Page 18 - NYLS Magazine • 2015 • Vol. 34, No. 1

Eulogy for Kathleen Grimm, Deputy Chancellor of Operations at the New York City Department of Education, Member of the New York Law School Board of Trustees, and Graduate of the Class of 1980
Delivered by
Anthony W. Crowell Dean and President New York Law School
February 21, 2015
Good morning everyone. I’m Anthony Crowell, Dean and President of New York Law School.
On behalf of Kathleen’s New York Law School family, including Board Chair Arthur Abbey, Board Vice Chair Jerry Crotty (who was one of Kathleen’s closest friends), our other Trustees, faculty, staff, students, and alumni, I extend our profound sorrow and heartfelt condolences to the Grimm family.
What can one say on a day when Mayors and Schools Chancellors, past and present—as well as the nation’s largest municipal workforce and a Law School community—all are mourning the loss of one of their very best?
Kathleen was an extraordinary person.
She served our incredible City, and Law School community, with honor and distinction.
She was a proud New Yorker, a proud New York Law School alumna, and she was universally loved.
Her influence, and the legacy she leaves, will be felt for generations.
I knew Kathleen for 14 years, first when we worked together in City government, and then when I joined the Law School, working with her in her role as one of the most prominent and active members of our Board of Trustees.
She was as powerful, brilliant, bold, and wise, as she was tender, caring, and dryly witty.
And she was as elegant, and as fearless, as they come.
Kathleen received her Juris Doctor from NYLS and then an LL.M. degree in Tax Law from NYU. In an interview with our alumni magazine, and in typical Kathleen fashion, she said she pursued tax because it “affected everything.” Classic Kathleen!
In gathering reflections from the NYLS community about Kathleen, former Dean Jim Simon wrote that he taught
her constitutional law in the late 1970s and that “she was exceptionally bright, self-assured without being arrogant, and thoroughly engaging on a personal as well as intellectual level.”
Later, as an alumna, Kathleen enjoyed great personal satisfaction from teaching a municipal finance course to our students. As Professors Carol Buckler and Mariana Hogan expressed: “Kathleen was unstinting in sharing her expertise and wisdom. In her class, she taught her students a complicated and important area of law, and inspired them with her joy in its intricacies.”
16 NEw York Law ScHooL maGazINE • 2015 • VOL. 34, NO. 1