Button Man

by Andrew Gross

  “It was during the war,” he went on, either ignoring her or not fully hearing how she’d responded. “World War Two, I mean. This time I was too old to sign up. Up to that point, I was just getting by in my new business. There was still a Depression going on. But after Pearl Harbor I got this contract from the army to make women’s uniforms. They needed anyone who had a sewing plant back then. The first order was for fifty thousand units. Then another fifty. It was enough to get me by. They gave me this big chart of measurements to figure out the size scales. You know, average heights, weights. They had all that information. And you know what I saw?”

  The professor smiled politely, having heard it all several times before. “Why don’t you tell me, Mr. Raab?”

  “I saw that over half the women were five foot four and under. The stores, all they wanted was stuff that was made for a model. But that’s not how the average American woman was. So after the war we made dresses based on the army’s measurements. A little short-waisted. Slightly shorter in length. Petites, that’s what they’re called today. But back then, we just called it ‘the All-American fit.’ And after the war it just stuck. All of a sudden we were rolling.

  “In 1964, we went public. I can’t remember, did I tell you that? On the American Stock Exchange. We were the biggest dress firm in the country. In every store. You ask any woman, they knew the name Lucy Fredericks. Still do … But things were changing. Things are always changing in this business. I learned that from Menushem Kaufman, my first day on the job, God rest his soul. Women no longer wanted to dress that way. So a few years later, my son, Sam—he runs the business now; he has for twenty years—he got us into sportswear. And that’s when we got really big. A few years later we switched over to the New York Stock Exchange. LFR is the symbol. It still is.…”

  “You’ve had a wonderful career,” the professor acknowledged.

  “Oh, and I almost forgot, given all we talked about, did I tell you that in 1955 we went completely union. There were good people running it now, not like before. So we built this big production facility in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Now, of course, everything’s made in Asia. Now it takes three months to turn around a number; I used to do it in three weeks. These young guys, they all have fancy degrees—my son, he went to Wharton—but sometimes they don’t have, you know…” He snapped his fingers. “This. Zip. My first employer, Mr. Kaufman, told me that.” He shook his head. “Over seventy-five years ago…”

  “Look, there’s the mayor.” The professor pointed to the familiar face surrounded by three aides, shaking hands and heading toward the dais. “You sure you don’t want to be up there, Mr. Raab, with your family? Let me take you.”

  “They’ll wait. So I told you what happened to Buchalter and Gurrah, right?”

  “Well, I know they spent the rest of their lives in jail, or in Buchalter’s case…”

  “Like Dewey said, not long after they tried to take me out, they were all arrested. Along with that Workman guy and the two mugs who tossed Abe Langer out that window. They got the chair. That police captain, Burns, he decided it was easier to put a bullet in his head than face the music. Irv, they got him too. He ended up spending two years in prison, then moved out West to get away, and I think bought this window franchise—he could never practice law again, of course. Anyway, his mother said he did well. But I never talked to him ever again. Got a letter from him once, but …

  “Buchalter went on the lam for a while, but they got him eventually. By that time they had booted the whole lot of them out of the union. But I did see him once again though.”

  “You saw him?” The professor looked at him, this time with surprise. “That you never told me. Where?”

  “In prison. In the death house; 1944, I think. It was the day before he died.

  “I got this message. From Dewey, actually. By that time he was governor. He said Buchalter wanted to see me. He was scheduled for execution the next day. I said, ‘Why me…?’ He said, ‘I don’t know why. He’s refused all visitors, except his wife. But he asked for you.’

  “I thought about it a bit. I mean, I had nothing to say to him. Except good riddance for what he did to everyone, especially Manny. It had been nine years. But the next day I had a driver take me up to Sing Sing. It’s in Ossining. Forty miles up the Hudson. The death house is separated from the regular prison. It’s right over the river. They took me into this room outside the cells. Just a table and two chairs. When he came out, he looked different than I’d ever seen him. About twenty years older. Heavier. Tired. He no longer had that cockiness in his eyes. His hands were shackled. He even said thank you to the guard who held the chair out for him. If I didn’t know it was Louis Buchalter, I would never have guessed in a million years.

  “He smiled when he saw me. Like I was an old friend. A man like that, I doubt he ever had any real friends. He sat down. He asked about my family. ‘That cute wife of yours,’ he says. He remembered being there the night we met. ‘The Theatrical Club,’ he says, ‘right?’ I go, ‘Yeah.’ ‘Nice place,’ he remembered.

  “I ask him if they’re treating him okay and he shrugged and smiled at me and said ‘It ain’t the Ritz. But tomorrow, I get the white curtain treatment,’ he said with a laugh. White curtains is what they drape over the other cells when someone goes by on their way to the chair, so they don’t have to see him. I said, ‘I’ll remember that if my wife ever wants to redecorate.’

  “He laughed. Then he changed and got all serious. I figured this was why he asked me there. He asks me if I ever wondered why he let me get away with so much? I told him Irv had said it was because of him. That he was protecting me. I said, ‘But I always thought it was because of Harry.’

  “He listened, then shook his head. ‘No.’

  “Then he says something that almost knocked me over. He said it was because he always kind of admired me. This is Louis Lepke talking. How everyone else always bowed down to him, ’cause they were afraid. Even the people who worked for him. But I always stood up to him. I never did bow down. And in a way, he always respected that. He said that if he was ever straight in life, he figured he would want to be someone like me. Brave. Who didn’t take no guff from people. Who didn’t back down. Like all the rest. It showed I had pride.

  “I said it wasn’t really about pride. ‘When you’re scared,’ I said, ‘you’re nothing but a prisoner. You go to sleep scared, you wake up scared. Like you’re in this prison. But the moment you decide to stand up, become brave, you’re free. Free of everything that holds you back. You can do anything. You don’t have to think about it anymore.’”

  “And what did he say to that?” The professor looked at Morris.

  “He just smiled and said, ‘Gee, I never really thought about it that way.’

  “So I said maybe I should let him have the time to himself now, if that was all, and he nodded yes. But before he got up, he went, ‘You know why I really asked you here, Morris?’ And I shrugged and said, ‘No. Why…?’ And he went, ‘Y’know, I ain’t sorry about much. About what I’ve done. It is what it is. But the one thing I am sorry about is what happened to your brother. Harry. It should’ve never happened that way.’ He shook his head. ‘It should have been Mendy.’ Then he looked at me and kind of smiled. ‘But I guess Mendy got what was coming to him in the end.’

  “I said, ‘Yes, I kind of look at it that way.’

  “As they were taking him away, he turned back, his hands in chains. ‘I got a rule for you, Morris Raab.…’ He winked and pointed at me.”

  “What was it?” the professor asked.

  “He never told me. They just took him away. Twenty-four hours later, he was dead.”

  Ruthie and Sam came up to him from the crowd. Morris said to them, “Here’s that professor I was always telling you about. You know, I’ve been telling her about my life. For the school. They’re going to put it in a tape.”

  “Sorry to have to pull you away, Dad,” Sam said. “I know how he loves talking about old
times. But we have a building to dedicate. And the mayor’s here now.”

  “Trust me,” she said to Sam and Ruthie, “the pleasure’s been all mine.”

  “All right … all right.” Morris started to head away. “You can see, I don’t walk so good now,” he said to the professor. “Not like before. Heel-toe, heel-toe. I learned that in the army.”

  Then he stopped. “Hold it a minute!” he said, and pulled away. “There was something else I wanted to tell you. It’s very important.”

  “Morris, please…,” Ruthie pleaded. “She’s probably busy. And we have to get started now.”

  “That’s okay,” the professor said, noticing Morris’s face, which had a sudden pallor on it. “What, Mr. Raab?”

  “I wanted to tell you, Sol and I, we went back to Essex Street once. Where we first lived. In 1965. He’s dead now, of course. He had a stroke in ’86. He dropped right at his club in Tenafly, New Jersey. That’s where he moved to. On the second tee. His family’s over there.” He pointed.

  “Anyway, it had all changed. Our old building—it was just a tenement back then—it was gone. There was a fancy new apartment building there. Lots of younger people around. The butcher, who had a shop below us, and the stable, of course, on the corner, they were long gone. We just stood in the street outside. Where it had happened. Over sixty years before.” Morris looked at her. Suddenly, tears pooled in his eyes. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  “I know what you’re talking about, Mr. Raab.” The professor nodded.

  “Shemuel and Harry.”

  “Dad, we’ve got to go,” Sam interrupted, “there are—”

  “Wait a minute.” Ruthie stopped him. “I’ve never heard this, Morris.”

  “That’s because I was never so good at saying things, Ruthie. But I still feel them. In here.” He tapped his chest. “Like anyone else. And I felt this weight come over me that day. Like nothing I’d ever felt before. Sol put his arm around me and said, ‘You can say it now, Morris.’ I remember, I put my hand in front of my face so he wouldn’t see me cry. But I was crying. He could hear me. You know what I’m saying, don’t you, Ruthie…?”

  She looked at him and nodded, tears welling in her own eyes. “I know what you’re saying, Morris.” She took his hand. “I know.”

  “I’d never felt so weak-kneed. I tell you I thought I was having a heart attack. Right there. All that time. And I had judged him wrong. I had pushed him back to them. I might as well have killed him myself. So ‘Say it, Morris,’ Sol says to me again.

  “And I did say it at last. I wiped the tears back and said, ‘I’m sorry, Harry. I forgive you.’ Right there in that street. ‘I forgive you,’ I said again. ‘And I hope to God you forgive me too.’

  “You hear what I’m trying to tell you, don’t you?” He looked at the professor, an aching in his old, gray eyes.

  “Yes. I hear you, Mr. Raab.” She put her hand on his arm. “I do.”

  “I want that on the tape. Because it’s part of it. You understand?”

  “I understand. I’ll make sure it is.”

  “It’s part of who I am.”

  “Come on, darling,” Ruthie said. “They need to get this on the road. And you’re the guest of honor. You were wrong, but look what you’ve done for him, Morris, in your own way, to help make it right. If he were here, he’d be so proud.”

  “All right then. Just so it’s in there,” Morris said one last time.

  Ruthie led him toward the rows of seats. A few people clapped. Morris looked back at the professor one last time. He took his seat, in the front row. The mayor came up and shook his hand.

  It was all there, right in front of him. Something that would stand for his life; a life of some breadth, some might say. That would be here for years and years. Forever, maybe. Or at least, Morris laughed to himself, till someone new came along and gave them more.

  He looked at the name on the building, letters reflecting the sharp rays of the sun.

  THE HAROLD RAAB CENTER FOR THE ARTS

  He always said how he wanted his name on something.

  Acknowledgments

  Twenty million immigrants came to this country between 1880 and 1920, and in many ways, this is the story of one of them. The only one in his family born here actually, in 1902, who went from the mean streets of Brownsville, Brooklyn, and a sixth-grade education to run the garment factory he apprenticed in at the age of twelve by the time he was twenty-one; battled the unions controlled by the Jewish mob (and was proud to show the knife wounds, courtesy of Jacob Gurrah, Louis Lepke’s henchman, to prove it); and grew the dress firm he named after his daughter, Leslie Fay, into an iconic national brand.

  That man was my grandfather.

  It’s a first-generational story that could be told by many American families, whether the protagonists grew up to be teachers, doctors, dry goods retailers, Wall Street icons, or garment men. Freddie Pomerantz was the “hero” of our family tale, and while he felt embarrassment over his lack of formal education his entire life, to us he was not only the toughest, but the wisest man we knew. Fittingly, his legacy today is that his name sits prominently over the entrances of buildings on several college campuses. Growing up, he was the most powerful influence in my life, and I’m proud to tell his story, with only a few embellishments.

  When I first planned out this book I went to the library of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and met with Karen Trivette, Head of Special Collections and College Archivist there. I was looking for background on the early years of the garment business, and she turned me on to microfilm of issues of Women’s Wear Daily back from the 1920s and ’30s and a couple of tattered, first-person accounts that looked like they hadn’t been checked out in years. She also gave me a gift I will never forget: “Many of the founding fathers of the industry have recorded their own stories,” she informed me, “as part of the permanent archives here. Your grandfather was among them. Would you like to hear it?”

  And that is how thirty years after his death, I heard my grandfather’s voice all over again. Uttering the phrases that were always part of the rough, street-honed way he talked: “You hear what I’m saying to you, don’t you…?” And, “So help me God, it’s as if it happened just the other day.” And, “So to make a long story short…” As real and familiar as if he was sitting in front of me, in his den or at the club, and I was a kid again, no older than the age he started out himself in business, and he would look me in the eye and tell me with such clear-eyed conviction that I grew to believe it myself and still do to this day: “You can do anything you want in life, anything—if you want to do it badly enough.”

  For men like that, it was just that simple.

  Listening, I have to admit I wept a bit. It was as if he had never died, just gone away for a while, and now he was back. As animated and alive as the last time I saw him. (More so, in fact, as that was in the cardiac ward of Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach in 1986 and he died that day.) In so many ways Button Man is his story, his rags-to-riches tale. His Great Expectations. But it’s also the story of an era, a Jewish generation’s boy-to-manhood tale: of hope and success; of tragedy and violent crime. And an industry’s tale as well. One I grew up in myself before I ever even thought of writing a page. Not the glamorous fashion industry that it has evolved into today, but a rough, go-for-broke, all-or-nothing way out of the grim, overcrowded streets to which half of American Jewry can trace its roots.

  Growing up, and as someone who spent fifteen years in the clothing trade before I turned to writing, I got to know many of the “founding fathers” Karen Trivette spoke of. They were all tough, uncompromising men. Animals, they were called, by their employees and competitors. Feared, but respected. Even loved. But what they all shared in common was this single-minded drive. They had this, as my grandfather would say, snapping his fingers. “And you can’t learn it in Harvard.” (Another thing they shared was generosity, as many of them, including my g
randfather, gave away more than they left behind when they died.) None of these men went to college, but they founded companies like Jonathan Logan, Russ Togs, Bobbie Brooks, and Leslie Fay, and they came to dominate the women’s dress and sportswear business from the 1940s to the ’70s. Each took their own path to success, and some eclipsed my grandfather in wealth, but any of them would tell you, around a gin game or after a round of golf, that Freddie Pomerantz was the toughest of any of them. As a generation, their lack of formal education coupled with their success will likely never be seen again. These were true Button Men. And I miss them.

  People commonly ask, how does a book begin? In this case, I was literally having a beer with fellow thriller writers David Morrell and Daniel Palmer and for whatever reason I was talking about some family stories, especially the one of my grandfather in his delivery truck guarding his shipment of coats with a loaded shotgun, which I’d thought of including in a book. When I finished, David looked at me with a gleam in his eye and said, “What a great scene! You have to write it.” And for the first time it got me thinking of my grandfather’s life as something other than the subject of family lore. So thanks for the push, man. Without, it, I’m not sure I ever would have made the move to do this.

  In the writing of this book, several books were instrumental to getting the full flavor of life on the Lower East Side, the early garment center years, the Jewish Mob, and the plight of the Jews in America in the early 1900s:

  The Rest of Us, Steven Birmingham. Syracuse University Press, 1984.

  How the Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis. Dover Press, New York, 1971. (Originally published by Charles Scribner and Sons.)

  Triangle: The Fire That Changed America, David Von Drehle. Grove, New York, 2003.

  Tough Jews: Father, Sons and Gangster Dreams, Rich Cohen. Vintage, New York, 1999.

  The Family, A Journey into the Heart of the Twentieth Century, David Laskin. Penguin, New York, 2013.

  Fourth Street East, Jerome Weidman. Pinnacle Books, New York, 1971.