Robert Lawrence Gibney, Jr. – 50th Reunion Essay

Robert Lawrence Gibney, Jr.

1 Nogales Street

Berkeley, CA 94705

rlgibney@gmail.com

510-520-4677

Spouse(s): Wendy N. Gibney (1971)

Child(ren): Jennifer (1975), Kirsten (1977) and Joanna (1981)

Grandchild(ren): Mason (2004), Leo (2005), Cody (2007), Myella (2009), Jordan (2009), Brooklyn (2010) and Naya (2011)

Education: Yale, BS (1969); Harvard Business School, MBA (1973); Harvard Law School, JD (1973)

Career: Business attorney (Heller Ehrman, 35 years; Jones Day, 5 years)

I grew up in central Connecticut, about a 30-minute drive from Yale. As the first in my family to attend college, I had no idea what to expect in New Haven. What I experienced at Yale was an exciting and engaging time, which clearly set me on a life’s journey I had no way of envisioning beforehand. Now 50 years into that journey, I have some perspective on just how critical those four years proved to be for me. (Actually, I was three years in New Haven, wrapped around a junior year with Smith College in Germany. My Yale German professor, Jeffrey Sammons, told me I was making a big mistake, because the Yale undergraduate experience was unequaled, and I could do graduate study abroad; he didn’t persuade me, and I’ve no regrets.)

The years at Yale introduced me to the power of knowledge and critical thinking. I was surrounded by incredibly smart people—classmates and faculty. It was a humbling experience, and taught me that real learning comes in many forms, with perhaps the most important being the power of listening.

From Yale I went directly north to Cambridge, first at Harvard Business School, and ultimately into a newly created joint degree program in law and business. While those “trade schools” would define my professional career, the most significant event in those four years was certainly the blind date with my future and still wife, Wendy. We married in my third year at Harvard, and Wendy taught music history to a bunch of slide-rule-toting students at MIT until I finished my studies.

Newly married, we thought that a move to San Francisco would create some healthy separation from our families. The plan to return to the northeast after a few years was never realized. I pursued a 40-year career in business law, we settled in Berkeley, and our family grew with three wonderful daughters. Like us, they studied and lived far from home for a number of years, but have all moved back to the Bay Area, thereby enriching our lives immensely.

I’m now in my fifth year of retirement, with time finally to pursue many things long deferred by profession and child raising. I’m very engaged in volunteer work—counseling needy seniors on Medicare and related health insurances issues. And I’ve gone back to school, principally in the form of short courses offered to retirees through UC Berkeley. The excitement of learning that was awakened by my years at Yale is again a source of great fun and discovery 50 years later. That excitement is the Yale legacy I hope always to sustain.

Blessed thus far by good health, Wendy and I now spend wonderful hours travelling and cheering on grandkids at Little League games and dance recitals. Apart from our disastrous national political scene, life is very good indeed.