How I Got to Be Whoever It Is I Am (2 page)

My cousin Fred also told me recently that my grandfather was widely admired. “Congregants would come from all over to hear
his witty interpretation of the Talmud.” I was particularly struck by that when my wife read me something from a journal she
had kept when our son, Nick, was growing up.

We had a Brazilian nanny who would come to Connecticut from New York on the train during the week to help look after our boy,
who was then three. Nick listened as Regina told my wife that a man on the train had given her his card and asked her to go
out with him. She showed the card to my wife, and my wife told her that Merrill Lynch was a financial organization, and according
to the card this man was the head of one of its divisions, but Regina declined to go out with him, because, as she put it,
“I don’t know him or his family.” Nick at three, listening to all this, asked, “So you’re not going to go out with him?” Regina
said, “I don’t know him, so I can’t.” Nick persisted. “So you’re not going to have dinner with him?” Regina again said, “No,
I really don’t know him, so I can’t.” Nick then said, “It’s all right. He’s my banker.” Oh, if life worked differently, would
my grandfather have enjoyed Nick!

My grandfather worked with me on my Bar Mitzvah, which took place in Chicago. He was then an old man with a long white beard.
I will never forget him looking up at me from his chair and saying in appreciation, with a heavy accent, “a nomber von.”

My only other memory of my grandfather talking to me was when he sat on the edge of my brother’s bed in the bedroom we shared
trying to convey to me that I should work harder to please my father. He pointed to his head and said in a deep, guttural
voice, “Your father—his head is mmmmmmm,” as if to say my father already had more than enough on his mind without having to
deal with any problems with me.

As I recall, his crucially important words went right by me because I was so struck by the sight of this elderly Talmudic
scholar with the big black hat and long white beard sitting on my brother’s bed.

Even though my father and my uncle Bob gave them money, my grandparents had to take in boarders to help meet the bills. For
a small fee, my grandmother would wash the boarders’ clothes in the bathtub with a scrub board. Clotheslines were stretched
across the back porch.

The boarders were not allowed to prepare food in my grandmother’s kitchen. She was, of course, strictly kosher, as was my
mother. I never understood the purpose of keeping a kosher kitchen, yet I who never stopped asking questions never asked why
we separated meat from dairy. I’m sure it was explained to me at one point, but I forget, because I never had any interest
in ritual. I’m only interested in character and behavior.

My grandmother Jennie Singer, along with her daughter, my mother, were my angels of goodness in childhood.

My female role model was my cousin Phyllis, who was warm and friendly and quick to laugh. When she was dying of cancer, I
was going to fly down to Florida to spend some time with her. When she said, “My stomach is filled with cancer,” she amazingly
expressed no self-pity. She said to me, “Everyone wants to see you, but I’d rather see you alone.” Before that opportunity
presented itself, sadly, she died. When Phyllis had had her first child she named him Ted, after my dad, maybe because my
dad helped support Phyllis and her younger brother, Fred, after their mother died and their father abandoned them.

This one ranks with my favorite memories of Chicago. When Phyllis’s son Ted was about five years old, he spotted my great-uncle,
Chiel Flassterstien, who he thought was his recently deceased great-grandfather, or Zadie as we called him. Ted said, “Zadie!
I thought you died!” Without missing a beat, my great-uncle Chiel responded, “I came back.”

In my early twenties I went to my cousin Fred’s wedding in Chicago. My grandmother was in the hospital. I went to see her.
She was her usual cheerful self with me. From my earliest sight of her she filled my heart with love that never wavered. I
don’t remember her ever looking at me without a smile on her face. After our visit I kissed her and left. Halfway down the
hall, I remembered something I forgot to tell her. I turned around to go back to her room , but when I got to the door, I
didn’t go in, because of what I saw. Jennie Singer didn’t see me, because she was convulsed with sobs. She knew she had just
said goodbye forever to her grandson.

I
was very fortunate to grow up in a household of role models. My father, mother, and brother all worked hard, and I don’t
remember any nasty comments about other people ever expressed in our house. That doesn’t mean they loved everyone, but they
were never nasty or hostile. I’m sure that’s why today I’m good at cutting slack for others, as I hope they’ll do for me.

When I was in eighth grade in 1948, I was the seventh man on my grammar school basketball team. I loved playing basketball.
As years went by, I was in a league at the Y with some of my teammates from grammar school. A fellow named Bill Goren who
worked at the Y and was a friend of my family observed me playing. He called me into his office one day and said, “The other
boys seem to be developing their skills more than you.” I said, “I know.” He asked, “Why is that?” I said, “I don’t know.”

I thought about it in later years and came to the conclusion that basketball for me was always just fun. If you really wanted
to excel, you had to go full out to
beat
the other guy, something I really wasn’t interested in doing.

About twenty years later when I was in a pickup basketball game with other men, playing in my usual have-fun style, I remembered
the conclusion I’d come to about excelling at basketball. In the middle of the game I thought to myself,
If all you need to do is really put out much more effort to excel, why don’t you do it right now and find out if you’re kidding
yourself?
Though it might sound self-serving, I have to say that the minute I went full out, I dominated the game. In competitive sports,
if you’re not ready to give everything you have every moment, don’t even bother showing up. Of course, that largely applies
to life itself.

When I was a kid we had radio and movies. Movies were like a magic world, but radio was right there in our house, a member
of the family. I think that’s why being on the radio these past several years has meant more to me than being in the movies
or on television.

I remember a big red portable radio I often used to take to bed and put under the covers. Since my brother was six years older
and usually went to bed later, I could listen to it until he came to bed and said nicely, “Could you turn your radio off?”

Looking back, I think I formed a lot of my values from the radio. I found a lot of heroes there—Superman, Batman, but mostly
the Lone Ranger. There was something about the way he would ride off before anyone had a chance to thank him, and there’d
always be one person who’d say, “Who was that masked man?” I got a particular thrill when the answer would come, “Why, that
was the Lone Ranger!”

Several years ago there was quite a to-do in the news about the Lone Ranger. Some Hollywood producers were planning a new
movie about him and were searching for someone to play him. During my childhood, the Lone Ranger was played by Brace Beemer
on the radio. When the Lone Ranger moved to television, I was among the legions of fans who continued to follow him.

For us, there was only one Lone Ranger on television, and his name was Clayton Moore. Even as we grew older, he was still
there. But now Hollywood wanted to make a big movie of the Lone Ranger, and Clayton Moore was seventy. Oh, he was still around.
In fact, he was still around as the Lone Ranger. Nobody had seen him leap up on many horses lately, but he was still showing
up at parades and rodeos, and getting plenty of cheers and applause, too.

But Hollywood was making a big new Lone Ranger movie, and the search was on for the new, young Lone Ranger. The producers
of the movie felt it would not be in their interest to have two Lone Rangers around, so they went to court to get a ruling
to force Clayton Moore to take off his mask and stop appearing as the Lone Ranger, and they won.
Our
Lone Ranger was ordered to take off his mask.

Clayton Moore had worn his mask his whole life. Without it, well, he just wasn’t the Lone Ranger. If you’ve been the Lone
Ranger your whole life, it’s kind of tough, at seventy, to take off your mask and stop being him. So Clayton Moore went to
court and protested the ruling, but he lost. Our Lone Ranger had to take off his mask.

Years earlier there was a headline in a New York newspaper. It read:
SUPERMAN COMMITS SUICIDE
. George Reeves, who had been Superman about as long as Clayton Moore had been the Lone Ranger, had committed suicide, having
become despondent over being unable to find work as an actor after the
Superman
television series was canceled. Whenever he would try to get a part in something, they would say, “We can’t use you in that
part. People will say, ‘That’s Superman!’” And so he couldn’t get a job, got very depressed, and ended his life.

Our Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore, fought back. When the court ordered him to take off his mask, he appealed the decision to
a higher court. The next time anyone saw him in public, he had taken off the mask pending appeal, but in its place was a very
large pair of dark sunglasses, not a bad mask in its own right. He showed up with those big dark sunglasses that covered just
as much of his face as the mask had, and the applause and cheers were louder than ever. The public was on his side.

Meanwhile, the Hollywood producers found a young man named Klinton Spilsbury to be the new Lone Ranger. The movie was made.
It came out, and nobody went to see it. There were at least a couple of reasons for this. It hadn’t gotten good reviews, and
also, by the time it came out, there was quite a lot of public resentment over taking the mask off
our
Lone Ranger.

Eventually, a higher court ruled that Clayton Moore could wear the mask, after all. The glasses came off, the mask went back
on, and Clayton Moore was getting bigger cheers than ever before!

Shortly after this I was at a party and got into a conversation with a young actor who turned out to be Klinton Spilsbury,
the new movie’s Lone Ranger. He told me that he was a serious actor from New York, had studied a lot, and was really doing
very well moving up the ladder when this Lone Ranger opportunity came along. He said the movie was a mess. There were several
scripts, and no one could agree on whether they were supposed to be funny or serious. He was having difficulty finding work
because of his association with the movie and had moved back to New York to try to pick up the pieces of his career, which
basically had ended. The movie had a devastating effect on everyone except Clayton Moore, who was more popular than ever.

When I was a kid, we had a saying, “Don’t mess with the Lone Ranger.”

As the story went, when a troop of rangers were killed by the Indians, only one ranger survived, and he was nursed back to
health by an Indian, Tonto. When the ranger first regained consciousness he asked the Indian, “What happened?” Tonto said,
“All rangers killed. You Lone Ranger.” I got goose bumps.

Who among us has not sometimes felt like the lone ranger? Not the Lone Ranger, but the
lone
ranger?

I
entered Peabody High School in 1949. Eighth-grade graduates from various grammar schools came to Peabody, where the kids
were then put in 9B, then 9A, 10B, 10A, 11B, 11A, 12B, 12A. We were divided into three different homerooms starting in 9B,
so we were meeting a lot of new kids for the first time.

A few weeks into 9B, I was home in bed, sick with a cold. When my mother came into the bedroom I shared with my brother to
tell me a classmate had called, I couldn’t have known that something important had just happened. She told me that I’d been
elected president of my freshman homeroom class,
and I hadn’t even been there
. This was the beginning of a series of events that was to have a powerful effect on me for the rest of my life.

I went on to be elected president of my homeroom in 9A, then of 10B and 10A as a sophomore, of 11B and 11A as a junior, and
of 12B as a senior. Next, all three 12A homerooms made me president. The margins grew wider at each election. All this happened
to a boy who had been impeached as president in the fifth grade.

I couldn’t have realized it at the time, but this gave me an unusually high level of confidence that has never wavered. Granted,
I only aspire to what I believe I can achieve. I guarantee you I’ll never be chosen scientist of the year.

When I was in my teens, my brother suggested that we form a law firm together. He was in law school and I was in high school,
but something about me provoked my brother to say that. Not only did he want to partner with me, he wanted to be the research
guy, and I would be the courtroom guy.

When my son, Nick, was graduated from middle school at thirteen, my wife and I listened as the principal said something about
each kid as they crossed the stage to receive their certificate. “She really can spell,” for example, or “He won the two-mile
race.” As Nick went up I leaned forward to hear what was going to be said, and I’ll never forget the principal’s words: “He
really knows how to marshal an argument.” If my brother had known Nick at the time Jack was in law school, he would have asked
him to be the courtroom guy and the head of the firm.

Recently, I came across the yearbook of my graduating class. It listed the best and the most, in about twenty categories—most
likely to succeed, funniest, smartest, etc. There was the best and the second best in all categories, with separate listings
for boys and girls. My name didn’t appear once. It took me back to a conversation I had with the only African American girl
in my class, Joanne Snyder. I asked her why I kept getting elected. She said, “You care about people.” It’s interesting to
me that there wasn’t a caring category in “the best, the most” in high school then. I hope there is today, but I’m doubtful.
I had no idea that was unique, and still find it hard to grasp. Today it resonates, because every time I agree to host a charity
event, the organizers seem shocked to learn I won’t take a fee.
I’m
shocked that that’s unusual.