Theodore Edmund Rast – 50th Reunion Essay

Theodore Edmund Rast

tedrast@nyc.rr.com

704-564-7015

Spouse(s): Ann Charlebois Rast (1969)

Child(ren): Jonathan (1976), Susannah (1978)

Education: Yale BA 1969, Penn Law 1974

National Service: Lt. (j.g.) US Navy ’70–’72

Career: Commercial Real Estate attorney: Thompson Hine (Cleveland) 1974–1979; Moore & Van Allen (Charlotte) 1979–present. Now of counsel.

College: Pierson

On presenting my diploma in Pierson Courtyard, Master John Hersey said, “Ted is a true gentleman, and if we had more time he could be a scholar.” I’m sure my dad began to wonder why he had so cheerfully paid my bar bills at Zeta Psi.

Ann was sitting next to me that sunny day, and mirabile dictu she still is today. We met at a Pierson mixer, with our guests bussed down from Holyoke. I wonder if they still do that. We were married on campus soon after graduation, with both the Catholic and Episcopal chaplains officiating at one of the earlier ecumenical weddings in St. Thomas More Chapel. I guess it worked. She propped me up in the early years, while I was a naval officer for two years and through Penn Law. She raised our two children while I was grinding out billable hours as a commercial real estate lawyer, first in Cleveland, then from 1979 in Charlotte. She’s still picking up behind me. I couldn’t have done it without her.

Law practice was good to me, but in my mid-50s Ann and I counted our shekels and decided we could choose between more money or more time. We opted for the latter, retired early, and never looked back. My firm has let me stay on the books “of counsel,” which protects my ego.

We split our time among Charlotte, a Manhattan apartment, and a farm hidden deep in the mountains of southwest Virginia. Three completely different places and lifestyles keep us alert. We’ve always traveled, and still do.

In New York it has been a joy to reconnect with classmate Doug Ousley (also our rector at Church of the Incarnation on Madison Avenue), freshman-year roommate Charlie Gaffney, and occasionally Richard Brodhead. I regret that other Yale contacts have been sparse, though I enjoyed doing admissions interviews for many years.

Does anyone else think it’s crowded in here? Among all the changes in our world, you may not have noticed that the population of the United States has more than doubled since we were born. When you take a transcontinental flight you see that we have plenty of open space, but most people (like me) have chosen to jam themselves into cities. Raises a lot of questions for which I have no answers, so I guess Master Hersey was right.