Ellen Gesmer
— 10th — (1981) Ronald Reagan
I'm not sure I would have predicted ten years ago that I would become a somewhat fanatic New Yorker. We are settled into a brownstone in Greenwich Village, and hope never to leave for long. Otherwise, I'm relatively unchanged. I find my work as a lawyer for poor people in Bedford- Stuyvesant satisfying, intellectually, personally and politically; I expect that if I leave it, it will be for a job that offers the same satisfactions (and doubtless, the same difficulties and frustrations). My major complaint is that involvement with my work doesn't leave me as much time as I'd like for my husband and for friends, but we still find time to enjoy ballet and opera and other delights of city life.
— 15th — (1986) Ronald Reagan
When I was pregnant with our son, and the director of litigation at Bedford-Stuyvesant Legal Services, I confidently told everyone that I would be back at work part time in three months and full time in six months. I did go back part time, but I've never gone back to full-time work, and it's been wonderful.
I loved my clients and my work in legal services, but eventually decided I needed a change. I taught in the clinical program at the University of Michigan Law School for a year while my husband was a visitor on their faculty. We realized after a few months that we missed New York and friends, and returned in the spring of 1984, with three-week-old Laura, and her big brother, a native New Yorker.
I am now an associate, half-time, at a small, progressive and eclectic law firm in mid-town. It's a good arrangement for the firm and for me. I have as much responsibility as I want, but the freedom to refuse to take on more work than I can handle comfortably. These are people I can learn from and enjoy working with, and most of the work is politically comfortable: much of it is civil rights, or representing non-profits or tenants' groups.
I am lucky to have a husband who enjoys spending time with our children as much as I do. Our children wake smiling, and bring smiles to everyone who sees them. We are in no rush for them to grow up, and are horrified by the academic trend of pre-school education. We are enjoying raising them in the city, especially balanced by frequent weekends on Shelter Island. We find the combination works well, and expect to stay in the city for many years to come.
— 20th — (1991) George H. W. Bush
I don't think I would have predicted twenty years ago the balance I've struck between home and work. I think I thought then that the arrival of children would slow down my work pace only briefly. I've been happily surprised to find that I don't want that to be the case, and haven't let it be. After Toby was born, I worked part-time, and occasionally not at all, for five and a half years, until I formed my own law firm three years ago, a setting that still gives me a lot of flexibility. We love raising our kids, Toby, now nine, and Laura, now six, in New York. They attend a progressive school three blocks from our home, which is so wonderful that they complain about school holidays. They enjoy what the city has to offer; both study dance at the Joffrey, both enjoy the choices the city gives them. We're fortunate to have a country home in Shelter Island, where, thanks to the flexibility of law teaching, my husband, Alan Hyde, is able to spend the whole summer with the kids. There, the kids have the freedom they can't have in the city.
Although running a small law firm doesn't let me spend the summer in Shelter Island, it has its compensations. My partner and I share a commitment to high quality legal work, progressive politics and representing individuals, and running a congenial, relaxed office. We represent a lot of tenants, especially loft tenants, and other people with real estate problems; we represent artists and small businesses; we do family and divorce law; we represent sexual assault victims in damage actions; and we do miscellaneous general litigation work as our clients need it. It's varied, highly emotional, personal and political; we work with NOW Legal Defense Fund, loft tenant organizations and similar groups. I was also appointed last spring as a public member to the Rent Guidelines Board, the rent setting body in New York City; the landlords' association immediately, and unsuccessfully, sued to unseat me.
My husband and I have devoted much time in the last two years to organizing a Havurah, an informal Jewish congregation organized around a Hebrew school and monthly family events. It has helped us to define a community for ourselves in the city, based around our neighborhood and our children, as well as forcing us to define what role we want religion to play in our lives. It's been a rewarding process.
I expect I will miss the reunion because Alan is speaking at a Law and Society conference in Amsterdam, and we hope to all be there. The only reunions I've attended were the Volunteer Teachers for Africa Twentieth reunion several years ago and the Strike reunion in 1989. I guess I define my Harvard experience most clearly through those experiences. But I would love to see old friends.
— 30th — (2001) George W. Bush
Five years ago, when the reunion form arrived, my father had just been diagnosed with stomach cancer, just as we were all beginning to come to terms with my mother's death only six months before. I had no room in my life just then for reflection, and I tossed the form. Now, after four years with no parents, I can pause and look back. I am blessed with a marriage of almost twenty-five years to a rare creature, a truly feminist man. Alan is a law professor, intellectual, and wonderful father. Our son, Toby, headed west last year for Stanford, after deciding that kids there were as smart as at East Coast schools but had more fun; his spring break playing rugby in Fiji certainly bears out his theory. Our daughter, Laura, a junior in high school, loves dance and backpacking and physics and writing and is starting the college process with poise and grace.
Professionally, I enjoy my little but growing law firm, where we specialize in what I call emotional law — a mix of divorce and other family law, miscellaneous litigation, and representing tenants, artists, and victims of sexual assault. I stay sane by being with my family, baking, doing yoga and spending time with friends, including at the wonderful, irregular '71 New York area dinners.
— 35th — (2006) George W. Bush
In 2002, after my daughter started college, I decided it was time for me to pursue something new too. I plunged into the process of becoming a New York City civil court judge. After a year of intense political activity, I was elected in November 2003. I left my law firm of sixteen years with some sadness, but I'm thoroughly enjoying my new career. I feel that I can make a difference in the lives of many of the people who appear before me; at the same time, being on the bench presents new intellectual challenges every day.
Meanwhile, the rest of the family has made changes too. Toby graduated from Stanford in 2003 and has started a career as a radio sports broadcaster. Laura is midway through Stanford and is just completing a year off, dividing her time between leading outdoor trips and working in an HIV education program in Tanzania. My husband has become increasingly interested in issues of international labor regulation, and is enjoying a year of teaching at Cornell Law School.
— 40th — (2011) Barack Obama
By far the major change in my life in the last five years is my separation in late 2009 from Alan Hyde, my husband of thirty-three years. The short version is that we had both been unhappy for a substantial period, and I can now say with certainty that I'm happier than I've been in years. I hope that the same is true of him.
Our children, although completely taken by surprise, have handled it reasonably well, since they are much more immersed in their own lives than ours. Laura is halfway through medical school at UCSF, which she chose for its clinical orientation and thoughtful approach to education. She and her partner, Erin Hult, a Stanford-trained engineer, have now been together for several years, and I hope that they will eventually find their way back to the East Coast. Toby is the broadcaster for the Savannah Sand Gnats, the single A team of the Mets. He writes a blog about the Mets minor league system, found at www.metsminorleagueblog.com, and also broadcast basketball for Savannah State last winter. It's not an easy career, but he does enjoy having an office in a baseball stadium.
I continue to love being a judge. Since 2006, I've sat in the matrimonial division of New York State Supreme Court, where I preside over divorce cases and everything that goes with them: domestic violence, custody, distribution of property. I also divorce gay people married in other states, even though I cannot yet perform gay marriages. These contradictions can't last forever. I have come to appreciate even more in the last few years my many wonderful friends, including the Radcliffe '71 crowd that gathers frequently for dinner. It also gives me great pleasure to share my home with old friends and to show off the joys of living in Greenwich Village.
— 45th — (2016) Barack Obama
My daughter, Laura, and her wonderful wife, Erin, are responsible for some of the happiest and most memorable moments of the last few years: their marriage in 2013 and the birth of their son, Simon, last September. He is filled with laughter and curiosity, a reflection of the joy his mothers share in him. Although they live in Oakland, where Laura is in the middle of a surgery residency and Erin works as an engineer for Facebook, I have managed to visit many times since Simon's birth, and I'm looking forward to their relocating east before long. My son, Toby, after twelve years broadcasting baseball, football, and basketball, decided to return to his undergraduate interest in economics and the environment. Last fall he began to pursue a master's in public policy at Columbia. My hope is that his commitment to creating progressive and rational transportation and energy policies will lead him to a job on the East Coast, if not in New York City.
After twelve years as a trial judge, mostly presiding over divorces, I was appointed in February to the Appellate Division, New York's midlevel appeals court. I am enjoying the breadth of the work and the challenge of crafting decisions with colleagues. As a bonus, the courtroom is a sumptuous work of early-twentieth-century craftsmanship, and my chambers on the thirty-ninth floor have a glorious view of lower Manhattan.
In the fall of 2013 I had the good fortune to meet Joseph Lubiner at a Shabbat dinner sponsored by my synagogue. We soon learned that we had met thirty-seven years before, when Joseph, as a young architect, participated, on behalf of the Massachusetts Governor's Office, in proceedings in federal court about the standard of care at the state institutions, held before Judge Tauro, whom I clerked for after law school. This was the first of many shared experiences, and our relationship took off from there. Now he and Toby and I share our home very comfortably. I maintain contact with Harvard mainly through the New York Radcliffe '71 dinner group and some other close friendships. I look forward to seeing more old friends in the fall.
— 50th — (2021) Joseph Biden
When I started thinking about writing this, I thought it would be easy: just talk about how lucky I am to revel in my family, friends, and work, and the pleasures of life in Manhattan. But the events of the last few months, and the reading and thinking that I am now immersed in, cause me to understand more deeply than ever before the extent to which my personal happy circumstances reflect not luck, but white privilege and our country's cruel history. As I try to figure out how to make these concepts part of my life every day, I am guided by the thoughtful and ethical lives that my adult children are each creating. I also feel intensely how much I miss our classmate Suzanne Lynn, whose candor and clarity illuminated every conversation.