Barry Levin

BJ Levin writes:

I will just be returning from Hawaii when the reunion happens, but may still try to drive down for Saturday afternoon/evening activities. Unfortunate timing on my part, but my wife of nearly 35 years, Gail, and I planned this as soon as we returned from there having belatedly celebrated our 60th birthdays on the Big Island.

I have been living here in Philadelphia since graduating from law school and though I still think of myself as a Southerner, Philadelphia has been a great place to live and work. I met Gail here in my first year of practice, we married within 4½ months and raised two great daughters here in Bala Cynwyd (you may remember that name from your Esso credit card payments in the late ’60s), just outside the city. Our older daughter, Rebecca, left here for UVa (she thought about W&L, but it was too small for her) and took to the South. She married a Richmond boy and now lives and works as a C.P.A. in Raleigh, N.C. She has become quite a fisherperson ... summmer before last, she and her husband’s family caught more than 800 pounds of big eye tuna off the Carolina coast.

My younger daughter, Anna, is now a fourth-year rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, having also graduated from UVa and spent a few years after college in Boston and Israel. She is engaged and will be married here November 1.

Rebecca and a Canadian muskie

After 16 years of private law practice, I became a "reformed" lawyer, leaving billable hours behind, and joined a financial services firm started by a friend of mine and devoted to working with family-owned businesses. I was in-house counsel, led the design department and provided liason to clients’ professional advisers. Much more interesting than private practice in tax and estate and business planning. In 1998 we sold the company to Wachovia Bank’s predecessor, First Union Bank, with promises that they would allow us to ply our trade (business continuity planning, mergers and acquisitions, and investment management) as we had. So much for promises ... within a year we left and went back into our core business with far fewer employees and overhead. We continue to do this and frankly can't imagine retirement (nor do I think Gail could imagine having me home all the time).  

Since coming to Philadelphia I have remained active in one part or the other of the Jewish community, with a special devotion to Hillel. I am finishing my second term (20 years apart) as president of Hillel of Greater Philadelphia, with serves the many thousands of students on the many campuses here. I have served on the national Hillel board since before it broke off from B’nai B’rith and have finally realized that I am an “old timer,” though contact with students keeps me in touch with what is happening on campus and in young folks’ heads. Interspersed in these years, I have also been president of our synagogue, on the Federation board and so forth.

BJ, Gail, Rebecca and son-in-law Chris at a Phillies game last summer

Gail gave up her profession as a city planner to be a stay-at-home mom and now has a small cottage industry making dried pressed flower stationary and framed botanicals. She enjoys it and we grow all our own flowers and most of our vegetables in the summer. Nothing like a fresh Jersey tomato grown in Pennsylvania or blueberries right off the bush. I have collected all the “required” tools – rototiller, mulch shredder and so forth – both to have toys and to save my back. Also play tennis two to three times a week, winter and summer, and visit the gym regularly.

For many years now we go north in the summer, to the Laurentian mountains in Quebec, where we have made some good friends from Ottawa and spend time fishing, canoeing and berrypicking. Gives us (mostly Gail) a chance to keep up on our French (though a Frenchman wouldn't love Québecers’ pronunciation) and get away from the States, plus enjoy some of that really good, strong Canadian beer. If you haven’t tried an Ontario peach, which are not imported, you are missing a real treat.