Andy

Andy

Yesterday I got a New Years call from an old pal, Andy, a.k.a. Drew, a.k.a, Lieutenant Commander Forrester. The funny thing is that while I have known Andy for approximately 47 years, he knows more about my daily life these days than I do his. That is because it seems he reads this blog every day. I have a certain cadre of friends and relatives who read my daily blog, but I wouldn’t have especially thought Andy would be one of them.

I met Andy in 1976 when I joined Bankers Trust Company right out of Cornell’s business school. I’m not sure I was a likely candidate to work for a “white shoe” banking firm like Bankers Trust, whose primary offices were on Park Avenue, but there I was. I came to the place with two suits (bought at Sky Sym’s precursor to Men’s Warehouse, one being a blue pinstripe and the other being a grey pinstripe. I remember having to go to Brooks Brothers to buy a few oxford button down shirts (my style of choice to this day). I started work with about $20 in my pocket and had the HR person, Nancy Turner, give me a chit for a $1,500 installment loan for which I had to go over to Leo Lenane’s office at 1155 Broadway to get. I was operating on fumes, but that would get me to my first few paychecks. I went to work during that summer before I went into the training program in the Europe Division, ostensibly because I spoke Italian and had lived for three years in Rome. But strangely enough, I was assigned to work with Christopher Pfeiffer on the Germanic countries where my language skills were non-existent. Some time during that summer I went to a gathering where Andy, who ran the Southern Division, was present with his team of commercial lending bankers, guys like Paul Shaum and Jim Schoenbachler.

I didn’t think about Andy too much as I headed into the training program, which was located downtown in BT Plaza, the building eventually made famous for being physically connected via a walkway bridge to World Trade Center #2, the first of the Trade Center buildings to come crumbling down as a result of the 9/11 attacks. BT Plaza was then Deutsche Bank Plaza and it ended up with an 18-story gash down its northern side caused by falling debris from the Tower. That injury eventually went septic with mold and caused the owners to have to demolish the building several years later, long after it stood wounded as a symbol of the pile that was the result of the worst attack ever on the United States shores. I was in the training program in BT Plaza for six months, learning all the practical business skills that my Cornell MBA had not taught me. When I went back up to Park Avenue in early 1977, one of the first people I recognized was Andy. My first day in the Eastern Financial Institutions Division, as was the convention at the time, I was lunching on the 10th Floor in the Executive Dining Room with my new mentor, Johnny Allen, also known around the bank as Mr. New England. I remember Paul Shaum coming into the dining room and going to the table where Andy was lunching with someone, informing him of some lending crisis of the moment and Andy getting up and marching out like the Lieutenant Commander his nickname commanded. It made an impression on me.

By 1979, I had earned my chops as a correspondent banker enough so that when the management was forming the new World Corporate Department, I was drafted by the powers that be to join the Eastern Division, which was one of the divisions under the Eastern Group, which was commanded by Lieutenant Commander Forrester. I was a co-team leader with a gal from the Europe Division, who I knew from my summer there, one Ms. Liz Lavers, a Swedish blonde bombshell who was very nice to work with, but also very short of practical banking skills. My desk was within earshot of Andy’s palatial office on Park Avenue and I can safely say that I saw him every day across the array of cubicles that separated me from his lofty lair. I had really taken to the banking business, less for many of the reasons people assume bankers bank and more because it was an age of great innovation in the arena and I thrived on innovation. I was the guy who wanted to do the first of whatever deal was au current while others were content to turn the crank and do the next twenty of the same. I started to get recognized for that quality and propensity and eventually was asked to take over something called WCD Marketing Division. Being elevated to a “Grade 40” Division Head (even though it was a staff division rather than a line division) was a very big deal for someone still in his 20’s. My career was on its way and Andy was a major enabling force in it. He had endorsed my move and was willing to play the long game for Bankers Trust rather than try to keep me in my place.

Less than two years later, in 1983, I was asked to go downtown (back to BT Plaza) to set up and run the futures and options business for the bank, something I had studied and explored as part of my Marketing Division responsibilities. That was a career-changing move and just before I made it, I got a call from Andy telling me that he was proud of me but that when he called he expected me to come running back since I was an uptown guy on loan to the downtown trading Department. I saluted Andy as was my habit by then. Two years later, after a highly successful run at BT Futures, I got the call I had been promised. Andy called to say he was calling in his chit on me and wanted me to come back uptown to run the fabled New York City Division for him. By uptown standards there was no higher or more envious position in the mid-levels of management at the bank than to run the NYC Division. I was simultaneously honored and annoyed since things were going well for me and the downtown crew was being paid much better in those days and I had had a good year. You see, Andy was calling me at the end of the calendar year and he wanted me to transfer back uptown before the bonus payments were made. I was expecting a large bonus that year based on my production, something in the order of magnitude of $85,000, which was a small fortune in those days of 1984. I had no choice but to go, so when Andy handed me my bonus check, I resignedly opened it on my way back to my new Park Avenue corner office. Imagine my surprise to see the number $200,000 staring at me. Good old Andy had come through for me.

I only worked for Andy for 18 months in the New York City Division because one day, Andy’s boss, Vice Chairman Phil Hampton called me to his office to ask me if I would take over the bank’s biggest problem, its $4 billion of less developed country sovereign debt exposure in order to find a way out of the mess. While BT Futures was a career delineating move, the move to the LDC Debt crisis portfolio was a life-defining move for me. And Andy had once again been at the center of it all. The rest of my career story is less relevant to the story of my relationship with Andy, but when he chose to retire he came to me and asked about motorcycle riding. He had been a flyer in his Naval Aviation days (hence the Lieutenant Commander title) and motorcycling was something Top Gunners did.

We have ridden motorcycles together from 1996 until just a few years ago when on a ride through Croatia, Andy suffered a mild stroke at the end of the ride. He doesn’t ride any more but we talk every once in a while and see each other occasionally. I even helped him write a book (Wardroom Warriors) about his military days in the early 60s. Whenever Andy calls it brings back lots of memories, mostly good ones. When my life story is told, it cannot be told without a major nod to Andy and all that he did for me and my career. I salute you Lieutenant Commander Forrester.