I ran some of the numbers and showed what would happen in the future, when the baby boomers currently employed began retiring after 2000. By 2010, some cities began mass layoffs of city workers to pay for pensions. This was seen in police and fire departments and teachers. The most pernicious effect was in accelerated pension vesting for hazardous duty. This was the concept where somebody in a dangerous job, a policeman for instance, would get credit for extra years when they retired. If they retired after 20 years, they might get credit for an extra 5 years, and get a pension based on 25 years. Otherwise, they could retire at 15 years and get their full 20 year pension. The theory was that since their jobs were so hazardous and so physically demanding, they were wearing their bodies down by an extra 5 years. What happened was that other unionized groups began demanding similar rights, even though they didn’t have the same excuse. So police secretaries began getting extra credit because their jobs put them in police stations with criminals, even though they were never anywhere near them. The net effect was to massively increase pension and health care liabilities.
After the article came out, I was on both Meet the Press and This Week with David Brinkley again. Marilyn teased me by saying that I should get an apartment in Washington if I was going to spend so much time down there. I teased her right back, saying it would be a great place to stash my mistress, which got her hooting and hollering at me. Later that night I showed her all the sorts of things I had my mistress do for me. I also was featured on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, with me broadcasting from Maryland Public Television in Owings Mills, which I had also done during the hoopla after Paying the Bills came out. Louis Rukeyser had me on twice to do his show Wall $treet Week with Louis Rukeyser, which he ran from there.
Not every article was related to economics or politics. In the fall of ’89 Fortune was back on our doorstep, followed closely by Forbes. Back in 1986, following the publicity surrounding our initial successes with Microsoft, Autodesk, and Adobe, we had managed to snake the Staples deal out from under Mitt Romney and Bain Capital. Now that Staples had gone public, we had made another big killing. Even better, the Bain deal would have been done mostly with invested capital, and not with a whole lot of Bain money; our deal had been predominately our money, with some invested money on the side. Their deal had the lowest risk, but our upside was far higher. The best part, at least for the firm, was that I had very little to do with the deal, being focused at the time on tech deals. This was totally Jake Junior’s and Melissa’s project.
Fortune was the first to piece it all together, tracing it with somebody inside Staples and a rather disgruntled junior VP at Bain who had lost his job when they lost the deal. Our team had kept their mouths shut, unsurprising since we had been the winners. Now that the deal was public and Staples’ stock was blowing through the roof, we could talk. I let Jake and Missy do most of the talking. Fortune was focused on the deal, Forbes was focused on me. Their piece focused on the growth of the Buckman Group and my rise in the standings of the Forbes 400. I found this massively distracting. Let them talk about Jake and Missy; they had earned it. The day of the IPO, I had a tub full of chilled champagne bottles brought to the office (along with limo service home!)
In late October, John invited Marilyn and me to a dinner party at his house. What I found curious, though, was when he mentioned I should wear a suit, which was a bit more formal than usual. “Yeah, okay. Marilyn to wear a dress, too? She can’t wear her bag lady sweat suit then?” I asked.
“I’m going to tell her you said that, and Helen, too, so they can both hit you.”
I laughed. “They probably hit like girls!” That got a laugh out of John.
And so, the third Friday in October, Marilyn and I drove over to the Steiners. When I was a kid, John had lived in Timonium, in a mid-sized Cape Cod style home off Timonium Road. Now, however, after his investment in the Buckman Group had paid off, they had bought a new home out in a development in Hunt Valley. Bigger house and bigger property and very nice. Not quite a McMansion, but close. We got there at seven, which is when he said cocktails would start.
We weren’t the first there. Both of John and Helen’s kids, Allen and Rachel, had left the nest years ago, so I knew it wasn’t their cars in the driveway. We walked up the driveway and rang the bell, and Helen opened the door. She had a cordless telephone to her ear and looked terribly distracted. “Oh, good, you’re here!.. No, some people at the door…” she then said into the phone. I smiled at Marilyn. Helen kept on with her two way conversation until her husband came up to us, and took the phone from her hands.
He spoke into it. “This is wonderful news, Pumpkin! You come home next week and visit, and your mother can plan the rest of your life for you. Bye!” He hit the END button.
Helen gushed, “Rachel just called! She’s engaged!”
“Congratulations! Now we know what you’re going to spend money on next year, John,” I said, grinning.
“Don’t laugh! You have two,” he replied.
I shrugged. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll just live in sin.”
That earned me an elbow in the ribs from Marilyn. I turned to her, smiling, and found her wagging a finger at me. “My daughters are going to be married in a church!”
“Yes, but are they my daughters? How do I know you didn’t subcontract out the first half of the job? I only know I was there for the second half,” I responded. That earned laughter from the Steiners and spluttering from Marilyn. John led us through the foyer into their living room.
There were five other people in the room, a couple in their late fifties, another couple in their forties, and a young man a few years younger than Marilyn and I. John made the introductions. The older couple were Bob and Millie Destrier, and the younger couple were Rich and Renee Miller. The single guy was Brewster McRiley, otherwise known as ‘Brew.’ I didn’t recognize any of them from anything business related, so I wondered why I was meeting them like this.
John made me a gin and tonic, and Marilyn got a whiskey sour, and we chatted for a bit with the other guests. They seemed to know me, although I didn’t know them. The Destriers were from Frederick, and Bob owned a farm supply operation out there. The Millers and McRiley were from out of town, however, Alexandria, down in Virginia, and I never quite learned where they worked. Bob noticed my cane, which I had left leaning by the archway to the foyer, and asked, “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you hurt your leg?”
“I don’t mind,” I answered. “I used to be a paratrooper, and I made one jump too many. I had a bad landing and had to leave the service.”
“Really? You were in the Army?” asked Rich.
I nodded. “Eighty-Second Airborne. I had a battery of 105s.”
“You were an officer?”
“A captain. Bravo Battery, 1st of the 319th.”
“I was Navy,” replied Rich. We talked for a bit about the service. He had seen duty on a destroyer out of Norfolk after college during the Viet Nam era. I mentioned my father’s service during World War II.