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Bob first came to national attention when he was hired in 1989 as special counsel to the Senate Ethics Com- mittee in the case of the Keating Five – one Republican and four Democrat Senators accused of doing favors in exchange for campaign contributions from Charles H. Keating, a savings and loan executive who would later be convicted in a massive fraud scheme. Bob’s aggressive approach was widely described as having kept pressure on the Senate not to deal lightly with the cases. Four of the five were given reprimands, and Senator Alan Cran- ston, who received a severe rebuke for his behavior, soon announced his retirement. Years later, one of his targets, Senator John McCain of Arizona, paid him the highest possible compliment, hiring Bob to represent him in an unrelated matter.
Bob’s other high-profile clients included White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, New York Times reporter Judith Miller, and Marge Schott, the owner of the Cincinnati Reds. Schott was facing a lifetime ban by Major League Baseball for having made racial and eth- nic slurs; Bob negotiated a $25,000 fine and a year’s sus- pension, after which Schott was allowed to resume her favorite activity, attending games with her dog, Schottz- ie. In 2004, Miller was in jail for refusing to testify to a grand jury about a source, and hired Bob after dismiss- ing the NYT-associated lawyers who had advised her to stay in jail as long as it took to uphold the First Amend- ment. Bob crafted a complicated arrangement that al- lowed her to testify before the grand jury and get out of jail. Bob was able to do that, he said, because his duty was to represent his client, not the First Amendment.
Bob and his younger brother, William J. Bennett, made up one of the capital’s odd celebrity pairings. Bill Ben- nett has been a vocal conservative commentator who achieved prominence decrying what he perceived as
the loss of moral values in society. He served as Presi- dent Ronald Reagan’s education secretary and President George H.W. Bush’s drug czar. Bob Bennett was, in con- trast, scrupulously apolitical; his public positions were only about his clients. When he was publicly depicting President Clinton as the victim of political enemies, his brother was on the Sunday talk shows denouncing Mr. Clinton for bringing about “the trashiest moment in American presidential history.” One private activity in which they participated together was a somewhat reg- ular card game that included Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court. Bob is survived by his wife, Ellen Gil- bert, three daughters and six grandchildren.
William Deane Booth, ‘83, died November 24, 2023 at age eighty-seven, predeceased by a son and survived by his wife of sixty-six years, three other children and seven grandchildren. Bill was a lifelong Michigan man, graduating in 1959. He attended University of Detroit School of Law. Bill was an avid outdoorsman and loved to fish, hunt and enjoy the outdoors. What he enjoyed most was to share the experiences he loved, with the ones he loved. When his boys were little, he was on the Board and coached Birmingham Little League. All winter long, after a full work week, Bill would devote the weekend to the roundtrip drive up north, and the family became lifetime avid skiers. He provided his family with highlight-reel experiences, taking his ex- tended family to Hawaii, and the boys fly fishing in re- mote Alaska. Every year he’d gather family and friends at deer camp up north. For over thirty years, Ann and Bill hosted an epic tailgate in the Victor’s Lot, drawing lifetime friends for every game, and making new ones along the way.
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