{"id":2814,"date":"2015-07-20T13:53:28","date_gmt":"2015-07-20T17:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/?p=2814"},"modified":"2016-12-22T11:40:56","modified_gmt":"2016-12-22T16:40:56","slug":"gibbel-kraybill-hess-home-to-four-alumni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/2015\/07\/20\/gibbel-kraybill-hess-home-to-four-alumni\/","title":{"rendered":"Gibbel Kraybill & Hess: Home to Four Alumni"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Peter<\/a>

Peter Kraybill ’97 and Elvin Kraybill ’70, son and father, are law partners in Gibbel, Kraybill & Hess in Pennsylvania (2008 photo).<\/p><\/div>\n

Four EMU alumni are an important part of a nearly 40-year-old mid-sized law firm \u2013 Gibbel Kraybill & Hess LLP \u2212 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Two are founders, another is a founder\u2019s son and the fourth is the firm\u2019s administrator.<\/p>\n

Melvin Hess, class of \u201968<\/strong>, jokes that he became interested in a law career after arguing with Myron Augsburger when he was president of EMU. \u201cWe debated church doctrine, truth and justice,\u201d he says. \u201cI maintained that many Mennonites\u2019 peace values didn\u2019t square with the way they voted at election time.\u201d He was troubled that EMU, in the 1960s, didn\u2019t actively promote the civil rights movement and oppose the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

Elvin Kraybill \u201970<\/strong> first became interested in the law in high school, when he talked with a lawyer who came to campus to judge a debate in which Kraybill participated. He enrolled at EMU as a history major, with the intention of going to law school.<\/p>\n

Sue Aeschliman Groff \u201979<\/strong>, a social work major, had nothing to do with a law career until four years ago, when Kraybill, whom she knew as a fellow board member at her church, encouraged her to apply to be legal administrator at his firm.<\/p>\n

Peter Kraybill \u201997<\/strong>, son of one of the firm\u2019s founders, grew up with the law in his blood. At the office, he calls Elvin Kraybill \u201cDad\u201d when he\u2019s with colleagues but \u201cElvin\u201d when they are meeting with clients.<\/p>\n

How it all started<\/h3>\n

As an associate in the Lancaster law firm of Wenger & Byler in 1977, Elvin Kraybill went to a tax-law seminar and talked at length with another Lancaster attorney, John Gibbel. \u201cWe shared many similar hopes and frustrations related to the legal profession,\u201d recalls Kraybill. Several months later they decided to start their own firm. They invited a law colleague of Kraybill\u2019s, Mel Hess, to join them in a partnership.<\/p>\n

The new general-practice firm later adopted a mission statement \u201cto provide excellent legal services that promote justice with integrity.\u201d Gibbel, Kraybill and Hess committed themselves to service, including pro-bono work for worthy causes, and strong client relationships. They built on their deep roots in the community.<\/p>\n

In 1988, the firm moved into a new office building on Orange Street, across from the Lancaster County Courthouse.<\/p>\n

Today, the firm has 14 attorneys and 18 support staff and a satellite office in Lititz. They serve a city of 60,000 people and a surrounding county of 530,000. They divide themselves into four service groups \u2013 elder law, complex business succession and estate planning, corporations and organizations, and advocacy.<\/p>\n

Elvin Kraybill<\/h3>\n

Elvin Kraybill went to law school at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, graduating in 1973. \u201cWhile at EMU I read the Washington Post<\/em> and often visited D.C., so I wanted to go to law school there,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I missed the small on-campus community of EMU.\u201d Georgetown was the largest law school in the country at the time.<\/p>\n

Kraybill, who grew up on a farm in Lancaster County, returned to his community with his wife, Esther Graber \u201970<\/strong>, for his first job after law school.<\/p>\n

Today he specializes in estate planning, real-estate transactions, nonprofit organizations and planning successions for family businesses. He has served on the boards of Philhaven Hospital, Goshen (Ind.) College and EMU. He has been president of the Lancaster Bar Association.<\/p>\n

His pro-bono work includes MidPenn Legal Services, which provides legal counsel to low-income people. It dismays him that the demand for legal services keeps growing while government funding for such services keeps being cut.<\/p>\n

Melvin Hess<\/h3>\n

Hess, who also grew up on a farm in Lancaster County, attended EMU for two years and finished his undergraduate study at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster. He went to law school at Seattle University, graduating in 1976. His first job, like Kraybill\u2019s, was at Wenger & Byler.<\/p>\n

He specializes in litigation, which often finds him in the courtroom, dealing with construction and real estate disputes, complex commercial issues, serious personal injury and wrongful death claims, civil rights issues, and criminal law. He goes to court in state and federal cases and has argued numerous cases before the appellate courts in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Hess has also handled hundreds of municipal hearings, representing landowners, neighbors and municipalities in all aspects of the zoning and land-development process.<\/p>\n

Peter Kraybill<\/h3>\n

Peter Kraybill, after majoring in English\/journalism at EMU, went to Pennsylvania State University\u2019s Dickinson School of Law in Carlisle, graduating in 2001. He married a fellow student, Maria Kalugina, who had come from Russia on a scholarship from the U.S. State Department.<\/p>\n

The couple went to Moscow for two years, where Peter worked for a Chicago-based international law firm, Baker & McKenzie. He also taught in a master\u2019s program for Eastern European attorneys at the Moscow campus of the University of California at Davis.<\/p>\n

After Peter and Maria returned to Pennsylvania, Peter joined his father\u2019s law firm in 2003. He became a partner in 2008. \u201cDad\u2019s office is just a few steps away from my office,\u201d Peter says. \u201cI\u2019ve learned a lot from him, and he\u2019s been gracious to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

He leads the practice group at his firm that addresses the needs of corporations, nonprofit organizations and churches. He helps his clients with contracts, real-estate transactions, asset purchases, leasing and invoicing.<\/p>\n

Peter is active in the area of brand names and trademarks. In fact, last year he was one of the top 5,000 most active trademark attorneys with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He is a regular presenter at the annual trademarks seminar in Philadelphia for intellectual property attorneys.<\/p>\n

Sue Groff<\/h3>\n

Groff, who spent her entire career in social-service agencies, was impacted by a book that she and other EMU students studied during their time in Washington Study-Service Year (now Washington Community Scholars\u2019 Center). It was Servant Leadership<\/em> by Robert Greenleaf. \u201cHis concepts continue to influence how I interact and relate to others,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

A native of Stryker, Ohio, she is married to Marlin Groff \u201979<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Before joining the law firm in 2011, Groff was associate executive director of the Lancaster and Chester Counties branch of Bridge of Hope, a national church-based approach to ending homelessness. Prior to that, she was community relations coordinator for Friendship Community of Lancaster and Lebanon Counties, which serves people with developmental disabilities.<\/p>\n

Groff\u2019s responsibilities at Gibbel Kraybill & Hess include financial planning and controls, personnel administration, and managing technology and physical facilities. She shares responsibility with the firm\u2019s partners for strategic planning, practice management and marketing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four EMU alumni are an important part of a nearly 40-year-old mid-sized law firm \u2013 Gibbel Kraybill & Hess LLP \u2212 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Two are founders, another is a founder\u2019s son and the fourth is the firm\u2019s administrator. Melvin Hess, class of \u201968, jokes that he became interested in a law career after arguing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":2815,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,586],"tags":[600,604,601,602,603],"class_list":["post-2814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine","category-springsummer-2015","tag-elvin-kraybill","tag-gibbel-kraybill-hess","tag-melvin-hess","tag-peter-kraybill","tag-sue-groff","issues-springsummer-2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2814"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2965,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2814\/revisions\/2965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}