Even after graduating Harvard Law School and being offered partnership at White &

Case, my father could never rid himself of wanting to be part of a smaller organization

where he could play a more prominent role. So in 1935, he joined an old Harvard friend,

C. Frank Reavis, and started the firm Reavis & Pantaleoni, a predecessor of Reavis &

McGrath.

Even though my father was exempt from service

in World War II, he still wanted to join the effort.

So in 1943, he went to war, charged with control

over the whole Italian and southern French area of

operations for the OSS.

On one of his missions behind enemy lines

in Sicily, he was captured by Axis forces. Being

the consummate lawyer he was, my dad tried to

convince the German sergeant who captured him

that the Axis cause was hopeless, and it was only

a matter of time before the Allies would triumph.

As the story was told to me, the sergeant came

very close to surrendering. Before anything like that

could happen, the vehicle my father was travelling

in hit a land mine and exploded. My father was

killed instantly.

After the war ended, this German sergeant

began searching the United States for my father’s

survivors. He located Helenka, my mother, in New

York and paid his way to the United States to see

her. Upon meeting my mother, the sergeant told

her that he wanted to be able to look her in the

eye and tell her that even though he only knew my

father for two days and was his enemy, he regarded

him as one of the most outstanding people he had

ever met in his life. He also presented her with

a note that my father had written that said,

“To whom it may concern, in the event that the

German sergeant is captured by the Allied armies,

I would request that he in turn be afforded the

same courtesy and consideration he has shown

me. Signed, Guido Pantaleoni, Lieutenant Colonel,

United States Army.”