Died: March 12, 2018
Born in Washington DC, Edward C. “Bud” Marschner entered Yale from Fox Lane School in Bedford, NY. After graduating from Yale, where he resided in Davenport College, majored in American Studies, and was active in WYBC, Bud won a Fulbright Grant and during the year following he taught English (Bud thought “American” was more apropos on account of his accent) to lycée students in France.
As Bud put it, his year in France changed everything. When he came back to New Haven to attend Yale Law School, he was definitely and unapologetically Europeanized, having found the quality-of-life life in France much more sensible than in the United States. He couldn’t wait to get back to France. Upon graduation from law school Bud joined Cleary Gottlieb, an international law firm with an outstanding Paris office, finally being dispatched to Paris after 15 months in New York. He stayed in Paris four years. After a few other overseas assignments Bud eventually returned to the firm’s Washington DC office but found Washington no longer appealing and left to join a small international business law firm in New York, then called Fox Glynn and Melamed, where he remained thirty-four years.
Perhaps as much as anyone in our Class, Bud seems successfully to have woven (not just balanced) his professional life into the fabric of his personal and family life. Always a lover and patron of the arts, he made his residence choices, both in Paris and New York City, to be close to artists and architects, the buildings in which he and his family lived probably not candidates for photographs in fancy magazines. When first assigned to Paris, for instance, Bud lived in the Marais district, what the New York Times called a “fancy slum.” His closest friends were the architects designing Centre Pompidou, for whom he acted as lawyer. In 1976 Bud bought a loft in an empty neighborhood called SoHo, again for its proximity to artists and architects. Professionally, while serving successfully as a corporate attorney for large companies, Bud continued to counsel friends in the arts (including journalists, architects, and photographers) as well as French and Italian family-owned industrial groups to protect their rights and advance their causes in North America.
Bud cherished his one son, Eli, born in 1985, and the love of his life, Francine Harris, whom he married in 1997. He was also genuinely proud of his association with the Yale Class of 1966. Bud suffered a terrible motorcycle accident, being clipped by a deer while out for a leisurely late afternoon cruise in 2015, damaging six vertebrae and five ribs with seven fractures. Nevertheless, following months of rehabilitation and surviving and defeating pain pills, Bud continued to travel the globe whenever he had the chance, including spending two summer months every summer at his home at Auriac du Perigord in France’s Dordogne Region. He passed away from acute pulmonary edema March 12, 2018, while in Thailand.
One has a vision of Bud smiling at many friends, stretching his arms across the Atlantic, one leg in New York, the other in France.
Un homme du monde, gentil et aimant….
Cameron Smith
Tom Porter remembers:
In the summer of 1965, Bud, John Meisel and I lived together in Washington while Bud worked for Senator Jake Javits of New York, John for Representative Thomas Curtis of Missouri, and I for Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas. Both Bud and John owned red Chevy convertibles, which were critical to our social life. One Saturday, Bud and I with our dates, traveled in Bud’s convertible to canoe the Shenandoah River with the canoe in the convertible with us. On our way home, we were given a ticket for an obstructed view, even though I was acting as the periscope to guide Bud in his driving. Two summers later, Zozie, Bud and I travelled around the Gaspe peninsula in Quebec, camping out. I only regret that we did not see each other as much as I would have liked after those great summers together.