Hometown Hawkeye: Nolden Gentry

Name: Nolden Gentry
Degree: B.A. (Political Science) ‘60, JD (Law) ‘64
Occupation: Semi-retired partner in law firm Brick Gentry
Residence: Des Moines, Iowa

Nolden Gentry came to Iowa to play basketball, but stayed to become a lawyer and leader in the state’s largest city.

Des Moines is in Polk County, Iowa, which includes:

14,385 UI alumni
1,049 UI-educated teachers and school administrators
549 UI-educated physicians
221 UI-educated dentists
124 UI-educated pharmacists

Discover how the UI impacts the lives ofIowansborder to border, river to river, at outreach.uiowa.edu.

Gentry had just led Rockford West High School to the Illinois state high school basketball championship when legendary coach Bucky O’Connor made him a Hawkeye. It was a productive four years on the Field House hardwood. A top rebounder, he lead the Hawkeyes with 241 rebounds in 1958, and his 23 boards against Michigan that year is still fourth-best in men’s basketball history for a single game.

He considered professional basketball after graduating with a political science degree in 1960, but he was called for a pre-induction Army physical instead of the NBA, and so he went to the University of Iowa College of Law on a deferral (he was eventually declared 4F because, at 6”7’, he was too tall for the Army, a designation emphasized by the “Too Tall” that was actually stamped on his draft papers). There, he met professors like Sandy Boyd and Alan Vestal, who became mentors and career guides following his graduation in 1964.

He sold football programs at Kinnick Stadium for all seven years while he was in Iowa City, and he can still remember a regular customer who bought a program from him most every game.

“Finally, during my third year of law school he says “Are we going to have to burn this place down to get you to leave?” he says.

He joined the FBI after receiving his law degree and was working in Newark, N.J., when Vestal told him about an opening for an assistant attorney general in the Iowa Attorney General’s office. In 1965, he returned to Iowa for good.

“I found Des Moines to be a wonderful community,” he says. “It’s welcoming; you can progress to participate in whatever organizations you’d like to participate in. There’s been no reason for me to leave.”

Eventually he became a partner in his own firm—now called Brick Gentry, P.C. and prospered while practicing mostly real estate and corporate law. And he became active in the community, too, more than active, actually, serving over the years on the boards of directors for Firstar Bank Iowa, MidAmerican Energy, Bankers Trust, Prairies Meadows, and the Iowa Public Television Foundation. He has also been a member of the State Board of Public Instruction, and president of the Des Moines School Board.

His public service also included the executive committee of the United Way, governor of the Great Des Moines Community Foundation, and membership on a committee studying government ethics for the Iowa State Legislature.

Now in semi-retirement, he continues to serve on the boards of Delta Dental Foundation, the Mid-Iowa Health Foundation, and Bridges of Iowa, a drug and alcohol recovery program.

Did you know? The College of Law’s Class of 2012 had a placement rate of 94 percent within nine months of graduate, well above the national rate of 85 percent.

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Hometown Hawkeyes are University of Iowa alumni, students, faculty, and staff living, working, and making a difference in Iowa. Know a Hometown Hawkeye you’d like to see profiled in Iowa Now? Email your suggestion to us at now@uiowa.edu.