incredibly grateful to have gone through much of it with so many of our classmates as lifelong friends.