University of Maryland Law Honors Manekin, Class of ’36

By Danny Jacobs

Bernard Manekin, co-founder of the eponymous commercial real estate firm, is the first to admit he was not the best student when he attended the University of Maryland School of Law in the 1930s.

“There was this saying: The ‘A’ students became judges and teachers and the ‘B’ students ended up doing the legal work for the ‘C’ students,” Manekin, class of 1936, said recently in an e-mail. “I was one of those ‘C’ students and during my real estate career paid a lot of legal fees to those ‘B’ students.”

Manekin, 94, will be honored Thursday night during the school’s annual Honors Banquet with the Star Award, given to a graduate who has made contributions to the law school and the greater community. He becomes the fifth person to receive the award and first businessman honored, which Dean Karen Rothenberg said demonstrates how the skills learned in law school are applicable in many fields.

“He had a career where he tried to bring together his expertise in real estate development and law,” Rothenberg said.

Manekin is recuperating from a recent hospital stay and will be unable to attend tomorrow’s ceremony; his son, Robert, will accept the award on his behalf. Because of the elder Manekin’s condition, Robert Manekin relayed his father’s answers to questions for this story via e-mail.

“It gives me a real sense of pride to be singled out for work that I have done,” Bernard Manekin said in the e-mail. “I have been fortunate to work with a lot of very talented and dedicated people.”

Chief among them was his late brother, Harold, the other half of what was then called Manekin & Co., founded in 1946 as a Baltimore brokerage firm. The company went on to handle leasing for One Charles Center and developed the Rotunda shopping center, among other local projects. Today, Manekin LLC oversees 150 buildings and more than 12 million square feet of office space throughout the Baltimore-Washington region.

Manekin noted other prominent real estate developers attended law school at the University of Maryland, including James W. Rouse and Mathias DeVito, a former chairman of The Rouse Co.

“Law school and real estate seem to go well together,” he wrote. “It never surprises me to learn that a real estate developer attended law school.”

Law as a vehicle

Personally, Manekin said, his legal background honed the deliberate, calculating process he used to gather information and make decisions for his company.

It was a tack he used when deciding to attend law school in the first place. The City College graduate had attended the University of Maryland, College Park and was working 55 hours a week at a salary of $6 per week for the Marlboro Shirt Co. during the Depression but believed he needed “a real career” to become successful.

“Law seemed like the best vehicle for getting that career,” he said.

So Manekin attended classes in the evening and worked during the day, studying when he could. He did part-time legal work and residential real restate development upon graduating before enlisting in the Army in 1941.

Even as a non-practicing attorney, Manekin has enjoyed watching the law school grow physically and academically. He is particularly pleased with the diversity of today’s students and faculty because all of his classmates were white and nearly all were men.

“The biggest and most important change is the fact [the law school] is now an institution that reflects our society,” he said.

Progressive

Manekin’s belief in diversity was reflected in his political activism. He backed Joseph C. Howard’s successful 1968 campaign to become the first black judge for what is now Baltimore City Circuit Court, and gave the first contribution to former Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke’s first political campaign, in 1982 for Baltimore state’s attorney, said Larry S. Gibson, a University of Maryland law professor who managed both campaigns and has known Manekin for 40 years.

Manekin has also served as a board member and donated to numerous civic, cultural and religious groups, including the Greater Baltimore Committee, The Walters Art Museum and The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, and was a co-founder of the Baltimore-based Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies.

“He was progressive in his manner of thinking about business and politics,” said Gibson, who is of counsel at Shapiro Sher Guinot & Sandler, which counts Manekin LLC as one of its longest-standing clients. “He’s had a consistency of decency.”

Originally published by Danny Jacobs.

(c) 2008 The Daily Record (Baltimore). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.