Legacy of Gerald L. Dorf ’57 Celebrated with Student-Centered Gift

In fall 2025, the ILR School began renovating King-Shaw Hall. When the building reopens in 2027, it will house the new Gerald L. Dorf ILR Class of 1957 Student Commons, as well as Jerry’s Café, thanks to a generous gift from the Dorf family.

“I don’t think there’s anything that my dad loved more than Cornell, other than my mom,” says his son, Brian Dorf. “His love for Cornell goes back to a point beyond my memory.

From the time my brother and I were in elementary school, we would pile into the Rambler station wagon and head up to Cornell for Big Red football games and Homecomings. Cornell has been part of our family forever.”

Jerry was a man of humble beginnings, born in Brooklyn, New York, to parents who immigrated from Belarus. In the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, he met his wife of 66 years, Evelyn, while attending James Madison High School. When Jerry, three years Evelyn’s senior, was accepted into Cornell, he asked her not to see any other boys while he was away. 

“I didn’t think I could do that,” Evelyn recalls. “And Jerry’s solution was simple. He said, ‘There’s a fine little college in downtown Ithaca, please go there.’” 

With that request, Evelyn, who was already on track to graduate high school early and had planned to attend Stanford, accelerated her classes further and was accepted to Ithaca College.

“Jerry started at Cornell in the fall of 1953, and I actually began going to IC the following February,” Evelyn says. “And we were married before we even graduated.” 

Upon graduation from Cornell, Jerry began attending the evening division of New York University School of Law and was hired by “The New York Times” as a labor relations negotiator. 

Having been a member of Cornell’s ROTC program, he also received his commission as a second lieutenant in the United States Army Reserve. 

After six months of active duty, he continued service in the reserves for eight years and reached the rank of captain before retiring with an honorable discharge. 

“They didn’t want him to leave, and he was being offered the rank of major. But it was time,” Evelyn recalls. “We had two children; he worked full-time after having gone to law school at night. It was a heavy schedule.” 

At the time of his discharge from the service, Jerry was executive director of the National Electrical Contractors Association. He left that position in 1968 to establish a private law practice.  

Jerry, who went on to win the ILR School’s Groat Award less than a decade later, represented both public- and private-sector clients in the labor and employment law firm. 

He became labor counsel for the New Jersey State League of Municipalities, and in that role, he attained one of his greatest professional achievements by helping enact legislation that reformed binding arbitration in New Jersey. 

“Binding arbitration reform was a critical issue that arose during my father’s tenure at NJSLOM,” Brian says. “My dad was a proponent of arbitration reform that untied an arbiter’s hands to allow them to craft balanced, insightful and thoughtful compromises. He was extremely proud to have that legislation proposed, passed by the legislature and signed into law by Governor Christine Todd Whitman. In appreciation, she sent him a personally signed copy of the legislation with her thanks.”

Jerry represented the League of Municipalities for over 30 years, during which time he helped grow its membership to include every municipality in the state. Its annual convention grew from an event held in the basement of a Howard Johnson’s hotel to one that filled the convention center and nearly every hotel room in Atlantic City. One of the highlights of the convention was a lively Q&A hosted each year by Jerry and his son, law partner and fellow ILRie, Mitchell Lane Dorf ’81. The session was typically attended by several hundred participants. 

“Interestingly, in addition to management invitees, many of those in attendance were union members and representatives,” Brian notes. “They came to the Q&A to pick the brain of the best management attorney that they knew, and that was my dad. They would come in and ask a plethora of pre-prepared questions about what he would do if he were on the union side.”

While he worked representing management, Jerry’s frame of reference came from growing up with a Teamster father who drove a bakery delivery truck. Occasionally, Brian recounts, his father would help less experienced union lawyers during negotiations by taking a well-timed break and 'sidebarring' with them to offer compromises that could be put on the table that would lead to a resolution acceptable to both sides. 

“Once, I asked him, ‘If a guy is willing to give away the tires on the car, why wouldn’t you take it,’ and he responded, ‘It doesn’t really cost me that much to be fair, and it develops a relationship that I can build on in years to come,’” Brian recalls. 

“That’s who my father was. He was the negotiator who was going to make sure that everybody got a fair deal. He always told me that if everybody walks away from the table feeling they got something, but not everything, then that’s the deal that everybody’s going to be able to live with.”

Twenty years into his career, Jerry’s son, Mitchell, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. When Mitchell joined the law practice a few years later, Jerry proudly renamed his firm the Law Offices of Dorf and Dorf. 

When Mitchell died in 2001 of complications from Crohn’s disease, the family established, in his honor, the Mitchell Lane Dorf Memorial Scholarship, which was recently converted to the Mitchell Lane Dorf Memorial Legal Research Assistantship, administered by the dean of the ILR School.  

After Jerry passed away in 2022, Evelyn and Brian considered how to honor his life and legacy and decided to do something that would fill a void for ILR students.

They felt that funding the creation of the Gerald L. Dorf Class of 1957 Student Commons – a place where students have cohesive access to services that support their education – as well as Jerry’s Café – a comfortable environment where students can relax and engage – was a more personal way to honor Jerry. 

“It is a reflection of how much Jerry felt a personal connection to Cornell at every level,” Evelyn says. 

Having parents who spoke English as a second language, Jerry’s pursuit of a career in law was unfamiliar territory, according to Evelyn. While he had the full emotional support of his parents, financial support was another matter, as “they simply didn’t have the resources to help him achieve his dream.

“Jerry was a brilliant student who attended Cornell on a full academic scholarship,” Evelyn says. “He worked multiple jobs while making his way through Cornell. He worked in the stacks for the ILR library. He waited on tables at the Straight. He even sold souvenirs and pendants at Big Red football games. He picked up almost any job that he could. Jerry did what he needed to do to achieve his dreams. 

“Having an ILR student commons and a café is something that would have made him happy. The café is the kind of place Jerry would have loved to be able to sit down, relax, have a cup of coffee and enjoy some camaraderie with people that he loved going to school with,” Evelyn said.  

Jerry’s love for his fellow students also inspired him to help establish the ILR Alumni Association in the early 1970s. According to Evelyn, he saw the influence of the Hotel School’s alumni association and took it upon himself to schedule a meeting between the deans of the ILR School, the Hotel School and himself.

“Once he got the dean of the ILR School on board, that was all he needed,” Evelyn says. “Jerry, working with a few other alumni, took about six months to a year to lay the groundwork, create a mission statement and inform the alumni of its existence. He even served as its first president. He committed himself to the association’s creation because he knew how much an alumni association can do for a school. 

“Whenever Jerry got passionate about something, he would immerse himself in whatever that was,” she notes. “And this effort was especially personal for Jerry.” 

According to Evelyn, Jerry had many passions to which he devoted his time. “As a student at Cornell, he provided live color commentary on WVBR for Big Red football games. So, it’s no surprise that, beyond being a world traveler, a voracious reader and a history buff, Jerry loved attending New York Giants and New Jersey Devils games, which became family outings.

“Jerry’s passions also included coaching Little League baseball when our boys were young, flying his own plane and attending the opera.”

Brian recalls that his father became interested in flying after finding that reaching clients by commercial flights was sometimes difficult and time-consuming. One day, when he was passing Monmouth Airport, he stopped in and inquired about flight lessons. When he arrived home that evening, he told Evelyn that he had signed them both up to learn how to fly. 

After several months of lessons, Jerry earned his pilot’s license. Then, he found a compatible partner and together they bought their first airplane.

“And after that, weekend destinations were no longer 50 to 60 miles away. They could be two or three hundred miles away,” Brian says. “So, the biggest decision on Saturday morning became ‘Where are we going for lunch? Boston or the south shore of Maryland?’ Before we knew it, Dad had his instrument flight certification to fly above the clouds, and the list of possibilities became almost endless.” 

That was when it became a “family affair,” and Jerry had Brian take lessons, as well. 

As for the opera, that passion began when a friend’s family invited him to attend the Metropolitan Opera as a young boy. Later in life, he served for more than a decade as chairman of the board of the State Opera of New Jersey. 

When he joined the board, the opera was struggling to produce one show a season, but as Jerry moved into a leadership role, his passion elevated it to something it hadn’t been in decades. They began producing several shows a season and turned financially from red to black. 

“Dad’s life was defined by his love of family, his love of flying, his love of opera and his love of Cornell and the practice of law,” Brian said. “They are the things that made him who he was. “And Dad always felt that the social part of his education was as important as the academic part. Creating a setting where students can engage and relax, converse and expand their circles with intellectually stimulating people is very much in keeping with how Dad saw Cornell. 

“The ILR School gave him the foundation to build a magnificent career, which he appreciated throughout his life,” Brian said. “This gift to Cornell and the students of the ILR School is an expression of that appreciation.”