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Procurement Lawyer Newsletter

The Procurement Lawyer Summer 2024

Reflections on the Life of George M. “Tim” Coburn

John S Pachter

Summary

  • Tim was born in 1923 in New York City, the youngest of five children of Katherine Rawn Coburn and Ralph George Coburn of Greenwich, Connecticut.
  • Following other law firm affiliations, he was a solo practitioner in Washington, DC, from 1992 until his retirement in 2013.
  • He authored or edited books on government contract law and wrote many articles on the subject.
Reflections on the Life of George M. “Tim” Coburn
Daniel Day via Getty Images

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George M. (“Tim”) Coburn died on February 10, 2024, age 100, at Forwood Manor, Wilmington, Delaware. Tim was active for many years in the Public Contract Law Section of the American Bar Association and served as Section chair from 1978–79.

Only in the last year of his life was it necessary for Tim to move from independent to assisted living. When Dick Johnson and I visited him on his 100th birthday, December 15, 2023, Tim greeted us heartily and was eager for conversation.

I met Tim in the 1970s when I was an associate and later partner in vom Baur, Coburn, Simmons & Turtle. In 2011, Tim asked me to edit the manuscript of his memoir, My Sixty Years as a Public Contract Lawyer. Tim had the reserve of a New Englander of his day and revealed details of his life for the first time in his memoir. I also wrote a book review of the memoir, which appeared in the Spring 2012 edition of the Public Contract Law Journal.

Tim was born in 1923 in New York City, the youngest of five children of Katherine Rawn Coburn and Ralph George Coburn of Greenwich, Connecticut. After the passing of his father, a successful business executive, and with the support of family and friends who recognized his potential, Tim attended Buckley School in New York and Brooks School in North Andover, Massachusetts. In 1942, Tim entered Harvard College on a financial scholarship and waited tables. When Harvard ended Tim’s freshman year in early 1943, he enlisted in the US Army. Following basic infantry training, the Army selected Tim for nine months of intensive German language instruction at Lehigh University, followed by rigorous training at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, the German prisoner of war interrogation center. This prepared Tim for special post-war duty in Germany. Tim was the last of the Section’s members to serve in the military during World War II.

Following the war, Tim completed Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and in 1949 he became a civilian attorney in the Navy Department. In 1954, he was assigned to the Office of the General Counsel of the Navy Department, headed by F. Trowbridge vom Baur. Tim’s many accomplishments included the role of editor and contributor to Navy Contract Law, for years the only single authoritative treatise on government contract law.

In 1963, Tim joined the firm later known as vom Baur, Coburn, Simmons & Turtle, for the practice of government contract law, one of the first such firms in the country. Following other law firm affiliations, Tim was a solo practitioner in Washington, DC, from 1992 until his retirement in 2013.

In addition to his work for the Section of Public Contract Law, Tim was a longtime member of the Procurement Division of the National Defense Industrial Association and chaired its legal committee for several years. He authored or edited books on government contract law and wrote many articles on that subject.

Tim was a formidable attorney and widely read intellectual. Toward the end of his life, he re-read The Odyssey and The Iliad. Before our visit on Tim’s 100th birthday, I asked his nephew Lawrence “Lawrie” Coburn for a gift suggestion. Tim told Lawrie he was uncomfortable because he hadn’t sent me a present for my birthday. Upon Lawrie’s insistence that this was a special birthday, Tim relented and requested a copy of Justice John Paul Stevens’s memoir, The Making of a Justice. On his 100th birthday, when Dick Johnson and I delivered the Stevens book, we found Tim revisiting the classic, The Life of Henry Adams.

Tim personified the best of his generation: duty to country and family, intellectual rigor, integrity, and devotion to the highest standards of the legal profession.

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