Susan and Corbet Bryant in St. Petersburg, Russia

Corbet writes:

Upon graduation I promptly married Susan Vandiver, RMWC ’68. We will celebrate our 40th anniversary a month after the reunion. We have six daughters, five of whom are W&L graduates. Two of our five sons-in-law are also Generals. We have seven grandchildren scattered from London to Washington, D.C., to Indianapolis to Dallas. The over-under for our projected ultimate total grandchildren count is thirteen.

After obtaining my law degree from UVa, I joined the Dallas firm of Carrington, Coleman, Sloman & Blumenthal (where I had been its first summer clerk) and tried lawsuits for 35 years. I handled a broad range of business disputes, but tried and arbitrated more securities cases than anything else. Although I was usually on the defense side protecting corporate America, I did obtain the largest punitive damages award in Texas securities arbitration history a few years ago for one of my sets of clients.

In the 1990s I served on a national committee for the National Association of Securities Dealers that formulated discovery and other rules for its arbitration process.  In 2006 I switched to acting as a mediator and arbitrator as a sole proprietor to free more time for my family, travel and extensive reading.

Back row: Elise Bryant Darden, Jay Darden, Hillary Bryant Coyle, Mary Catherine “Cappen” Bryant Lynn, Adrienne Bryant Wooldridge and Zach Wooldridge. Front: Robin Bryant Dawson and Paige Bryant (to become Paige Douglass on August 30). Everyone in the photo but Cappen is a W&L graduate.

My second business (I continue to persuade the IRS) is owning and racing thoroughbred horses, with the attendant ups and downs which can occur very close together. The best horse I have owned through the years, a filly named Palace Rumor, narrowly avoided being killed in September 2005 by a tornado that destroyed my trainer's barn at Ellis Park in western Kentucky. The stable cat, Braveheart, managed to point out to rescuers another horse buried under the rubble and as a result was nominated for U.S. “Cat of the Year.” The following month we had the pleasure of attending the Breeders Cup at Lone Star Park near Dallas with numerous bigwigs in boxes surrounding ours including the 17th Lord Derby of the United Kingdom whose magnificent mare Ouija Board won.

The past 40 years have been wonderful for me and I consider W&L to have been the springboard. We look forward to the reunion.