THE DECADES OF OUR LIVES — Sharon Mark Cohen

Celebrating 70 years of Arnee, B”H. My mantra that everyone deserves a legacy just moved up a notch to “everyone deserves a living legacy.”

His mother told me that the older you get, the faster the years go.

"The past 20 years have sped by," his brother, seven years his senior, commented.

Let’s talk about the decades of our lives.

Arnee and I met in our teens, married in our 20s, had children in our 30s. We started to lose our parents in our 40s, began sending our children off to college in our 50s and, began marrying our children off and became grandparents in our 60s. With all the trials and tribulations, time has not stood still.

Spanning those years, Arnee graduated college Summa Cum Laude, went to law school and received a graduate degree in labor law. He became a first-class lawyer, voted by his peers as the best in his field. He’s argued and won more than 10 cases in the New Jersey Supreme Court while always backing workers’ rights and noteworthily establishing precedent.

One of the most challenging and rewarding cases of his career was heard by the Beth Din, a religious tribunal. With a resounding victory at the Beth Din, he continued to argue pro bono against the challenges to that decision. The case went to the New Jersey Supreme Court, where Arnee defended the Beth Din decision in a groundbreaking 7-0 win.

Aside from his full-time day job as a labor and employment attorney, he has been an adjunct professor of law for nearly four decades at Rutgers School of Law in Newark, New Jersey, and approaching a quarter of a century as an acclaimed weekly volunteer radio show host of The World of Work on wdvrfm.org. In those circles, he's known by his middle name, Shep.

He has served and still has a seat on numerous boards, such as the elected secretary of the Botto House-American Labor Museum. He also represents benefit and training funds.

As Chair of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the New Jersey State Bar Association, in 2005, he started and continues to moderate the Hot Tips in Labor and Employment Law for the Institute for Continuing Legal Education (ICLE). He has trained generations of young lawyers. Arnee was also a founding member of the Inns of Court in Labor Law and reported on the history of the esteemed organization at their opening session in 2021.

A Fellow in the prestigious College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, listed yearly in the peer-selected Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers in America, he has written countless articles, headed legal publications, and contributed to books on labor law. Our three children and I are blessed to have seen him honored on numerous occasions for his work on behalf of working people.

As the years speed by, I do not want to miss an opportunity to celebrate 70 years of Arnee, as I’ve been with him for 52 years of the ride. To list a few of our adventures since marrying in 1975, we’ve traveled to 45 states, need the fingers of both hands to count the number of countries we’ve visited, rode on an elephant, held an orangutan, and flown in a hot air balloon.

Scott Linder said it best. When we walked into Arnee’s 45th high school reunion, Scott, who went through grade school, Hebrew School and college with Arnee, declared, “no one could ever say a bad word about Arnee Cohen.” My reply was, “they still can’t.”

I'm a lucky gal. Happy 70th birthday to my bashert. May it be the start of a fulfilling decade.

Arnee and Sharon 1973 Elizabeth, New Jersey