Peter M.C. Choy – 50th Reunion Essay

Peter M.C. Choy

139 Dorchester Way

San Francisco, CA 94127

pmcc_2000@yahoo.com

Spouse(s): Ruth Meyler (1980-2005)

Child(ren): James Peter Choy (1981); Celia Ruth Choy (1984)

Grandchild(ren): Lila Rosalind Christiansen (2018)

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

Career: Lawyer, Pettit & Martin, 2 years; Itel Corporation, 3 years; counsel to various financial services firms, 8 years; Sun Microsystems (Deputy General Counsel), 13 years

Avocations: Analog photography, world travel.

College: Ezra Stiles

Fifty years after laboring over my Yale College admissions essay, I couldn’t foresee that I’d now be laboring over an essay on what has happened since. Hopefully, the acceptance rate for what’s next won’t be as daunting. One thing that hasn’t changed is that I’ve left the task to the very last minute, which gratefully will not entail an all-nighter.

My freshman digs were in Vanderbilt Hall, which was then allocated to Ezra Stiles. Being on the fourth floor in the first entryway, we intermittently engaged in such higher educational pursuits as launching water-balloon skirmishes with the entryway across the courtyard (Morse?), occasionally inflicting collateral damage upon startled passersby in Chapel Street. When not drenched by retaliatory fire, I was inundated in another sense by the rigors of directed studies. Once I came up for air, I went on to the history major, taking courses from such rock-star historians as Jonathan Spence and Edmund Morgan. As college aide to Richard Sewall, the first master of Stiles, I was charged with supervising the college darkroom, where I picked up the basics of photography. That led to a stint as photo editor of The New Journal, but my flirtation with photography (which remains a long-term hobby) gave way to the demands of the legal profession (less an avocation but not quite a life’s calling). My student photo gigs included a couple of summers as the architectural photographer for the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, and shooting the photo storyboard for the screenplay of Love Story, under the direction of author Erich Segal, who was my classy civ seminar prof and a resident fellow of Stiles. I then attended Yale Law School, and continued serving as a graduate assistant to the next Stiles master, Bart Giamatti. He enjoyed his nocturnal cigarette and I would encounter him roaming the Stiles courtyard after my late-night duties mucking out the darkroom. I had occasion to bum a few smokes from him (I later quit, he didn’t) over coffee at the Copper Kitchen, where we traded thoughts on education and the state of Yale College. Years later I was gratified to hear him call out my name at the San Francisco reception held to introduce him as newly appointed president of Yale. I felt the world had expanded in ways I couldn’t have imagined from my childhood days centered around my immigrant parents’ Chinese restaurant in Jersey City. One thing that didn’t change was my love of Chinese food, hardwired into my DNA.

My first job practicing law took me to San Francisco, where I settled, married, raised a family and from which I explored the world but which ever since has remained home. My legal practice included real estate, financial services, and, somewhat unexpectedly, intellectual property. During the last dozen years before I retired as deputy general counsel of Sun Microsystems, I directed the bulk of my attention to the development of copyright policy in the global harmonization of legal protection of new technologies. In particular, I devoted myself to striking a balance between the scope of protection, limitations and exceptions in order to take into account the public interest in the preservation of a robust public domain, the better to support future innovation. I worked on cases that were heard by various federal courts of appeals, and in one case by the Supreme Court. My most satisfying work was in the international arena, where I participated as a delegate to the WIPO Internet treaties, and where I interacted with various governments in Europe and Asia on copyright policy issues. I retired from practice in 2000, after which I dabbled in providing adult supervision to a high-tech start-up, did some volunteering to grapple with the immense problem of homelessness in San Francisco, and dipped a little toe into local electoral politics. But mainly I have taken the time to live quietly with my books and pencils, analog photography, my love of the arts and leisure travel while keeping up with my children as they have made their ways across the globe.

My children are the most enduring legacy of my marriage which lasted 25 years before my ex-wife and I parted. My children have also provided me with continuing ties to Yale, my son being both a Yale College grad as well as a Yale Ph.D. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali and speaks both French and Bambara. He is now a professor of economics at a U.K. university (he and his sister being U.S./U.K. dual nationals, the latter courtesy of their Brit mother). He and his Irish wife, an epidemiologist, are expecting my first grandson this summer. My daughter labors as a litigator in D.C. In fruition of another labor, she gave birth to my first granddaughter earlier this year. My daughter is also a Yale College alum, a Yale-China fellow and a Yale Law School grad. It seems Yale has been part of the family DNA as well.