Washington Lawyer - November/December 2019 - 38

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
"That sort of thing is really not that important to me. It's just there as far
as I'm concerned," Englert told Washington Lawyer in an interview in
August inside the offices of Robbins Russell LLP in Washington, D.C.,
where his son, Roy Englert Jr., is a partner and top-ranked Supreme
Court and appellate litigator.
In fact, even the younger Englert did not become aware of the full extent
of his father's military service during World War II until the Library of
Congress interviewed Englert Sr. for its Veterans History Project. Growing
up, Englert Jr. recalled asking his father about his war experiences and
being told, "there was a lot of fire, but I just treated it as if they were fireworks going off overhead."
According to historical records, Englert Sr. participated in the D-Day
Invasion in Normandy, France, in 1944; in Operation Dragoon, which
forced German forces out of Southern France, also in 1944; and in the
Battle of Okinawa in 1945.
"My father is of the World War II generation, the so-called 'Greatest
Generation,'" Englert Jr. says. "The men who fought in [the war] for our
country all say, 'I'm not a hero,' no matter what heroic acts they actually
did. That's the moral my father learned during wartime. It stuck with him
for a long time."

LIFE IN MILITARY & LAW

Englert Sr. was born on September 11, 1922, in Nashville, Tennessee,
seven years before the Great Depression. When Englert was five years
old, his father drowned, leaving his mother, Ruth Tindall Englert, to
raise him and his sister by herself. After high school, Englert attended
Vanderbilt University, graduating in 1943 at age 20 with a business
administration degree.

On June 11, 2019,
Englert set another
world record for
men in the 95-to-99
age group: completing
a 5,000-meter race in
just 42 minutes at the
USA Track and Field
Masters Outdoor
Championships in
Ames, Iowa.

38 WASHINGTON LAWYER

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019

A year before graduation, Englert joined the U.S. Navy Reserve through
a program that allowed him to finish college. He enlisted in the Navy
after college and became a lieutenant. On the strength of the GI Bill he
attended Columbia University Law School in New York before settling
in Washington, D.C., where he began his 22-year stint with the U.S.
Department of the Treasury. Englert rose through the ranks and became
deputy general counsel.
"I've led a very fortunate life," says Englert, who was first inspired to go
into the legal profession during his teenage years while working with his
cousin, Thomas H. Smith, a lawyer in Nashville.
Working at the National Life and Accident Insurance Company for two
years after college further fueled his interest to go into law, eventually
enrolling at Columbia. At the insurance company, Englert says he regularly
encountered lawyers and admired their work. It was also during this time
that he met Helen, who would soon become his wife of 65 years (he
remarried after she died).
Law school was hard, Englert says, but he learned a lot about discipline
while in the military and he thrived.
As a child, Englert Jr. remembers his father coming home for dinner
at 5 p.m. every day after work. It wasn't until many years later, while
attending a ceremony at the Treasury Department honoring his father
and several others, that the younger Englert fully understood his father's
dedication to his work and family.
"Everyone talked about what a hard worker he was," Englert Jr. says. "It
turns out that he was a very efficient worker. That's why he was able to go
home on time every night. He worked very hard during the day and went
in the office very early in the morning."

Washington Lawyer - November/December 2019

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