Gilbert L. Amyot; Silver Spring Lawyer, Playwright

Gilbert L. Amyot, 75, a lawyer who in later years became a playwright, died April 17 at his home in Leisure World in Silver Spring. He had prostate cancer.

Mr. Amyot, who practiced law in the Washington area from 1974 to the mid-1980s, worked for the Air Line Pilots Association, International until 1980. He then worked with the law firm of Thompson, Hine and Flory, now Thompson Hine, in Washington.

He wrote "The Guest Lecturer," a play about the life of Maxwell Perkins, legendary editor at Charles Scribner's Sons for F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Ring Lardner and Thomas Wolfe; and "The Spokesman," a play about Joseph Thayendanegea Brant, a Mohawk leader and British military officer during the American Revolution.

A staged reading of "The Guest Lecturer" was held at Olney Theater on Jan. 23, 50 years after Mr. Amyot had acted there.

Mr. Amyot was s the first baby born in his hometown of Manchester, N.H. He graduated from Assumption College in Massachusetts in 1955. He attended Catholic University and studied speech and drama under the direction of the Rev. Gilbert V. Hartke until being drafted into the Army in 1958.

He served overseas in France in the Army medical corps.

When it was discovered that he could speak French, he worked in tandem with the local French police to mediate charges against U.S. officers arrested in France.

Mr. Amyot returned to the Washington area in 1960 and later graduated from Georgetown University Law School. He worked as a lawyer for the Comptroller of the Currency and Civil Aeronautics Board in the late 1960s.

From 1969 to 1974, he lived in Los Angeles while working as a lawyer and assistant vice president in the office of regulatory affairs at Western Airlines.

He lived in Kensington from 1974 to 2001, when he moved to Silver Spring.

A son, Gilbert "Biggy Boy" Amyot, died in 1986.

Survivors include his wife of 49 years, Claudette Bernier Amyot of Silver Spring; two children, Michele Whaley of Lawrenceville, Ga., and Nicole Mastromarino of Gaithersburg; three brothers, Paul Amyot of Silver Spring and Robert Amyot and Charles Amyot, both of Greenfield, Mass.; two sisters, Judith Russaouen of Mexico City and Madeleine Sanchez-Santiago of Montreal; and six grandchildren.

-- Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb