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PR E FA C E

HOW MY CAREER STARTED

When I was young, growing up in Brooklyn, New York, I planned to
go to MIT to be an engineer, but my father died suddenly when I was
16 and that plan died with him. At 17 I enlisted in the U.S. Army be-
cause they offered to send me to college. When I went on active duty,
I was trained as a cryptanalyst (a code breaker) and spent most of my
short army career in Washington, DC. The analytical skills, pa-
tience, and tenacity I learned as a code breaker helped me when I was
faced with seemingly unresolvable real estate problems.
With the help of the GI Bill, I obtained my BA degree at Brook-
lyn College and entered Brooklyn Law School. Working three jobs
concurrently and with the support of my working wife, I graduated
and was admitted to the New York Bar in 1953.
While looking for a job, I saw an ad in the Law Journal for a law
clerk. As luck would have it, the person who answered the phone was
Bill, a friend from law school. He was working for Dreyer and Traub, a
well-known real estate law firm. Bill said, “You don’t want this job.
You’ll be nothing but a messenger and it only pays $25 a week.” But I
took it anyway! That was the inauspicious beginning of my legal career.
Although Dreyer and Traub was a law firm dealing primarily with
real estate matters, they handled litigation as a courtesy for their
clients, and Bill and I worked in the litigation department. Several
months later there was an opening upstairs in the real estate acquisi-
tion and leasing practice, the place where real money was made. It was
an excellent opportunity for advancement and Bill was slotted for
the job. I was to take his spot in litigation. But before he could start,
he was drafted into the army and recommended me for the real es-
tate position. Once upstairs, I had the good fortune to apprentice to
Murray Felton, a very tough taskmaster. He was so demanding that
if I put a comma in the wrong place, I would hear about it for days.
But Felton was a superb technician and highly regarded in the

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