Separation : Part 5

The Real Deal: My Life in Business and Philanthropy
by Sandy Weill, Judah S. Kraushaar

(Page 5 of 9)

From the first moment, I was drawn in completely. I felt relaxed and comfortable around her. I had done my share of dating, but no one attracted me like Joanie. She was beautiful and vivacious, confident, full of easy conversation, and quick with a joke. The entire evening proved exciting and intoxicating. Neither of us wanted it to end; at nearly 3:00 A.M., we reluctantly agreed it was time to go home. Joanie and I were eager to see each other again. Unfortunately, she had another date for the following evening. I couldn't bear the thought of her seeing someone else, so I decided to cruise by her house with my car's top down to check out her date that night as he picked her up. Joanie probably didn't appreciate the gesture, but I wanted her to know I would not be deterred.

We saw a lot of each other over the next several weeks. Joanie was finishing her junior year at Brooklyn College so we were limited to weekends. She'd either come up to Cornell for one of our bacchanalian fraternity parties or I'd drive to her house. Yet time seemed in short supply. I was receiving reserve officer training (ROTC) during college with the notion that I'd receive an officer's commission in the air force upon my graduation. That summer I was due to report for training in South Carolina. We dated a lot right up to the day I left. We proved to be avid letter writers that summer-each time I'd receive a note from Joanie, she'd enclose my last letter complete with corrections to all my misspelled words. I should have realized then and there that Joanie would make me a better person!

Shortly after my return from boot camp in August, we became engaged and planned for a wedding the following June after my graduation. However, Joanie's parents were not thrilled by their daughter's plans. Her parents were snobbish and never felt I was good enough for their daughter. Their disapproval began with our very first date, as they were upset at my dropping off Joanie in the middle of the night, and I learned later that they kept telling Joanie of their preference for one of her earlier boyfriends. Her folks saw me as someone who came from an uncultured background who hadn't graduated on time and-though brash-didn't seem to have much direction when it came to thinking about the future.

Unfortunately, my parents did little to counter the impression. Around the beginning of 1955, my parents invited the Moshers to their home for dinner. I wasn't there, but Joanie told me it was a dreadful evening. At first my father grew angry at my mother for burning the roast lamb. He then talked about his recent retirement from the steel business and bragged incessantly about the extravagant lifestyle he could afford. He announced he'd give us a car as a wedding present and suggested to Joanie's father that he should give us $3,000. The idea must have struck a nerve as my normally reserved future father-in-law bellowed, "My daughter is not for sale!" From that time forth, I felt nothing I could do would ever redeem me in Joanie's parents' eyes.

It was right after this ill-fated dinner that my world suddenly turned upside down. I was preparing for midterm exams when word came from a family friend that my father had left my mother and had disappeared. The news came like a bolt from the blue. Maybe I should have realized over the years that my parents barely had a relationship, but I took for granted that their marriage was normal. My first instincts were to protect my mother and also to find my father and reason with him why he needed to return home. With the help of a private investigator, I found out that he was in Washington, D.C. Disregarding my two remaining exams, I raced to pick up Helen at Smith, and we drove all night to talk sense into our father. I was mostly shaken up while Helen was clearly resentful.

When we confronted him, we heard his convoluted side of the story. "I haven't been happy for a long time," he declared. "You are now old enough to deal with the change, and it's time for me to think about myself. The reason I left the way I did was that it was the best way not to upset your mother with a bad scene." As if we were not shocked enough, our father went on to confess that he had been seeing another woman for two years, a Hungarian lady named Marian. In an admission that especially incensed me, he let on that he had once arranged secretly for her to sit next to us at the theater so that she could check us out. We argued and cajoled for two days before giving up and deciding we needed to return to New York to console our mother.

My mother hadn't even called to tell me about what had happened out of concern for upsetting me during my exams-that was her way of trying to protect me. When we finally sat down, she did her best to put on a brave face. "Go back to school," my mother implored. I could not fathom how my father could have been so self-centered and cruel to my mother-I was seared by the act of disloyalty and abandonment. I eventually returned to Cornell, but my final semester was a blur as I tried my best to finish my studies while helping my mother with her divorce settlement.

As if my father's abandonment were not enough, I found his stinginess in how he proposed to settle with my mother especially distasteful. He had some wealth at that point but initially offered my mother only the house in Brooklyn. Incredibly, he claimed my mother lived frugally and didn't need much to live on. Eventually, my mother accepted a settlement whereby she received the house and $50,000. She remained in that house for many years. The experience with my father embittered her, and she never remarried.

In subsequent years, I'd alternate between feelings of disdain and guilt in how I'd relate to my father. From the day he left my mother, his shortcomings, if not outright failure, had become glaringly obvious. I was repelled by his lack of commitment and loyalty and his selfcentered approach to life. I could no longer count on joining him in his steel importing business let alone on asking him for financial support. And as an adult, I understood how his unethical practices had killed his first business while his free-spending ways undermined his second company. My father may have taught me the value of working hard, and he may have given me part of his outgoing personality, but ultimately, he became mostly a negative role model-more than anything, I learned firsthand the importance of loyalty and being ethically upright in one's business and personal life.

Copyright © 2006 by Sanford I. Weill

About the Author

Sanford I. Weill is Chairman Emeritus of Citigroup Inc., the diversified global financial services company formed in 1998 through the merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group. Mr. Weill retired as CEO of Citigroup on October 1, 2003, and served as Chairman until April 18, 2006.

Judah S. Kraushaar, the former director of the Global Financial Services Equity Research team at Merrill Lynch, has been consistently ranked as the banking industry's top securities analyst by investor surveys from The Wall Street Journal, Institutional Investor, and Fortune. He and his wife, Michele, and their three children live in Westchester County, New York.