Legal News

The Most Senior Senior Counsel? A Chat With Hazard Gillespie

By Dan Slater

Last month, the Law Blog took a long weekend and trained it up to Keene Valley, which is nestled in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, to celebrate our grandparents’ 65th wedding anniversary. (Happy anniversary, G & G!) Grandpa retired from medicine a little more than 30 years ago, and now, at 93, he stays healthy by, among other things, reading widely, wielding an axe from time to time and tending his vegetable patch.

To be honest, it never occurred to us to ask whether the LB’s grandpa had a law-firm counterpart – until we stumbled upon Hazard Gillsespie. On Saturday, Gillespie, who in 1934 became Davis Polk’s first summer law clerk, celebrated his 98th birthday. Some 75 years later, he’s still at it.

Recently, we caught up with Gillespie (Yale, Yale Law), who was taking a couple weeks of vacation at his summer house in Rhode Island to relax and throw himself a birthday party.

Hi Hazard. Happy birthday. Sounds like you’ve got a nice view from where you’re sitting. Can you describe it?

Life couldn’t be better. I’m in Little Compton, Rhode Island, looking at Cuttyhunk, the southernmost tip of the Elizabeth Islands. We’re on the Buzzard’s Bay side. On other side is Martha’s Vineyard.

Tell us a bit about what life is like back in New York.

Well, in 1977 I left the city and moved to Piermont, overlooking the Hudson. I go into the office every day. I take the bus across the Tappan Zee Bridge, ride the Metro-North train from Tarrytown to Grand Central. Then I’m not a block from Davis Polk’s office. I’ve been married for 11 years to Adelma Park.

Do you have any children?

I’ve got two children living. Jane, the current president of the U.S. Tennis Association, and Sam. He was the general counsel of Mobile, before it merged with Exxon. Then he became GC of Unocal. Today, he’s the chief legal officer of Cobalt, a company exploring in the gulf of Mexico.

Do you play any sports?

My big sport is sailing. Although years ago, I did a great deal of skiing. In 1936, after I graduated from law school, I qualified for the U.S. Olympics skiing squadron that went out for training at Mount Rainier. I didn’t go out because my then-father-in-law asked me, “Are you going to be a lawyer or a ski bum?” That shook me up. But I still ski. If the weather is decent, I put on a pair of cross-country skis and ski across the Hudson River. That’s how I attained my years!

So tell us, what was it like to be a summer intern at Davis Polk in 1934?

I was the first person they accepted who was not yet a summer associate. I was taken on as a substitute for messengers. But then I was able to get some library work, and I worked on the famous case of Erie v. Tompkins, which had just started. Three years later, when I came back to the firm, cert had just been granted. I Shepardized all of the cases that went into the Supreme Court brief.

Was Erie the biggest case you worked on?

No, I think the most important case, in terms of my relationship to the firm, was the investigation of the mid-air collision over the Grand Canyon of a United plane and a TWA plane in 1956. All 128 people aboard the two planes died.

I went down into the canyon in a helicopter and found the wingtip of the United plane and it was flown to Washington to be examined by the FAA. A year later, the conclusion was reached that the United plane had overtaken the TWA aircraft. That was written up in the The Wall Street Journal in 2006, which was the 50th anniversary of the crash. [Click here for the article.]

Did you ever work outside Davis Polk?

I was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York for the last two and a half years of the Eisenhower administration.

Do you still bill hours?

I don’t keep track of my time, thank God. I do pro bono work. One of the things that I have worked very hard on is the American Skin Association. My son-in-law, who commanded a fighter squadron in the Vietnam War, got a very bad sunburn on the back of his neck from flying more than 50 missions in a plane with a clear cockpit. After the war, he came down with a bad sunburn that we didn’t recognize as a melanoma. Today, a melanoma is one of the most terrible skin diseases that mankind faces. He died of this melanoma.

In addition, I’m very much opposed to the construction of an additional bridge across the Tappan Zee, from Tarrytown to South Nyack. I’ve got a group of people who are opposing this.

Best of luck on those projects, Hazard. And here’s to many more happy and healthy years.

Thank you very much. It was nice speaking.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 14, 2008 (boomark / email).