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When Earl left public service in 1979, he developed a national repu- tation for his defense of white-collar clients. His clients included for- mer Attorney General (and College Past President) Griffin Bell, when he was accused of defaming an E.F. Hutton branch manager in an in- vestigative report on a check-kiting scandal; the former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, during the independent counsel Ken Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton; and Kenneth Lay, the former chairman and chief executive of the bankrupt energy firm Enron.
What an extraordinary career, especially for someone who didn’t especially want to be a lawyer. But at his memorial service, Pat wistfully posited that Earl actually achieved his dream of be- ing a teacher. Certainly the scores if not hundreds of young law- yers he mentored were taught by him. Certainly the hundreds of kids he helped with sports and other activities learned from him.
One example. The Fishing School. Earl was a fisherman – we have the pho- to of him holding a fifty-pound sailfish to prove it. But the Fishing School
is not what it sounds. It is from the adage “Give a man a fish, he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.” [Jay Leno added “Corner the market in fish, you’ll eat steak for a lifetime.”] The Fishing School provides academic after-school and summer programs for elementary and middle-school youth from underserved communities in Washington, D.C. In the late 1980s, Earl signed up to take a course at the Servant Leadership School in Washington’s Adams Morgan neighborhood, where he met Tom Lewis, a fellow student and retired police officer who had just opened a center for underpriv- ileged children on a block of Washington then known as the “worst street in America.” Earl asked if he could help, in what would become the Fishing School, of which Earl was a board member and chair for more than two decades.
As Earl and Pat were driving home after a delight- ful day in Vermont with his daughter Sarah and the grandkids, he was struck with what appeared to be a heart attack. Serendipitously, they were fewer than ten
minutes from a familiar hospital in Keene NH, where they learned that he had suffered an inoperable aortic trauma and the end would come quickly within hours or days. Earl was the one calmly reassuring shocked, devastated family mem- bers that he was okay with the news because he felt so lucky to have had a great life blessed with his beloved family and friends. He then added, in a marveling tone, “And I got lucky with my work too!”
Earl’s survivors include his wife of fifty-two years, the former Patricia Allott of Chevy Chase, Md.; his daughter, Leslie Sil- bert, a best-selling author who is finishing up the book she and Earl have been co-writing, The Missing Watergate Story, which will be published in 2023; his daughter Sarah Silbert, who teaches creative writing and English at Vermont Techni- cal College; and three grandchildren.
So, not unlike the song he liked so much, Earl went from a low-level legal job to ruling the Queen’s Navee. Not sure he wanted to be a lawyer, he became an exceptional one. Wanting to be a teacher, he succeeded beyond expectations. And he did it all with grace and humility. He was a great man. He was a nice man. He will be missed.
WINTER 2023 JOURNAL 68