Paul J. Yesawich Jr. Scholarship Helps First-Generation Students

$250,000 Gift Recently Added to Scholarship Fund

Paul J. Yesawich Jr. was the only child of Lithuanian immigrants who grew up in Queens, N.Y. As he approached graduation from one of the city's most challenging and respected high schools, Brooklyn Tech, he was eager to continue his education, but concerned about his family's ability to pay for it. Fortunately, while at Tech he also developed a standout talent for basketball, which ultimately earned him a full athletic scholarship to Niagara University (and induction into its Hall of Fame in 1966). He studied accounting, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1948 and a master's degree in 1950.

Yesawich pursued his basketball career as a player on the National Basketball Association's Syracuse Nationals for a couple of years before enrolling at Cornell Law School to earn his JD. He graduated and was admitted to the New York Bar Association in 1951, after which he began a long and distinguished career that included positions with the renowned New York City law firm of Davis, Polk and Wardwell; as assistant counsel to the subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives; as partner in the law firm of Folmer, Ryan, Fenstermacher & Yesawich; and as a commissioner of the New York State Law Revision Commission.

In 1971, he was appointed to the New York State Supreme Court by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and served a 14-year term on that court. Three years later, he was designated to serve on the Appellate Division, First Department, of the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan. He served in that position for seven years, simultaneously serving as a trial judge in the Sixth Judicial Department and as a member of the Advisory Panel on the Proposed Code of Evidence for the State of New York. He was subsequently appointed to the Appellate Division, Third Department of the court in Albany, where he served until his retirement in 1999. He passed away in 2017.

Yesawich never forgot the crucial financial assistance that enabled him to attend Niagara, often saying that he was very lucky he learned to "throw a ball through a hoop." In recognition of his father's gratitude and strong belief in the value of education, Dr. Peter Yesawich, his wife, Paris, and brothers Paul III, and Christopher, established the Paul J. Yesawich Jr. Memorial Scholarship in 2021, and recently donated an additional $250,000 to the corpus of the fund. Scholarships will be awarded to undergraduate students who, like Paul, are the first in their families to attend Niagara and require financial assistance to do so.

"Going from his youth in Queens, to his early days at Niagara, to what he eventually accomplished professionally was quite remarkable," said Dr. Yesawich, who described his father as "incredibly honest, principled, focused, and determined." Yet, despite his outstanding success as a legal scholar, his father was very humble, Yesawich added.

"Niagara gave him a wonderful opportunity not only to develop personally, but eventually become a respected legal scholar…something that likely would have never happened otherwise," Dr. Yesawich said. "So, when we created the scholarship, we wanted to make sure it reflected the path he had to pursue, because we knew it would warm his heart to know we did something that would enable someone in a similar circumstance to have the same opportunity he did."