by Julie Klam
So the stories about Marcella having an affair and talking stock tips with J. P. Morgan were probably about Harold Bache—and even then they may not have been true. I kept thinking about what work must have been like for her. Everyone said she was surly; maybe she had to be that way to fight for her place as a broker in the male-dominated world of Wall Street. I can’t imagine how many men told her to smile more. I have no doubt that much of her unlikability came from the fact that she was a woman who behaved the way she wanted to. I always think that of the four Morris sisters, Marcella would have been the least likely to be my friend. (I try to be liked and don’t like people to be mad at me.)
“I don’t know how the hell they got to New York and how she got in with Bache,” Herbie said. “Suffice to say she was very, very, very successful. And there were no women on Wall Street then. Just very, very few.”
Herbie attempted to explain the commodities market to me so that I had a rudimentary sense of what Marcella’s job was. (There was a moment as he explained it when I understood it, but don’t ask me to repeat it here.)
I asked Herbie if he thought that Marcella had a trading account when she was a secretary. This was my theory about why she had several lowly jobs when she was supposed to be making a lot of money. Everyone said she was a genius. Herbie agreed.
“I was then coming out of . . .” He paused and called out to his wife, Sandra, “Hey, hon, when did I start with Marcella? Undergraduate or graduate school? Graduate school? Okay.” He returned to his story: “Someone hooked me up with Marcella. You know, I knew them from the seders. Malvina and my dad were very close. And we adored Malvina, she was the normal one. She was as lovely a human being as you could get your hands on. So I guess Malvina connected me with Marcella, or maybe I had the audacity to call her for help. I just needed a job. So Marcella introduced me to a guy who served as her broker at that point. Julie, I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, but I remember his name: George Breen. I don’t know what firm he was with. But he was her broker and he handled all her business, and the last thing that SOB wanted was for me to become a broker—he didn’t want to share her business. Having said that, he certainly did talk to me and gave me time because she must have put the screws to him. So he got me an interview at Maryland Casualty Insurance Company in Towson, Maryland. Sandra and I had a long discussion. Neil [his oldest son] was either in the crib or about to be in the crib. I didn’t want to go to Maryland, Sandra had a job here, she was a teacher, and that enabled us to eat! I had just finished my master’s and I didn’t want to go. I didn’t take the job, which pissed Marcella off. And she didn’t talk to me again other than nodding to me at your grandparents’ house.”
Herbie continued: “So here we are. Now let’s jump to around 1980. What year was Marcella born?”
I told him 1901.
“So she was close to eighty herself. I got a call from her after not hearing from her for over twenty years, okay? (Hey, San, how old did I say Marcella was when she called me that time? Eighty or ninety?) So at that time, thirty-five years ago, being eighty was improbable. It wasn’t like today. She knew I had done very well, I was a partner. My secretary comes into my office and says, ‘A Miss Morris is on the phone.’ And I said, ‘Who?’ She says, ‘Miss Morris.’ I’m thinking, ‘What the hell?’ And then I say, ‘All right. I’ll take the call.’ So I pick up and she says, ‘Herb?’ and I say, ‘Yes, Marcella.’ So I don’t know the exact figure, but she asked for credit for either a million or twenty million or fifty million to trade commodities. She wanted to open an account! To trade! I’m not joking!
“I said, ‘Marcella, I have nothing to do with commodities.’ She said, ‘Herb, I’ve followed your career and I know if you wanted to make this happen, you could make it happen.’ Well, (a) I didn’t really give a flying hmm for her; if it was Malvina and she needed ten thousand dollars, I would have found it and given it to her. But this one, I wouldn’t give her the perspiration off my butt.” Herb sounded like Jackie Gleason.
“She said, ‘Herb, take care of it, I know you can.’ ”
“I said, ‘Marcella, I’ll get back to you in a day or two.’ I waited a day. I didn’t call anybody, I didn’t twist one arm. I called her back and said, ‘I’m awfully sorry, Marcella, I can’t help you.’ So she starts rattling off a number of the firms she traded with. And I said, ‘I did the best I could, but I cannot accommodate you, but thank you for calling, it was nice to hear your voice, and be well.’ And that was the last time I talked to her, ever. And then when everyone started the drumbeat—you know, when she was on the way out—everyone wanted to get a piece of this action. Believe me, if I could have stomached her, I would’ve taken a shot [at getting into her will]. But I was on the outs with her from the day that I refused to go down to Maryland.”
I asked him what he thought about the fact that Marcella was so successful and one of the few women who’d had a flourishing career on Wall Street, why he thought I couldn’t find anything about her.
“Julie, I never, ever, ever saw her name in print,” Herb said. “When I mentioned her to people at the time, no one ever heard of her. I read all the financial literature—magazines and whatnot—and I never saw her name. I knew people, I knew a lot of top people, and I never heard about her from anyone except the people in our family. I think maybe it was just that she was not liked. That’s my guess.” I feel angry on her behalf thinking of how many unlikable men get profiled ad nauseam.
I asked him if he remembered hearing about other women on Wall Street. He gave some thought to the question before replying.
“I’m sure there were some, but not many. There were just no women on Wall Street, and for her to rise up like that was truly a phenomenon. In the annals of finance, you just didn’t see women.”
I told him I was going to go to Prudential-Bache and ask the company if it had any historical records that mention Marcella.
“I wouldn’t bet on it, nobody gives a shit,” he said. “Honestly, Julie, our industry was not known for keeping adequate records for anything.”
While I knew he was right, I hoped he’d be wrong.
Seventeen
The Harvard of Jews
Just about everyone I interviewed about the Morris sisters eventually brought up Brandeis University. Claire, Bobby, my dad, and Herb all had said the Morris sisters gave millions of dollars to the Jewish university in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Herbie said that he thought the sisters’ donations might have started in the 1960s. He said they were well known to abhor men and he thought they didn’t want their money to go to male students. He thought that their money was only to benefit women and women’s studies. The feeling among the family was that the Morris sisters had hated their father for putting them in the orphanage in the first place and never taking them out again, but since they all went to live with him when they aged out of the orphanage, I thought their donations to Brandeis women might have been for some other reason. Or maybe that wasn’t the case at all.
Herbie said he heard that Marcella was giving money to Brandeis and insisting it went to women’s studies and women students, and that Brandeis objected, so she and her sisters stopped contributing. But he wasn’t sure whom he heard that from, and I knew now that many of the sources for such stories were difficult to pin down and their accuracy was questionable. I hoped that any interaction the sister had had with a university would be well documented and that maybe I could speak to someone at Brandeis who’d dealt with Marcella and her sisters over the years.
I emailed Brandeis Donor Relations and explained that I was looking for any information regarding the donations of my relatives for a book I was writing. Someone in the department responded that she did in fact have information on the Morris sisters, but she would have to find out through the legal department what she was allowed to release to me. In the meantime, she wondered if I had contacted the Morris Foundation.
Yes, I said. The Morris Foundation was my cousin Bobby.
About a week later I got an email from her:
Hi Julie,
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. There were a few people I needed to check with on this, but I’ve finally got it all straightened out. Here’s what I can do for you.
First, I am allowed to share with you that Marcella Morris and her sisters and brother made bequests to Brandeis that totalled a number in the high six figures. There was no specific designation, and so it was used for the University’s Annual Fund, or to relieve any immediate needs the University had during their lifetimes. A few of them made small gifts, but the total was less than $20,000, over a number of years, to various programs, and in small amounts.
However, I understand now where the millions figure you had came from. It is possible that at one time your relatives may have had estates with a combined worth of that much at one point in time. We were never given paperwork to confirm this amount, or confirm that it was coming to Brandeis. Over the years, as your aunts aged, their estate may have been drained to support their living and healthcare expenses. So what may have once been an estate of that size may have dissolved for a number of reasons. This is only my guess from the paperwork I have reviewed (and which you will see) and from our experience with other donors in similar situations. Your relatives’ only connection to Brandeis University was through our first president, Abe Sachar.
Apparently, they grew up with him in St. Louis and maintained the connection. The bulk of the paperwork we have deals with the will of Ruth Morris. I don’t think it’s of interest to you at all (no biographical information at all)—and it conveys a lot of direct information about the gifts she and your family made to the University, which as a rule we cannot share the details of. However, we also have a few notes over the years that were written to them, as well as by development officers that convey some biographical information. I can give you copies of these. (Again, from time to time there is sensitive information in these that I will need to black out, as we generally don’t give them out and they are not intended for it—you are the exception to the rule.) However, I should be able to provide you with a few copies of documents that provide some biographical information about your relatives. I’ll make copies and black out what I need to and send to you soon.
So despite the family’s stories that we took as truth, the Morris sisters didn’t actually give millions of dollars of Marcella’s money to Brandeis. But the high six figures was certainly something, and even more since the contributions were made at least forty years ago. (I would like for someone to give me some high six figures today.) Apparently the sisters also didn’t specify that the money needed to go to educating women. Everyone in the family claimed that the sisters hated men and that they were strong and independent—and how important this narrative was to their myth. I already knew that their father didn’t drop them in the orphanage and leave town for Los Angeles and that they lived with him when they got out. He never left St. Louis. When the four Morris sisters first arrived in New York, they stayed with my great-grandmother Martha, their aunt, who was their mother Clara’s sister. How much had she known about her sister, and her nieces going into an orphanage? Had she learned the truth of what really happened when they came to New York? She might have blamed their father or maybe she felt guilty for not taking them in. If she was anything like my grandma, her daughter, she wouldn’t be shy about a strong and steady pummeling of her brother-in-law’s character.
I’m sure the notion of Guerson Morris aspiring to be a movie director would’ve struck everyone in the family as ridiculous. Martha may well have talked to the rest of her family about what had happened and turned everyone against Guerson. The fact that the three oldest daughters lived only with each other and never married would have perpetuated this belief. It was neat and melodramatic, and explained what the people in the family couldn’t understand.
A week later, I got PDFs from Brandeis University of what I was allowed to see. This is what it said:
Dr. Sachar
January 17, 1992
MARCELLA AND MALVINA MORRIS
Malvina (born 3-11-1900) and Marcella (born 9-17-01) Morris are the two surviving members of a family of five unmarried siblings. Their brother died in 1963; their sister Ruth died in 1978; and their sister Selma died in (?) 1990. They live in Southampton, Long Island, and virtually never leave home. Marcella recently stated that the family grew up with Abe Sachar in St. Louis.
Brandeis received small gifts [REDACTED] from the Morris Sisters in the 1950s. [REDACTED]
[SEVERAL PARAGRAPHS REDACTED]
Brandeis counsel met with the Morris sisters in New York in 1964 hoping to confirm their estate plans or establish a life trust. [REDACTED]
Following Ruth Morris’s death in 1978, the university was informed that she too had left her entire estate in trust for the benefit of her sisters for their lifetimes, with Brandeis as the ultimate beneficiary, as their brother Samuel had done. Accountant Anthony Ullman indicated that Brandeis was the ultimate beneficiary of all of their estates. [REDACTED]
Brandeis had correspondence but no personal contact with the Morris sisters during the 1980s: University officers met several times with accountant Anthony Ullman.
In 1990, Anthony Ullman informed us that he was no longer the accountant for the Morris sisters, as they had decided to let a relative (nephew or cousin), who is an accountant, handle their financial affairs.
[SEVERAL PARAGRAPHS REDACTED]
Both sisters have been hospitalized recently but the caretaker who answers the phone indicates that there are no serious problems and that a visit would be possible. Malvina, who spoke to me on the phone in December 1991, was perfectly [REDACTED] and cordial and asked that we try next month. She remembered the correspondence from President Thier, including the long letter explaining his vision for the University. [TWO MORE PARAGRAPHS REDACTED]
CONTACT REPORT
Date of Contact: June 5, 1992
Date Submitted: June 6, 1992
Department: Development/Planned Giving
Name of Prospect: Malvina and Marcella Morris
Affiliation: Friends
Address: Gin Lane, Southampton, NY 11968
On Friday, June 5, 1992, Vice President Dan Mansoor and I visited Malvina and Marcella Morris at their Southampton home for several hours. Also present were Gloria Smith and her daughter, Lauren, who have been employed as housekeepers and caregivers for the elderly Morris Sisters for four years. Gloria Smith had spoken with me numerous times over the phone during the moments in which I reestablished contact with the Morrises. The Morris Sisters had obviously been looking forward to our visit, were very happy to see us, enjoyed talking about their family and old times over lunch and were sorry when we had to leave. Their caregivers told us that the Morris Sisters do have plenty of visitors.
As soon as we entered the house, Malvina Morris, who is confined to a wheelchair due to lifelong hip problems, introduced her sister, Marcella, saying “she is the brains of the family.” Indeed it was Marcella who had represented the family in all correspondence with their accountant, their attorney, and with Brandeis, in our files and who was said to handle the family finances. [REDACTED] She repeatedly explained that Malvina knows more people than I do, “because I always had to work.” Marcella worked in bookkeeping and accounting positions since the age of 16, while Malvina was kept from working from time to time by her medical condition. Separately, each person in the household told us that Marcella had been the financial expert and Malvina was the more social person.
The Morris family is from St. Louis and they said that all family that they ever had are dead now. They said that they came to New York for the sake of better jobs. For at least 40 years, three of the sisters, Selma, Marcella and Malvina, lived together in New York and Southampton, staying permanently i
n Southampton sometime in the 1970s. Selma died there in 1991. (May 18, 1991, according to Gloria Smith.)
Both Malvina and Marcella talked a great deal about Brandeis University throughout our visit. They explained that Marcella herself had been unable to finish college (Washington University in St. Louis), lacking one credit toward the degree because she had to work. They knew of a “brilliant Jewish boy in St. Louis” who “could not go to college.” They apparently lived across the street from Abe Sachar’s father’s business, and referred to Abe Sachar often, usually with an appellation like “that brilliant man,” but clearly meaning Abe Sachar (for example, knowing that he had four sons and one of his sons had died).
[REDACTED] Marcella repeatedly stated that their brother, Samuel, who died very suddenly (at the airport on his way to visit them in Southampton in 1963) [REDACTED]. They are concerned about the cost of their constant healthcare.
Both sisters spent considerable time with us reminiscing about their brother, Sam, and the great legacy he had left to the university. They specifically spoke about the youth of the school and how it did not have the advantages of “the other school in Boston that’s as old as the United States.”
When asked later, the Smiths confirmed that the Morris Sisters have “talked about Brandeis all the time, since we’ve known them,” talking about how it was “the first Jewish school” and “the first one to let everyone in.”
I read over the documents several times. They felt similar to the minutes from the orphanage, detailed and written at the time the event occurred, not hazily recollected or disparate memories like jigsaw pieces from an unknown puzzle. The two points that jumped out at me were the way the Morris sisters got involved with Brandeis through Abe Sachar—a childhood neighbor—and that Abram Sachar was the first president of Brandeis. He took the job in 1948 after Albert Einstein turned it down. Sachar had been born in New York City in 1899 and was the child of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants. When he was seven, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where his grandfather was the chief rabbi of that city. It was there that Samuel Sachar, Abe’s father, owned a clothing business on the same street where the Morris sisters grew up. According to notes from the Brandeis development office, Marcella and Malvina said Abe Sachar hadn’t been able to go to college, but he actually went to Washington University in St. Louis, and then Harvard, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and finally Cambridge University, where he received his doctorate in history for a thesis on the Victorian House of Lords. So he certainly went to college.