Nancy Dunlap, general counsel and vice president of Dallas-based Rosewood Property Corporation, died at home on January 21.
Born in Houston, Nancy Kliewer graduated from Hillcrest High School in 1965 and from the University of Texas in 1969, with honors. After starting as a legal secretary, she decided to become a lawyer, and obtained her law degree from Southern Methodist University.
She joined Rosewood in 1987, developed a broad expertise in commercial real estate and in her 32 years at Rosewood, she worked on most of the company’s high-profile projects, including the Mansion on Turtle Creek, The Crescent and Rosewood Court. Her company leadership photo remains on Rosewood’s website with a short and elegant mention of her death.
The Texas Lawbook asked Alan Loewinsohn, a longtime friend and outside counsel, to make a few comments about their relationship. He responded with the following note, which we found remarkable for its warmth:
In my 40 years in the practice of law, I have had the honor of working with, and for, many general counsel. Some were smart. Some were strategic. Some were kind. Some were caring about the organization they served. Some could find a typo buried in the middle of a 50-page brief. Some were complimentary for a job well-done, but very few that I have met possessed all of these qualities. Nancy Dunlap, former General Counsel and Vice President of Rosewood Property Company for over 32 years, was at the top of my list.
I worked with Nancy over the last 20-plus years on various litigation matters. Every time I finished an engagement, I felt blessed that I had the opportunity to share those experiences with her.
One of the most memorable cases I had with Nancy was a complex arbitration involving a new Rosewood Hotel in the Caribbean island of Canouan. We were trying to find a legal hook for our position that would give us leverage in the litigation. I had poured over the dense contracts that formed the transaction and had not yet found the magic bullet. Late one night, Nancy called me, with excitement in her otherwise calm voice, explaining how a sub-sub section of a paragraph deep in the bowels of one of the contracts provided the support for the winning argument. I learned then that careful and repeated reading of documents not only would reveal the hidden typo, which Nancy found great joy in discovering, but more importantly could lead to the keys to the kingdom.
Nancy passed away at the age of 72, far too soon. I wish she had lived to have seen and experienced her official retirement day, planned only a matter of months away, so that she could share with all her family, friends and colleagues the culmination of a great legal career. On the other hand, she passed away while still working and doing what she loved. That is both her blessing and her tribute.
Alan Loewinsohn is an attorney in the Dallas-based firm Loewinsohn Flegle Deary Simon LLP.