Practicality
Over Profundity
Land use lawyer Diane Whitney
is all about common-sense solutions
BY TIMOTHY HARPER
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL PARAS
DIANE WHITNEY’S NAME GETS THINGS
DONE. Lee Hoffman, a member at the
Hartford office of Pullman & Comley, tells of
failing to persuade an uncooperative court
clerk to provide a document. “I then uttered
the magic phrase, ‘It’s for Diane Whitney,’
and instantly the woman’s face was
transformed,” Hoffman remembers. The
clerk not only gave him the document, she
spent the next 45 minutes recounting tales
of Whitney’s knowledge, tact and kindness.
As a partner at Pullman & Comley,
Whitney practices land use and
environmental law—helping improve the
quality of life where people live and work.
Away from her law practice, Whitney has
been involved with various government
and non-government institutions and
agencies promoting sensible land use,
supporting the arts and more.
“Diane epitomizes what we should
all strive to be in this proud profession—
individuals who solve our clients’ problems
with integrity and faithfulness to the laws
we are sworn to uphold, while at the same
time bettering society through advancing
the rule of law,” says Tim Shearin, the
firm’s chairman.
Whitney was raised in Port Jefferson
on Long Island. Her father ran
Woodfield’s Menswear and her mother
stayed home with Whitney and her
younger brother, Gary, now an attorney
in Florida. It was, she says, an idyllic
childhood—kids walked home from
school every day along the harbor and
spent summers on the beach swimming,
waterskiing and organizing clambakes.
She was active in school government,
played field hockey and sang in choral
groups. Growing up, she didn’t know any
lawyers, much less female ones. “When
I went to college, girls didn’t go to law
school,” she recalls. “Nobody said, ‘You
can’t do it.’ We just didn’t.”
After William Smith College in Geneva,
New York, Whitney got a master’s degree
from Colgate University and then taught
English, first in Ilion, New York, and later
in Hartford. She and her husband, Gary
Whitney, a former laser physicist for
United Technologies, settled in Windsor,
a Hartford suburb, and she stayed home
with their sons. David, 46, is an architect
and Matthew, 42, is a financial consultant;
both are in the Boston suburbs.
She was a busy mom, volunteering
for school and civic groups and serving
as a docent at Hartford’s renowned
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.
When she considered returning to work
after the boys were old enough, she
pondered the law. Her husband provided
the nudge. He said, “It would be sort
of stupid to be 80 years old and still
wondering if you should have gone to
law school.”
