Last night I had dinner with two of my favorite people in the whole world, Terry & Paula. I met Terry 27 years ago when I invested in a business he was running. I remember him telling our group of investors that his business was for $50 million. We eventually settled on investing at a $20 million valuation. Terry seems unusually dispassionate about everything during the negotiations. There was no apparent emotion in his business deals and the expression I recall coming to mind was that he was very even-keeled. Two years later, in 2000, I joined in a four-way partnership with Terry and two others, Bruce who had been my partner in banking for many years prior and Sam, who had been Terry’s partner for equally many years in the advertising business. Our partnership was about forming a venture capital incubator, something that became all the rage in the late 90s internet boom. We figured that four seasoned professionals, two from finance and two from new media, would bring some enlightened and experienced “adult supervision” to the world of new age entrepreneurship. We gathered up some capital, bunked in with Terry and Sam’s business, in which we were all invested, and started doing business together at Broadway and 12th Street, right across from the famous Strand Bookstore.
After a few months sharing a conference room, we reorganized our space and the four of us partners had four half-open, half-walled cubicles from which to work. We were visually separated from one another, but the acoustics were far less segregated. I sat behind Terry in the array and found out very quickly that the dispassionate and even-keeled man across the negotiating table was just as dispassionate and even-keeled in every aspect of his life as best I could tell. I would hear Terry speaking to Paula on the phone when she called and I particularly remember the calm and loving way that he always talked to his partner of some thirty years at the time. Terry became my relationship guru at a time that was very meaningful to me. I was between marriages and in need of a reset after my second divorce (technically one divorce and one separation at that time). I have had a wonderful and loving relationship with Kim for twenty years now and while I do not know how much of that is my doing versus Kim’s (she is so damn perfect that it way be 100% her doing), I am certain that I was a far better partner to Kim thanks to the subtle lessons I learned from watching how Terry went about his life.
At that time, Terry & Paula were anachronistic among people of our generation. They did not, and had never, owned a home. They had no children. They had no TV. They had a big golden Labrador Retriever named Willie. They lived in an apartment on 58th Street, just south of Central Park, perhaps the most central Midtown Manhattan location that exists. Both Terry & Paula had grown up in New York, Paula in the Bronx and Terry in Brooklyn, and were, to my thinking, the quintessential urban couple. Terry studied and spoke several Romance languages. Paula was a writer who loved jazz. They both loved foreign travel more than almost anyone I knew. Terry worked long days, as did I, so we got to know each other quite well during what amounted to three years in the same office. That friendship carried on through the years of our partnership (which still exists today) and our time on the board of his company, eMarketer, which we sold quite successfully in 2016.
When that sale went through, Terry & Paula suddenly found themselves with more money than they had ever had before. While I always thought they were committed New Yorkers who would never live anywhere other than Manhattan, they chose to do otherwise. It’s funny, my youngest son, Tom, who spent his first 28 years living in Manhattan on Union Square (other than his four years in college) and then a short stint on Staten Island and several years in Brooklyn was also a committed New Yorker…or so I thought. He now lives in Denver and is loving it so much that he’s thinking of making it his permanent home. So, New Yorkers though they were, Paul & Terry bought some property in Croton on Hudson, just a short poke up the Hudson River from their old home base, and built their dream home overlooking the river. It was the style of home you would imagine that lifelong apartment dwellers might build…it had the distinct feel and modernity of a city apartment…but with a view of the surrounding nature.
As Terry shed his lingering work obligations, he and Paula exorcized many of their travel demons by seeing the world that they had not yet seen. They kept a small pied-à-terre in Manhattan, but lived in Croton otherwise. Then, eventually, the cold New York winters caught up with them as they tend to for all aging Baby Boomers, and they started going south to Florida in the winter for some warmth. If you haven’t read some of my older stories, Florida is among my least favorite place in the world. It might have something to do with the fact that I was born there (in Fort Lauderdale on home leave from Venezuela back in 1954), or maybe because my six years of youth growing up in the tropics makes the weather insufferable to me. Lately, my feelings have a lot to do with the politics of the state and my disappointment that so many of my generational cohort have moved there to avoid taxes and to gather with like-minded conservatives who tend towards the golf and tennis lifestyle. I was concerned for Terry & Paula’s souls as they decided about moving to Florida. They have since built a similar modern and simple home in a community in North Palm Beach (I saw it a few years ago when it was just a foundation about to be built upon). I’m sure Terry & Paula could hear my deep sigh from out here.
A few years ago, we finally got some time in Terry & Paula’s busy travel schedule to come out here and stay with us for a few days. They were quite taken by the area and spoke casually about thinking about moving out here at some point. That is not an unusual reaction for visitors to Southern California. It is a lovely place. They told us to expect them back soon for an extended visit to look for houses, but one postponement led to another cancellation, and I lost the thread of hope that they were seriously considering a move. I secretly hoped they would come to dislike Florida and was quietly encouraged when I heard tales of their disagreements with their neighbors there over things they wanted to incorporate into their simple design. Conservative Floridians seem to want all houses to keep up with their own size and design standards, no matter how McMansion-like they may seem to some of us. But then, something unusual happened. Terry & Paula decided to put their Croton house on the market and it sold almost immediately. In fact, they tell me it sold almost turnkey with all furnishings down to the spoons. Shortly thereafter, they emailed to say they were coming out to California to look at houses. They would look in San Diego and Santa Barbara. I figured that was indefinite enough to not get my hopes up for a quick move.
Last night at dinner, they told me that they had decided that the La Jolla and Del Mar areas were simply too crowded for their liking (not surprisingly). I thought that might be end of the dream of having a dear friend move close by. Then they told me that they saw their dream house with a spectacular ocean view in San Clemente, a place Kim and I go to fairly often. In fact I just had lunch across from the San Clemente pier last week. They would be 49 minutes from here per Apple Maps. They say buying that house would cause them to sell their Florida place. They are going back to San Clemente today with a contractor, so it sounds serious. I am keeping my fingers crossed that two of our favorite people will be coming our way soon and leaving Florida to the folks who belong there.