My sisters and I always loved it when my mom and dad invited our Aunt Joanie and Uncle Michael over for dinner. Aunt Joanie, thanks to her extraordinary sense of humor and her hilarious laugh, was the source of superb, rib-tickling entertainment—-and Uncle Michael was our “Uncle Monkey,” the larger-than-life man who was always kidding around with us and playing football with us in the back yard.
With Uncle Monk, we always knew we were in the presence of a New York giant. He was the famous lawyer in the family—-he studied law as an undergrad at Yale (while playing tight end on the football team), then was a pilot in the United Staes Air Force before going on to earn his degree from Harvard Law School in 1960.