ALUMNI PROFILES BY DECADE
1970s
Summer of Love
Meets Law and Order
W
hen Rick Sarner K’73 arrived at King for his first day in sixth grade, it was the 1967 “Summer of Love.” As he donned the burgundy blazer uniform with hair trimmed above the collar, Timothy Leary was advising people to “turn on, tune in, drop out.” Aretha Franklin was demanding “Respect.” John Lennon graced the cover of Rolling Stone’s first issue, and Mrs. Robinson was causing controversy. Slowly, the aesthetic of the culture infused the King campus, and by the time Sarner graduated from Middle School, the boys were sporting shaggy mop tops and frayed bell bottoms. By ninth grade, the Low-Heywood girls had moved in next door, and the schools began sharing curricula. Low-Heywood offered King students theater for the first time, and King augmented the math and science options available to Low-Heywood. Sarner joined a group of students from both schools to publish a paper called The Joint. “It was a great time to grow up,” said Sarner, a former trustee and the second of three generations in his family to attend one of King’s founding schools. “Everyone had long hair and bell bottom pants by the time I graduated. If you saw a student from behind, you couldn’t tell if they went to LowHeywood or King. But regardless of how we looked outwardly, the focus was always on getting a good education.” The counterculture revolution and the liberal arts education had a lasting impact on Sarner, who straddled conformity and autonomy in carving a career path according to his own rules. 48 Quest 2023-24
“I was always a generalist,” he said, adding that his curiosity about a wide range of topics drove his course selection when he entered Dartmouth College. “I majored in geography, which in college is less about countries and their capitals and more about exploring the impact of location on the development of different societies and countries. It provided me with the balance and diversity I was looking for.” At Dartmouth, he took a course in environmental law taught by an assistant attorney general in Vermont. “I found it fascinating,” he said. “I loved the Socratic method. I was drawn to law because it could be applied in many different ways.” He graduated from Dartmouth with a major in geography and environmental studies and headed to Hofstra University to study law. After Hofstra, he joined hundreds of lawyers in one of Manhattan’s bestknown firms, Shea & Gould. Though he had his sights on trial work, he used his career to explore different paths within the profession. For two years, he honed his litigation skills at the firm before moving to the smaller D’Amato & Lynch, joining a team of 75 attorneys and focusing on legal malpractice defense. “Legal malpractice defense work was very interesting because I was looking at the ‘case within the case’ to determine whether the lawyer had committed malpractice,” Sarner said. “To answer the question, I had to learn that practice area.” As his skills grew in range, he was attracted to smaller firms. He joined Lowenthal Landau Fischer & Ziegler, where he worked in commercial
