3
1980s: Climbing Higher
Such a perfect black couple that it seemed as though they might have come from central casting at the CIA.
—CLIVE BARNES, New York Times dance critic, describing us in a story about Boston Ballet’s China tour, 1980
The Boston Ballet was founded in 1963 as the Boston Ballet Company, and by the time Addie and I were living in Boston, it had already become one of the best dance companies in the United States. So it was fortunate for us that our friend and former landlord Mark Goldweitz invited us to numerous Boston Ballet events. He was an ardent supporter and always had tickets to special access ballet soirees and mixers with the principals, company founder E. Virginia Williams, donors, and the dashing director and former ballerina, Violette Verdy. Attending the performances and special events with the Goldweitzes, Addie and I fell in love with dance, with the exquisite athleticism and precision of the dancers, the hush of expectation before the curtain’s rise, and the social buzz surrounding grand productions. Our growing interest in the company had a side effect of placing us in new social circles. The city’s aristocracy, the “Boston Brahmins,” were deeply involved in supporting the ballet. If Boston had a caste system, this was its apex. Mark introduced us to people like Mary Ellen Cabot, who was the board chair, and her husband, Louis Cabot, descendent of John Cabot, one of the first Europeans to explore the northeastern coast of what would become America. John Cabot and his son made a great fortune by shipping rum and African slaves. Subsequent Cabots went on to even greater business and political prominence and became one of Boston’s leading philanthropic families. I was pleasantly surprised by how welcome they and the other ballet supporters made me feel, despite Boston’s reputation for inhospitality toward blacks.
Nigel took the ballet in stride. He was a New York City kid, after all, and by nature cool and unflappable. Because his mother was an artist, married briefly to an actor (with whom she had a second son, Christopher), Nigel was used to being exposed to cultural events. In the winter of 1980, when he was eleven, we took him to The Nutcracker, one of Boston Ballet’s signature productions, which they’ve continued to stage every year since 1975. He sat between me and Addie and watched as dozens of little dancers emerged from Mother Ginger’s tentlike hoopskirt. He smiled up at me, mildly intrigued at the engineering feat. I looked down at him and was reminded how sharp he was, how little he missed of what was going on around him. He had recently taken an oral placement test to be admitted to a competitive middle school near the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan, and Stephanie had told me how Nigel had known he’d done well even before the results were shared with her because he had been reading the test administrator’s notes on his answers, upside down from where he sat, as the administrator jotted them down.
Addie and I liked being parents, even if it was only part-time duty. I had often told Stephanie that I thought it might be a good idea for Nigel to come live with us for his teenage years.
As we became more involved with Boston Ballet, I was asked to join the board of trustees, and then I was elected treasurer. A few months after I joined the board, the company was invited to tour China in the summer of 1980. This was newsworthy during the Cold War years, and it attracted significant press coverage and was regarded as a diplomatic and artistic coup for Boston. The itinerary included Beijing, Shanghai, and Canton (now known as Guangzhou), with entry and exit to and from China via Hong Kong. Board members and spouses were invited to accompany the tour at their own expense, and Addie and I decided to participate. We were among the first Americans to visit mainland China since the Nixon-Kissinger diplomatic breakthrough in the mid-1970s, and our group was afforded diplomatic status. That meant we received official state tours of the most significant Chinese cultural and historical sites, and there were many elegant receptions and dinners with our Chinese hosts and local government dignitaries in each city. Accompanying our delegation was Clive Barnes, an Oxford-educated Englishman and drama scholar who had served as the New York Times’ dance critic for many years and who described us in comical and flattering terms in his write-up of the tour for the paper. Addie and I were feeling that our life together was on a very nice arc, climbing higher.
The Manchester Union Leader was one of the most conservative newspapers in the country, and it was the only statewide paper in New Hampshire. The journalist Hunter S. Thompson called it “America’s worst newspaper” and labeled the paper’s publisher a “neo-Nazi.” When I was assigned to manage the audit of the Union Leader Corporation in Manchester, I was the only minority on the Arthur Young audit engagement team, and there were no minorities in the Union Leader’s business office. Meeting me for the first time, the client financial team couldn’t conceal their surprise. Their eyes popped open and they seemed too stunned, for a brief moment, to speak. It was as if a black man standing in their midst was as unexpected as an alien from outer space.
Every morning for several weeks, during the fieldwork portion of my assignment, I arrived at their offices early and stayed late. Mindful of American racial history, in which a black man could be beaten or lynched if a white woman complained that he had looked at her or spoken to her disrespectfully, I tried to avoid talking to or looking at the women in the office unless it was absolutely necessary, and I never had lunch or coffee or any remotely social exchanges with the female staff. On the occasions when I had lunch or conversations with the men on the Union Leader finance team, I avoided being drawn into political discussions. When someone asked me directly, for instance, “Aren’t you the guy from the student revolt at Cornell? What happened there?” I said only, “Yes, but it’s a long story and we don’t have enough time to go through it,” and I would change the topic to Red Sox small talk. I simply refused to engage on any level other than the most polite and superficial, or in my professional responsibilities, which I was diligent in performing. Ultimately, the people at the Union Leader never had any cause for complaint. I was their audit manager for three years, and the assignment was a good example of my knack for working well even with difficult clients.
Arthur Young had promoted me to principal in 1979, but my outlook toward the company was altered by two unexpected events. First, my primary mentor, eastern region managing partner Len Miller, died suddenly and unexpectedly. And my other significant mentor, Boston office managing partner Arthur Koumantzelis, retired in 1980. With my original mentor relationship with Richard Landis already disrupted by his departure from AY several years earlier to pursue other opportunities, I was now without any close personal ties to anyone in senior management. The incoming Boston office managing partner, Thomas McDermott, who had transferred from another city to assume the position, was very friendly toward me, and his wife, Maria, was gracious to both Addie and me, and they made us feel very welcome at the firm. But I knew in my gut that it wasn’t the same. I also began to consider the possibility that I might not be able to progress higher on the career ladder at AY unless I demonstrated my commitment to the firm by a willingness to transfer to another city, which was a common pattern at AY. I was not enthusiastic about that possibility because Addie and I had built a nice real estate portfolio in Boston, we had a very enjoyable social life, and Addie had a job she liked as director of career services at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. So I began to think about other possibilities for pursuing my career.
Our phenomenal China experience was equaled in the summer of 1981, when Boston Ballet was invited to tour Russia. Again it was a newsworthy event, and we were met with diplomatic fanfare on each leg of the itinerary in Moscow and Leningrad. We were among the first Americans to have a personal view into Soviet Russia at the height of the post–World War II period.
Moscow struck me as utilitarian and drab. Buildings were gray and square, people were dour, the public landscaping minimal. And every supposedly cold drink we were served was warm.
I jotted down notes and impressions every night of our trip in a journal:
Moscow does not demonstrate much that would appeal to a spiritual person. Buildings tend to be drab … virtually devoid of flowers or pleasantly manicured greenery. People are not seen laughing or smiling very often. And even on Sunday afternoon, a very sunny day, we saw very little street play or family fun (laughing, picnics in grassy areas, ball games, etc.). But the people do appear well fed and decently clothed. Perhaps Russia is an economic success and a spiritual failure. These people need more God, love, faith, bright colors, and laughter in their lives. It is almost as though the weight of the system—the struggle to get small things done in everyday life—saps many of their smiles and pleasantness.
Leningrad is architecturally attractive in the center city (Winter Palace, St. Isaac’s Cathedral, Nevsky Prospect area), and its artistic heritage per the Hermitage is quite impressive. The people are somewhat more elegant than in Moscow, and the city generally feels more cosmopolitan. But overall, life still appears to be drab and tedious for most people. The main department store is very shabby, with long lines of people at counters which have some particularly desirable item in stock. Usually there were too many people crowded around for us to see what they were after, but once we did glimpse ladies’ winter boots. The people wait in line with stoic and weary expressions. They are not accustomed to having very much, or to being served with courtesy and alacrity. It’s easy to see how they defeated the Germans—by simply refusing to be worn down. They have a peculiar kind of strength—endurance is probably more accurate.
One of our guides (Nina) seems to go out of her way to be nasty to a Russian lady who attempts to accompany her cousin—a member of our group visiting from the U.S.—on our various sightseeing trips. Usually, since one or more members of our group opt to do something else, an extra ticket is available for the Russian lady. But Nina seems to delight in preventing her from feeling part of us. And the two cousins are only harmless women in their fifties. Nina is probably typical of the manner in which the petty bureaucrats of this society abuse those over whom they can exercise authority—always preferring the option of negativism rather than extending the benefit of the doubt and helping another person. Interesting that people who love to dwell on their history of being abused (the czars, Nazi Germany) are so quick to become abusive. Perhaps they wouldn’t be this way if their communist revolution had been more supportive (or at least tolerant) of Christianity.
The subway mosaics in Moscow are beautiful. It is astounding to see such art, including delightful chandeliers, in underground public areas. It reflects well on the people that these areas are spotless, without graffiti or litter. It is almost out of character with the broader impression of Russians—the shabbiness of surface landscaping, and the general drabness of the buildings and the people. Perhaps the explanation is that these are people of a harsh winter climate, and the subway is one of their winter burrows. Surface appearances don’t receive comparable attention, perhaps, because they are typically snow-covered more than half of the year? In any event, it is also clear that the extraordinarily deep subways can also serve as bomb shelters. And the newer subway stations have sliding doors in the tunnels to seal the platform (perhaps to seal the station platforms from gas or radiation, or to permit emergency use of the tracks unimpeded by persons getting into the tunnels from the platforms?). These people always seem to bring one back to themes of war!
Went to the circus in Leningrad this evening. The nicest part of it was to see so many Russians smiling and laughing.
After visiting here I am moved to serve my country in some positive manner. Not having been in the military service because of the civil rights and anti–Vietnam War struggles in the sixties, I would like to find a way to perform national service which signifies my love and respect for the USA. The country seems to have put behind and moved forward from the worst mistakes of institutional/systemic racism and colonial war (aka Vietnam), and my generation should acknowledge what appears to be genuine efforts of America to correct past mistaken policies. No person, or nation, can do any more than to attempt to correct past grievances—but none can undo the past. Within this context, it is right and appropriate for people like me to demonstrate our willingness to assume our obligations under the social contract which must be achieved for America to survive and prosper. And the first obligation may well be for people from the most successful strata of society to perform two years of national service.
Russia would make a much nicer impression if the service people extended a modicum of effort to be courteous, pleasant, and helpful. They seem to compete with one another to see how quickly they can interrupt your service request, and point you toward someone else who is allegedly responsible for whatever you are requesting (they seldom are, and quickly point you toward yet another “service person”). This process can transform the simplest request into an agonizing, tiring, and time-consuming ordeal. We have walked back and forth multiple times between foreign currency exchange counters at opposite ends of the lobby balcony in the Cosmos Hotel, as the clerks at each counter continue to chat with each other, and point us toward the opposite counter as the one which is “open for service. We have tried to confirm flights with the Aeroflot representative in the Cosmos Hotel at 1:00 pm in the afternoon, only to be told by her as she sat and chatted with a friend, that she was on her lunch hour and we should return at 2:00 pm. We have stood in a line of twenty persons at the sole open cash register at a Beriozka store (for foreign nationals only, accepting certain foreign currencies but not Russian rubles), as ten clerks stood nearby with arms crossed watching the line but making no move to open a second register. They seemed totally disinterested in whether people were served or put down their intended purchases and departed. The single spark of service zeal we observed was among the clutch of doormen who are assigned to keep non-guests out of hotels (which usually means keeping ordinary Russians out), as they energetically challenge everyone for room registration cards. This they seem to enjoy. To receive such poor service is mind-boggling in a country where most service positions appear to be staffed quite heavily (presumably one of the ways they achieve full employment). But productivity is nonexistent. Perhaps this is the result when people’s income is not in any way related to the quality of service they render—the monthly check for most of these workers probably doesn’t change one iota as a result of either excellent or poor service on their part.
It seems as though we are reminded several times daily of the tremendous suffering of the Russian people in World War II (twenty million dead, virtually countless injured, and numerous cities destroyed). There are numerous war memorials in Moscow and Leningrad, of which one of the most moving was the cemetery in Leningrad where 480,000 war dead are buried in mass graves. One cannot help but sympathize with the Russian people for this unfathomable suffering, which is so far beyond anything in the American experience. And, to a certain extent, one understands why the war memory is invoked frequently as rationale for Soviet military strength. But there is an important distinction, which we all must learn to identify and observe, between respect for history and entrapment in history. Virtually all nationalities and ethnic groups have suffered some historical tragedy—that is the nature of man’s inhumanity to man—and it behooves thoughtful persons to learn important historical lessons from those tragedies. But at the same time, we all need to be capable of “leaving history behind” and focusing our energies on the only time horizon we can actually impact, which is our own lifetimes and the future. I have an uneasy sense that Russia dwells a bit too much on World War II, and I’m instinctively uncomfortable with people who perhaps prefer to wallow in their past suffering rather than focus on moving forward. Has their misery become a way of life? A final observation is that the Russians don’t like to discuss the suffering they inflicted on themselves under Stalin. Some historians estimate the toll from Stalin to also be approximately twenty million dead from the upheavals associated with forced industrialization, forced collectivization of agriculture, and consolidation of Stalin’s ruling power. When asked about this, the guides say “only a few thousand died under Stalin.” The overall impression I’m left with is that it is less the anguish at human suffering which motivates the focus on World War II, and more its utility as a tool for social cohesion by focusing the population on external enemies rather than internal economic and social problems.
Today is Monday June 22 in Moscow. We have been here since late Saturday evening June 20, and we have toured Red Square (Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral, and Lenin’s Mausoleum), toured the city by bus, and visited the Exhibition of Economic Achievements (forty-odd pavilions devoted to Russian exploits in science, industry, and agriculture). We are learning that Russians have been first or biggest (which is sometimes better than being first!) in just about all spheres of human endeavor, including the first printing press (poor Gutenberg), and that the USA being first to land men on the moon doesn’t mean very much because Russia has a much larger lunar rover!
Addie squealed with glee when I came to our hotel room with two Pepsi-Colas and a smug smile of triumph (they were even chilled!). This followed two days of a fruitless quest for cola drinks at all of the bars and service areas in the hotel. And last night we were even defeated in our efforts to obtain a cold beer from any of the hotel bars. But it turns out that there is a “dollar store” in a far corner of the hotel, and it stocks cold colas and beer! I must say that I was thrilled at Addie’s joy, and my own sense of achievement. So we are Muscovites—we are weary, we are defeated, and we are hoarding our Pepsi-Colas with smug self-satisfaction at having “gotten something,” however modest it may be. Perhaps, after we rest, we will be ready to engage in the struggle for dinner.
What is good about Russia? The pride and self-respect they have for their culture, history, and their nation. The spirit of service and individual sacrifice for the common good. Their individual and collective will to prevail. The improvement in the economic lot of the common person since the communist revolution. And Russia’s ability to harness its vast natural resources and progress toward economic self-sufficiency.
When we returned from Russia, Stephanie called me and said, “I think it’s time for Nigel to come stay with you.” He was twelve and highly opinionated and independent, and for the first time in his childhood, she was worried she might not have the authority over him to keep him out of trouble. She loved what living in New York City had given him—the great schools and the confidence and sophistication New Yorkers have—but she also remembered, from her childhood in the Bronx projects, that young men without firm guidance could wind up dead. Addie and I were more than happy to welcome him as a full-time member of our household that fall, in time for the new school year. To make room for the change, we moved from our two-bedroom apartment into a large three-bedroom apartment in our Columbus Avenue building. Nigel attended Boston Latin School, which was considered the premier public school in Boston and had a highly competitive admission process.
That winter, Addie learned that she was pregnant, but we decided to wait a few months before sharing the good news with anyone else.
“Oh, you have to hear this,” she said to me one night as we lay in bed reading. “Today I told Nigel about the baby.”
“How did he take it?”
“Very well, I think. But, listen, he asked me, ‘Does my dad know?’ As if I would have forgotten to tell you!”
Our daughter Evonne was born on September 19, 1982, at 8:15 in the evening. Charles came to our place to stay with Nigel while we were at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital for the delivery. Both Addie’s mother and mine came to be with us. The doctors let me into the room for the birth. She was a pretty little baby in perfect health.
Figure 12 /
Tom’s mother, Tom, Evonne, Addie, and Addie’s mother (left to right) at Evonne’s baptism, December 1982
Charles was one of our last friends to get married. He stayed single until he was fifty, when he met his wife, Susan, who had also never married before. Maybe because he wasn’t wrapped up in a family of his own yet, he occupied a place in our family very much like that of an uncle to my children. For instance, he took Nigel with him on maintenance jobs in our properties, which he managed. “You’re my Paint Man!” he said to Nigel. When an apartment or hallway had to be repainted, Nigel would get the job of taping off the baseboards and window trim. Charles was meticulous as a property manager, and proactive in gaining new insights into how we could best maintain the buildings, conserve energy during the winters (during the oil crisis, no less), and in other ways provide the tenants with the best possible home while also watching the bottom line.
Addie and I were unbelievably happy to have shared with each other that enriching cultural and educational experience of travel to Europe, China, and Russia. Our horizons had been broadened, and we began developing a sense that we might be blessed with a very special life together. We also were enjoying Boston, where we had many friends in both the white and black communities. We felt like we belonged and that the city was embracing us.
It was around that time that I came up with and adopted a “rule of three,” a practice I have kept and lived by since. As each New Year approaches, I reflect and meditate on potential areas of self-improvement. I select three to focus on and achieve in the coming year—improvement of mind, body, or soul. In 1983, for example, one of my goals was to read the Holy Bible cover to cover, which I did. When our lives were changed by the presence of children, one of my three goals was to become more loving, patient, and gentle with Addie and the children. Over time, I have learned that achieving three important goals every year is an enormously powerful personal discipline that leads to tremendous personal growth.
It was the only time I pursued a business opportunity that I probably shouldn’t have. Had I been successful, I think I would have felt slightly uncomfortable about my success, because it would have been the result of the worst kind of capitalism, essentially a seizing of public assets. In 1981 I became aware of an unexpected opportunity to pursue a Federal Communications Commission license challenge for one of the Boston television stations. The incumbent owner had violated certain license provisions, so the license renewal was vulnerable to challenge, if the FCC could be persuaded to follow the strict letter of the law and make no allowances. It was an era of federal government affirmative action, and FCC rules called for additional favorable consideration to be given to minority-controlled applicants. It was a long shot, but I wanted to try for it. I assembled a number of significant investor commitments and founded Atlantic Television Corporation. If successful, I would become owner of the ABC affiliate in one of the largest television markets in the country.
I resigned from Arthur Young & Company, rented an office downtown, and worked full-time for Atlantic for the next year, putting together the license application and visiting Washington, D.C., to lobby for the license. At the end of the year, my television station dreams fell through when the FCC moderated its stance and backed away from imposing severe loss-of-license sanctions on the current licensee.
To hedge my bets, on the side I had also been working to put together another investment in real estate. In May 1981 we invested to purchase a second South End property with eight rental units. This building had already undergone renovation several years earlier, so it required only modest refurbishing. And so, by the end of 1981, we had accumulated a promising real estate portfolio of eighteen apartments in the rapidly gentrifying South End neighborhood at a time when Boston’s economy was experiencing a nice upswing, driven by its employment base in higher education, computer technology, medical services, and financial services.
“Come on, son, it’s time to walk to church!” I called out from the foyer of our apartment. Addie stood waiting already, with baby Evonne strapped into the stroller and kicking her legs. Evonne loved these walks to Trinity Church in Copley Square, just three blocks from our building. We had recently started attending Trinity because we wanted our family to have a spiritual framework, much like what both of us had had growing up. (Addie was raised an Episcopalian.)
Trinity is an architectural marvel, built in the 1870s and named by the American Institute of Architects as one of the ten most significant buildings in the United States. In our family’s life, it certainly ranks as one of the most important too, with its soaring ceiling and massive pipe organs, but also, more important, the role it played in our lives every week.
The Reverend Spencer Morgan Rice, an extraordinarily gifted preacher, was rector of Trinity from 1982 to 1992, and so when we visited the church on the recommendation of Addie’s family friend the Reverend Peter Gomes (professor of Christian morals at the Harvard School of Divinity and Pusey minister of Memorial Church at Harvard University), Reverend Rice was newly arrived. But he’d been aimed toward Trinity since he was a young sailor visiting Boston. He’d happened to attend a service at Trinity which so moved him that he felt called to the ministry and vowed one day to return to Trinity as its rector. When his strong voice rang out, intoning lines from the Book of Common Prayer or preaching with vigor and sincerity and heart, I felt transported and uplifted, but also it was a feeling of returning home at last, to the spiritual habit of my youth, directed by my father.
I also found that I enjoyed many of the liturgical aspects of the Episcopal Church, especially the Book of Common Prayer and the way it organizes prayers and meditations around themes people encounter in daily life. There is the prayer for vocation in daily work, for sound government, for church musicians and artists, for prisons, for the good use of leisure. It was easy for me to transfer my religious loyalty from the Presbyterian Church of my childhood.
Reverend Rice’s sermons in his first few years at Trinity frequently referenced the book The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, which was published in 1978 and ultimately became one of the best-selling books ever written about love and spiritual growth. I read this book, and it occurred to me that it was also important to read the Holy Bible to further my spiritual growth. I reasoned that the Holy Bible is arguably the most important book in human history, and I felt strong motivation to experience its message firsthand and to reflect and meditate on God’s revelations to mankind. I felt such a sense of urgency that I adopted this as one of my three personal goals for 1983. I kept that commitment and read the Bible cover to cover that year, which was one of the most important and satisfying achievements in my life.
Over the years, Addie and I became friends with Reverend Rice and his wife, Harriet. He encouraged me to join the church’s governing body, and I was elected to the vestry in 1986. Participating as an insider in the governance of a great church, helping my friend to achieve his spiritual mission there—this was enjoyable and meaningful service.
As I contemplated my next career move in late summer 1982, I was approached by two John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company executives who were members of the Boston Ballet company’s board of trustees. Philip Saunders and Stuart Yoffe told me that John Hancock was embarking on a strategic initiative to diversify into various non–life insurance financial services businesses and was considering recruiting outside management talent. Would I be interested in discussing possible opportunities at John Hancock?
I was intrigued by their inquiry, as I had long thought that the financial services industry would probably experience a considerable expansion as my demographically oversized “baby boomer” generation moved through its financial life cycle. Demographic forces are extraordinarily powerful and are relatively predictable and foreseeable. It was obvious that America’s post–World War II baby boom had had a dramatic impact on K–12 public education across the country in the 1950s and 1960s, and on higher education enrollment in the 1960s and 1970s. It seemed fairly obvious and predictable that successive stages of the baby boomers’ financial life cycle would create surging demand for credit products during their young adult years (credit cards, auto loans, mortgages); then savings, investment, and protection products during their midlife years (mutual funds, retirement accumulation products, life insurance); and, finally, retirement income and protection products during their retirement years (mutual funds, annuities, life insurance). I reasoned that there probably would be attractive career opportunities to be found by riding this rising demographic wave in financial services, and it appealed to me to find a way to participate.
In September 1982, I met with Bill Boyan, the executive vice president of John Hancock. We immediately liked each other. He discussed the company’s plans for diversification into a broader set of financial services products. Hancock’s management tradition, he told me, was to make strictly internal career ladder promotions, but the firm was considering a few external officer hires to refresh and diversify the managerial talent pool. After several interviews, Boyan presented an offer for me to join John Hancock as second vice president in the controller’s department. The plan was to use my accounting background as a platform to become involved in various Hancock product diversification initiatives. I accepted the offer and joined John Hancock in October 1982. I later learned that I was only the third external officer hire since the founding of the company in 1862, and I was the first black officer in company history.
My John Hancock years were very enjoyable, and I made rapid progress on the promotion ladder: I was promoted to vice president in 1985, vice president and treasurer in 1987, and senior vice president and treasurer in 1988. My responsibilities were initially budgeting and financial planning; then I became controller of the holding company that owned all of the non-insurance financial services businesses, and then treasurer with responsibility for financial reporting and external rating agency relations. The work habits and quality assurance disciplines I had learned at Arthur Young stood me in good stead. My ingrained habit of 100 percent effort to excel at whatever I was doing really differentiated me from most of my peers in the Hancock environment, which was not as intense or demanding as the AY culture.
Another important factor in my success at John Hancock was my good fortune in having a group of subordinates who really liked me, wanted me to succeed, and took pride in my success. This positive dynamic is not always the case when a young black outsider is brought into an old-line, traditional company and put in charge of seasoned career professionals as direct reports. Two executives in particular earned my gratitude in this regard—Jack Scan-lon in the controller’s department and Henry Desautel in the treasury department. Both were white men in their forties in management positions, and they could have chosen to resent the young black officer they suddenly found themselves reporting to, but they didn’t. They gave me a chance and ultimately came to respect and like me, and even seemed to enjoy my success. I also developed a circle of friendships with my peers in the senior officer ranks, including David D’Alessandro, Judy Markland, Stuart Yoffe, and Phil Saunders. And Bill Boyan became my mentor and senior management advocate. Over the years there, my confidence was growing that I could perform and succeed at a high level in the business world.
My managerial success at Hancock stemmed primarily from my inclination to be a team builder and team leader. I didn’t issue orders. I respected people and sought their input on how to solve problems or achieve important objectives. Most people have more to offer than they’re given credit for, and most people respond well to being respected. I also led by example, working longer hours than anyone else. When things went well, I always gave public recognition and credit to my subordinates. And when things didn’t go so well, I always took responsibility on myself.
You couldn’t see the house from the road. It sat beyond an old stone wall topped by a six-foot wooden fence. To see the house, you had to turn into the drive, and then the house became visible, large and gray. It was a Cape Cod, with a garage and a pool equipment shed tucked away at the sides. It had several gables and gave the overall impression, from the outside, of graceful sprawl. Inside, the woodwork was beautiful, the rooms generous and well arranged in relation to one another in a way that produced a pleasant flow. There was a swimming pool out back and room for a tennis court, which we soon built. Two acres for Nigel and Evonne to run around on. After the closing in our lawyer’s office, Addie and I went straight to the house and stood together for a moment at the front door, with our backs to the house, surveying our new country life. The town of Weston was one of Boston’s prettiest suburbs.
Addie was working as head of career placement services at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, which put her in the midst of enjoyable intellectual and social activities. In the mid-1980s she became head of admissions and financial aid for the international master’s in law program at Harvard Law School. Her commute to Harvard Square from our home in Weston was an easy twenty-minute drive door to door. My commute to John Hancock Tower in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood was also very comfortable, in part because the Hancock parking garage was built directly over the Massachusetts Turnpike with interior direct access entry and exit ramps. On most days, barring traffic accidents, I could leave home at 7:30 am and be in my office by 8:00, and I could leave the office at 6:00 pm and be home by 6:30. My standard ten-hour workday was long compared to that of my Hancock peers, and yet on most days I was still home for quality evening family time.
In 1983 Stephanie, who had a nephew at Andover, encouraged Nigel to apply to boarding school. I reserved judgment and drove him to his school visits. We saw Andover and Exeter, two of the most elite boarding schools in the country. But after our visits, and some thought about what the schools offered, I told him he couldn’t attend.
We were at the dining room table one night and I explained my thinking: “Those schools won’t teach you what you most need to know to succeed as a black man in America, Nigel. Sure, you’d probably be a star at Andover or Exeter, and everybody would love you, and you’d probably be a big man on campus. But the problem is that you’ll be getting B-plus grades without even breaking a sweat, and everyone will be telling you that you’re doing fine.”
He glared at me. Nigel wasn’t used to being told he didn’t work hard enough, and he didn’t like it.
“What I want you to learn in high school is how to dig down deep inside yourself to find out what’s there, and what it means to really try hard and give your best efforts, because you’re eventually going to need to know how to do that in order to succeed as a black man in America. And the faculty and staff at schools like Andover and Exeter don’t train black boys for that.”
Nigel pushed back from the table and stormed off. He was upset with my decision, obviously, and he started to rebel. After a week had passed, I wrote him a letter dated April 10, 1983, which read:
Dear Nigel,
I am writing this letter to communicate with you as clearly as I know how in regard to your behavior of the past few days. I am writing while your behavior is fresh in your mind, and in order to give you a permanent record of my position and how I intend to behave toward you.
Let me begin by saying that I am your father, for better or worse. Neither of us can change this fact, even if we desired to do so. Since you can’t change it, my advice to you is to be happy and positive—you could be in far worse circumstances. I suggest that you begin to think of your father as a coach. You have learned that the team can only have one coach, and you can’t be the coach until you have sufficient experience and knowledge as to be able to give your team good guidance in all situations that arise on the field. The team can’t fight the coach and win. The team can discuss strategy and suggest ideas to the coach, but the coach makes the final decisions—who will play, what positions, batting order, etc. As your father, it is my job to coach you to manhood. I will coach you to the best of my ability, drawing on the experience I gained from my coach—your grandfather. I will do my best to train you to be disciplined, hardworking, to strive for excellence, and to conduct yourself in accordance with Christian morality. My father taught me that these were the ingredients of his successful struggle to rise above the circumstances and limitations of his birth as a black man in the rural South in 1909. And I know that these are the ingredients of the success that I have experienced in my life. As your coach, I will do my best to ingrain these qualities deep into your character. And I hope that one day, if you have children and become the coach, you will find that these are the important lessons to be taught and passed on. But you will not and cannot be the coach until you have sufficient experience and, hopefully, the knowledge that flows therefrom. And that is why, at fourteen, you will not make certain decisions which should be made by the coach.
You have given me severe resistance on two occasions this year:
1. In the fall when I put you on a four hours per day study schedule following your worst report card in two years, I told you that you had to learn to really reach inside of yourself and strive for excellence, and that even if you didn’t achieve excellent results you would have the pride and satisfaction of knowing that you did your best. And if you did achieve excellent results, you would have the pride and satisfaction of knowing that you earned it and that you could do it again.
You complained bitterly. You complained that the other kids didn’t study so hard, and that your cousin didn’t study so hard and his mother (your mother’s sister) is a teacher and knows what’s best. You complained frequently to your mother, who in turn tried to get me to back off, and evidently made you feel that she was very sympathetic to your position because you weren’t happy. You and I eventually had an ugly confrontation before you resigned yourself to obeying my orders.
Eventually you discovered that you could achieve at a higher level than ever before, and acquired new depth and capability as a student. In retrospect you recognized how valuable it is to be capable of that kind of academic discipline and effort, and you now do a good job of pacing your own study schedule because you understand what excellence is all about.
2. This past week you resisted me strongly on my decision that you should live at home and attend BB&N [Buckingham Browne & Nichols, a private day school in Cambridge], rather than go away to Andover. I told you that I wanted you to stay home because BB&N was academically equal to Andover and, given equal educational environments, it made more sense for you to be raised by your father rather than strangers.
You argued that Andover has more courses than BB&N; my response was that it didn’t matter since, practically speaking, you were going to have little time for anything other than math, English, science, history, language, etc., and that BB&N was equal to Andover in these major subjects. You argued that Andover had better clubs and activities; my response was that having a decent chance to be on athletic teams was an important consideration, and that you had a much better chance at BB&N (250 boys instead of 800), especially since Andover recruits postgraduate athletes for its teams and those guys, who should be playing in college, dominate Andover athletics. You told me all about the famous men who have graduated from Andover (Vice President Bush, Supreme Court justices, etc.); my response was that you should tell me about the famous black men trained by Andover, because the issue is whether the anonymous dormitory counselors can do a better job than me in training you to be successful as a black man in this very tough society. You told me that Andover had more minority students, and a more diverse and cosmopolitan student body; my response was yes, but is this so important that you need to leave home now and spend the next ten years in that type of situation, rather than a last four years at home, to be followed by six or more years of campus living in college and graduate school?
So, son, I weighed all of these considerations and made a decision. You had opportunity for input. But I’m the coach and I make the decision. You resent it now, but you will eventually grow to appreciate this decision as we live through the various growth crises you will experience in the next four years. I don’t expect you to have that perspective now, son—you don’t have enough experience yet. It’s my responsibility to have that perspective and make the decisions as your coach.
What I do expect is that you will accept the coach’s decision and execute your assignments to the best of your abilities. I will not tolerate your rebellion and insolence. And I will not tolerate encouragement of your insolence, and other negative influences, from your mother or anyone else. It is clear that your mother has encouraged you to set your heart on Andover, even though she knows virtually nothing about BB&N; she simply knows that Andover is more famous and “people like Nat Hentoffsay it’s the best.” But these “people” can’t possibly have weighed all the subtlety and nuance that I outlined above.
Your mother must understand that her advice to you must stop well short of encouraging or condoning the type of resistance you have given me now on two occasions this year. If this negative influence does not cease, your mother’s access to you will be curtailed.
Your mother is well meaning and acts from love for you. I know that. But I also know that she has no direct experience with the dayto-day aspects of training a young black man to be successful in this society. Her father, a dentist, unfortunately died when your mother was four. Your mother did not grow up in a family or neighborhood environment which included successful black men. Your mother grew up in one of the most notorious slums in this country—a place where black men are more often than not either junkies or criminals by their late teens. This background is not your mother’s fault, and is certainly not a reason for you to love her any less than you do. But it is the reason why she is not going to be your coach. She does not really understand from firsthand experience the subtleties of the training that I will give you. Your mother means well, but she is not going to be your coach.
So, son, I am the coach. In order to make my position perfectly clear, I am taking the following actions.
1. I will no longer pay for your trips to New York to visit your mother. Since your mother volunteered $3,000 to assist you in leaving to attend Andover, it is reasonable to believe that she can afford to pay for your travel to New York. This will be her financial contribution to your support. You are free to go to New York one weekend per month and on certain holidays, as long as it does not interfere with your schoolwork. You should obtain advance permission from me, and have your mother send a ticket.
2. I am issuing a warning. If you behave again in the manner you have behaved in the two incidents I have cited, and if I have reason to believe that your mother has encouraged or condoned the rebellion and insolence, I will seek a court order curtailing your mother’s access to you. I will file a complaint enumerating her negative influences on your development and I will seek court protection from visitation or telephone contact except upon my permission. This letter will be one of the documents which I will submit to the court.
Well, son, the ground rules are clear. You are going to live with me and be trained by me for the next four years. Neither you or your mother has any choice about this—if either of you thinks you do, we will settle it in court very quickly. Be advised that you or your mother will be hard-pressed to find a judge who will take your custody away from me under these circumstances.
I sincerely hope that these next four years together, probably the last time in our lives that we will live together, will be happy and harmonious. We will make a good team if we both approach our responsibilities in a spirit of love, and if you remember at all times that I am the coach. I love you and, with God’s help, I will do well by you.
Dad
The letter had its intended effect. We came to an understanding, and in the end, Nigel stayed with us and attended public school in our neighborhood. It was really our only major conflict in all the years he lived with us.
Addie and I both come from families of four children, and we enjoyed parenting. We were in a good place personally and professionally to expand our family, so in 1987 we adopted our son Michael, who was two years old when he joined us. In 1988 our daughter Victoria was born, and we became a family of six. Addie continued to work at Harvard, but reduced her hours to half-time so she could “manage the affairs,” as she jokingly put it, of our high-schooler and three young children.
Nigel thrived academically and athletically in the Weston school system, and graduated with honors in 1987. The administration and his classmates together selected him to be orator, to deliver the class address for the Weston High School graduation exercises on the Weston town green, a manicured square crisscrossed by gravel walkways and bordered by a profusion of flowers. A large temporary wooden structure was placed in the center of the park as a stage for the graduates. Addie and Evonne and I sat in the second row, along with my mother and Mrs. Knox, Charles McLean, and the Wileys. The graduating seniors formed a sea of white up on the stage, since it was the tradition that the young men wear white jackets and the young women wear white dresses.
The high school principal introduced Nigel, who took the podium. I knew his topic and that his audience was in for a surprise. His delivery of this speech was one of my proudest moments as a father because of his sincerity, the forcefulness and merit of his assertions, and the courage I think it took to say what he said:
Parents, teachers, friends, members of the Class of 1987—
There comes a time in everyone’s life when you realize that you must do certain things, even if you know that not everyone, probably not even the majority, will agree with what you’re doing. You do it because you know that it’s the right thing to do, and in the end, that’s all that really matters. I want to talk to you today about a very difficult aspect of my life that I feel relates to you in a special way—
“Don’t apply to any schools that I’m applying to because you’re black.”
“You just got that grade because you’re black.”
“You might feel uncomfortable at the Country Club.”
“Teachers love you because you’re smart and you’re black.”
When my parents go to play tennis, just like yours, people not only assume my father to be a professional athlete, but come up to him wondering which Celtic or Red Sox player he is.
At Weston High School, I am an enigma. I’m black and I live in Weston. The kids from Boston don’t feel like I’m one of them and the kids from Weston look at me as a shooting star, moving quickly through the heavens, leaving a dull, empty void in its path. This is going to be a very difficult thing to say, and I’m extremely hesitant about saying it, but it has to be done. The Town of Weston and its school system pride themselves in being liberal and open-minded and unbiased. I question your definition of open-minded and unbiased.
At Weston High School, prejudice is not overt, and so when I first came to this school system, I was blinded to something deeper and more ominous than overt prejudice that I have only begun to understand this year.
Ralph Ellison’s main character in his famous novel Invisible Man laments a world where no one will see him purely as a human being, and not as a symbol for this, or a tool for that, or as a means of gratifying one’s guilt about how one’s life has been led. For many of you out there, and for many of the people behind me, I am invisible. I am a statistic, or a barrier to college admissions, or a symbol of a good black boy. I am anything and everything but a human being, an individual with personal ambitions, emotions, and desires.
“How do I know that I am invisible? When the policeman came to the door, he told my stepmother that he had reports that there had been a black man in a beat-up car sitting in the driveway. He must have seen right through her, not letting her skin color affect his distorted perception of impenetrable class and racial barriers. I was the black man in the driveway. The beat-up car is mine. The driveway is ours. When a black student accidentally walked into an honors class, the teacher told him he had the wrong room, before asking him what section he was in. The teacher assumed that the student wouldn’t be taking a difficult course. He saw not a human being, eager for knowledge, but dark skin, and all of the stigmas that his mind attached to it.
What are the reasons for the image that black students have in this town? You can look at the honor roll at the end of each quarter and see that we don’t do well academically. But I say to you that if you truly care, and if you don’t want to just sit back and tell yourselves how charitable you are and how open you are because the METCO program [enrolling inner-city students in suburban schools] is wonderful and because there are a number of black families in Weston, you will look deeper and ask yourself why there aren’t more blacks in honors classes.
Ask yourself why someone complains about a black man sitting in the driveway. Ask yourself why I get stopped and questioned by the police when I walk on the streets after dark. As uncomfortable as it is, just ask yourself. The reason is that we are invisible. Even now you don’t see me. You don’t see my anguish, and you don’t see the deep frustration that I have sometimes felt, and never talked about.
If you really don’t care about yourself and about the Town of Weston and the rest of the world, but only about how you are perceived by others, then you’ll walk away today and not try to understand. But if you really want Weston to be the open, accepting place that some people seem to think it is right now, then let go of your assumptions and your prejudices and your biases. Look at me, look at all black people as people, as individuals—as you look at your own children. I know that there are few black students in the honors classes. The black students are, as a group, not as academically proficient as the white students. But it’s not because of any intrinsic deficiency, as some of the faculty of Weston may believe. If you took any 50 kids from South Boston or Dorchester and placed them in the highly academic environment of Weston High, you would get the same results. It’s a socioeconomic problem, not a racial one. If you think that white kids are so much smarter than black kids, send your children to Dorchester High for 5 years and then bring them back to Weston, and see how they do.
The assumptions and biases that I’m talking about are not ingrained in the spirit of any individual, and especially not those in the Class of 1987.
When we leave this town and this school system, we will discover that the rest of the world has made the same unfair judgments that we have. We must be leaders in trying to unlearn the fallacies we have been exposed to. From the friends that I have, and the individual relationships I have had with the members of this class, I know that we can.
I am asking you, the Class of 1987, and your families and friends to really try to make a difference. The problems of class and wealth are too involved for any one person to try to solve. Rather, when you come into contact with a person who has not had the same advantages and the same opportunities, understand that. More importantly, try to see us, to know us as people, as individuals, and not as symbols. I have been invisible for six years now, ever since I started junior high at Boston Latin School, and believe me, it gets very lonely when no one can see you. I want you to let go of your blindness. I want us to make a better town, and a better world. Thank you.
The June 29, 1987, Boston Globe published an article titled “Confronting the Unseen,” devoted to a summary and analysis of Nigel’s remarks and their reception by the people of Weston. “Although fellow students cheered Nigel’s speech, the reaction in town has been mixed. ‘It almost makes you feel guilty in a sense, but I don’t have anything to feel guilty about,’ said Richard Murray, chairman of the Board of Selectmen.”
Nigel was admitted to Cornell, Harvard, Stanford, and other top schools, and he decided to attend Harvard. He visited Cornell and was impressed, but I didn’t try to push him toward my alma mater because I lacked confidence that he would encounter a supportive campus social environment. From keeping up with the Cornell Daily Sun student newspaper and talking with friends who were still engaged with the campus, my impression was that black students at Cornell continued to be dominated by “blacker-than-thou” rhetoricians who would probably give Nigel a hard time for being a member of the “black bourgeoisie,” just as their predecessors had given me a hard time.
Over the years my attitude had hardened against those in the black community who engage in this rhetorical intimidation. I was more convinced than ever that the only viable path to black prosperity, and full political and economic equality in America, is individual commitment to those selfsame so-called bourgeois values of personal moral discipline, hard work, education, and self-improvement. This is the path to success trod by millions of African Americans from many generations, and it is the path trod by my parents to lift themselves from poverty. It is the path I was following in my own life.
When Nigel left home to attend Harvard in September 1987, I reflected on our years together. He had developed into an exceptional young man, and I was sure that part of that was due to the fact that I had been able to give him a spiritual foundation in the church, similar to the one my father had given me. Our family had continued to attend Trinity Church most Sundays from September through May, and Nigel had become Reverend Spencer Rice’s favorite acolyte crossbearer, leading the processional and recessional marches of the ministers and choir which opened and closed the worship service. Reverend Rice delighted especially in using Nigel on the most important ceremonial occasions such as Christmas and Easter. Nigel and I often shared the uplifting spiritual experience of participating together in worship services in a church filled with over one thousand people on those Sundays when he served as an acolyte and I served as an usher.
Our South End real estate investments had continued to do well, and the eighteen apartments were always 100 percent occupied, other than during brief vacancy intervals between tenants. We increased rents on every tenant turnover, and we achieved classic real estate positive operating leverage— when debt service expenses are locked in by a long-term fixed-rate mortgage and don’t increase each year, and you are able to increase your rents by a higher percentage than the percentage increase in operating expenses such as heat, electricity, real estate taxes, and property maintenance. Thus, net income from our property increased each year.
But in 1985 we experienced an ugly incident that diminished my appetite for the real estate business.
One of our tenants, a single woman in her thirties who worked as a reporter for the Boston Globe, lost her job and stopped paying her rent. She started to play the housing code violation game, a scam in which a tenant files a bogus complaint with the municipal building department alleging housing code violations. When the code violation inspection or hearing is scheduled, the tenant cancels at the last minute because of an “emergency” and requests rescheduling. Also, key case documents may disappear from the building department or housing court files or be “misplaced” by clerks who sympathize with the tenant. By law in Boston at that time, an eviction could not proceed if there was a housing code violation complaint still open. A sophisticated person who understood the municipal housing bureaucracy could prolong this process for many months, or even years.
If the tenant had approached me honestly and directly, asking for time—thirty, sixty, or ninety days to pay her rent—I would have felt a moral obligation to be sympathetic and merciful. But since she decided to try to beat me by playing the housing code violation game, I felt no obligations of sympathy or mercy. I refused to play the patsy in this game, and retained a “courthouse dog” attorney who knew the intricacies of the building department and housing court bureaucracies, and knew how to connect with supervisors and judges to keep the process moving. I reasoned that it didn’t make sense to be in the real estate business unless I was serious about collecting rents, because if tenants learn that they can skip payments, the landlord may fall to the bottom of their priority list of bills to pay. I also thought that not collecting rent was tantamount to a direct money transfer from me to the tenant, and I was not inclined to run a personal welfare support operation. I was already paying substantial real estate property taxes and personal income taxes, which supported public assistance programs.
When I went to housing court for the final hearing, where the tenant was facing imminent eviction, she shot me a look of absolute hatred. I remember thinking that people don’t expect to take food from the grocery store without paying, or clothes from the clothing store without paying, but for some reason some people seem to believe that it’s okay to take housing from the property owner without paying. “This is too close for comfort,” I thought. “This hatred is directed at me personally, and this woman knows who I am and can easily find out where I live.” Perhaps my family could be endangered under some conceivable scenarios. I decided that day that I should either scale up my real estate activities to operate more remotely and anonymously through agents or employees, or I should get out of the business altogether.
From the beginning, I’d considered our real estate development and rental property investments as my backstop to the corporate world, something like an insurance policy I held in case I encountered insurmountable barriers in corporate America. Then, in early 1986, with the sour memory of our rent-dodging tenant still fresh in my mind, federal tax law changes were proposed that would eliminate many favorable real estate tax preferences and negatively impact real estate investment economics. I thought the proposals in Congress had a fairly good chance of being enacted, and would likely have a negative impact on rental apartment valuations, so I decided to get ahead of the curve. I placed our rental properties on the market. We achieved very favorable sale valuations and converted our $25,000 initial savings and subsequent savings and investment in the project into nearly $250,000 net profit. We were out of the market before the federal tax law changes were enacted in late 1986. I was out of the real estate business.
“Mr. Jones, there’s a Clif Wharton on the line for you.” I knew that my assistant meant Clif Wharton, the CEO of TIAA-CREF. I took the call, of course, and it would prove to be a turning point in my career.
Dr. Clifton R. Wharton Jr. had become the first black chief executive of a Fortune 500 company when he’d been named CEO of TIAA-CREF (Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association–College Retirement Equities Fund) two years earlier, in 1987. Fortune magazine had put him on the cover. But before achieving that historic milestone in business, Wharton had been a philanthropist, an academic, and the first black president of a major university in America, Michigan State University. He was later the chancellor of the entire sixty-four-campus State University of New York (SUNY) system. It was his distinguished career as a university leader that had made him so attractive to TIAA-CREF, which was dealing with something of a rebellion of academics and university staffacross the country who wanted more control over their hefty TIAA-CREF retirement accounts. Who better to helm the ship at such a time than a leader famous for his ability to build good relationships with scholars and college staffs?
Wharton was embarking on restructuring TIAA-CREF management to reinvigorate the company. In his autobiography Privilege and Prejudice: The Life of a Black Pioneer, Wharton tells the story of how he came to call me on the phone:
When I asked friends in the insurance business who was the best chief financial officer in the field, one name kept coming up, Thomas Jones. I didn’t know him, but soon learned that he was the number two financial officer at John Hancock Mutual Life, in line for the top job within a few years. I also found out that he was Black. Alan Monroe, my friend and Boston Latin classmate, was an officer at Hancock, and he gave Jones a glowing evaluation. So without prior introduction I called Tom up at work, explaining that TIAA-CREF needed a chief financial officer and could we talk? “I get calls from headhunters all the time, and I never respond,” Jones told me. “But you’re the first CEO to call me directly. (246)
I told him that I was content with where I was at John Hancock, but that I would be happy to meet with him.
That night, I told Addie about the surprising call. “Of course,” I said to her, “I’ll meet him, because why would I give up the opportunity to develop a relationship with the top black CEO in America? But beyond that, it’s really just a courtesy meeting. I love my work, and my prospects for advancement are good at Hancock.” My attitude was: “The devil you know is usually better than the devil you don’t know.”
Addie surprised me. She said, “I don’t think you have a chance of becoming president of John Hancock.”
“Why is that?” I asked. Addie didn’t often express opinions about my career, and when she did, they were almost always positive.
“I know that the top management executives at Hancock like and respect you deeply, but they probably think you should be grateful for what you’ve already achieved. Steve Brown is Jewish, and is one of the first Jews to break through to the top tier in the Boston business community, right? And that just happened in the last few years! So I don’t think Boston is ready for blacks at the top.” Addie also said that Steve Brown and my mentor Bill Boyan and others would probably think I hadn’t paid my dues sufficiently to become president. She thought I would probably make it one more step to executive vice president and chief financial officer at Hancock, but that would likely be the end of the road. “Just imagine being at a place where Clifton Wharton is around, a living statement that a black man can be CEO. At least in New York, at TIAA-CREF, you’d have the peace of mind of knowing that racism wouldn’t block you from a fair shot at the top.”
I thought long and hard about Addie’s comments and ultimately decided that she was giving me wise counsel.
Wharton and I met for dinner and had a good conversation. He was a soft-spoken, elegant man, with an air of quiet authority and kindness that was attractive. Toward the end of our conversation, when I sensed that he was ready to offer me the job, I said, “You know who I am, don’t you?” He looked surprised and asked what I meant, and so I told him about my leading role in the Straight Hall takeover at Cornell in 1969. I could see recognition dawning. Yes, he knew of that historic moment, had seen the famous photographs.
“Does that change your mind?” I asked him.
“No,” he said simply.
The world is small, time compresses, and every encounter and relationship can come to bear on events later in time, at unexpected moments. Little did I know that Wharton was a good personal friend of James Perkins, the Cornell University president during my time at the school. So of course Wharton would call Dr. Perkins and check his reaction to this news: “I’m about to bring Tom Jones on as TIAA-CREF’s next CFO.” He later wrote about that conversation with Perkins. Without pause, Perkins said, “I think that’s marvelous.”