What we do for love

Recently, I visited a high school friend who seemed quite happy after a woman had moved in with him for the first time (I think) in his 70s.I admired how much nicer the house and yard looked and how they did so many things together.

That’s quite admirable because it was hard sharing my house with someone even in my 40s. I had purchased a small home in Arlington, VA., neighborhood but it felt quite empty.

 When Pickett moved in, things changed quickly.  She brought her dog, her son and his dog. (I was not fond of dogs.) Soon my friendly neighbors hated me because her dog got loose and tangled with theirs.

She complained that the house was too small and that she could never tell which one was ours in our tract home neighborhood. So, OK, we looked for a new one. I wanted California modern. She wanted Victorian. Our realtor was quite frustrated.

Then he found one that was old-fashioned Victorian in the front and glassy, sun-filled California modern in an addition. Sold!!!

But now we had such a big house it, too, felt empty. We needed another child. (But not more dogs!) Later on, we adopted Sara. But I thought we should be married first.

 I proposed with flowers and a ring on bended knee at our house. She accepted and was happy  until it sunk in that we would have to plan and pay for a wedding.  So we had one at Dumbarton United Methodist Church in Washington, DC. This was no cookie-cutter wedding established by the church hierarchy.

Pickett upset the pastor by refusing to say “Til death do us part.” She said, “I already broke that promise once.” I arranged for a gospel choir from Anacostia to sing. She brought her large preschool class to the wedding to release balloons to the ceiling.

After the wedding, I expected life to go on exactly as before. But for the first time, Pickett packed my clothes for the honeymoon. I had never expected that and was not sure I liked it. And friends seemed to treat us differently. For a while, Pickett felt trapped by getting married a second time—until she opened a bed  & breakfast.

After those vows at the altar,  I knew that things had changed!

I guess for the better! Our 40th anniversary is May 11.

 

First a windfall, then the axe

One of the most bizarre situation I ever encountered in journalism came when I was a business writer at U.S. News & World Report from 1979 to 1987.

 

After founder David Lawrence died (and I wrote his obituary for AP), he left 100% of the company to the employees. As circulation grew, workers saw the stock value, determined by an appraiser, grow steadily.

 

 Many older employees decided it was time to cash out and retire. But there were new outside offers for the magazine, and when the bidding was over, its value skyrocketed seven-fold or 15-fold, depending on how it was measured.

 

The magazine staff was shocked but euphoric. The appraisers had never factored in the enormous value of the Washington, D.C., property the magazine owned, right between Georgetown and Dupont Circle. Editor Marvin Stone and his board, who could profit enormously, determined that it was the managers’ fiduciary responsibility to sell the company. For one thing, they couldn’t afford too many people retiring and demanding  cash. The eventual winner was Mortimer Zuckerman, a New York real estate magnate (like Donald Trump), who had designed and built our new office building and later purchased the Atlantic Monthly and New York Daily News.

 

Employees were greedily counting their forthcoming money, and many of them were about to become millionaires, depending on how long they had worked there. As a five-year veteran I didn’t become a millionaire, but I was able to put some money into retirement savings.

 

But wait! Those retirees who cashed out before the bidding war were steamed. Why should these newcomers get the money? The retirees filed suit, and the court battle went on for years, but we eventually got our money.

 

But wait again! In exchange for that big payout, most of us lost our jobs. Zuckerman didn’t like having people around who had gotten rich with his money. The place became so chaotic, we didn’t like working there anyway. People left mysteriously every few days, (Sounds like today’s federal government!)

 

 I was told to leave by the editor, David Gergen, who was a speech writer for presidents ranging from Nixon to Clinton and a famous PBS commentator. Giving me details of my firing was Kathy Bushkin, who was once presidential candidate Garry Hart’s press secretary and also a frequent talking head on TV. Months later, as Gergen was commenting on TV, I quickly switched channels, and there was Bushkin also discussing politics on CNN. I turned the TV  off.

 

But wait one more time!  Well after I landed on my feet at Satellite Orbit magazine, U.S. News’ circulation plummeted along with readership of other print media. (Was it because I left?) In 2010, U S. News got rid of its print magazine and today is best known (and controversial) for rating colleges and universities.