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Larry Cetrulo

Cetrulo Honored by Newark Academy with Alumni Achievement Award

Larry Cetrulo was recently honored by Newark Academy, receiving its prestigious Alumni Achievement Award. Of his time at the Academy, the presenters wrote “Larry’s record of accomplishment at Newark Academy has been well documented.  He entered Newark Academy in 1960 in the sixth grade and graduated in June 1967.  Academically, he was at or near the top of his class for his entire career at the school. In the Upper School he was a four-year letter winner in football, fencing and baseball. He was annually elected President of his Class, was a perennial officer of the Student Council and was Sports Editor of The Minuteman and an Associate Editor of The Polymian.  Larry was the organizing force and the major contributor to the establishment of the Cetrulo Family Fencing Center at Newark Academy and has been a member of the Board of Trustees of Newark Academy since 2012.”

Larry matriculated to Harvard College where he graduated Cum Laude in American Government in 1971.  He was elected a member of the Newark Academy Athletic Hall of Fame in 1992 and in 1996 was inducted into Harvard College Athletic Hall of Fame for his accomplishments in fencing. He was a three-time, First Team, All Ivy, competitor in fencing, a three-time All American Fencer and a Harvard Captain in 1970-1971. In Larry’s Harvard Hall of Fame accolade, he was called “arguably the best fencer in Harvard history.”

Mr. Cetrulo is a long-time Board Member of the Harvard Varsity Club and for over 25 years has been the Chairman of the Friends of Harvard Fencing. Among Larry’s major accomplishments as Chair were to endow the Fencing Program at Harvard and to organize and chair a gala celebration for the 125th Anniversary of Harvard Fencing, attended by over 300 alumni, administration and fencing dignitaries.

After college, Larry received a Master’s in Education Administration (Ed.M.) from Harvard University Graduate School of Education in 1972 and in 1975 was awarded his J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law.  Larry was a law clerk to the Honorable Andrew A. Caffrey, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts from 1975-1976 and began his legal career in September of 1976 at the Boston law firm of Burns & Levinson.  While there, he was protégé of legendary trial lawyer Thomas D. Burns. He soon developed an expertise in civil litigation, defending a wide variety of toxic tort and product liability litigations in Boston State and Federal Courts and thereafter both regionally and nationally.

In 1995, Larry founded the Boston law firm of Cetrulo LLP, which now numbers nearly 40 lawyers, 25 paralegals and over 75 employees. He is a member of the Corporation of Northeastern University, where he has endowed the Cetrulo Family Scholarship at its School of Law; a member of the Board of Directors of New England Center for Children (the nation’s largest researcher and treats autism in children); a member of the Board of Advisors at Tufts University School of Medicine (where he was the major contributor to the Cetrulo Family Scholars program which has awarded grants to dozens of medical students in the last four years). Among his many accomplishments at the Bar, Larry is currently Hearing Officer for the Board of Bar Overseers for the 2016-2018 term and is a Lifetime Fellow of the Massachusetts Bar Association, as well as the American Bar Association.

Larry has endowed a Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education Scholarships in honor of Thomas D. Burns, Esq., Lawrence Levinson, Esq., The Honorable David A. Mazzone, USDC-MA and The Honorable Walter Jay Skinner, USDC-MA. He has lectured and written extensively on a wide variety of legal subjects, including authoring a four-volume treatise for Thompson West Publisher entitled “Toxic Torts Litigation Guide.”  Perhaps Larry’s most enduring legacy in the law is the remarkable record of young men and women whom he has mentored in his 42 years. Since hiring his first paralegal in 1980, Larry has mentored over 700 law clerks, paralegals and college students aspiring to legal careers.

Larry resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts and summers in Truro, with his wife Lynn, a psychoanalyst. They have four children, Lara Ann Cetrulo Thomas, a paralegal with the law firm of Drew Wckl Farnham of Atlanta, Georgia; Lauren Lee White of  Los Angeles, California, who is a writer and a recent winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship Award at the Annenberg Institute for Public Diplomacy at U.S.C.; Nicholas Cetrulo, Harvard College, ‘06, Tufts University School of Medicine, ‘12 and a Fellow in Surgery at the Carolinas Medical Center, Charlotte, North Carolina and Kate Ellena Cetrulo, Harvard College, ’09, now matriculating in a joint program in Law and Public Health at Northeastern University School of Law and Tufts University School of Medicine.