Jarvis . . . Really?: Well, This Is How It All Happened, Step by Step

By Jarvis Doctorow

Jarvis, Really?! humorously chronicles the unbelievable life story of a lucky and clever man. From a Jewish boyhood in Brooklyn to the Allied airwaves of WWII, how without a traditional high school diploma, he was accepted into Oxford University and from there, an unconventional admission into Harvard Business School. From Jeeps to greeting cards to real estate, his business acumen took him on wild international adventures. This book documents his opportunities, his choices and the perseverance that led to his successes and the establishment of a charitable foundation. His transformation from student to soldier to successful businessman to philanthropist is inspirational.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524509651

Book preview

Jarvis …

Really?

Well, This Is How It All Happened, Step by Step

JARVIS DOCTOROW

Copyright

© 2016 by Jarvis Doctorow.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2016909850

ISBN:      Hardcover         978-1-5245-0966-8

                Softcover          978-1-5245-0964-4

                eBook               978-1-5245-0965-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 06/20/2016

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

549603

Contents

Chapter 1 Your Name Is What?

Chapter 2 In the Beginning

Chapter 3 Lexington House

Chapter 4 My First Job and a Few After That

Chapter 5 From Corsica to the South of France and Then Some

Chapter 6 Catherine

Chapter 7 Getting Accepted at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University

Chapter 8 Acceptance at St. Edmund Hall: The Sequel

Chapter 9 Did I Hear You Say that You Were Accepted at the Harvard Business School without Even Having a Preliminary Interview?

Chapter 10 HBS Then at Jeep, My First Career Job!

Chapter 11 Consultancy (First Taste), Then POPAI, Then Consultancy for Real

Chapter 12 St. Regis Paper Co. Then Back to the Freedom of Consultancy

Chapter 13 ARTIS Publishers

Chapter 14 3280 Broadway

Chapter 15 Catskill Mountain Foundation

Chapter 16 I Led Three Lives: Catherine, Erica, and Connie—Take Your Pick

Chapter 17 Sale of 3280 Broadway to Columbia University

Chapter 18 Philanthropy

Chapter 19 My Rashi-Based, Rambunctious Negotiation Style

Chapter 20 The Impossible Reality

Chapter 21 The Final Phase

When in the course of human events, it becomes appropriate for me to outline the path I took to make it possible for a Brooklyn Yeshivah bucha who didn’t even graduate high school to earn his BA /MA at the prestigious University of Oxford and to finalize his academic endeavors by earning another master’s degree at the Harvard Business School, then to pursue a very rewarding business career that led to the establishment of a foundation which currently helps to support cultural, mental health and performance entities annually, I am faced with a look of disbelief and the words . . .

Jarvis … Really?

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I am absolutely convinced that what you are about to read would never have seen the light of day had my kids not insisted that I record these life stories.

People look at us so unbelievingly when they learn that we had three moms, that we went to school near the Alps for a while, and that the first salaried job of Jarvis, our Yeshivah educated dad, was to help sell surplus US Army jeeps to buyers in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East after the war. Ya gotta put it all down on paper, they insisted.

I succeeded in avoiding the chore for many years, but when I needed their help to establish and run the family foundation, their terms were clear.

Your stories… or else.

OK, OK, but please understand that the stories are the result of many late-night hours in front of my ancient computer and are in the form of individual vignettes, so a certain amount of repetition is inevitable.

The product of this effort was carefully reviewed by all three of my children and edited by my daughter Suzanne.

So here it is. Come what may . . .

Chapter 1

Your Name Is What?

On the day before the third anniversary of the American landing at Normandy and shortly after embarking on a long, easterly drive in a Radiodiffusion Française (RDF) tech van from Paris to that historic site, Jean-Paul could hardly contain himself. He was the crew chief assigned to assure linkage between the French national radio network RDF and American radio stations, like WOR NY, and I was the American reporteur, microphone in hand, assigned to provide live coverage of that momentous occasion.

Gervais, he finally blurted out. "How the hell could a Jewish Brooklyn baby be named Jarvis by a rabbi circumcising a future Yeshivah bucha?"

It’s a long, boring, and complicated story, I replied.

"We have a long, boring ride before us. Now, give it to me straight," he snapped.

So I took a long, deep breath and told my story.

* * *

OK, OK. First of all, I didn’t even know my name was Jarvis until I was almost sixteen. On the street, with friends and family, I was Jack or Jackie. Dad called me Yankelleh or Yankelleh Shimshon (Yiddish nicknames for Jacob and Samson, for indeed, I was Jacob, Samuel’s son), and my Yeshivah diploma is inscribed with the name Jack Doctorow.

For health reasons, Mom and I spent several winters in Miami Beach. The first time Dad drove Mom and me to Florida, he didn’t want to drive back North all alone, so he parked the van in a neighbor’s garage and took the train home.

Things settled down. Mom opened Mrs. D’s B&B. I registered at the local high school and got an early (4:00 a.m.) newspaper route, delivering 110 Miami Heralds from a bike basket to add to my modest allowance. Everything was just fine.

One morning, the kid who delivered papers on the route next to mine fell and broke his ankle. The manager offered me a chance to double my income, and I grabbed it.

All went well during the first week, until I realized that delivering 225 Sunday Heralds, each weighing well over two pounds, from a bike basket was impossible. I had to be creative. So Sunday mornings, I quietly swiped the key to Dad’s van, delivered my papers from it quickly, then parked it back in its slot without a word to anyone, until the Sunday before we were to go back North, when the cops caught me driving a vehicle with out-of-state plates while performing a commercial activity. To top it all off, I was doing so without a driver’s license. I got three tickets. They dumped my papers on the sidewalk, took the van, and boy, I was in real trouble, with Dad set to arrive the following Tuesday.

The day he arrived, I pseudo-cheerfully said, Pop, let’s take a walk.

He saw the look on my face, promptly stopped his treasured evening reading of the New York Times, and called out, "Esther, Yankelleh and I are going for a walk." Mom, who already knew the story, understood and didn’t utter a sound.

Dad, I said when we were finally out of earshot, I’m in real trouble.

"Yankelleh, he said, draping his arm over my shoulders, with you, it can’t be so bad."

Oh yes, it is, I replied.

OK. Talk to me, he said warmly, which made it even tougher to explain.

First of all, your van is no longer where you parked it.

He stopped in his tracks, stunned. As I told my story and explained that he would have to go downtown to the main police station with a couple of checks to bail out his van, something weird was going on. He should have been roaring with anger, yet somehow there was a peculiar look on his face that I couldn’t understand.

Could it possibly be pride? No, no, no! I had broken laws, etc., etc., etc. Still, he wasn’t as angry as he should have been.

Then I gave him a filled-out junior driver’s license form to sign, because being under eighteen, I needed a parent’s permission to apply.

Suddenly, I saw real dismay. This time around, he was really struggling. He knew that I had done wrong, but he couldn’t hide his pride that his son had found a solution to a problem, was willing to risk, and more importantly, was really willing to work.

What I thought was the problem wasn’t. Money, whatever the cost, could retrieve the van. The problem was that he could not sign the license application for his son because the name I put on the application was Jacob, which simply was not true.

Passing a public garden, he took my hand in his and led us to a bench under a few palm trees. We sat. He cleared his throat twice, heaved a sigh, and said, "Boychick [a Yiddish nickname like kiddo that he had for me], have you noticed that your aunt Hazel never comes to visit us at our home?"

Yes, I replied, for I knew that he and Hazel simply did not see eye to eye.

"Well, there’s a good reason I won’t let her come through my door. You know how all ten darn Schlefsteins [Mom’s siblings] are crazy about giving themselves and their kids American-sounding names to make it seem as though they are really an original part of American life here, even though we Jews, many of us, very religious, all came from faraway other places. Hazel was born Hannah, Moish became Murray, Itzhak became Irving, Arthur was born Aaron, etc., etc., etc. The day after you were born, Hazel visited the hospital just before I got there.

‘What are you and Samuel going to name him?’ she asked Mom. ‘Jacob Samson’, Mom replied. ‘Is that what you really want?’ Hazel asked. Mom was hesitant. Hazel heard my footsteps in the hall and scooted away with the briefest bye-bye.

"Next day, when I arrived at the registry, the man behind the counter began to laugh. ‘Mr. Doctorow,’ he said, ‘it is quite rare that brothers have sons on the same day.’ His voice slowed and grew softer as he reread the notations in the big book. ‘At the same hospital… with the same wife!’ he shrilled. ‘What the hell is going on here?’ It was obvious! Hazel beat me to the registry. You were, and still are, registered as Jarvis [no middle initial] Doctorow.

I begged the registrar to fix it right then and there, but he said that it could only be done after a long and costly procedure, which we simply could not afford at that time.

With his arm still around my shoulder, he continued, So I’ll sign the application with your real name, but you’ll drive, not so much, of course. But when you do, very, very carefully, and we’ll all keep it a secret.

* * *

And so it was, Jean-Paul. For the outside world, I continued to use my alias. I remained Jack or Jacob until three years later, when I joined the army.

Chapter 2

In the Beginning

Cousin Morris owned and operated two dairy farms in central New Jersey, a creamery and an egg-processing operation closer to New York, three retail milk-butter-and-egg stores in Brooklyn, and two trucks that linked his modest empire.

His farm managers and several employees who lived locally were from families that had originally owned the farms but were happy to exchange the risk-prone peaks and valleys of entrepreneurship for a bundle in the bank up front and steady weekly checks that were paid for work they did very well and loved to do.

Regularly, Morris would join the driver of one of his trucks that was headed for one of the farms, stay for a day to catch up on the details of farm management, then ride in a truck going to the creamery/egg-processing