Richard Wiley; mastered law, banking, teaching

“Underneath all his success, Dick was really a teacher,’’ said David Follett, who was founder and chief executive of Giganet, a former Concord-based high-tech company for which Mr. Wiley was an adviser and board member. “He was always teaching, always mentoring, sharing ideas he had learned in his life well beyond the legal profession.’’

With a résumé that accommodated a handful of successful careers, Mr. Wiley worked in the Defense Department, at a half-dozen Boston law firms, and with a major bank as he became someone lawyers and entrepreneurs trusted to guide them through the thickets that grow where different disciplines intersect.

Diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, Mr. Wiley kept working and transferred the last of his clients to other lawyers only a few weeks before he died in his Wellesley home June 12. He was 80.

“In a world where people are experts, narrowly focused on one particular issue, my father viewed himself as truly a generalist, someone who knew a little about almost everything,’’ said his son Garett of Shanghai.

Intent on making education available to as many people as possible, Mr. Wiley at various times served as chairman of the state’s Education Loan Authority, Higher Education Coordinating Council, and Board of Regents of Higher Education. He also served on the Regents’ task force on student financial aid.

“Education was probably the most important thing that he could give somebody,’’ said his other son, Stewart, of Cambridge.

Mr. Wiley, however, didn’t stop at working on boards that could shape education or steer aid toward Massachusetts students in need. He taught at his alma mater, Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and at Boston College Law School and Boston University School of Law.

“I really think in some sense Dick missed his calling, because he was what you think of as the old school professor, the type of person who was really dedicated to helping people improve themselves,’’ said Paul Combe, president and chief executive of American Student Assistance, a Boston-based firm that guarantees federal loans in Massachusetts. “He always made sure that you kept your dignity, that you saw the right direction, and saw that he was supporting you.’’

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Mr. Wiley moved with his family to Springfield, where he graduated from Classical High School. He and his older brother were the first in their family to attend college, and Mr. Wiley chose Bowdoin.

The college awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1994, and Richard E. Morgan, the professor who presented the degree, noted that to “a casual, contemporary observer,’’ Mr. Wiley’s accomplishments “might appear out of line - not in the usual order of things.’’

Even at Bowdoin, Mr. Wiley overlapped multiple lives. He graduated a year early, in 1948, with a degree in government. Rather than enjoy a “relaxed senior year at Bowdoin,’’ Morgan said, Mr. Wiley then completed his first year at Harvard Law School while serving as a private in the Marine Corps Reserve.

From there, he spent two years as a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College in England, and graduated from Oxford University in 1951 with a bachelor of civil law degree.

By the time he graduated from Harvard Law School in 1959 with a master’s in law, Mr. Wiley had already worked at John Hancock Insurance Co. in Boston and served as a lawyer in the Air Force, later reaching the rank of major with the Air Force Reserve.

In 1959, he joined the Boston law firm of Bingham, Dana & Gould, where he was elected managing partner in 1971. A lawyer who becomes managing partner in his early 40s often remains at that firm for the remainder of his career. Not Mr. Wiley, who went on to work as an attorney, or serve as counsel, with five other Boston firms: Csaplar & Bok; Gaston & Snow; Powers & Hall; Hill & Barlow; and Foley Hoag.

“He was someone who is absolutely driven by his professional ethic and his work ethic, as well,’’ Stewart said.

Married in 1955 to Carole Smith, Mr. Wiley took time away from his Boston legal career to serve in the Department of Defense in Washington. Appointed by President Gerald Ford in 1976 and confirmed by the Senate, he was the department’s chief legal officer, holding the rank of assistant secretary of defense.

Mr. Wiley was awarded the department’s Medal for Distinguished Public Service the following year when, with the change in administrations, he returned to Boston.

During the next decade, he worked at First National Bank of Boston as vice president and counsel, rising to executive vice president. Then, he returned to Boston firms, developing a specialty in high technology corporate law.

“My father didn’t have any real single career,’’ Garett said, and Mr. Wiley had a file folder full of income tax forms as ample evidence. In a conversation last month, “He said to me that he’s had 14 separate W-2s in his life, which is indicative of how many different things he did. He always did what interested him. He was very much a passionate intellect. Through the course of his life, he ended up doing almost every job that someone with his education could do.’’

Of all his endeavors, education was paramount for Mr. Wiley, whether he was teaching formally in the classroom or informally in an office or conference room. To help others learn, he believed, is to invest time and effort, just as others had done for him years earlier.

In 1994, when he accepted the honorary doctorate at Bowdoin, he said, “In accepting this tribute, I am, however, simply an agent - or a proxy - for hundreds of others whose lives have touched mine. Each of us, who we are, and what we do with our lives, is the product of myriad sacrifices by others, a few known, but mostly unknown to us. Those sacrifices shape our values - shape our very beings.’’

In addition to his wife, Carole, and sons Garett and Stewart, Mr. Wiley leaves a daughter, Kendra Wiley Kilsdonk of Westford; and four grandsons. At Mr. Wiley’s request, no service was held.