by Wallace Ford
Diedre and I both settled down at that point, trying to assume a more sober air. As the rest of The Pride filed into the church, three thoughts crossed my mind. First, it was amazing that I could be friends and laugh and joke and enjoy the company of my ex-wife. It made me wish that we would stay friends for a long, long time. Second, I wondered if anyone overheard our conversation, especially about Arthur Lane. I perversely hoped that someone did and that they would pass on that bogus story. Like I said, the reaction of someone as self-absorbed and self-important as Lane would certainly be worth the price of admission.
And finally, I wondered what kind of business opportunity could arise from this gathering of so many members of The Pride. It was an opportunity that I was determined would not let pass without trying to make something of it.
As the service began, an idea began to take shape that would change my life as well as the lives of many other members of The Pride.
CHAPTER 16
Diedre
Reflection on a winter’s day
I purposely let my thoughts swirl and wander wherever they wanted to go as Paul and I brought our warm and comfortable foolishness to a close. We waited for the final preparations for Winner Tomlinson’s memorial service to be completed. I have to admit that I thought about Winner who, though I met through Paul, I knew professionally and personally and on a much more personal basis once Paul and I were divorced.
I always respected Winner for what he had accomplished, not only in terms of his business success, but because of his desire and ability to be a positive force in the national black community. His financial contributions to the NAACP, the United Negro College Fund, and politicians like New York Mayor David Dinkins and Chicago Mayor Harold Washington were just a part of the story as far as I am concerned.
I believe that it was also important that he used his money to make major contributions to Harvard Law School (one of the largest in the history of that university) and Howard Law School (the largest in the history of that university). It always seemed to me that Winner was trying to send a message that over time, black Americans would be real players in all aspects of America. And I want to be one of those real players also.
As my mind continued to wander that cold January morning, I couldn’t help but think about how I had intended to start a national community development bank after I completed a few years at Citibank. This after I had gone to Mount Holyoke College to get my Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts and after I had received my MBA from Columbia’s business school. I remembered how it was not that long ago that all things seemed possible and that the rest of the world and I were young and full of hope and possibilities.
But it seems so long ago, really long ago, that Paul and I were married. We were joined in a marriage that crashed, burned, and died. A horrific crash occasioned by multiple causes. Some were Paul’s, and if the truth be told, many were mine as well. We shared joint responsibility for, and custody of, the disaster that was our marriage.
And then an opportunity came for me to work in Citibank’s offices in Paris. My girlfriends and family thought it would be good for me “to get away” in the aftermath, although I didn’t think that self-exile was warranted. But I did get away.
First to Paris. Then London and then Tokyo. I also got so far away that my dream of a national community development bank got dimmer and dimmer until it was just a flickering light in a backroom of my consciousness. It was a backroom that I rarely visited.
By the time I returned to New York City six years later, I have to confess that, in all modesty, I was a polished, accomplished and outrageously smart global banker. Everyone knew that I was a brilliant rising star.
So when I was asked by the chairman’s office at Citibank to take on a totally new assignment, I leaped at the chance. No valley was too deep, no mountain too high. The assignment: to set up a financial advisory unit that would advise pension funds, states, municipalities, and countries.
Within two years, I had made sure that my unit was a part of the bank’s twenty-first-century strategy, a big part. In truth, I envisioned my career and the future of Citibank as being intertwined.
I was extremely loyal and extremely well paid. I made money for the bank and the bank paid me a lot of money. My unit was truly a profit center.
And then one day there was management reorganization at the bank. These came and went like the seasons and were of no real concern to stars like me. The constellation where I dwelled had permanence like the sky itself. Besides, I had heard nothing that involved my unit. So I had no real concerns.
I was summoned to the office of one of the most senior vice presidents at Citibank, one of the very few who reported directly to the chairman. I just had to assume that the purpose of the meeting was to officially announce my oft-rumored promotion to the upper tier of senior management. My biggest concern was how I was going to manage to look surprised when I received the long-awaited good news.
As I took the elevator ride down to the third floor of 399 Park Avenue, the nerve center of the empire that was called Citibank, it was one of the few and last times that I have ever unfettered my hopes.
As I recall, I actually allowed myself to worry about how I would remain composed when the promotion was offered and how I would celebrate with friends and family. I was in orbit!
I thought about the new challenges that waited. The ride down to the third floor was dizzying in its possibilities and expectations that day. It was a day that I simply will never forget.
The elevator ride back up to my office was not what I had anticipated. I encountered a scenario I never could have imagined because it was outside of the universe of my imagination.
CHAPTER 17
Diedre
More reflections
In a brief eight minute meeting, I was advised that my unit had been reorganized and that two of my rivals at the bank, one male, one female, both white, both younger, had been selected to run what had been my unit. My position was being phased out and I was offered an extremely generous separation arrangement.
In other words, I was fired. Sacked. Terminated. Shown the door.
As I sat in the Riverside Church that morning, I was amazed that I could still vividly and painfully remember that I was shivering with rage as I returned to my office, alone in that elevator in 399 Park Avenue.
The one thing I remember is that I made up my mind that no one would see my anger or my pain as I walked to my corner office with the panoramic view of Manhattan and closed the door behind me.
I also recall that the senior vice president with whom I had met had generously given me until the end of the business day to clean out my office and be out of 399 Park Avenue forever. And I remember that there was no time to waste crying or wondering why.
By early the next morning I was on a flight to Anguilla, staying in a private villa that I had rented from time to time. This was in 1985, and Anguilla was still a secluded getaway that only a fortunate, discriminating few knew about.
That has since changed now that Conde Nast and Regis Philbin have discovered the Cap Jaluca and Mallehana ultra-luxury resorts and other sybaritic pleasure palaces that didn’t even exist when I made my journey into seclusion and self-discovery and renewal.
When I made my escape from the sheer and utter madness at Citibank, the only way to get to Anguilla was by hydrofoil from St. Maarten. Or, one could be really adventurous and take a five-mile flight from the same island in a four-seater airplane and land on a dusty strip of runway that had the nerve to call itself an international airport.
American Airlines has now figured out that it can make money shuttling wealthy tourists from Puerto Rico who are in search of something different. And Anguilla is certainly something different.
A former British colony, and still a member of the Commonwealth, Anguilla is a very small, extremely private, sparsely populated isle about five miles north of St. Maarten. Everything that St. Maarten has, Anguilla doesn’t.
That is wha
t always attracted me, even when the island didn’t have central electricity. It is this special character of Anguilla that was one of the reasons why Paul and I went there on our first honeymoon.
Anguilla doesn’t have casinos, it doesn’t have large condominiums and discos and cafes and traffic jams. What it does have is some of the finest, quietest and most secluded beaches in the Caribbean.
And, because of a local law that declares that all beaches must be accessible to the public, there is none of the snooty, faux exclusivity that I absolutely despise in many of the top vacation destinations that I have visited. After the debacle at the bank Anguilla was just perfect for where my head was at, as the saying goes.
As I strolled along the bleached beaches, my newly liberated toes luxuriating in the sugary sand of that tropical wonderland, a plan began to glimmer, glow, and then gleam. It demanded that I grasp its reality and move with it right away. And I am glad that I did exactly that.
It wasn’t about a national community development bank anymore however, it was a financial advisory firm that started to take shape in my mind. I would head it, own it, run it, and it was going to be a success.
I was determined that I would take everything that I had learned at Citibank—adversity, treachery, betrayal, strategic planning and expectation of success, and I would be a success. I would be a bigger success than I ever would have been at the bank. I was determined not to be bitter. I was determined to be better.
The totality of my experience at Citibank, and that ride back up the elevator to clean out my office had taught me a lesson that I will remember for the rest of my life. In business, it was simply never personal. It is always just business.
And that’s the way that I have played it ever since. From that moment on the beach in Anguilla to that day sitting in the Riverside Church, business has never mixed with my personal life.
And as I sat next to Paul in the church that day, waiting for Winner Tomlinson’s memorial service to begin, I couldn’t help but think about all that had happened since that very special trip to Anguilla.
By the time I returned to New York, I had written out a complete business plan in longhand on the yellow legal tablets that I have always favored. I cashed in some securities that I had been holding, and made an insane number of calls to colleagues in the financial community. Within sixty days I opened the offices of DBD Financial Advisors in the newly opened World Financial Center in Lower Manhattan, right in the epicenter of my entire business universe.
I was able to hire away a few of my former staffers at the bank, the ones who saw the handwriting on the wall. When one has to choose between loyalty and opportunity, always choose opportunity. That’s what the big dogs do every single time. Frankly, I really didn’t care what their motives were. Again, for me it has been strictly about business—period.
As the crowd rustled and settled into the cathedral on the river, I couldn’t help but reflect on the fact that DBD had offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, and Miami. The firm had over two hundred employees and it counted a number of Fortune 50 companies, cities, states and countries as clients.
As a matter of fact, I hired away so many people from the bank that now even my “successors,” Mr. and Ms. Great White Hope worked for me. Again it was strictly business, nothing personal.
It is interesting to reflect upon the fact that DBD also has foreign affiliates in Tokyo, Paris, and London. At the time of Winner’s memorial I was seriously considering opening an office in Johannesburg since the release of Nelson Mandela gave me reason to believe that there would be tremendous changes and opportunities in South Africa. I thought then that Johannesburg could provide DBD with an excellent platform to begin operations throughout the continent of Africa.
At the time, I also found myself reflecting on just how bizarre and interesting life could be. I know that Paul would probably have the mother of all apoplectic fits if he knew about the brief affair that I had with Winner just last year. To this day Paul has no right to have any kind of fit at any time. But Paul is a particular type of man, and I know that is how he would react.
A memorial service is a strange place for retrospection, but life is like that, too. It was funny how things started.
Winner was interested in becoming an equity partner in DBD and I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to listen. Although we had known each other for years, we had never really spent much time together alone. I believe that we probably impressed each other with intelligence, wit and vision. And, there was something more.
And then one thing had led to another. Even now I can’t remember exactly how. But very soon after our discussions began, my trips to Paris became more frequent, and they had not all been strictly business, that’s for sure. Pleasure is the word that I am looking for here.
In some ways, it was a perfect affair. Both of us enjoyed the pleasure without the unwanted interference of unwitting and unbridled and uncontrollable romance.
I always knew that Winner was not going to leave his wife. Winner knew that I was not interested in being less than a full partner, and he was not interested in full partners in any aspect of his life and certainly not his business. But he was perfect for the kind of male companionship that I thought I wanted at the time. And then he had the bad taste to die.
As the last strains of Roberta Flack’s rendition of “Amazing Grace” soared through the church, I began to focus on the services that were about to begin. It wasn’t often that I contemplated my own mortality. I simply don’t have the time.
But this was one of those times when I just couldn’t help it. There was nothing that I could do but let the thought make itself known, bloom into my consciousness, and then wither and die.
CHAPTER 18
Sture
Yet another point of view
The reaction of Americans to cold weather has always been a real source of humor for me. The way some of them act and the layers of clothing that they wear upon the slightest sign of frost or a chill in the air, you would think that they had never felt cold weather before.
And, I must say, with all due respect to my black business partners and my many black friends and patrons of Dorothy’s By the Sea, that many of my friends and colleagues of color seem to find that cold weather is a cue for them to vie for some kind of dramatic award—perhaps an Oscar for the Most Overdressed, or a Tony for Loudest Complaint About the Weather, or an Emmy for Greatest Number of Times for Exclaiming “Lord have mercy, it’s cold.”
As I left my Chelsea apartment that morning, taking the subway to attend Winner Tomlinson’s funeral, I noted that it was a cold January day—at least by New York standards. In Oslo or Bergen, of course, the day would barely rate the wearing of a hat and gloves. Most Norwegians would not even dream of buttoning their coats.
Going down the stairs from street level to get on the subway, I saw a bizarre combination of fur coats, down jackets, scarves, hats, combat boots, cloaks (!!) and various combinations of fabric, the origins of which would be known only to the owners. My Norwegian compatriots would have been amazed at what New Yorkers considered to be cold weather.
I remember days in the heart of winter back home when Saab door handles would snap off in your hand like candy canes. And I remember seeing old men spit into the air and watching the spittle freeze in the air and bounce and roll on the street. One would imagine that New Yorkers would just curl up and die in weather like that. But, from my experience in New York, New Yorkers would figure out a way to survive.
Even though I have now been a resident of New York City for over a decade, I continue to be amazed at the qualities and character of the “New Yorker.” I say “New Yorker,” because the typical New York resident could be Chinese, black American, black Caribbean, black Dominican, Hasidic Jew, Irish or … Norwegian. What “New Yorkers” share as a common trait is the ability to deal with just about anything. That also happens to be one more reason why subways are my favorite mode of transportation. Just about anything can, and wi
ll, happen on the subways. Real New Yorkers manage to deal with it, and move on.
I have seen a blind old lady break the flintiest of hearts playing “Amazing Grace” on an accordion while wending her way through crowded subway cars at rush hours, the packed commuters parting like the Red Sea for Moses as she passed through. And I could swear that I saw her get off the subway and take off her dark glasses to count her change as the car full of chagrined passengers pulled out of the station.
I have seen newly arrived immigrants from Afghanistan, complete with turbans, robes and sandals receive barely a first glance from the jaded residents of the Big Apple. As a relatively recent member of the tribe known as New Yorkers, I have found myself wondering what would be going through the minds of my Afghan compadres, newly arrived from Kabul and camels and bazaars and casbahs, when they get into a steel tube and fly under the concrete canyons and stainless steel and glass mountains. It must be like traveling to another planet.
I took the subway to the 116th Street stop on the Broadway local and proceeded to walk past the Columbia University campus. I considered my environs as I walked the rest of the way to the Riverside Church.
Columbia is one of the oldest universities in the United States, being about three hundred years old. Centered on 116th Street on the west side of Manhattan, its current location was an absolutely rural location when it moved from Madison Avenue in midtown Manhattan about one hundred years ago.
Now, of course, Columbia stands on the borders of the Upper West Side and Harlem. It is as urban a college location as there is anywhere in the world. It provides not only a first class academic education and also yet another illustration of how New York City has always been in a constant state of change. It was a most remarkable place.
I imagine that I wound up living in Chelsea because it was affordable and close to the places that I was working, first the Water Club and now, Dorothy’s By the Sea. It never occurred to me to consider the Maginot- Mason Dixon Line of Manhattan, 110th Street, as a factor in the location of my living quarters. Of course, not only am I from out of town, I am from out of the country, and there are those who would say that I am out of my mind.