(A work in progress of scattered thoughts in response to a son’s request and dedicated to all three sons, two daughters and seven grandchildren… to date.)
A dividend of living to a ripe old age is having a better understanding of who we are and analyzing what were major factors in causing us to think and act as we have done and do.
In our youths we thought we were creating ourselves from whole cloth, oblivious to all of the influences of family, community and times.
Born in 1937 to a moderately prosperous family that owned a neighborhood credit department store, I was raised during my initial twelve years in a semi-detached home in what was then the predominently Christian North East Philadelphia. (After the end of the War, the “North East” designation moved much further north.) I suffered no Great Depression deprivation. Later in life, I benefited from the lack of peer competition resulting from the paucity of depression age births as compared to the ‘baby boomers’ after the Second World War.
Families had not spread across the country. In the 1940s and 1950s we alternated Sundays visiting the homes of relatives or receiving them at our house. You didn’t call ahead; you just stopped by. If they were at home, you would be warmly greeted and force fed. By visiting relatives I mean all of them, from grandparents and great aunts and great uncles to uncles and aunts and cousins. Half a dozen stops was not unusual.
I recall my scratchy wool pants (I learned to wear pajamas under them) and the overheated living rooms of the elderly. And everywhere we went there was the ubiquitous boxes of candy. (Boxed chocolates were very big in those days, often made in the neighborhood. We needed to place orders months in advance to secure a supply for the holiday season as gifts for friends and acquaintances.)
My values were formed in the 1940s and 1950s, during an era that prized and rewarded hard work and fostered a strong sense of societal cohesion and respect for one’s fellow citizens (unless they were black.) The humbling shared difficulties of the Great Depression and the self-sacrifice of the Second World War implanted values that were exemplified by the two women who raised me (my mother Hannah who helped out in the family store and our live-in housekeeper Lena), my older brother Joe, and my two college years each at Oberlin and later the University of California at Berkeley.
From my father Sylvan I learned to question authority and think on my own. If we made a comment at the Sunday dinner table, we were called upon to defend it with citations, not opinions. My father said his mission was not to be our friend but to toughen us up for real life. He did. If you could stand up to Sylvan, you were ready to stand up to just about anyone. This proved invaluable later in life during many challenging episodes with people of emmense status and power. They included CEOs for whom I worked, U. S. senators, and a president of the United States.
From my brother Martin, I later learned the rudiments of real estate development.
After having read “Plutarch’s Lives” ” and upon provocation, I told a junior high school ancient history teacher during class that she was “one of the most ignorant persons on the face of the earth” and walked out of the classroom. Neither the school administration or my family made any fuss over it. (My views were likely shared.)
I probably learned as much from suffering as a target of two or three bad teachers over the course of my public school education as I did from the several excellent ones. The former nourished my strong aversion to injustice and abuse of authority. The latter stimulated an academic proclivity.
Tall, fat, and awkward, I was bullied in middle school by school toughs. That left an impression and, to enhance my self respect and to be better accepted, it led me to participate in freshman football at Oberlin College. (I wish I had been able to take Karate. Bullies, like dogs, pick on others who they sense are scared.)
I was a student of history and economics and continue to be so to this day.
Rightly or wrongly, I came to believe that most relationships are predicated on self-interest. Also, the only person whose opinion of you really matters is your own. Moreover, those who would honor you likely do so to control you. And if you are not going to be popular, then strive to be respected. During my senior year in high school, my asperation was to stand out as one in ten thousand.
Cynical? Yes. Do I think I am wrong? Yes, in many cases. Altruism does exist, as I have experienced in my work with reform and philanthropic organizations.
Speaking your mind and actively opposing what you consider wrong does not foster many long term friendships. (Thousands of locals will read NewsLanc each week; few would want to be seen in public with me in small town Lancaster.)
There are a handful of early friendships that I regret not having been able to retain over the decades. In some cases I wish I could apologize for wrongs I now recall doing or of which I am not aware. Perhaps they just didn’t like me after a while and they joined that long line.
Until my confirmation year when our rabbi was the teacher, I objected to religious school and did not identify myself as Jewish, although I never concealed my religion from others. Later in life, I became a student of Judaism and I have identified myself as a member of the Reform branch. I was influenced by the teachings of Mordecai Kaplan. (He was a great Orthodox rabbi who helped found and lead the Conservative branch.)
Jewish values (supplemented by Lena’s Catholic values) had permeated our upbringings, whether or not my father and others recognized it. It was only later that I came to understand this.
Perhaps due to the influencse of the Great Depression and World War II, the flaunting of wealth was looked down upon in the 1940s and 1950s. Wealthy people were hesitant to move from the neighborhood in which they grew up. The ‘status symbol’ of the super-rich on the Philadelphia Main Line in the 1950s was to drive a six year old Buick. Wealthy ladies bragged about wearing attractive outfits that they had purchased at Bonwit Teller’s a decade or so earlier. (Both my former and current wives are the same in this regard! Perhaps that was one of the their many qualities that attracted me.)
At Oberlin and Cal Berkeley my friends considered me politically conservative. Although registered Republican, I often voted across party lines. I was one of Richard Nixon’s last supporters when he abdicated. (I still retain ambivalent feelings about Nixon, who reminded me of my father with his mixture of good and bad characteristics.) Over the years, my views and values havenot alter much; the Republican Party did. As a result, I changed my registration to Democrat in 2003.
I worked for or otherwise dealt with a half dozen of the wealthiest businessmen in the country. None of them put on airs or engaged in conspicuous consumption. Quite the opposite. Their homes were similar to those of professionals such as doctors and lawyers, who were not vastly overpaid in those days. In the 1950s, it usually was the “Nuevo rich” who drove the fancy cars and wore the obviously expensive suits.
During the 1950s the income of the top 1% of the population was not that disparate from the upper middle class. The salaries of heads of companies were perhaps ten times greater than the typical worker, certainly not a hundred times as much, if not more, which is all too common today. A business persons, doctor, dentist or lawyer aspired to someday have a hundred thousand dollars, the equivalent of a million dollars today. They did not expect to earn that much each year.
I was influenced by the Jewish value that the second highest form of charity is for neither the donor to know the recipient or the recipient to be aware ofthe donor. (The top value is to help another to be self-supporting.)
I don’t know that the Tea Party of today is that much different in its vehemence against Barack Obama than was the Liberty Party that opposed Franklin Roosevelt. Members derogatorily mocked FDR as being a Jew. (He wasn’t Jewish.) Members of the Tea Party today are careful not to apply the “N” word to our president. (He is black.)
My father’s aversions for Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman were strong. They partly sprung from his resistance to unions and higher taxes. Labor organizing could be brutal in those days. My father carried a gun much of the time, and perhaps he had good reason. Also income taxes were at least twice as high. During and after the war into the 1950s they reached around 90% for the highest bracket.
I understand why conservatives might legitimately disapprove of President Obama’s initiatives. However, I don’t understand the visceral hatred that many have for him. Perhaps they see him as a symbol of an America rapidly changnig from predominently White and Christian to a virtual melting pot.
Thinking back on life, I ask myself what would I have done differently. I question whether my Herculean efforts to get Arlen Specter elected to the Senate had more to do with his close ties to my brothers and my own self-aggrandizement than his views and character. He likely was the better candidate. After George W. Bush became president, I felt Arlen compromised his moderate values in exchange for a fifth term.
My decades of tilling in the unpopular fields of drug policy reform and harm reduction enabled me to make a meaningful contribution to the public welfare. It brought great satisfaction. Drug prohibition was a colossal mistake predicated on lies and ignorance and I am proud to be a pioneer in bringing about reform, although it took over two decades of efforts by many of us to educate the public and to partially achieve our goals. I was honored to work alongside some remarkable individuals in our quest.
As to how to conduct business: Unstinting effort; devotion to serving our customers; concern for quality; appreciation of the input of co-workers, contractors and suppliers; fair play; empathy for the needs of the customer; investment for long term profits; and a sense of achieving something worthwhile for society – all reflect values from the 1940s and 1950s, not the get rich quick approach of more recent decades.
If I had it to do over again, what would I do differently? Unless I could change myself, very little.
Would I even want to do it again? No. The business world has gotten too tough, with increased competition and less opportunities here in the USA. (To paraphrase Horace Greely: Go north, young people; go north to Canada.)
Moses said to Joshua “Be strong and have courage.” Without the “strength” from a successful business career which gave me the cushion of ” ‘Go to hell’ money” ( in the words of James Clavell), I don’t know that I could exercise the “courage” to help make a difference to the world.
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