Marvin Philip Wexler – 50th Reunion Essay

Marvin Philip Wexler

30 The Esplanade

New Rochelle, NY 10804

marvinwex@gmail.com

914-632-8110

Spouse(s): Candice Stone

Child(ren): Matthew Wexler (1977); Laura Wexler (1980)

Grandchild(ren): Hannah Wexler (2011); Sofia Padro (2016)

Education: Roosevelt High School, Yonkers, NY, 1965; Yale College, BA, 1969; London School of Economics, MS, 1970; Yale Law School, JD, 1973

National Service: Anti-War Movement 1965–1975, Anti-War Movement, 2003–present

Career: Litigator, Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison; Kornstein Veisz Wexler & Pollard, LLP; Duane Morris LLP

Avocations: Poetry and the Elderly, Interfaith and Interracial Relations

College: Calhoun (Hopper)

I have enjoyed a very satisfying private law practice since graduating from the Law School in 1973. For thirty-five of those forty-five years, I did that at my small Manhattan ‘litigation boutique,’ together with wonderful colleagues. Somehow my small firm practice managed to avoid much of what has plagued the legal profession in recent decades.

In middle age, I started suffering some profound personal losses – divorce, the slow but sure physical and mental decline and then death of loved ones, and significant health issues of my own. Those losses made me grow, made me move from my head to my heart. I feel I was enrolled, involuntarily, by scary unwanted guests, in a school of love, where I am still attending class and trying to learn. There, one teacher in particular, Candice Stone, has been a revelation. Candice, a high-school classmate, and I have been together for more than two decades now.

My studies in that new school moved me in new directions, including to create a poetry program for residents of a nursing home in Westchester, where I regularly recite poetry to groups of those residents. I describe that program, and its therapeutic value for people with Alzheimers and dementia, in my website (www.poetryfortheelderly.org). That website includes the ‘curriculum’ of my poetry program, an academic article I wrote about the program, and some other material, including information about my law practice and a screenplay I recently wrote about the culture of covivencia in Spain under Muslim rule. If you have a loved one who suffers from Alzheimers or dementia, this website might be useful to you, and please do not hesitate to call me if you think I could be helpful.

In more recent years I have been practicing letting go, including letting go of my little law firm, which closed its doors two years ago when our lease expired and I moved to a huge national firm. And letting go of my identity as a lawyer.

I am very grateful to Yale for giving me the educational opportunities that I loved and for helping me be able to do what I have done in this world. I also thank Yale for dealing rather well with the Secret Service when they came to campus in 1967 to investigate the danger that I and my freshman year roommate Tim McDaniel (of blessed memory) posed to President Johnson. When they come for me next, perhaps as concerns our current megalomaniac chief executive, I should be more ready for them.