Robert B. LUICK

LUICK, PELLETIER, GOOD, BRYAN, RICHARD

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 1/28/2008 at 10:55:47

Copyright - Boston Globe, MA
by Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff
April 23, 1999

Robert B. Luick, 87, of Belmont and East Dennis, a longtime Boston corporate lawyer and adviser to several major area companies, including the former Continental Cablevision and Ionics Inc., died yesterday after a long illness.

Mr. Luick, born in Belmond, Iowa, earned his undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Minnesota and a master's in business administration, cum laude, from Harvard in 1938. After four years as an attorney and assistant to the president of New England Mutual Life Insurance Co., Mr. Luick joined Sullivan & Worcester in Boston as a partner in 1943 and moved to an of-counsel position in 1992. During his 56 years with Sullivan & Worcester, Mr. Luick helped build the firm from a half-dozen lawyers to more than 150, and pioneered a new specialty for the firm advising several Route 128 start-up technology companies in the post-World War II era.

"He was 40 or 50 years ahead of his time in concentrating on these entrepreneurial companies in his practice, and he was as much a business counselor as a legal counselor," said Lee Dunham, managing partner at the firm. Mr. Luick was known there as an unfailingly kind and gentlemanly mentor, as well as a tenacious negotiator. Mr. Luick assisted Boston cable television entrepreneur Amos B. Hostetter when Hostetter founded Continental Cablevision in 1963 and served for two decades on its corporate board. Continental, which became the third-largest US cable firm, was bought by US West in 1996 in an $11 billion stock-and-debt transaction and is now part of MediaOne Group. In 1948, Mr. Luick prepared the incorporation papers for Ionics and began five decades as a director and legal counsel to the Watertown-based company. Ionics is now the world's largest builder of desalination plants and also produces AquaPure brand drinking water and ultrapure water for high-tech manufacturing.

"He was an outstanding lawyer and, more important, an outstanding human being with steadfast, solid judgment," Ionics chairman and chief executive Arthur L. Goldstein said. Mr. Luick also served as a director of Associates for International Research, Delta Engineering Corp., Meta Software, Mueller Corp., Setra Systems, and Stratford Realty Co., and was a mentor to dozens of high-tech entrepreneurs in the area.

A member of the Longwood Cricket Club in Brookline and the Mashantum Tennis Club in Dennis, Mr. Luick played tennis up to the last year of his life. He enjoyed landscape painting as a hobby and frequently spoke to classes at Harvard Business School, where last year he cochaired his 60th class reunion. He was also a member of the Belmont Hill Club, the Commercial Club of Boston, the Union Club, and the Knights of Malta.

Mr. Luick, who was married for 51 years to the late Evelyn G. Pelletier, leaves four daughters, Elisabeth A. of Belmont, Susan Luick Good of Cambridge, Sarah H. of Boston, and Nancy Luick Bryan of Greensboro, N.C.; a sister, Marian L. Richard of Pompano Beach, Fla.; and four grandchildren. A funeral Mass will be said Monday at 11 a.m. at St. Joseph's Church in Belmont. Burial will follow in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.