My LIfe, Part IV: School

Growing up in “Little Odessa,” I bore witness to the strange rules of local ecnomicas. Someone whom the system perceived as “poor” could actually be richer than my father, who worked 22 hours a day at times. However, I could not begin to understand how this system worked while I was stuck in private school. There, I was surrounded by the "rich" who never played any other role than the rich.

My private school was a Yeshiva, which is Jewish private school. But this was not your normal school. My parents chose to send me to a "high class" private school, with a a tuition they could not even afford.

It was a "Sephardic" school, which is a sect of the Jews that come from most Latin countries or some parts of the Middle East. People would pull up in Mercedes Benz and Posche vehicles, and my dad would be in a 10-year-old Mercedes. We tried to look like your everyday rich family, but we weren’t. We lived in a large home in Brighton Beach, but my father worked as a machinist at least 22 hours a day. If we were lucky, we would see him when he came in for a quick sandwich. This affected my life as well. Not being around my father took a toll on the way I grew up.

To make up for the long hours at work (and to to keep with their idea of not letting their children make friends), my parents made it their business to save all year long and take their children around the world every summer. By the time I was born, my parents finally went into business for themselves and took summers off to spend with their children. School would let out in May, and off we would go.

We would start in Italy to visit my entire family. We had a home in Milan so that would be our base. From Milan we would journey to the Riviera, Monte Carlo, the South, Paris, Venice, and wherever the autostrada would take us.

By midsummer, we would travel back to the states, and then, a few weeks later, we would be off to the Middle East. Our base would be Haifa Israel, where my family lived, but the traveling would begin. We covered the Middle East and toured every summer as if we'd never been there.

Growing up this way also molded me into a person who can appreciate the world. By the time I was 18, I literally traveled the globe.

Years went by, and my family began to amass wealth from my fathers blue-collar suffering and his new business. The more hours he worked, the more money my mother put away. The more she put away, the more my father began to invest. He later became self proclaimed "mayor" of Kings Highway. Amazing story as it sounds, he turned his investments into wealth he probably only dreamed of while he was captured in the death camps of the Black Forest.

I was still astonished by the goings and the comings of the Russian immigrants and their actions. For this reason, I chose to leave private school, leave my friends behind to go to a public high school in the middle of both the Russian immigrant population and the projects. Well it really did not start that way. Unhappy as I was there, I managed to get myself thrown out but then accepted to come back; which of course, I did not. My parents had a hard time believing that this was the right decision, but it changed me for good. Maybe staying in Private School would have changed things, but if someone told me I would have no sorrow, no hard ship, no hurdles but would not be married to the same women or have the same children...well I would do it all over again, feel the pain and love it. One thing I learned, my wife and my children are my world, so I can just imagine what my father felt.

I was this white, Jewish preppie kid, in the middle of a school where a good portion of the kids lived in the Coney Island projects, and the Russian kids were smoking dope or skipping school to run numbers for their family. I immediately decided to change myself, and become someone who would not be ostracized. I found that I knew how to run, and catch a football. I also found that I could write, and knew how to be a people person. Even thought I had never even watched a football game or attended one , I found myself playing Varsity football as a freshman, in addition to running Varsity track. The world for me as I knew it changed.

I also began to write. I took up writing on the local sports teams in NY and on the current economic situation of a place that was very foreign to me, Wall Street. By my senior year, I had a scholarship to a few Catholic Universities and the underrated Bringham Young,…a turn my parent’s weren’t happy about. I was more excited to go to Iona. their football team had been disbanded for years and they were just starting it back up. That would give me all the room in the world to be whomever I wanted to be. But that did not work. No way to Iona.

Scholastically, I won multiple awards for my writing. I ended my senior year with three New York Newsday Awards for sports writing…and, of course, for my commentary on the local Brokerage houses in NYC.

Aside from the NY Newsday Award and my extensive Regents studies, I won the Daily New High school senior award of achievement. I’m not sure if I was attempting to compete with my two sisters, who graduated with honors and were on a tremendous road to success. One sister was being pitched to be the translator for the consulate in Spain and my other sister graduated from college, pharmacology and was already in med school. Needless to say, I had some shoes to fill! And, for some reason, I became attached to the idea of becoming a banker like my uncle. I watched him amass such wealth, but also wine and dine a different women every night. That changed my views on the relationship back then as well. But, his life did not end well and I look back and wish I could have told him, "I did all this to be you." Instead, we fought, we argued, he would call me, "El Bandido!!" And was not too happy to see me because I was just a jerk. But a jerk who secretly wanted to be just like him.

Traveling to the city and researching these brokerage firms, allowed me to befriend many successful brokers, who later became my shoulder for success. I began working the summer at Shearson Lehman Hutton. This really changed my life.