In Memoriam: Jeannot de Cuba

When We Were the Youngsters

When many of us started in this profession, we were the youngsters. Starting out as a young lawyer was different then. There were the senior lawyers, the established names of the profession, people we knew about long before we could claim to know them personally. We learned from them, but we were also expected to go meet them. Some of our bosses and mentors would quite literally send us around: go introduce yourself to the firm of lawyer X, go meet the firm of lawyer Y, let them know who you are, and show your respect. Many of us had to make those rounds.

And then there would often be a proper cocktail, a proper reception, to introduce and welcome the new lawyer to the legal community. That was how you entered the profession. Not simply by being admitted to the Bar, but by being introduced to the people who were already part of it. You learned who they were, and they learned who you were. Those rounds don't seem to happen much anymore, and sadly neither do many of those receptions. Perhaps it is simply a sign of the times, but I do think something was lost along the way.

Sometimes, when I walk into a courtroom and look around at all the young lawyers, I realize I have absolutely no idea who some of them are. Earlier this year, I was at a Bar meeting when one of the lawyers mentioned that he was 24 years old. I looked at him and thought to myself:

“Son, I have been practicing law longer than you have been alive”.

It was one of those slightly uncomfortable reminders that we are no longer the youngsters. Somewhere along the way, without any formal announcement and certainly without a cocktail reception, we became the senior lawyers.

This Time, One of Our Own

That realization makes the passing of our colleague mr. Jean Maurice "Jeannot" de Cuba, at only 59, particularly difficult. For many of us, and certainly for me, this is the first time we have been confronted not with the passing of one of our elders, but with the passing of one of our peers. That distinction may seem small, but it isn't.

Jeannot was one of us.

Over the years, we have said goodbye to senior lawyers whom we respected and admired. They were the generation that had welcomed us, taught us, challenged us, and sometimes put us firmly in our place. Their passing was always sad, but it followed a certain order. They had come before us. Eventually, painfully, one generation makes way for another.

This feels different. This time, the person whose passing we are mourning belonged to our generation.

Going Toe to Toe

I remember one of my first encounters with Jeannot very well. I was still at the beginning of my career when I found myself representing the Country of Aruba in a complicated and delicate matter involving institutions across the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Looking back, it was quite a case to handle at that stage of a legal career.

At the time, Jeannot was practicing with a firm in Curaçao. He came to Aruba with one of the firm's senior partners to argue the other side. And so, still relatively young lawyers, Jeannot and I found ourselves across from each other in court.

We went toe to toe.

It was the first time, but certainly not the last time, that our professional paths would cross. Over the many years that followed, Jeannot and I maintained a good and professional relationship. We were not best friends, and I would not pretend otherwise. But perhaps that makes what I want to say about him more meaningful. I respected him. I respected the lawyer he became, his abilities and the way he practiced his profession. We did not always agree, and lawyers rarely do, particularly when standing on opposite sides of a case. But disagreement never stood in the way of professional respect.

Jimmy's Place and the Rat Pack

Our generation also had another place where those relationships developed, and not only among lawyers. In those days, quite a few of us would regularly meet at Jimmy's Place. Lawyers would be there, but also notaries, tax lawyers, and many of the guys who worked in senior positions at the various banks. We spent quite a bit of time there. We talked about work, about life and probably about a great deal that seemed terribly important at the time.

Jimmy's Place no longer exists. But for those of us who were part of that period, the friendships and connections that developed there somehow survived the place itself.

In fact, the Jimmy's Place crowd still exists today, albeit in a very twenty-first-century form. We have a chat group. Recently, we even had our first activity together, an attempt, you could say, to bring the old Rat Pack back together. There was something special about seeing people who had shared that period of our lives reconnect after all those years. Careers had developed, families had grown, life had taken each of us in different directions, but that common history was still there.

And now that group too is confronted with something we would rather not have contemplated.

One of us is no longer there.

Looking at a photograph of that group together now means something different than it did when the photograph was taken. At the time, it was simply a photograph of old friends and colleagues enjoying being together again. Today, it also reminds us how precious those moments are.

A Demanding Profession

This is not an easy profession. Those outside it understandably see the courtroom, the titles, the successes, and perhaps even the prestige. Those of us who have lived it for decades also know the other side. The long hours, the responsibility of carrying someone else's problems, the cases that follow you home, and the expectation that, whatever may be happening in your own life, when your client needs you, you must be ready.

Sustaining that for thirty years is an accomplishment in itself. Sustaining it at the professional level at which Jeannot practiced deserves respect. He built a distinguished career, served our profession, including as Dean of the Aruba Bar, and earned his place among the senior members of the legal community.

That is why, when I learned that Jeannot was retiring before his 60th birthday, I was genuinely happy for him. I wished him well. After decades in this profession, you understand what retirement really means. It is not simply the end of a career. It is the opportunity to finally have more time. Time for family, time for yourself, time to travel, time to enjoy life, and time for all those things that during a demanding professional career we so often postpone until "later."

It is therefore particularly painful that Jeannot was given so little of that time.

We Became the Senior Lawyers

His passing gives us an occasion to remember an accomplished lawyer and respected colleague, but for those of us who regarded him as a peer, it also forces us to look at ourselves.

We are no longer the young lawyers being sent around by our bosses to introduce ourselves to the established members of the Bar. We have become those established members. Another generation is making its way into the profession now. Some of them are so young that we have been practicing law longer than they have been alive. They are finding their places, building their practices, arguing their first important cases and developing the professional relationships that may accompany them for the next thirty or forty years.

Perhaps they will do things differently. The introductory rounds may be gone. The cocktails welcoming every new lawyer may be gone. Jimmy's Place is certainly gone. Times change, and professions change with them.

But I hope professional respect doesn't disappear with those traditions. Jeannot and I could stand on opposite sides of a courtroom, argue our respective positions and disagree, sometimes fundamentally, and still respect one another as lawyers. That, too, is part of belonging to a profession.

One of Us

For me, a peer's passing brings a realization that an elder's passing never quite did. Mortality is no longer something happening to the generation ahead of us. It has entered our own generation, our own circle.

One of us.

I remember the young lawyer who once came over from Curaçao with his senior partner and stood on the other side of the courtroom from another young lawyer, also trying to find his way. I remember the colleague whose career I watched develop over the decades. And I remember him as part of that generation that spent time together at Jimmy's Place, when we were younger and probably assumed, without ever really thinking about it, that we had all the time in the world.

Neither of us could have known where the profession would take us over the decades that followed. We grew older in this profession. We became experienced lawyers. We became, whether we noticed it happening or not, the generation that once stood ahead of us.

And now one of us is gone.

Perhaps Jeannot's passing should remind those of us who remain of something else too. Careers matter, the work matters, and our clients and cases matter. But time matters as well. The old places disappear. Traditions change. The people around the table change. One day Jimmy's Place is where everybody meets, and years later it exists mostly in our memories and in a chat group carrying forward friendships that started there.

So perhaps we should make a little more time for those reunions. A little more time for those conversations. A little more time for the people with whom we have shared this journey. We should make that call, attend that dinner, and bring the Rat Pack together while we still can.

Because none of us knows how much time we have.

My sincere condolences go to Jeannot's wife Mireille, their three daughters, the De Cuba and Saleh families, and all those who loved him. I also extend my condolences to his partners at De Cuba Ormel Noordhuizen, Dirk Ormel and Willem-Jan Noordhuizen, as well as to his former partner Ronald Wix, his colleagues, friends and the wider legal community that had the privilege of knowing and working with him.

Rest in peace, Jeannot. You left us far too soon.