Norman Jakob Resnicow – 50th Reunion Essay

Norman Jakob Resnicow

71 Washington Place, Apt. 1A

New York, NY 10011

njresnicow@foxlex.com

917-576-6626

Spouse(s): Barbara Jane (Roses) Resnicow (1970)

Child(ren): Daniel, (1978), Joel (1981)

Education: Yale Law School 1972

Career: Yale Law; 26 years at NY office Baker & McKenzie doing “international law”; International Partner 20 years; helped create world’s first broadly international law firm; travel and friends worldwide. 2000 joined NY boutique Fox Horan doing whatever interests me (no mandatory retirement). Fulfilling, ground-breaking, lucky career with always something new.

Avocations: Travel; hiking; International Relations

College: Pierson

Barbara and I soon leave for a two-week (2018) exploration vacation in Morocco. (Summer before we met, I was a hitchhiker in Marrakesh celebrating my 21st birthday.) While juggling respective pre-vacation workplace arrangements, we indulged in a nostalgic Billy Joel concert. He’s still “good” and didn’t “die young.”

With much fun yet undone, I should be sensibly retired instead of still charging ahead as a law firm partner. While energetic, with almost no lifestyle restrictions, I’m more bionic and probed than many contemporaries (pacemaker, replaced heart valve, periodic eye injections). It’s not feeling sorry for myself; more an awed sense of living largely on borrowed time.

I want to be around for lots longer—if only to see how things unfold longer-term in this bizarre, speeded-up world. More astonishing stories appear daily in the NY Times than the most imaginative novels.

I’ve been more than satisfied in my professional (the legal trenches) and community (refugee assistance organization) commitments. Our two sons—biotech and hi-tech, respectively—are what any parents would wish for (Barbara’s sensible guiding hand). Barbara and I enjoy together the many interests we share, and I savor her superlative cooking.

I’ve come to accept my ingrained receptivity to taking on apparent lost causes against overwhelming adversaries who pushed me just too far. Twice I’ve been a seeming doomed whistleblower; each struggle went on for several years; and somehow I prevailed. Now in the midst of a third extended challenge, I hope to go three for three.

Beyond these headstrong episodes, I’ve realized what a lucky life has been granted me. After our parental generation’s 16 years of economic depression and world war (my mother’s family escaped Germany in 1939), I was born in the right place at the right time. It was a given our generation would advance and prosper beyond our parents. (Not a given now.)

I had the luck to apply to Yale just when the Ivy League broadly opened up to boys of my background; to enter the law firm world just when top tier firms likewise opened up; and to begin practice when there was a fair shot to grab the prized partner ring. Timing does matter and, for me, has made a strong difference.

A while back I started writing a book tentatively titled Highest Hopes. The thought is to chronicle a baby-boomer lookback touching upon my particular experiences and observations. I still have highest hopes of getting back to writing it.

In coping with the current societal sturm und drang, it’s consoling to point to how many things got better since our 1965 landing on planet Yale. Modern medicine produced the miracle bionics and probings that keep me alive and fully sighted. Broadened minds enabled a sister to join the first women at Yale College. And so on.

We were the forever young talkback generation—rebellious, hedonist, doing our own thing. How strange it feels now to be “senior citizens.” Who’s that I see in the mirror?