PJ and the Bear

PJ and the Bear

In the Fall of 1971, I was just like every other schlubby Freshman at Cornell University, living in University Halls (U-Hall 4 to be precise, second floor, north wing) on West Campus. Those WWII-era cinderblock dorms were torn down and replaced by fancy new upperclassmen dorms bearing names like Hans Bethe House and Carl Becker Hall. I like to joke that instead of freshman yelling “Dorm 3 Sucks!” from the dorm room windows, they now yell “Hans Bethe Sucks”, otherwise its business as usual. Framing those new dorms remain the old ivy-covered dorms made of grey Ithaca Stone, called the Gothic Halls. These classier dorms were where in-the-know freshmen could reside if they were smart enough to request them. While I had no such local knowledge to request anything specific for my freshman dorm accommodations, my friend Paul Joseph (PJ) lined up a fancy room in McFadden Hall while the rest of us looked at our cinderblock walls. Such was the good fortune that PJ had in those halcyon days on campus where PJ was as close to a BMOC as any of us knew.

Seventeen of us guys on that U-Hall floor chose to join Phi Sigma Epsilon fraternity at 40 Ridgewood Road on North Campus. That was how I met PJ, because he joined PSE since it was one of the predominantly Jewish fraternities and just happened to be the one with the highest GPA of the 54 fraternities on campus. PJ had come to Cornell from distant Trumansburg (13 miles away) and was the most directed person I knew. He planned to be an Agricultural Economics major and get into the rigorous 5-year BS/MBA program in order to achieve his ambition to become a corporate CEO. In 1971 most of us had no idea what a CEO was, but PJ had a subscription to Business Week while the rest of us were still reading National Lampoon. He chose to room Sophomore Year with Rob Fisher as Rob had drawn a top room selection number and had chosen one of the prime fraternity house rooms usually reserved for juniors or seniors. PJ would have had his pick of any roommate, such was his charisma. The wall over his bed was adorned with a small Israeli flag and a picture of the Israeli tanks rolling into Sinai during the Six-Day War. For a guy who didn’t fit the stereotype of the typical New York City area Jewish guy, he was rabidly Jewish (more cultural than religious) due to growing up in a household with a Jewish father who was a rare West Point graduate leaving PJ as one of the only Jewish kids on bases like one in Leavenworth, Kansas.

I’m sure that no one would disagree that PJ was one of the best looking young men in the Class of 1975 at Cornell. He was also one of the smartest. His high school sweetheart was Ann and she was easily one of the best-looking young women in the Class of 1975 at Cornell. She was chosen as one of the elite Straight Desk staff at the main student union, a cadre of the coolest kids on campus. Everyone wanted to be Paul or Ann and if they couldn’t be that, they wanted to be close to them. By some quirk of fate, no one was closer to them both than me. As a foreign-based student, I spent most holidays and summers in Ithaca. That made me the logical fraternity brother to be in charge of the house in the summer. PJ and Ann decided to marry after Sophomore year and I helped orchestrate the wedding reception held at the fraternity house. I threw rice on them and helped them move into their marital abode in the basement apartment in the Irv Lewis house in Cayuga Heights. PJ and I took economics courses together (he always beat me by half a grade at least) and Paul, Ann and I hung out together all the time since they really were homebodies and I was far less a party guy than most Cornellians. I was a regular at the Joseph family high holidays in Trumansburg as PJ taught me the “baruchas” like I was a trained Goyim monkey at the family seders. I was one of the few Cornell students who even knew where Trumansburg was.

PJ is the person who convinced me during senior year to apply to the Cornell business school to join him for a post-graduate year to get an MBA. PJ and Ann were considered in our group as the cutest couple and the most likely to succeed. However close we three were during undergraduate years, we became even closer as all our friends moved on from Ithaca and we three stayed for our advanced degrees (Ann for a Masters in Education). We drove to campus together, we played squash together (PJ, as a very athletic guy, hated that I could beat him in squash), we ate together at their apartment or at Roma Pizzeria (where I always had to speak Italian to the staff to humor PJ). In those years, PJ and I became best friends and Ann was part of that equation. And then everything changed on one weekend at the end of grad school. For some reason still a cipher to me, PJ and Ann split up and started sowing the wild oats they had never sown and perhaps should have. After living with me in my efficiency apartment for a few days, PJ initiated divorce proceedings at Ann’s request. Funny thing that they both had jobs in Alexandria, Virginia lined up, Ann at a school and PJ at Xerox. PJ had offers from any bank or company he wanted, but he wanted to learn to sell and Xerox was the best sales training company. He was an immediate star who was named Asst. Sales Rep. of the year at Xerox in 1976. No surprise.

What was a surprise was that PJ had to take eight weeks off that fall to go home toT-Burg and deal with a severe bout of depression. That was a surprise. Why would Mr. Perfect be depressed? Well, as Ann went her own way, PJ started wrestling with the bear that would plague him for the rest of his life. He got on with his life and loves but the bear was never far away. He rose through the sales ranks at Xerox and met the Jewish girl he had always wanted (Ann had converted to Judaism at his request, but I guess that was different). He and Pam started a family and had two beautiful daughters in Ruth and Kate. In those days, Xerox sales execs moved on average every eighteen months so the young family did just that…Virginia, Rochester, California, New Jersey, Boston, New York. During those years, PJ and I remained best friends and spoke several times a week and vacationed together all the time. The most memorable vacations were at my homes in Utah, where my kids and PJ and his kids hung out and skied together every year. Along the way, PJ and Pam parted ways and PJ took up with Loretta (a pseudonym to protect the innocent). We didn’t miss a beat and the Utah ski vacations continued. But so did PJ’s occasional and all-too-regular bouts with the bear (which had become a bipolar bear…pun intended, but nothing funny about the affliction).

Along the way, PJ took to Utah and moved there. He eventually left Mother-X (Xerox) and started an entrepreneurial effort in which I invested. In fact, he got several million dollars from my venture capital company as well (my partners’ choice as I recused myself) and I was talked into being Chairman representing the money guys. PJ’s bipolar bear was in full swing by then and the mix created a lot of entrepreneurial vision, but insufficient and inconsistent execution, so we had no choice but to shut it down. When I did the deed, PJ did not take it well and delivered a threatening legal letter to me. Our friendship over thirty years had withstood many things, but then when the bear ripped into me with that letter, our friendship was forever damaged. That was eighteen years ago and over that time we drifted apart as the bear raged in PJ relentlessly. It caused him to have difficulty in work (not everyone is as enlightened in these afflictions as Xerox had been) and with his marriages and children. The bear estranged PJ from many things in his life.

During those dark days, I kept a relationship with Loretta but temporarily lost track of Ann and the girls. Then I reconnected with both and kept those connections alive ever since. We all shared fond memories of the old PJ, but everyone shared a fear of the bear. Meanwhile, PJ found Susan, who I only know a bit, but must be a bear tamer par excellence. She has stayed with PJ and the bear for fifteen years now. Today Susan emailed me to say that yesterday, PJ’s heart stopped and there was no reviving him. The bear had taken him before his time. His struggles are over and he now rests in peace as Ann, Pam, Ruth, Kate, Loretta, Susan, his family and I are left to wrestle with the memory of PJ and the bear.