"Thousands of acts paving the way for the next generation" -Ari, Margot, Kaja, Tavi

Dear Vanessa,

Among the hundreds inspired to emulate your rigor, creativity, ethical standards, commitment to service, care, and personal touch (if not your energy—which could never be matched), we’re happy to count ourselves, and, of course, Kerstin. Because of you, Kerstin became an attorney, went to NYU, and became a legal services attorney.

In so many memories over so many years, from the first time I met you and Steven (this paragraph is mostly from Ari), you were not just Kerstin’s aunt and uncle, but mine, and many years and many tears later, you became Margot’s aunt and uncle, too. And since you get credit for starting Kerstin on her lawyering path, you also get credit for me ever meeting Kerstin. However, fast forwarding to the end of our time at NYU, you did not exactly express a classic “mazel tov” when Kerstin and I called you, one morning in 1995, to say we were getting married. Instead, there was a pause. And then: “WHY. WOULD YOU DO. THAT?!”

Thankfully, you’ve always afforded everyone liberty to disregard your advice. Sometimes, you outright invited that response from those of us in the next generation, or that’s how it seemed. I mean, Darrow would have been great in the different trades you used to urge him to join in lieu of college, but the main point for Darrow, for Rebecca, for all of us, was that you and Steven would be even more pleased when we charted a more personalized journey.

Your generosity and thoughtfulness have always been evident in how you’ve given of yourself to everyone whose crossed your path, be they part of your family and friends, your work, or neither. The explanations you give about the research that goes into your gifts show how you have sometimes approached gift-giving much like you approach teaching and practicing law – research and tireless efforts improve everything. For those who lived on the opposite coast from you, these explanations would typically arrive in a long email, usually in the middle of the night. Sometimes the explanations have elaborate instructions, too. In fact, while you’ve always sent e-cards since the early days in which one could do that, you’ve seemingly had some trouble abiding by your ecard platform’s word limits, so we receive both the ecard and then a much, much, much longer email, too, with the full explanation, full instructions, everything--the full Vanessa treatment. In this way, gift giving is the flip side of litigation. Freed from those pesky limits on pages or words, you’re free to give, and give.

One gift was a tea tasting in California for Kaja, Tavi, and Rebecca’s birthdays, complete with a reserved room and a staffer to help order and brew each tea perfectly. And sure enough, it came with elaborate instructions, food to pick up elsewhere on Rebecca’s route to the tea tasting, etc. But in this case the explanation was also unusually transparent in illustrating how for you, these extensive details were also partly beside the point. Mostly, you just wanted us to be together, as you made clear in the gift explanation, excerpted here:

"Dear ones, I wish we all lived in a small, remote valley where a river ran to the sea, and we could hardly avoid seeing one another every day. Humans evolved for about 190,000 years to be part of small idiosyncratic tribal hunter-gatherer bands, 100-200 people, interdependent, multigenerational, with much more direct, noncommercial connections of sharing food and water – and knowledge and skills. We mimic this in our holidays for a reason. We were never meant to try to identify with immense anonymous billions, to communicate mostly through machines, to endure constant change, to accumulate and fight over possessions. That is why, I think, we are making such a mess of things now."

You no doubt remember that the above, truly, is just an excerpt. And even the full note was not the full assignment, because you also gave us links to further reading, because, again, research and tireless efforts improve everything.

That much was clear even in visits to Hastings in the 1990s. You’d sit at the kitchen table (the dining room table being way too full of paper), look over corrections Darrow was receiving from his teacher on his writing, and you’d carefully correct the teacher’s corrections, sending back a full explanation to the teacher of any edit that had been wrong or any edit that had been missed entirely.

At all times, you’ve endlessly devoted yourself to every worthwhile cause and everyone who might benefit from your help -- even when that meant donning your academic regalia to join an NYU graduation protest (pictured above). This devotion has of course continued, right up through last year when you announced your retirement and began thinking about the clinic’s future under new leadership. And in the middle of it all, you promptly responded to our email and helped a pre-law college student who’s dear to us find a summer job at an immigration advocacy organization, one of thousands of acts paving the way for the next generation and for making the future better than today.

Through all of that, and for everything in between, your love for your family, community, and the world shines through and touches us all.

With so much love from Berkeley,
Ari, Margot, Kaja, Tavi