Growing up with other young people at school, on the playgrounds or, later, as after-school work colleagues, you could usually identify those you knew were going to be successful.

You know the ones I’m talking about. They were the kids all the teachers liked, the ones your parents hoped you would hang around with so maybe their good habits would rub off. They got good grades, had healthy hobbies like collecting coins or stamps, dressed nicely, and never seemed to get into trouble.

Grown-ups had an expression for the smart, ambitious kids: They were “going places.”

I didn’t like the expression much because they never elaborated on where, exactly, the person in question was going. Were they going to the Arctic Circle, to Harvard or to Serus’s Market at the corner of Asylum and West Main streets? Furthermore, the insinuation seemed to be that I was, well, going nowhere.

At the time, I suppose it seemed my life was shaping up that way, but I was going at my own pace.

Anyway, with my 50th Norwich Free Academy Class of 1972 reunion only a few months away, I’m learning more and more about some of my NFA classmates from a half-century ago. Some became doctors and lawyers, financial advisers and bankers and businesspeople.

At least one is a philanthropist; another is a noted newspaper columnist in New York. Others stayed closer to home and were successful here, too.

One of those classmates I had expected — correctly — to be successful was Glenn Carberry, who retired at the end of 2021 after decades as an attorney, partner and, for the last 30 years, managing partner with the prominent New London law firm of Tobin, Carberry, O’Malley, Riley and Selinger, also known as TCORS.

OK, a decades-long career as a successful attorney may not, on its own, merit special attention. However, Carberry — as he was throughout his high school years — was always busy as an adult, always working, always striving to do better. And without knowing what every one of my classmates did with his or her life, few can look back on as busy and accomplished a life as Glenn T. Carberry, NFA ‘72.

As a student, Glenn liked to have fun, play tennis, write for the school newspaper and, apparently, study. He was certainly studious, as he was in honors classes (I only observed this from afar as I was never in an honors class at any level of my education, especially high school).

For some students, like Glenn, it just seemed to come naturally, if not easily.

He and a few other guys from our class got their picture in the newspaper during our senior year for collectively eating an enormous number of chicken wings at a local all-you-can-eat restaurant. It was good, clean fun, and the other fellows in the photo would also go on to successful careers of their own later in life.

After graduating from NFA, Carberry enrolled at Gettysburg College, graduated summa cum laude (Latin for “with the highest distinction), then earned his law degree from Ivy League University of Pennsylvania School of Law, where he was editor of the law journal’s comment section. Fresh out of law school, he was hired by the large international law firm of Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C., but three years later, in 1982, decided to return to southeastern Connecticut where he was hired by one of this region’s leading firms.

“I always had in the back of my mind that I wanted to come home and, being closer to home, be able to do some things here,” Carberry said recently.

As a partner in the firm, his practice focused primarily on regulated industries and business matters on which he would regularly advise clients ranging from small, emerging local businesses to Fortune 500 companies. Most rewarding, he said, was being able to see a business client he’d represented in their formative years having grown and prospered with the help of his guidance.

“You learn a lot from people you work with, and that kind of experience, you can’t get without actually living it,” he added. “That kind of personal growth was always fulfilling to me. I was always learning from the smart people I worked with over the years.”

Some of those smart people were colleagues in the firm, like senior partner Bob Tobin, and Dan Dennis, former president of the Norwich Savings Society, and later, executive vice president with Peoples Bank. Another was the late Milton Jacobson, senior partner in the prominent Norwich law firm of Brown Jacobson, who was a consummate mover and shaker here in Norwich.

However, besides learning the art of the deal from the bishops of local business, Carberry said he also learned from people who practiced the art of local politics after they finished at their day jobs — people like Harold Arkava, Joe Heap and Mark Christiansen, who combined to serve decades as chairmen of New London’s Planning & Zoning Commission. They could be counted on for quiet advice and education on the nuances of local government — all information that Carberry, also a land-use specialist, absorbed like a sponge.

Most people would be satisfied and fully occupied with such work, but Carberry wanted to do more for the community in which he’d spent most of his life. So, without ever having been elected to political office at any level, he aimed high at the tender young age of 32 and ran — quite literally — for Congress in eastern Connecticut’s sprawling Second District. He ran first in 1988, when he won the Republican nomination to run in this heavily Democratic district.

This would be no easy feat. He was not only running as a Republican in a historically Democratic district, but he was also taking on incumbent Sam Gejdenson, then the dean of Connecticut’s congressional delegation, a man running at full speed himself for a fifth term in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he was climbing the ladder of seniority toward the chairmanship of the House’s powerful Foreign Relations Committee.

Despite having served four terms in Washington and having a sizeable re-election war chest, Gejdenson took nothing for granted. He was also a tireless campaigner, hitting his first stops before the sun even rose and outlasting most of his staff and volunteers by campaigning vigorously until nearly midnight before starting over early the next morning and eventually wearing out previous challengers.

Undaunted, however, Carberry was different from the others. He ran a creative, energetic, organized and well-financed campaign in which he literally ran through each city and town in the entire district, drawing important early media attention to his underdog campaign.

He raised money aggressively, amassing a campaign fund of more than $300,000. He put out numerous position papers and press releases, challenged the incumbent to debates, and then more than held his own when they did go toe-to-toe.

When the dust had settled in November on the long, hard-fought campaign, Carberry received 36.4 percent of the vote in the Second District. While his defeat was decisive, his campaign had garnered a higher percentage than any of the other congressional challengers that year in Connecticut. After his loss, he offered no excuses, no apologies.

In 1994, the stars outside his law practice aligned again. Norwich, the city where he was born, raised and still lives, needed something. And native son Glenn Carberry needed something more to do.

He embarked on a long, uphilll mission to bring the New York Yankees’ Double A farm team to Norwich. To many, it seemed like a pipe dream. Why would the New York Yankees, the most successful sports franchise in the world, want anything to do with the gritty city of Norwich, Connecticut? Well, had he not gone into the field of law, Carberry could have been a very successful salesman because after more than a year of his courting the Yankees and promising them a first-class baseball stadium in the Norwich Industrial Park, it happened. Minor league baseball was coming to Norwich, and not just any minor league team, but the New York Yankees Double A team.

Big announcement

The Yankees announced on June 3, 1994, that they would move their Double A franchise to Norwich from Albany. The team would be called the Norwich Navigators and they played their games in the brand-new Senator Thomas J. Dodd Memorial Stadium, named in memory of the former U.S. Senator, a Norwich native.

Ground had been broken on the new stadium on Nov. 3, 1994, and it was completed just in time for the Navigators’ sold-out home opener on April 17, 1995. The stadium was packed, the mood was electric, and the Navigators, who had won their season’s first game on the road 11 days earlier, delighted the hometown fans with a win over the Reading Phillies.

As he watched the game from his seat next to the Navigators’ dugout, Glenn was thrilled at having succeeded. Many people from many different organizations were involved in making it work, but Carberry was the driving force.

As he watched the game with thousands of other fans, he was thrilled that the effort so many had doubted had come to fruition.

“I was thinking it was great, that we really did it against a lot of odds,” he recalled. “It became so difficult and so engrossing that I decided I was going to put everything I had into it.”

Over the ensuing 25 years and several franchise changes, minor league baseball has drawn four million spectators to Dodd Stadium and about 200 players who were either on their way to Major League Baseball or had made it and were rehabbing with the Double A team. The region would be abuzz when the likes of Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Hall of Famer Tim Raines, Roger Clemens, David Cone, Andy Pettitte, Alfonso Soriano and Bernie Williams were slated to appear at Dodd Stadium.

Other Hall of Famers such as George Brett, Dave Winfield, Carlton Fisk and Bob Feller made promotional visits to the stadium as well.

For his efforts, Carberry was honored with two of the most prestigious awards of the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut — Citizen of the Year in 1995 and the William Crawford Distinguished Service Award in 1996.

Carberry is a prolific writer, having authored more than 100 op-ed pieces for Connecticut newspapers and various law reviews. In retirement, he will continue to write, only about another of his passions, travel. He writes regularly for his website The Traveling American for which he’s already written about 170 articles about his travels to more than 60 countries.

He has also authored a travel book, “Epic Destinations.”

“It’s been an interesting 40 years,” he said of his recently concluded career. “You learn a lot, and if you don’t learn a lot then you’re not paying attention. You learn a lot from the people you work with, and that kind of experience you can’t get without actually living it. That kind of personal growth was always fulfilling to me.”

Bill Stanley, a former vice president at L+M Hospital, grew up in Norwich.