Gleanings from an Unplanned Life

I was born in an elevator in New York City’s Women’s Hospital in the early hours of March 9, 1923. That was the first of a series of unplanned, unanticipatable events that have shaped my life. It was also a rather unceremonious way to enter the world. I wouldn’t have entered it at all, however, had it not been for an allergy gene that caused my paternal grandfather, who was beset by asthma, to abandon Canada for the starker landscape of south Texas. At least it seems...
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I was born in an elevator in New York City’s Women’s Hospital in the early hours of March 9, 1923. That was the first of a series of unplanned, unanticipatable events that have shaped my life. It was also a rather unceremonious way to enter the world. I wouldn’t have entered it at all, however, had it not been for an allergy gene that caused my paternal grandfather, who was beset by asthma, to abandon Canada for the starker landscape of south Texas. At least it seems unlikely that my father would have courted my New Orleans mother if he had been reared in Canada.   I grew up in a small rural community located in the northwest corner of Connecticut beyond commuting range from anywhere. I loved the life there; and while bobbing around the Pacific as a naval officer in World War II, I decided on a career as a country lawyer. After four years learning the trade at a New Haven law firm in preparation for a move to the country, I was lured away by my father and found myself working for a family business headquartered in New York City. Then through a series of wildly improbable circumstances, beginning with the decision of my brother Bill to run for the office of mayor of New York City on the strict understanding that he could not win, I have found myself among the very few who have served in high positions in all three branches of the federal government; in my case, as a senator, an under secretary of state, and, most recently, as an appellate judge.