Robert Huntington Knight

ROBERT HUNTINGTON KNIGHT - 87, of Greenwich and Ocean Ridge, Fla., died Sept. 28. He was a prominent lawyer, who also served as an official in Washington, D.C., and later as a presidential advisor.

Born in New Haven to Francis Whitney and Earl Wall Knight, he was a descendant of Eli Whitney. He graduated from Yale in 1940 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps.

After his military service, he enrolled in the University of Virginia School of Law, where he attained its first 4.0 GPA and was editor-in-chief of its Law Journal. Upon graduation he was invited to become a member of the faculty and taught for two years before joining the New York law firm of Shearman & Sterling.

Mr. Knight became a partner of the firm in 1956 but just a few years later was called to Washington, serving first for two years in the Eisenhower Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Department of Defense and then for two years in the Kennedy Administration as General Counsel to the Department of the Treasury. Shortly after returning to the private sector and the practice of law, then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy asked him to organize private-sector donations of food and drugs to exchange for the return of more than a thousand prisoners captured by Cuba in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Knight was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal and the Alexander Hamilton Medal in recognition of his government service.

At Shearman & Sterling, he led its international expansion and headed the firm in 1982-85, setting its course to become the premier global law firm it is today. He also served two terms as Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank in 1977-83, and on the Board of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Asia Foundation, and a number of other non-profit and corporate boards.

A founding member of the University of Virginia Law School Foundation, he served as a board member and trustee, helping lead a highly successful fund drive to build the school's endowment.

Mr. Knight was predeceased by his brother, John Whitney Knight, and his daughter Alice Price Knight.

He is survived by Rosemary, his wife of more than 30 years; sisters Patricia Anne Beckhard of New York City, Susan Knight Cecil of Richmond, Va., and Sara Ellen Rabilloud of Staten Island; daughters Jessie Knight of Staten Island and Patricia K. Cluett of Allentown, Pa.; sons E. Whitney of Naugatuck and Robert Jr. of Guilford; stepdaughters Gray Gibson Solar of San Francisco and Anne Gibson Proietti of New York City; 18 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. His first wife, Alice Valle Knight of Guilford, also survives.

A memorial service for Mr. Knight will be held on Friday, October 20, at 10:00 a.m. at Saint James' Church, 865 Madison Avenue (at 71st Street), New York.

The family requests that contributions may be made in his memory to the University of Virginia Law School Foundation, 580 Massie Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903-1789.