William Gordon Constable

FAVORITE MEMORIES OF WILLIAMS

Transition from parietals to coed during time of great music, political turmoil, and civic action
Hank Art as mentor and boss, Sheafe Satterthwaite opening windows and seeing things anew, and the nascent Center for Environmental Studies

WILLIAMS CLUBS / ACTIVITIES

Outing Club, rugby, swimming, lacrosse, tutoring Anti-War Association, Hopkins Forest intern

CURRENT INTERESTS, PASSIONS, AND ORGANIZATIONS

Conservation consulting and teaching augment time devoted to land protection, climate action, and environmental advocacy, currently with the Trustees of Reservations (board member), the Mass Land Trust Coalition (president), the Lincoln Land Conservation Trust (president),and the Environmental League of Massachusetts (board member).

Time spent with grandkids is right up there in interest and passion, along with fly-fishing and wandering around Yellowstone Park with friends and my wife, Nancy, for a bunch of months every year.

LIFE SINCE GRADUATION

My desire to be an academic ecologist led to Yale Forestry, which waylaid me into environmental advocacy, which directed me to law school, which took me to a short-lived partnership as a real estate development specialist in a major Boston firm, from which I was inspired by single parenthood to become a long-term executive at a century-old regional commercial real estate investment, development, and management company.

Beginning in law school, I’ve had the honor of being a local elected official in my 40-year hometown of Lincoln, Mass., and appointed/ elected to numerous Boston, regional, statewide, and a few national committees, commissions, councils, and boards, mostly having to do with land use and conservation, with an interesting smattering of affordable housing, historic preservation, and transportation (including chairing the environmental oversight for the famed Big Dig). A year at Harvard as a Loeb Fellow provided perspective and depth to my work. All that was more stimulating and fun than building a few million square feet of real estate in the Boston region.

Professional life made possible hiking several mountain ranges, wilderness sea-kayaking on a few continents, playing 20 years of rugby until my knees and shoulders succumbed, going to innumerable soccer and lacrosse games involving my son, having a short stint with the World Bank when the Soviet Union dissolved, and, importantly, marrying a wonderful lady who shares my love of outdoor adventure and fly-fishing now that our knees are shot.

Spending much of the last two years in our other house near Yellowstone National Park has provided opportunity for reflection as democracy, racial equity, civility, and political honesty have been tested. The last time the crises have been like this, we were at Williams, where we made a difference. I hope that now, when most of us have the time and the wherewithal to do that again, we will.