Passings in My Profession: 5 Killed at a Newspaper, the Sale of My Employer of 32 Years

I was touched by two events Thursday, one that made national headlines, the second another example of economic realities in today’s business environment. 

Both events involved my chosen profession, journalism. 

When news broke of the fatal shooting at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, my mind raced back 41 years. In early 1977 I turned down a job offer at the newspaper. I had left my newspaper job in New Haven in September 1976 to work as press secretary to a congressional candidate in a race both he and I knew he would lose. But the opportunity to leave The Register for “something” was too appealing to pass up. For two years management had frozen our salaries after the editorial staff voted in the Newspaper Guild. It was not easy living on $200 a week (as one of six bureau chiefs on a staff of 100 I was one of the better paid reporters. About a year later the union won a contract. Had I stayed I would have been paid about $450 a week). 

Once the congressional race ended as expected, I began searching for another newspaper job. The Gaston Gazette in Gastonia, NC, a suburb of Charlotte, offered $200 a week. After all, the editor reasoned, it was a lot cheaper to live in Gastonia than New Haven. When I demurred, he upped the offer to $250 a week and membership in a country club (I don’t think he knew I was Jewish). There was one catch, however. Instead of the two reporters he hoped to hire, for $250 a week he expected me to do the work of two staffers. Again, I resisted the call of the South.

My next possibility was a job at the Capital Gazette. Again, $200 a week. As my brother and his family lived some 50 miles away in Rockville, MD, Annapolis appealed to me. However, the state capital and home to the Naval Academy was a high priced community to live in. No way $200 a week was going to cut it.

A few weeks later I answered an ad in The New York Times from a trade publisher. I started at Lebhar-Friedman’s Nation’s Restaurant News March 14, 1977. A year later I transferred to Chain Store Age, a title that appeared on my business cards for the next 31 years. I retired in June 2009.

On Thursday, family-run Lebhar-Friedman, founded in 1925, was acquired by Chicago-based EnsembleIQ, a portfolio company of RFE Investment Partners, a private equity investor. At one time L-F had as many as 16 publications, half covering the retail industry, the rest healthcare, employing more than 500. At the time of the sale, only three books remained, Chain Store Age among them, as well as two CSA conferences, SPECS and X/SPECS dealing with store construction and facilities. The company employed fewer than 100. 

What happened? Consolidation of the retail industry at the same time more publications entered a shrinking field. These competitors were more nimble, with lower operating costs, allowing lower advertising rates. L-F always used internal funds to power growth. But an ill-timed, ill-advised acquisition into the healthcare field saddled L-F with heavy debt just when revenues toppled. The Internet sapped classified advertising while forcing investments that did not pay off. 

No need to elaborate any more causes. My bottom line: The 32 years I spent at Lebhar-Friedman as a staff editor, editor-in-chief and publisher afforded the opportunity to support my family and treat them to pleasures not experienced by many others. We travelled across the country and to distant lands. My children attended top schools. During the summer they went to camp or travel programs. Our home, I like to say, is the “house that Chain Store Age built.” 

Working on Chain Store Age from 1978 through 2009 enabled me to meet and at times befriend some of the most important retail luminaries of the last half century, including Sam Walton, Charles Lazarus and successive heads of Walmart, Sears, Kmart, JC Penney and many chains no longer around including TG&Y, Caldor, Zayre, Rose’s, Woolworth. Equally, if not more importantly, working at L-F introduced me to some great creative professionals. 

I am saddened by the loss of the Lebhar-Friedman nameplate. But I am comforted that Chain Store Age-SPECS-X/Specs will continue to provide, in the words of David Shanker, CEO of EnsembleIQ, “a comprehensive view of retail insights and information.”

Three Deaths in an Extended Family

The official cause of death was reported as respiratory failure, but to me anything but a broken heart would be a mischaracterization.

Charles Lazarus, the guiding light of Toys “R” Us for 46 years, died Thursday, one week to the day after the company he founded in 1948 filed bankruptcy liquidation papers. He was 94. 

In a corporate obituary of Toys “R” Us I posted just a week ago, I wrote, “I cannot imagine what must now be gripping his emotions” (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2018/03/from-proudest-moment-to-saddest-saga-of.html).

It somehow seems fitting that Lazarus did not outlast his creation. Even if some parts of Toys “R” Us may be resuscitated, as some toy suppliers are trying to cobble together a successor company, the chain will never be the same as when Lazarus commanded the toy industry. 

I had the good fortune of knowing some of the titans of the retail industry during the last half century. Lazarus would qualify for Mount Rushmore status. He invented the category killer discount specialty store concept copied in numerous merchandise categories. 

Retailers with his merchandising, marketing and operational skills, linked by strategic perception and unmatched passion, are rare birds. He will be missed by all who knew him and by countless children, some still young, some now grown up, some not yet conceived.  

Back to the Shtetl: One never knows where inspiration for a posting will emerge, where a seemingly distant reference might intersect with some part of your or your family’s past.

The New York Times ran an obituary of Rabbi Mordechai Hager in Saturday’s edition (https://nyti.ms/2Dz4SUq). The 95-year-old rabbi was the leader of the American branch of the Viznitz Hasidim, a religious sect that began in the Carpathian foothills of what is now western Ukraine. My father’s shtetl town of Ottynia was in that region, so I was naturally interested in details of Rabbi Hager’s life. 

As I read the obituary I was struck by the following: “Mordechai Hager was born on July 20, 1922, in Oradea, Romania, known among Yiddish speakers as Grosswardein. His father, Chaim Meir Hager, was the fourth grand rabbi of Vyzhnytsia (Viznitz in Yiddish), the village in the Carpathian foothills in what is today western Ukraine; the village had been the seat of this Hasidic dynasty since its beginnings in the mid-19th century.”

The key phrase, “His father, Chaim Meir Hager,” made me race to my folder on Ottynia. In a booklet published in 2000 by Philip Spiegel, a descendant of Ottynia emigres, there are numerous references to “Rabbi Chaim Hager and the Chassidim of Ottynia.” (Observant readers will notice the cited names are not totally identical: Chaim Meir Hager vs. Chaim Hager, but the family of rabbis is definitely the same.)

“Rabbi Chaim Hager was born in Wishnitz in 1864. He was the sixth generation of the Wishnitz dynasty of rabbis who descended from Rabbi Kopel Chassid, a student of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Chassidism in the early 18th century (interestingly, my father’s first name was Kopel). At age 13, Chaim Hager was ordained as a rabbi after studying with his grandfather. … 

“Toward the end of the 19th century he settled in Ottynia and thousands of Chassidim came there to study with him.”

Ottynia changed hands several times during World War I. Seeking safety, Rabbi Hager moved to Vienna during the war. “When the war ended he found much of Ottynia and the synagogues in ruins so he moved to Stanislawow,” now called Ivano-Frankivska, a larger city to the northwest. He died in 1931 in Krakow. He was buried in Stanislawow. 

Many Viznitz Hasidim emigrated to Israel after World War II. They settled in Bnei Brak, outside Tel Aviv. Yeshivat Ottynia, in Bnei Brak, has been run by a grandson of Rabbi Chaim Hager. 

I’ve visited Israel numerous times, never stopping in Bnei Brak. Now that I have a connection, I cannot say it will make a difference the next time I am in Israel.

Leading Lady: I got to know Charles Lazarus and other retail luminaries because I worked for Lebhar-Friedman, publisher of Chain Store Age. L-F is a family run company, founded in 1925 by Arnold Friedman, Godfrey Lebhar and John Stern (I have no idea why his name is not part of the company). 

Since 1981 after the death of his father, Roger Friedman has led the company. Once, twice or maybe three times a year, I would see his wife Pat at the office, a company function or at one of our conferences. She usually wore something red. She always smiled and had a graceful gait, walking with head held high. 

The last time I saw Pat Friedman, about five years ago, Gilda and I were eating lunch with Ellie in the basement cafeteria of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ellie worked at The Met. Pat was there because she was a docent. 

Pat died last Thursday, March 15. Here’s a portion of the death notice printed in The Times:

“Patricia Mosle Friedman of New York, NY, and Pecos, NM, passed away on March 15th, 2018, after an intense battle with cancer. She died peacefully, in her sleep, surrounded by her family’s love. Born in Litchfield, CT, to A. Henry Mosle and Jane Magor Mosle, she graduated Magna Cum Laude from Columbia University where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. She later received her M.A. from the Institute of Fine Arts, and spent several years as an adjunct professor at Hunter College where she taught Impressionism and Post Impressionism. She earned a Certificate of Achievement from The New York School of Interior Design and freelanced as an interior designer with Stroheim and Romann. 

“Passionate about the arts as a whole, Pat excelled as a student and teacher of Middle Eastern Dance, and performed several times at Lincoln Centre under her stage name, Patrima. For the past 30 years, Pat truly loved being a Docent at The Metropolitan Museum, serving as Chair of the Collection Tour Program from 2008-2010. She served as a guide in the High School Program, and an adult tour guide in Highlights, Impressionism, Post Impressionism, and Modern & Contemporary. She was perpetually inspired by the works of art that she covered, and rejoiced in the constant sense of ongoing discovery and learning. 

“She was a Colonial Dame, a Sustainer of The Junior League of New York where she was named Volunteer of The Year, a Founding Member of the Board of the National Dance Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and sat for many years on the Board of The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependance. 

“Pat is survived by her husband of 55 years, Roger, their daughter, Amanda, son, Randall, daughter-in-law, Tomomi, and twin granddaughters, Sasha and Myla.”

A Schnorrer's Cry: Baseball's Been Good to Me

I’m a baseball schnorrer.

Theres no getting around it. As I reviewed in my mind my visits to Yankee Stadium, I see a definite pattern of schnorring.

Now, for the uninitiated let me first decipher the meaning of the Yiddish word schnorrer. It may be best defined in my case as a moocher, someone who gets something for nothing or otherwise would not partake in the experience.

Eight years into the new Yankee Stadium I finally made it, with Gilda, to the big ballpark in the Bronx Thursday night, courtesy of our friends Jane and Ken G., who themselves were recipients of four complimentary $150 field level tickets about 12 rows in and a third of the way up the right field line. Great seats.

During my years at Lebhar-Friedman (1977-2009), I was fortunate to be among the privileged to receive the company’s four box seat tickets once or twice a season. They, too, were great seats perhaps a dozen rows behind the Yankee dugout near first base. They were so good they spoiled me for sitting anywhere else.

Unfortunately, along with the building of the new Yankee Stadium came a dramatic increase in season ticket prices which dovetailed with the recession that struck publishing especially hard. L-F made the tough but economically prudent decision to not renew its ticket subscription. 

I, as well, did the financially prudent thing. I forsook going to games. I even turned down a suggestion by Ellie and Donny that we go one Father’s Day several years ago. Instead, I convinced them that rather than spend a minimum $400 on tickets alone, plus food, parking and other incidentals, we should go to a Brooklyn Cyclones minor league game in Coney Island, have dinner at a nearby Russian restaurant and stroll the boardwalk, all for less than the cost of one Yankee ticket. It was a most enjoyable Father’s Day.

I didn’t always use the L-F tickets for my own enjoyment. I would give them to Dan and Ellie. I even gave Dan tickets to the seventh game of the 1999 World Series because it was to be played on his 21st birthday. Baseball aficionados no doubt realized the gift turned out to be a beau geste as the Yankees wrapped up the series against the San Diego Padres in four games. 

I was fortunate enough to go to a World Series seventh game in 1975. I scored a free ticket from the sports editor of The New Haven Register where I worked as a bureau chief. Happy to report the Cincinnati Reds came from behind to win the title against the Boston Red Sox. Aside from the Reds’ wives and front office personnel, I was probably one of the few people in Fenway Park pleased with the outcome. I was intelligent enough to keep my delirious contentment to myself that evening, even from my fellow Register reporter John Membrino, a die-hard Sox fan.

After moving back to New York in 1977, the only time I went to a Yankee game other than with L-F tickets was with John and Gilda to watch the home team play the Red Sox. We sat high in the upper deck along the left field foul line. I have no idea why people pay good money to sit in those far-away seats. 

My baseball ticket schnorring began as a child. My brother Bernie and I would go to Yankee games using tickets provided by one of our father’s sales representatives, a Mr. Schaeman. Half the fun was going on the ear-popping elevator to pick up the tickets at his office in the Empire State Building. Back then, in the late 1950s early 1960s, when the last out was recorded, on their way to the subway fans could walk on the ball field toward the exit gate in center field. Police would keep you from running on the infield diamond, but to tread where Mickey Mantle patrolled was a thrill to be savored.

We didn’t always go to Yankee games. Bernie rooted for the Dodgers. We went to Ebbetts Field virtually for free after eating 10 Elsie the Cow ice cream treats and sending the wrappers along with 25 cents to the Bordens Company. Mr. Shaeman also provided tickets to Mets games at the Polo Grounds and Shea Stadium.

For the record, I’m not just a baseball ticket schnorrer. For many years now Gilda’s brother Carl sends us two tickets to four regular season and one pre-season game of the New York Giants football team. They, too, are really good seats, though in recent years I’ve mostly chosen to avoid the two hour drag-of-a-ride home from the Meadowlands in heavy traffic. It’s a lot more comfortable watching the game on televised tape delay skipping through commercials. If Dan and Allison or Donny and Ellie can’t use the tickets, we give them to friends, Gilda’s co-workers or donate them to charity auctions.

By the way, at Thursday night’s Yankee game, the Bronx Bombers won in true bomber fashion. Brett Gardner hit a tie-breaking walk-off home run leading off the bottom of the 11th inning. Too bad we headed to the parking lot at the conclusion of the 10th inning. Ah well, at least we heard John Sterling’s call on the radio, “It is high, it is far, it is gone. The Yankees win!”

A Journey Four Decades in the Making

March 14, 1977, 40 years ago today, only it was a Monday not a Tuesday, I emerged from the Conrail train, now called Metro-North, from New Haven at Grand Central Terminal, took the escalator up into the Pan Am, now called MetLife, Building, followed the throng as it marched through the eastern corridor of the New York General, now called the Helmsley, Building and walked briskly up Park Avenue past the Waldorf-Astoria, St. Bartholomew’s Church and the Seagram Building with the iconic Four Seasons and Brasserie restaurants flanking, respectively, its southern and northern sides, until I arrived at 425 Park Avenue occupying the full block between East 55th and East 56th streets. Across Park Avenue I had passed equally renowned structures, the historic and landmarked Racquet and Tennis Club and Lever House. I took the elevator to the sixth floor to begin a 32-year career at Lebhar-Friedman, publisher back then of Nation’s Restaurant News, my first year’s assignment, and still publisher of Chain Store Age, my professional home for the following 31 years.

After deducting weekends, vacations, and travel days for those 32 years, I figure I walked up and down Park Avenue more than 12,000 times, never once considering 425 Park Avenue as anything more than my home-away-from-home for eight or nine hours Mondays through Fridays. Never once did I wonder how 425 Park Avenue fit into the development pattern of one of the great boulevards of Manhattan. To me, 425 Park Avenue was just a destination, the finish line for the secret races I fast-walked every day with other pedestrians oblivious to their inclusion in my mind game. 

I would pick out businessmen—yes, I mostly raced against men, partly because there were more imaginary competitors to choose from and partly because if a woman was not wearing athletic shoes it was too much of a disadvantage to her to compete in heels. I’d pick out someone usually about half a block ahead of me. As long as I kept them in the dark about our race I felt the least I could do was provide them a head start to the finish line. 

My rivals and I were not trudging along. We weren’t shuffling off to work or slinking back home. We were intent on crossing against the light if it meant getting to work, or the train back home, faster. 

Those walks, usually accomplished at the fastest pace I could maintain, were the best parts of my work day. With no interruptions during those 10-12 minute jaunts in the morning, I would think about the upcoming day’s tasks. The trek back to Grand Central provided the contemplative freedom to think through new editorial or marketing projects.

My three decades-long walk up and down Park Avenue provided personal evidence of global warming. I would be so cold during the first decade I wound up buying a Neoprene face mask to keep warm. I never used to wear a hat, but I soon bought a Russian-style rabbit fur hat at the now defunct B. Altman’s in White Plains. By the time I retired I had retired the rabbit as well as the face mask, only sometimes donning a baseball hat and earmuffs to keep warm. 

Lebhar-Friedman no longer has office space at 425 Park Avenue. No one does. In 2015 the owners of the 30-story building began a massive renovation to transform it into a modern 47-story structure, a quite fitting future for a building once considered a trendsetter when it opened in 1957. 425 Park Avenue and the architects who designed it, Kahn & Jacobs, were prominent players in a fascinating history of skyscraper development in Manhattan. 

Who knew? Follow the accompanying link to find out more: 

http://newyorkyimby.com/2016/04/425-park-avenue-pioneer-of-modernism-loses-half-its-height-to-make-way-for-893-foot-tall-21st-century-beacon.html

I'm No Foodie But I Enjoy a Well-Cooked Chinese Meal

While I enjoy a well-cooked meal (I’m fortunate that Gilda often prepares gourmet-level repasts for me), I’m no foodie, so I was not surprised or too disappointed that of the 10 New York City eateries chosen as locations by comedian Aziz Ansari for his Netflix series Master of None (http://nyti.ms/1SxxAqH and http://nyti.ms/1Oykuua), I recognized and have frequented only one, Shun Lee Palace on East 55th Street in Manhattan. And when I say “frequented,” I mean I’ve eaten there many, many times. It truly is a savory culinary experience.

Shun Lee Palace is around the corner from my former employer’s offices when it was on Park Avenue. So many of our executives, editors and salesmen ate lunch there that we used to call the restaurant Lebhar-Friedman East. Every day at least three or four tables would be occupied by L-F’ers.

My favorite dish was Lake Tung Ting Shrimp, a delightful combination of jumbo shrimp, bamboo, water chestnuts, mushrooms, carrots and snow peas in a white creamy sauce and egg whites. Only one other Chinese restaurant that I’ve patronized has served up a comparable dish, Ocean Flavored Jumbo Shrimp, which I get at China Star, of all places a takeout joint on Mamaroneck Avenue in White Plains.

About 30 years ago Gilda was reading a list of the best restaurants in New York City in New York magazine. We had not eaten in any of them. Except, when she said Shun Lee Palace I chimed in that I quite often ate there. Indeed, I had lunched there that very day. She was seriously peeved I had not yet taken her there, an omission I shortly thereafter remedied.

It was customary to take the editorial staff to lunch each December. Naturally, Shun Lee was chosen for our culinary treat one year. On the appointed day, however, a meeting kept me from walking over with my staff. When I arrived, the nine editors were seated around a table. I can’t remember who was to my left, but to my right was Jil, one of our senior editors. 

As I commented how pretty the charger plate at my place setting was, quick as a lick Jil whisked it into her oversized tote handbag so, she explained, I could take it home. Before I could protest a waiter appeared, not to investigate the pilferage but rather to take our order. Back in the office Jil handed me the plate which I dutifully took home and which Gilda summarily told me she did not like and was not going to display in our home.

Shun Lee not only was among the top Chinese restaurants in the city, it also was among the priciest. When Shanghai Manor opened a few doors down we gravitated toward it. It didn’t cook Lake Tung Ting Shrimp. I had to settle for shrimp in garlic sauce, but the overall quality of the food and the lower, slightly lower, price kept us L-F’ers coming back time and again until, some 15 or more years later, the owner retired and Shanghai Manor closed. It was replaced by another Chinese restaurant, but for the last five to 10 years of my employment I never truly enjoyed another lunch of Chinese food.

Babysitter Memories and a Walk Down Memory Lane

Funny how two seemingly disparate events come together to evoke a memory.  Last Saturday afternoon Turner Classic Movies aired The Long Long Trailer,  the madcap adventure of newlyweds, played by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez, riding around in an oversized house trailer pulled by their convertible. The 1954 comedy was among the first films I saw in a movie theater. 

My brother, sister and I were probably taken there by our babysitter Maddie who lived next door to our family on Avenue W in Brooklyn. Maddie would often take us to the movies. I seem to recall her also taking us to see The Trouble with Harry, a 1955 Alfred Hitchcock humorous mystery starring Shirley MacLaine and John Forsythe. 

A few weeks ago one of Gilda’s patients said he knew her in-laws, my parents. With a family name like Forseter he easily figured out who her in-laws were. He wasn’t from Brooklyn but he was Maddie’s cousin and used to visit her all the time, and, by extension, our family as well. I don’t recall him at all. 

His reminiscences about those 1950s years ended with some sad news. Maddie passed away a few years ago. I remember how sad I was, how sad my sister and brother were, when Maddie went away to college and was no longer available to babysit. I can’t remember having any other sitter. 

When our kids were little, a babysitter of theirs was Leah. The daughter of one of our friends, Leah highlighted her long brown hair with blue dye. Ellie couldn’t resist asking her why. Because, she explained, she wanted to be different. Good babysitters leave indelible impressions on their charges. Leah didn’t need blue dye to be a good babysitter, but, like Maddie, she will always be remembered.

Memory Lane: I walked up Park Avenue two Fridays ago, starting at East 45th Street, through Helmsley Walk East to my old office at 425 Park between 55th and 56th Streets. I retraced the path I took nearly 7,000 times during my 32-year career at Lebhar-Friedman, almost all on Chain Store Age. 

This walk was different. It probably would be the last of its kind as L-F must vacate its home of 38 years. All tenants must be out by May 1, 2015. The building is coming down, to be replaced by a 60-story or so office tower, nearly double the size of the current structure, but still dwarfed by the 90-story, pencil thin, residential skyscraper going up diagonally across East 56th Street.

Park Avenue has not changed much since I began my daily treks to and from Grand Central Terminal in March 1977. For sure, there are more banks along the divided esplanade. But it’s still an oasis of refined elegance compared to the hurly-burly of most major avenues in Manhattan. 

I stopped off at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. For old time’s sake I used the bathroom. The attendant who proffers a towel to dry your hands has changed. Younger. Hispanic, not Armenian (at least I think he was Armenian). I tipped him a dollar. 

I made another stop at the main Citibank branch at 53rd Street. The lobby has been mostly transformed into self-service ATMs. I had a teller cash a check, the same way I did 37 years ago when I opened a checking account at that branch the day I started working at Lebhar-Friedman.

I couldn’t believe the Walter Steiger shoe store at East 55th Street had installed two outdoor red neon signs proclaiming its name. I always thought it was one of the classier shoe stores. No more.

After a warm visit with my friends still at L-F, I walked back down Park Avenue to a luncheon of some 25 L-F alumni. We get together every December, to update our status and reminisce about our days (make that years, often decades) at not the biggest family-owned publisher but surely one of the most impressionable companies any of us ever worked for. 

Stories of Terror Strike Home

I’ve written about the intertwining of current events and news articles with my life experiences. Today provided examples of both the bemusing and tragic juxtapositions of reality with my past.

Monday’s New York Times ran an article on Chatham, Mass., where a little more than two decades ago my magazine co-sponsored a retail innovation technology award (RITA) competition at the Chatham Bars Inn. Invoking the perquisite of office, I brought along my whole family for three days of fun, walking and biking around Chatham and playing on the beach, a mini vacation catalogued by Gilda on our VCR camera, the tapes of which I recently converted to DVD format. Gilda filmed me walking from my meeting to the beach where Dan and Ellie built sand castles.

One of Gilda’s and my fondest memories of our children is dinner in the dining room of the Chatham Bars Inn. The dozen adults—judges and spouses—ate together. As required by the hotel, the men wore jackets and ties. Ellie and Dan, respectively 8 and 11, ate at a separate table in a separate area of the dining room. We dressed them up in their finest outfits. The wait staff treated them like a prince and princess. They were models of decorum, acting very grown up amid very grown up surroundings.

The Times article chronicled the increased presence of great white sharks in the waters around Chatham, a terror the town has not only learned to live with but also has embraced for economic benefit (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/28/us/sharks-in-cape-cod-town-draw-tourists-flipping-the-jaws-script.html?ref=us&_r=0).

A continent away, in the waters of Venice Beach, Calif., where Gilda and I stayed two years ago, terror of another kind struck Sunday. A lightning strike electrified the salt water, injuring about a dozen swimmers. One young man died. 

Like many of you, I heard of this tragedy on the radio news. The deceased was not identified. As I was riding Metro North to Manhattan this morning to attend a rally against man-made terror by Hamas against Israel, a friend at my former magazine called. The young man who died was the son of our West Coast saleswoman. 

It’s been hard to breathe deeply all day. The support for Israel rally brought out collective grief, not just for Israelis killed in the conflict in Gaza but also for the hundreds of civilian Palestinians killed, injured and trapped in the crossfire. Jews identify with the suffering of other Jews, and other peoples. It’s in our blood, our DNA, given our long history of persecution. But it’s mostly an abstract association. Among the six million who were murdered in the Holocaust, many of my relatives could be numbered. But I never met them. I have pictures of but a few of them. 

Similarly, I know many Israelis, friends and relatives. I long for a time when they won’t be in daily danger, when they can return to the beaches of Tel Aviv and Herzliya without fear, without searching for the location of the nearest bomb shelter.

Nick Fagnano just wanted to wash the sand from his body when he waded into the Pacific Ocean right before the lightning struck. I might have met Nick once when he was a teenager. I truly don’t remember. But I knew his mother for most of the 32 years I worked for Lebhar-Friedman. Mary joined the sales staff of Chain Store Age in 2003. She and her husband, Jay, always talked positively about their son, his devotion to baseball. He was a pitcher on the Sherman Oaks Notre Dame High School baseball team. In September he was to enter USC as a junior to study urban development.

Headlines and initial stories said, “20-year-old man” killed by lightning. Yes, he was old enough to be called a man. But to Mary and Jay, he will always be their boy, their only child, taken from them in a freakish confluence of timing and nature. 

Rejected

Rejection is a common, if not welcome, part of many a life. Last night’s CBS Evening News with Katie Couric featured a story on a new book, “Other People’s Rejection Letters,” that will amuse, or pain, you, depending on how thick your skin is. Here’s a link to the story: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/07/20/eveningnews/main6696691.shtml.

After four years as a reporter with The New Haven Register, I was eager to move on. I looked up the name of the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal in the directory edition of Editor & Publisher and sent him a letter and resume. I did not receive a rejection letter. I heard nothing back. No matter. Shortly thereafter I began my 32-year career with Lebhar-Friedman, almost all of it with Chain Store Age.

I did, however, find out what happened to my overture to The Journal, courtesy of one of my former colleagues at The Register who did secure a job with the paper, owned by Dow Jones at the time. My letter was reproduced in Dow Jones’ annual yearbook of achievements and noteworthy events. Seems when I copied the name of the managing editor of The Journal my eyes must have shifted over to the adjacent column, onto a listing for The Daily Worker, the Communist Party newspaper. The Journal staff found it very amusing to have a communist as head of the nation’s pre-eminent capitalist business newspaper.

Have you stopped laughing yet?

All I can say, to save some face, is that I got a lot of satisfaction in subsequent years when The Journal quoted me in stories about retailing.

Yankee Corner

East 55th Street and Lexington Avenue became my unofficial Yankees Corner. It was there, down the block from my office on Park Avenue, I said hello to Johnny Damon (twice) and Shelley Duncan. I could have greeted George Steinbrenner but reacted too sluggishly when our paths crossed about 10 years ago as he was crossing north and I walked south along Lex. He was wearing his signature white turtleneck sweater under a blue blazer, but what surprised me at the time of our fleeting encounter was his height. I had always envisioned Steinbrenner as a giant of a man, equal in size to his ego. He was a larger than life character, but he stood just six feet tall. My height.

George, King George, The Boss, will be missed, but, in truth, he hasn’t been around for at least three years. I’m not talking about his body. I’m referring to his presence. His ability to control a dynamic. It’s a testament to him that the Yankees won their 27th and most recent (it would be wrong to call it their “last”) championship adhering to the principles he espoused.

I started going to Yankee games back in the 1950s. One of my father’s sales representatives, Mr. Schaineman, with offices in the Empire State Building, would give my brother and me tickets to games. We’d take the subway up from Brooklyn to The Bronx. Back then, after the final out, you could walk across the outfield grass as you exited the Stadium through the gates behind the center field monuments of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Miller Huggins. One year we went to the Mayor’s Trophy Game, an exhibition game between the Yanks and the Dodgers (I can’t remember if Da Bums had already moved to Los Angeles). Gil Hodges hit a ball that landed behind the monuments, 468 feet from home. Hodges lumbered around the bases, but he was a slow runner and was nailed at the plate as he attempted an inside the park home run.

I attended perhaps one or two games during my teenage years through my late 20s, until I returned to New York to work for Lebhar-Friedman in 1977, the year of the first championship won by the Yanks under Steinbrenner. Like Steinbrenner, Roger Friedman, the L-F president, had attended Williams College. Roger was an avid Yankees fan; until the devastating economic downturn of the last few years the company purchased season tickets to four box seats some 12 rows behind the Yankee dugout. They were great seats. I was lucky enough to secure those tickets to one and sometimes two games a season for almost 30 years. I was supposed to take clients, but in truth I mostly took family and friends. I took Dan and Ellie to their first baseball games.

I never ventured out to Monument Park in the old stadium, and have yet to enter the new Yankee Stadium. I’m sure that when that time eventually comes, a sixth monument honoring George M. Steinbrenner III will join in grace those of Huggins, Ruth, Gehrig, Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio.