Hon. Richard Rosenbaum
Richard A. Rosenbaum’s career has been all on the upside. As a teenager, in native Oswego, he played on the freshman basketball team there that went undefeated. Then his his family moved to Rochester, his father taking a managerial job with Sears, and the future barrister tried out for the football team at Monroe High and played three seasons as a tackle. As a senior he became interested in track and field events, ran the quarter mile and threw the shot put. He did well in both.
Then it was on to Hobart College where Richard played tackle on the football team, and two years on the Statesman’s Lacrosse team. Standing 6 feet, i inch tall and weighing 212 pounds, Rosenbaum laced up the boxing gloves and won Hobart’s heavyweight championship two years in a row. He also won the heavyweight title in the Pacific Theater of our armed forces.
Twenty years later he reentered the ring in the War Memorial, taking on former heavyweight champ Floyd Patterson in a charity event. Jersey Joe Wolcott was the referee. The bout was supposed to be all fun but Patterson was irked by something and disposed of Rosenbaum in two rounds.
But by this time in his career, Richard was on his way to the big time. He first became the GOP Chairman in Penfield, then in Monroe County and later became the GOP state chairman. Along the way he became a Penfield town justice, a Monroe County Legislator, and then a Supreme Court judge. He became a close friend of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who appointed him to the Board of directors of Rockefeller Center and held that position for seven years. As an attorney he became associated with the Nixon Peabody firm, Rochester’s largest law firm.
Today he handles three assignmets. He is chairman of the State Unemployment Insurance program, mediator forJAMS and a Judicial Hearing Officer. Richard and his wife reside in Penfield and have raised four children and they have 12 grandchildren.