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1980s Class Notes
1980
Leslie Jones has been named senior vice president, general counsel of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, a not-for-profit pediatric health care organization, where she will oversee the legal services and risk management departments. Jones has a personal connection to Children’s; her daughter, who was cared for there after suffering a traumatic brain injury as a teenager, is now a junior at Stanford University. Jones was most recently of counsel with Chorey, Taylor & Feil’s health care practice.
Sally C. Merrell has been named in Best Lawyers in America 2009 in trusts and estates. She is a partner with Quarles & Brady in the Milwaukee, Wis., office, where she focuses on estate planning, probate, and charitable gift planning.
W. David Paxton has been named to Virginia’s Legal Elite by Virginia Business magazine. He was also selected for inclusion in the Best Lawyers in America 2009 in labor and employment law. He is a partner in the Roanoke, Va., office of Gentry Locke Rakes & Moore.
1981
John Baker Boatwright III passed away on February 9 in Richmond, Va., leaving behind his wife, Allison, son, John Baker Boatwright IV, and a multitude of close, loving friends.
Boatwright practiced law at Morchower, Luxton and Whaley until 1985. He practiced solo from 1986 to 1988. In 1988 he formed the law practice of Boatwright and Linka and practiced there until September 2002.
From September 2002 to December 2007 he was named the first Capital Defender for the Central Region of the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission. From January 2008 through August 2008, he was Special Capital Counsel of the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission.
Boatwright was an adjunct faculty member for VCU from 1988 to 1998 and again in 2002. He was a member of the Richmond Criminal Bar Association, serving as its president in 1988; a member of the Virginia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, where he was president in 1999 and served on the Board of Directors from 1996 to 2000; a member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association.
David P. Ferretti has been named among Best Lawyers in America 2009 in corporate law and mergers & acquisitions law. He is in charge of lawyer administration in the Charleston, W. Va. office of Spilman Thomas & Battle.
William M. Herlihy has been named in Best Lawyers in America 2009 for corporate law, energy law, and natural resources law. He is a member with Spilman Thomas & Battle in Charleston, W.Va.
Edward “Ned” Kelly was named chief financial officer at Citigroup. On January 16, Citi announced senior management changes to support the company’s business realignment of Citi into Citicorp and Citi Holdings. Kelly was previously head of global banking of Citi Private Bank and president and chief executive officer of Citi Alternative Investments in Citi’s Institutional Clients Group. He is a member of Citi’s senior leadership and executive committees. Prior to joining CAI in February 2008, Kelly was a managing director at The Carlyle Group, a private investment firm.
Blaine A. Lucas has been selected for inclusion in Best Lawyers in America 2009 in the areas of land use and zoning law, and municipal law. He is in the Pittsburgh office of Babst, Calland, Clements and Zomnir.
1982
William B. Baker has been elected to the Council of the American Bar Association’s section of science & technology law. He is a partner at Wiley Rein in Washington, D.C.
David Beck has been named chief legal officer of the Golden Living family of health care companies, with his principal office in Washington, D.C.
William H. Hines has been named to New Orleans CityBusiness’ 2009 Leadership in Law. Honorees are selected based on their contributions to the legal profession and their contributions to the community. He is listed in Best Lawyers in America 2009 in banking law, corporate law, insurance law, international trade and finance law, project finance law, and real estate law. Hines is a managing partner in the New Orleans, La., office of Jones Walker.
Jennifer Jordan McCall enjoys working in trusts and estates with Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman in both Silicon Valley and New York City. Her husband, Jim, works in investments in new technologies at Intel. “We love playing golf in Scotland and Ireland in the summer.” The couple has four children, two at Princeton and two high school seniors.
In November, Cleo E. Powell was sworn in as the newest judge of the Virginia Court of Appeals. She previously served as a general district and circuit judge in Chesterfield County.
James S. Ryan III has been selected for inclusion in Best Lawyers in America 2009 for corporate law and mergers and acquisitions law. He is a partner in the Dallas office of Jackson Walker.
1983
In December, Mark A. Bradley received an Assistant Attorney General’s Award for supporting the national security mission. A member of the federal government’s senior executive service, Bradley heads the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Intelligence Oversight Section.
California plaintiffs’ attorneys Mike Danko and Terry O’Reilly have announced that they are ending a 14-year partnership on April 1. Danko is establishing the Danko Law Firm and will continue to focus on aviation cases, cases involving catastrophic injury, and business torts.
Betty S. W. Graumlich has been made partner at Reed Smith in the Richmond office. Her focus is on employment and labor law.
Dustin F. Hecker has been named co-chair of the litigation section of the Boston Bar Association. He is a partner at Posternak Blankstein & Lund in the firm’s Boston, Mass. office.
R. Marshall Merriman, Jr., is a managing director at BlackRock Kelso Capital, a business development corporation headquartered in Manhattan that provides financing to privately held middle market companies. He lives in Richmond with his wife, Sarah, and daughters, Claire and Laura.
Paula Campbell Millian lives in McLean, Va., with her husband, John, and children Courtney (18), Andrew (16), and Matthew (14). She is a legal recruiter with Finn & Associates and specializes in the Washington, D.C. legal market.
Former Governor of Arizona Janet Napolitano is the current Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, a Cabinet-level post in President Barack Obama’s administration.
Andrew Sleigh LL.M. became a partner with Levy & McRae, a Glasgow-based boutique firm of solicitors with an international reputation. Sleigh will establish a corporate and commercial law offering at the firm to complement its market leading litigation practice. He was previously a partner with Burness, a leading commercial legal firm in Scotland, for 15 years.
Steven W. Sloan has been selected for inclusion in Best Lawyers in America 2009 in labor and employment law. He is a partner in the Dallas, Tex., office of Thompson & Knight.
Scott C. Thompson has been selected by Best Lawyers in America 2009 in real estate law. Thompson practices with Lowndes, Drosdick, Doster, Kantor & Reed of Orlando, Fla.
Craig Owen White has been elected to the board of directors of the International Senior Lawyers Project. He is a partner with Hahn Loeser & Parks in the Cleveland, Ohio, office, where he focuses on publicly traded corporations and high-growth, privately owned concerns.
1984 
In September, ForKids (a Norfolk, Va., non-profit that helps homeless families) opened the Marie and Paul Finch Center for Families and Children. “We have both been very involved over the last three years with ForKids, and are privileged to work with a group of caring, professional individuals who achieve real long-term success in the local fight against homelessness,” writes Marie Achtemeier Finch.
Chip English joined Ober|Kaler’s Washington, D.C., office in the commercial litigation and government relations practice.
J. Thomas Francis, Jr., is a member of the American College of Bond Counsel. The College recognizes lawyers who have established reputations for their skill, experience, and ethical conduct in the practice of tax-exempt bond law. Francis is a partner in the Birmingham, Ala., office of Balch & Bingham, where he specializes in public finance law. He represents housing authorities, municipalities, counties, boards of education, and various other governmental entities, as well as banks, developers, and bond underwriters. He has been included in Best Lawyers in America 2009, recognized in Alabama Super Lawyers 2008, and named among Birmingham Business Journal’s Best of the Bar 2007 in Public Finance. He lives in Mountain Brook with his wife, Patty Francis ’86, who practices energy law with El Paso Corporation, and his son, Joey (16), and daughter, Katherine (12).
Timothy B. Goodell has been appointed senior vice president and general counsel of Hess Corporation, a global integrated energy company headquartered in New York. Goodell had been partner with White & Case, joining the firm in 1984.
Cynthia C. Hogan is serving as counsel to Vice President Joseph Biden. She has been a legal advisor to Biden for almost 20 years, having joined his staff in 1991 as counsel for constitutional law on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. She became staff director and chief counsel while he was chairman.
Michael J. Lockerby, a partner with Foley & Lardner, has been named chair of the litigation department in the firm’s Washington, D.C., office.
Mark Mamantov was vice-chair for the Tax and Securities Law Institute held March5–6 in Orlando, Fla. The institute is a technical seminar presented by the National Association of Bond Lawyers and is for the most advanced practitioners in the field of tax and securities law for public finance. He had previously chaired NABL seminars on Municipal Bond Law and Bond Attorneys’ Workshop. He is a founding partner of Bass, Berry & Sims in the Knoxville, Tenn., office, where he focuses his practice on financial transactions, with special emphasis on tax-exempt finance, commercial lending, and real estate. He was selected for inclusion in Business Tennessee’s Best Lawyers 2009 in the area of public finance.
David M. Rosenberg has been selected for inclusion in Best Lawyers in America 2009 in the area of non-profit/charities law. He was recently named a member of the Catholic Foundation’s Board of Trustees, where he will serve a three-year term. He is a partner in the Dallas, Tex., office of Thompson & Knight.
1985
After working at The American Lawyer magazine for ten years as editor of two of the company’s magazines, John Close started his own in 1999. The M&A Journal covers mergers and acquisitions, including the Delaware courts, proxy fights, prominent jurists and dealmakers, and regulatory issues. Close lives in Park Hill in Yonkers, N.Y., overlooking the Palisades and the Hudson River.
In October, Martha N. Donovan moderated a seminar for environmental professionals entitled “New Jersey Going Greener: What to Expect from the New Jersey Energy Master Plan.” The program offered insights on the proposed plan, in particular aspects related to sustainability, site remediation, and greenhouse gas reduction. Donovan is co-chair of the Norris McLaughlin & Marcus environmental group in the firm’s Bridgewater, N.J., office, where she focuses her practice on environmental law and complex litigation with an emphasis on the defense of environmental property damage and toxic tort claims.
In October, Daniel J. Dunne joined Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe as a partner, where he continues his complex commercial litigation practice, representing companies, directors, officers, and major accounting firms in securities and corporate governance litigation, internal investigations, and class action disputes. He has particular expertise in matters involving financial institutions with significant mortgage-related assets. He continues to live in Seattle, Wa., with his wife of 20 years, Layne Presho, and their two daughters, Carly and Mallory.
In March, University of Tokyo Law Professor Yuji Iwasawa S.J.D. was elected as the chairperson of the Human Rights Committee under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights for a term of two years. The Committee meets three times a year for three weeks each time in Geneva and New York.
Paul Lombardo is a professor of law in the Center for Law, Health and Society at the Georgia State University College of Law. His book, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court and Buck v. Bell, was published in 2008. In February, Lombardo traveled to Rome to speak at a conference at the Vatican on “New Frontiers of Genetics and the Danger of Eugenics,” sponsored by the Pontifical Academy for Life. (See In Print)
1986
Randolph Beales remains a judge on the Court of Appeals of Virginia. “The big news in our family is that my wife, Julie, and I had twins, born last year. They are our fourth and fifth children and are just a joy. We now have two sons and three daughters. (The girls won out on the ‘last play of the game!’)”
George Doumar’s firm, the Doumar Law Group, just celebrated its fifth anniversary in Arlington, Va. The firm primarily handles business litigation. Doumar is the father of four teenagers, Lia (17), Celine (16), Albert (15), and Karim (13). He coaches Karim’s little league basketball team—which at one point had a 22-game winning streak.
Bill Eigner was recently noted among those destined to be newsmakers in 2009 by San Diego Metropolitan magazine, which referred to him as the “go-to guy for emerging companies.” He was also selected for the Daily Transcript’s San Diego County Top Attorneys for 2008 for corporate transactional law. This involved a lengthy peer voting process that asked San Diego County lawyers to name those among their peers who were worthy of recognition.
Judy Gleason is thoroughly enjoying a position as ‘in-house’ counsel for the New Jersey Department of Agriculture. The work deals with a myriad of issues, including animal rights, dairy pricing, and general regulations.
Edward Rogers has joined Arent Fox as a partner in the Washington, D.C., office. He practices in the area of real estate development and commercial finance, with a focus on the development of large-scale, mixed-use projects.
1987
Doug Beck lives in Denver, Colo., with his wife, Karen, and their daughter, Dori (4). He is currently vice president, deputy general counsel (global) for Molson Coors Brewing Company.
Elizabeth Finn Johnson has been named chair of the board of the Study Hall, a non-profit after-school program that serves kindergarten through fifth grade children and families in the Peoplestown community of South Atlanta. She has served on the board since 2004. Finn Johnson also serves on the boards of the Women’s Resource Center to End Domestic Violence, Street Law Inc., and the Atlanta Bar Association Foundation. She is senior litigation and employment counsel with the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta.
David Keesler was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Charlotte Latin School Distinguished Alumnus Award. He currently serves as a U.S. Magistrate Judge in Charlotte, N.C. He and his wife, Susan, have two daughters, ten and eight.
1988
Bill Berlin has been selected as one of ten lawyers from the whole nation to be included in Nightingale’s Healthcare News 2008 ranking of “Outstanding Healthcare Antitrust Lawyers.” Berlin is a principal in Ober|Kaler’s health law and complex civil litigation groups.
Julian Abele Cook, Jr., LL.M., senior judge of the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, Detroit, received the prestigious Honorable William J. Brennan, Jr., Award at the 28th Annual National Trial Advocacy College at the Law School in January. The Brennan Award, named after Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., of the Supreme Court of the United States, recognizes outstanding trial lawyers and members of the judiciary for their invaluable contributions to the Trial Advocacy College and the legal profession.
Brant O. Gardner has been recognized as a “2008 Five Star Best in Client Satisfaction-Health Manager” and was recognized in the October issue of Indianapolis Monthly. He is a partner at Baker & Daniels, practicing in the trusts and estates group in the Indianapolis, Ind. office.
Pete Johnson transferred to the environmental team after 20 years on the litigation team at Hunton & Williams in Richmond, Va. He will focus on environmental litigation after making the move.
Matthew Myers retired from the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps as a lieutenant colonel in June of 2007. Myers is now a diplomat assigned to the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. In July he will be assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Manila, the Philippines.
J. Marshall Page is a partner at Jones Walker in New Orleans. Page is the practice group leader of the business and banking department.
1989
David N. Cohan, an attorney with the Virginia law firm of Gentry Locke Rakes & Moore in Roanoke, has been selected to serve a three-year term on the Intellectual Property & Information Technology Section Council of the Virginia Bar Association. Cohan’s term took effect January 23 during the Association’s Annual Meeting.
Keith H. Johnson has been named one of Business North Carolina magazine’s Legal Elite in the environmental category. He is a partner with Poyner Spruill in Raleigh, N.C.
