I Are a Capitalist

A headline in the Wall Street Journal this week read: "401(k)s Are Minting Millionaires." The article explained that rising stock market prices over the past three years have created hundreds and thousands of "moderate millionaires." Money manager Fidelity, for example, reported that 654,000 of their 401k clients had balances over 1 Million. Benefits manager Alright reported that 3.2% of more than three million accounts tracked had balances over 1 Million. T. Rowe Price reported that the number of  retirement accounts over 1 Million had doubled from 2022 to 2023. Finally, investment giant Vanguard reported that of the millions of plans it administers, a record 88% were invested in the stock market.

A table in the article indicated that even the staid Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) had grown over 40% in the past three years. It is not hard to imagine that the number of plans with balances in the 500,000 to 1,000,000 range have grown accordingly, and that these younger people will also be millionaires by the time they retire.

In an encyclical letter written shortly after he became Pope. the late Pope 

Francis bemoaned income inequality and 'trickle down economic theories," but still said:  

“It is not the task of the Pope to offer a detailed and complete analysis of contemporary reality, but I do exhort all the communities to an “ever watchful scrutiny of the signs of the times.”

As an ordinary Catholic I would like to offer an anecdotal and incomplete analysis of the signs of the times based on my own lifetime experience. 

I have to confess that I am a Capitalist. I even remember the year I became a Capitalist. In 1965 I was hired, right out of graduate school, as an Instructor to teach History at Sacred Heart University, a small, recently opened institution of higher learning in Fairfield, Connecticut. 

Sacred Heart could hardly be called a university in those days. It was a small liberal arts college with the distinction of being the only Catholic college in the country staffed and run entirely by laymen and women. When I arrived the school was only in its third year of existence and the faculty was still in the process of formation.

Anyway, a few weeks after classes started the Business Manager of the school approached me to ask if I wanted to sign up for the fledgling school’s retirement plan. He explained that if I agreed to allocate a small percentage of my pay toward retirement, the university would match my contribution. 

My starting salary back in 1965 was about $6000 and I had a wife and one small child. Retirement was the last thing on my mind. Nevertheless, it seemed like a good deal especially since the university would match it. If I reduced my pay by 6% or $30 per month, the university would add that much to my account. Because it was a pre-tax contribution, the reduction in take home pay would only be about $25 per month.

After I agreed to sign up, the Business Manager told me that I would have a choice of where my small contributions would be invested. Sacred Heart University had joined with the great majority of colleges and universities in the country to utilize the services of the Teachers’ Retirement and Annuity Association (TIAA) to administer and manage its retirement plan. The university would deduct the contribution and send it along with their matching contribution to TIAA where it would be invested as I chose. 

At that time, there were only two investment choices. The first was a fixed or guaranteed account like a bank account. The principal in the account was guaranteed by the insurance company and it would earn a fixed rate of interest. The second option was a variable account where my contributions would be invested in a diversified portfolio of common stock. In this account, there were no guarantees. The principal value would fluctuate according to the vagaries of the stock market, and there could be no predicting what the actual rate of return would be.

Like the majority of teachers I elected to split my retirement equally between the fixed and variable account. I was not a student of finance or the stock market, and just decided to do what most others seemed to be doing. I had no idea that in electing to put half in the variable account that I was becoming a Capitalist.

The variable account was a relatively new creation. It was a mutual fund but since it was run by an insurance company, it was called a variable annuity. After years of lobbying TIAA had finally convinced the Government to allow insurance companies to get into the booming mutual fund business. TIAA’s variable annuity fund was called the College Retirement Equity Fund (CREF), and it would in time become one of the largest pools of investment dollars in the world.

When my little contribution went into CREF each month, I became a part, although very small, owner of practically every major company in the USA. Whatever their political feelings or philosophy, thousands and thousands of other college teachers throughout the country were also becoming Capitalists. We all were becoming owners of a slice of the American pie. Moreover, the government agreed not to tax our contributions or their earnings until we retired.  

Over the ensuing years the features of this type of retirement plan would be extended to a larger and larger segment of American workers. Self-employed individuals were allowed to use so-called Keogh plans. Corporations were allowed to set up tax favored 401k plans for their employees. Finally, the creation of IRAs enabled practically every American to have a stake in the American economy.

It’s true that few of us will have the income or assets of Rock stars like Taylor Swift, TV personalities like Oprah, or athletes like LeBron James. But more than anywhere else in the world, we do have the opportunity to acquire and keep property. We can even buy and sell shares in the companies we work for.

 

Trickle down economics may be an odious theory but I don’t call what has gone on in America in the past sixty years trickle down economics. It is something else and whatever you call it, it has worked to raise the standard of living in this country to the highest that has ever been seen in the world. Other countries have an emigration problem. Only we seem to have an immigration problem.

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Note: After seven years I left Sacred Heart University in 1972 at the age of 33. At the time, my retirement balance was about $10,000, but the only way I could get my hands on the money was to take a lifetime monthly income. Fifty three years later I am still receiving checks. The annual payout from the fixed account is about $500, and the payout from the variable account is now over $2000.

Mortgage Our Future

My wife and I bought our first home in Fairfield CT back in 1966 for $21,000. It certainly was not affordable for us. I was 27 years old and my salary as an Assistant Professor at a small Catholic college was only about $6500 per year, or about $540 per month. My wife, an RN, could not work because our second child had been born six months before. 

Indeed, only a gift of $2000 from my father enabled us to come up with the down payment, and somehow a local bank approved us for a $19,000, 30-year mortgage to cover the balance of the purchase price. We had no choice. No mortgage, no home.

Actually, it turned out to be a no-brainer.  The monthly mortgage payment, with taxes and insurance, was about what we had been previously paying for rent, but now we had a home of our own to live in and care for. 

I did not realize it at the time but in taking on a mortgage loan we had entered into a partnership with the bank. We really were joint owners of the property. What were the terms of the partnership? The bank put up the capital and required us to make monthly payments of principal and interest. We were also responsible for paying for homeowner’s insurance and local property taxes that the bank conveniently lumped into the monthly mortgage payment. Any improvements or repairs would be our responsibility.

Initially, it seemed that the capitalist bank got the most out of the partnership, but as time went by, it turned out to be a great deal for us. Twelve years later our family had grown, and I had had a career change that was turning out well, and so we decided to buy a larger home. We sold our house for about $80,000, paid back the remaining principal, that was probably still around $17,000, to our bank partner, and pocketed about $60,000, a substantial increase in equity over our original $2000 down payment. 

Most of that equity went as a down payment on a larger home nearby that cost about $90,000. Now we had a new bank partner, another friendly capitalist institution that was willing to invest in us and our property. The terms of the partnership were much the same. 

Thirty years later with our six children grown we sold that house for about $500,000 and downsized to a small ranch house that would be more suitable for an older couple. Even though all those years had gone by, there was still a large principal balance on my mortgage because I had refinanced a couple of times as the house increased in value to help put our children through college.

Although still nearby, the ranch house was in a better neighborhood and cost about $600,000.  Even though I was about to retire, we still had a mortgage of about $250,000 and will probably continue this latest partnership with a bank until death or illness forces us to sell.  I still see no reason to pay it off. Taxes and insurance costs keep rising, but our monthly housing cost is comparable to current rental rates in Fairfield. 

Looking back now I still believe that our experience with capitalism was a positive one. The banks lent us their depositor’s money, and we never missed a payment. We labored to take care of the property and maintain its value. In the process the bank got its principal back with interest, and we were able to increase our equity. Both sides in the partnership profited. We were not alone. I suspect that home ownership is more widespread in the United States than anywhere else in the world.  ###

I Lose My Job

Many people today are worried about losing their jobs, especially those with government jobs. In his recent speech to Congress, President Trump read a long list of wasteful and unnecessary spending on the part of the federal government and promised significant cuts. Even state and local government employees are worried since the loss of Federal grants might cause them to lose their jobs.

I know from experience that it is a hard thing to lose your job. Back in 1972 I lost my job as an Assistant Professor of History at a small Catholic college in Connecticut. The college had only come into existence ten years earlier as an experiment in Catholic higher education. It was to be run entirely by lay people although the local bishop would still head the Board of Directors. In addition, there would be no dorms, and the students would all be commuters or day hops. 

Initially, the school flourished as students and parents took advantage of the low cost. Also, during the Vietnam war many young men enrolled to avoid the draft. However, by 1972 the war was winding down and enrollment was dropping. As a result, administration decided to cut costs by trimming the faculty and did so by declining to grant tenure to anyone eligible that year.

Seven of us were denied tenure that year. Tenure is an unfamiliar concept to most people. For academics, it meant that once you receive tenure, it was almost impossible to lose your position thereafter. You have a job for life. In effect, the seven years I had been teaching there were a probationary period. 

I did have some paranoia about my dismissal. I thought that the administration had decided to terminate seven people just to get rid of me since I was the elected head of the faculty association. In academe it was not called a union, but it had some resemblance although there was no collective bargaining. I had also been overwhelmingly elected to the Faculty Senate during the years of student unrest that accompanied the increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam. 

Looking back now, I can see that while administrators might have been glad to see me go, I did not have a strong case for tenure. I was not a popular teacher since I had a reputation of being a hard grader. As an academic, it took seven years for me to complete my doctoral dissertation, and I had no publications to my credit. Coincidentally, I received my doctorate on the same day my tenure appeal was denied. 

So, in the Spring of 1972, I was thirty-three years old and out of a job. Complicating things was the fact that my wife and I had five small children ranging in age from 8 to 2. We had bought a small house in Fairfield with help from my father who provided the $2000 down payment. We lived from paycheck to paycheck and had only meager savings. Teaching jobs were nonexistent in the area, and we did not want to relocate our family.

I had to find work out of academe, but my doctorate made me virtually unemployable. Prospective employers would only laugh and say that someone with your education would not be happy or useful working for them. Eventually, the only employers interested in me were insurance companies always on the lookout for new agents who basically worked on a commission basis. No sales meant no pay. 

At that time, most academics looked down their noses at people engaged in business. Today, practically everyone goes to college to study business, but back in 1972 the business department at our school had only a few majors. Just as today, people in higher education tended to frown on those who worked for profit. Insurance agents were regarded as the lowest of the low in the business world, maybe just a notch above used car salesmen.

Nevertheless, I had no choice. I interviewed with a couple of companies but one seemed to have a novel approach. It was then among the leaders in the nascent mutual fund industry and offered low-cost life insurance as a supplement to mutual fund investing. I did fail their aptitude test that showed that I was an academic with no aptitude for sales. The office manager, whose contempt for academics matched mine for salesmen, informed me that he would not be able to take me on, but when I asked if I could borrow the study materials he had given me, he admired my persistence and immediately changed his mind. It was no skin off his nose since it was a commission only job. So, I became a salesman, a peddler of life insurance and mutual funds.

Needless to say, it was extremely difficult. Most new agents flunked out in weeks or months. The aptitude analysis was correct, but it only measured what I was and not what I could become. Only with the help and unflagging support of my wife, who went back to nursing, was I able to survive the first year and develop the knowledge, skills, and experience needed for success in this very competitive field. As the years went by, successful sales agents would morph into financial planners no longer dependent on commissions. Over the next 35 years I was able to build a very successful financial planning practice with hundreds of contented clients. 

In my case, losing my job was one of the best things that ever happened to me and my family.

 

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Turning 85 continued

 

Last week I republished a 2013 interview with a local reporter who was interested in my work at the Fairfield Senior center. Here is the second part of that interview. Eleven years have gone by and though I no longer teach courses at what is now known as the Bigelow Senior Center, I continue to present films in the Foreign Film Festival, and the Monday series of American film-noir classics from Hollywood's Golden Age. I also play chess there every Wednesday. 

Q. You are one of several highly respected teachers whose brief teaching stints, several times a year, for the Fairfield Senior Center‘s Lifelong Learners Program make you a valuable commodity. What is it about teaching Seniors that you enjoy?

A. I have always been interested in learning, and the best way to learn is to try to teach something. It is especially rewarding to teach in the Lifelong Learners program at the Fairfield Senior center. It is obvious just looking at the people in class that they are intelligent, educated, well traveled, and motivated. In my very first class on Renaissance art I asked if anyone had been to Florence, and practically everyone raised their hand.

So I get a chance to explore subjects that interest me with 40 or 50 people who really want to learn, and who also have a wealth of life experience that they can bring to class.

Cong. James Himes with Fairfield Seniors

Q. Do you enjoy traveling? What are your favorite places? Are they stuff for the New York Times travel section?

A. Linda and I have traveled frequently to Italy since 1997 when we visited our youngest daughter, an NYU student taking a summer program in Florence. Since then we have gone back practically every year. It was because of these trips that I began at series of talks at BACIO, an Italian-American organization founded by Leonard Paoletta, the former mayor of Bridgeport. *

In the talks I tried to discuss the history and the culture and the art of some of the places we had visited. Most of the world’s great art comes from Italy. These talks led me deeper and deeper into Art History until the subject became a passion even before I retired.

Incredibly, this interest led me to a great discovery. One of the most beautiful and mysterious paintings of the Italian Renaissance is the “Tempest” by Giorgione, one of the greatest of all Venetian artists who died at about the age of 33 in 1510, more than 500 years ago. Not as well known as Michelangelo and Raphael, Art historians place Giorgione along side them in the Renaissance pantheon. To this day scholars, while universally admiring the Tempest, his most famous painting, cannot agree on what it's all about.

Giorgione: The Tempest, Venice 1509

I believe that I have identified the subject of the painting. A short version of my interpretation was published in the Masterpiece section of the Wall St. Journal in 2006, and I have been developing the thesis ever since. I blog about the Venetian Renaissance at Giorgione et al...

Q. I see that you are a member of the Renaissance Society of America. What is that all about?

A. The Renaissance Society of America is an organization of scholars from all over the world who share an interest in the renaissance in learning and art that took place roughly from 1400-1650. They publish a quarterly journal of articles and reviews, and hold an annual meeting. In 2010 the meeting was held in Venice. At that meeting I presented my paper on the “Tempest.” 

Q. What do you particularly enjoy teaching at the Senior Center?

A. My course on the art of the Italian Renaissance, “A Tale of Four Cities,” is my favorite because of my interest in Renaissance Italy and its Art. This Spring I will repeat my “Italian Dreams” course which used four great Italian films to understand the reasons for the great migration of Italians to America. Next Fall, I will present a new course on four eighteenth century revolutions. The course is entitled “England and America in the Age of Revolution.”

Q. Do you feel that you have a following? That you have developed a rapport with your students?

A. All the classes have been very well attended. I believe that we have developed a following for the Foreign Film Festival, which I launched in 2009. The films are shown at 12:15 on the second Friday of the month. In our second season we showed  “Bakhtiari Alphabet,” a film about an Iranian tribal people and their adaptation to the modern world. The film’s producer and co-director, Dr. Cima Sedigh of Sacred Heart University, was on hand to discuss it with the attendees. We are also fortunate to have our China expert, Dr. Richard DeAngelis from Fairfield University, on hand to lead discussion of a number of films from China including the award winning “To Live.” In April we will feature Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni in “Too Bad She’s Bad,” a wonderful early Italian comedy.

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni

Q. When we watched Pagliacci, Tuesday morning, you asked your students to watch the faces of the adults and children in the operatic foreground? Why was it important that they look at the faces do you think? Did you get any feedback on that specific request?

It is very difficult for us to imagine our own parents and grandparents as young vibrant people with real emotions. Looking at those young faces watching the clowns makes me think of my own grandparents back in Italy before they came to America. Also, a good film is a work of Art. From my Art history study I have come to realize that you must try to see everything in a painting, not just the main figures. Franco Zeffirelli, the director of “Pagliacci,” put those images on the screen for a reason.

Q. What question would you care to ask that hasn’t been asked?  Why don’t you answer it?

A. It seems that I have said enough for now, but you might have asked, “Why do you do it?” When I used to counsel my clients on retirement planning, I liked to stress that retirement was not the end but the beginning of a new career. It was sad when people told me that they had no interests beyond work. Linda and I both believe that it’s important to keep active and continue to grow and learn. 

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*We made our last trip to Italy in 2017. It was kind of a farewell tour, and we had a great time visiting Venice, Milan, Florence and Rome. But even before the pandemic we realized that we had reached the age where foreign travel, like many other things, was getting too difficult.

Turning 85

  

I've just turned 85 and thought it might be of interest to new as well as old readers to repeat a post from 2013 containing an interview I did back then for a local newspaper. I had been teaching at the Lifelong Learners program at the Fairfield Senior center. The original title of the post was "It's a Wonderful Life." It is in question and answer form and will be presented in two successive posts.

Q. Let’s start with some background. Where were you born? Where did you go to secondary school? What did you like about going to school? Was there a favorite teacher? Why did you decide to go to Fordham? What was special about your undergraduate work?

A. I was born in 1939 and raised in NYC in the borough of Queens. My parents were second generation Italian Americans and we lived right next door to my paternal grandparents who were both born in Italy.

In 1953 I went to Power Memorial Academy, one of the many Catholic High Schools in NYC. It was an all boys school located in a very tough West Side neighborhood that was subsequently razed to make way for Lincoln Center. The school was run and staffed by Irish Christian Brothers although there were a few laymen on the faculty. A favorite teacher was the Brother who taught the Senior Honors Literature course. I was always an avid reader but he imparted a sense of the importance and value of the study of great literature.

I went to Fordham on a full scholarship provided by the Bulova Watch Company, my father’s employer. This competitive scholarship would have paid tuition and room and board at any college of my choice. Initially, I was going to Syracuse for Engineering but probably decided on Fordham because I was uncertain about a career path, and it was closer to home. Since Fordham’s Bronx campus was only about an hour and a half away by bus and subway, I didn’t see any need, in my naiveté, to live on campus even though the scholarship would have paid for it. There was no one to advise me since I was the first in my family to attend college, and my mother had died when I was 11. Like many other things in my life, it worked out for the best since NYC itself, with its theaters, sports, nightclubs, museums, and libraries, became my campus.

Even though I had been a top student at Power, I was not prepared for the rigors of a Jesuit education at Fordham. In 1957 Fordham was probably the best Catholic institution of higher learning in the country, and the class of ’61 was probably its best ever. Even though I was only an average student I was in a great learning environment. I say average but looking back I realize that the curriculum was broad and comprehensive including four years of Theology and Philosophy, as well as two years of Latin and French as requirements.  I majored in History, a subject which I had loved since grade school. There was nothing special about my work at Fordham. Nevertheless, even though I had only average grades, I aced the graduate record exams and was accepted in the MA program at Columbia. Finally, in my last year at Fordham I met my future wife, Linda Gardella, a nursing student at Cornell University Medical center in Manhattan.

Q. You have a PhD. What was your Master’s in? Did you have to write a Master’s thesis and what was it? Were your orals tough? And your Doctorate? That was in History. What was your thesis? Did you enjoy writing it? Might it have been what led you to teach at the college level?

A. I went to Columbia on a NY State Teaching fellowship. I guess it was then that I really began to think that I wanted to become a college professor. But just as at Fordham I found myself way over my head at Columbia, a world-class institution with an internationally renowned faculty. 

I decided to specialize in 18^th century British politics primarily because I was always interested in the American Revolution, and also because I had taken a wonderful course in British politics in my Senior year at Fordham with a really great professor. My Master’s thesis was on the political career of a British general and politician who was very active in the opposition to the War with America. After completing my Masters at Columbia I went back to Fordham to continue my studies in British politics under the mentorship of my old professor, Dr. Ross Hoffman. 

It took almost 10 years to complete my PhD dissertation on the political career of General Henry Seymour Conway. I loved working on the dissertation but it was really hard work. During that time Linda and I married and began a partnership based on mutual love and respect that has continued to this day. 

I taught in a Catholic High School for a year and then she worked as a public health nurse while I took a year off to complete my course work at Fordham. After a brief stint of government work with the Federal Aviation Agency in NY, I got a call for an interview at the brand new Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. 

Q. You still enjoy teaching, why did you leave it?

I taught History for seven years at SHU from 1965 to 1972.  Linda and I bought a house in Fairfield and began a family. I was teaching as well as doing research on my dissertation and thoroughly enjoyed both.  But the Vietnam era was tumultuous for America. As the war came to an end, enrollment at the University began to decline and in 1972 the University began to retrench. I was one of the faculty up for tenure that year and none of us had our contracts renewed. In the same year that I got my PhD from Fordham, I found myself out of a job with a wife and five small children.

Nevertheless, it again turned out for the best. I got a job in the Financial Services industry and managed with Linda’s support to survive the very difficult early years. Over the years I was able to build up a very successful career as a Financial Advisor before retiring in 2008. 

to be continued...

Sixtieth Wedding Anniversary

 

Circumstances kept my wife and I from celebrating our sixtieth wedding anniversary earlier this year. The day just slipped by quietly for both of us. Fortunately, our children combined to host a wonderful family gathering this past weekend. Below is a post that I wrote two years ago on the occasion of our 58th anniversary. It was entitled "A Fine Romance." 

We were married at St. John the Evangelist Catholic church in White Plains, NY on February 9, 1963. 

We originally met about two years before on a blind date. I was a senior at Fordham College in the Bronx thinking of going on to graduate school to study and eventually teach History. She was a nursing student at Cornell University on pace to get her BSRN the next year.

Both of us were unattached. I had broken off with a girl I had dated for months and wondered if I would ever find the right girl. She had also parted ways with a recent boyfriend. I guess that is why a friend of mine at school asked his girlfriend at the nursing school to find me a date so that the four of us could attend the annual Fordham glee club concert.

Maybe because I was Italian, his girlfriend thought of Linda Gardella. When she couldn’t find her, she asked a friend of Linda’s if she thought Linda would be interested. “Of course,” she answered without bothering to even ask her. Linda was a little upset but did agree to go. I guess that’s how fate operates.

Anyway, in those days men were not allowed entrance to the nurses’ quarters. I had to give my name to a receptionist who would let Linda know I was there to pick her up. On this occasion she was already ready in the lounge, a kind of waiting room. I can still see her now. I don’t know if it was love at first sight but not only was I struck by how beautiful she was, but by how mature she seemed to be. 

I think the first date was kind of a flop. The glee club concert was a major affair for the school and held every year at New York’s City Center, not far from the nursing center on the East Side. The concert was on Friday evening, March 3, but even though the chorale was premiering a new piece, the only thing I remember was that Linda fell asleep during the concert. In those days nursing students actually worked in the hospital wards and she had had a busy day. I don’t recall how we got back to the nursing center. I dropped her off and that was it. There was no holding hands or good night kiss.

Nevertheless, it was a start and despite my shyness, I got up the nerve to call her up and ask for another date.

As an aside, there were no cell phones in those days. There wasn’t even a phone in my grandparents’ home where I lived. I used pay phone booths that could be found on street corners. Any fan of Superman will be familiar with them.

She agreed to go out with me again and we began to date. In those days New York City was a wonderful place for a budding romance. Quiet bars (the drinking age was 18), coffee shops, and neighborhood restaurants were everywhere. Movie houses, theaters, and concert halls were nearby, and inexpensive. You could get seats for a Broadway play for less than $20 and half price tickets were readily available to students. Central Park was a short walk from the nursing center, and the lovely East River walk was around the corner.

In that beautiful spring of 1961, we held hands for the first time while watching “The Days of Thrills and Laughter” at a local movie house. We kissed for the first time one night in Central Park by the Lake. I had certainly fallen for her, and unbeknownst to me, she told her mother that she would probably marry me. 

Nevertheless, when summer vacation came, she went back to White Plains and while she didn’t exactly break it off, she went incommunicado. I’m still not sure of the reason. I was so despondent that I even grew a beard. 

After a couple of months, I was finally able to get through to her and she agreed to see me again. Persistence paid off. Of all places, I took her to Belmont Park, one of New York’s premier racetracks. Guys in my neighborhood in Queens loved the races, and I had become a little bit of a fan myself. Fate took a hand again. I had a couple of winners and was able to take her out to dinner at a nice restaurant back in White Plains.

After that we were a couple. I guess all she needed was time and space to make up her mind. In the meantime, I had graduated from Fordham, and had been accepted in the graduate program at Columbia University. She still had a year to go in nursing school. We dated regularly, wrote incessant love letters which she recently burned, and began to plan for the future.

 Shortly after she graduated in 1962, I proposed and she accepted. Of course, I went through the formality of getting her father’s permission. By then he knew I was not really a gambler. Years before, in Catholic elementary school the nuns had us open up a savings account with a local bank. I think we would deposit a nickel every week. In 1962 I took the little more than $200 life savings that I had in the account and bought a diamond engagement ring from a jeweler in New York’s Diamond district on 47th Street. Maybe, I got taken but she still wears it 60 years later.

It has been, and still is “a fine romance.”

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A Freak Accident

 Freak Accident

 

 

By definition a Bystander is one who stands by and just watches things transpire, but on Super Bowl Sunday, a freak accident made me a participant. Around 1:00 in the afternoon, I went into my bedroom to take off my slippers and put on my sneakers so that my wife could drive me to a Covid testing center in preparation for a heart catherization this Thursday. As I always do, I sat down in an old wooden chair that I had used for years to put on my shoes and socks. *

Accident Scene

 

However, this time the chair collapsed beneath me and I crashed to the floor. I was apparently unhurt but then I noticed blood flowing down my head, On the way down, I had banged the back of my head on a nearby windowsill. So there I was on the floor profusely bleeding and, like most 83-year-old men, unable to get up. I yelled repeatedly for my wife who was at the opposite end of our house on the phone with our daughter Anne in California. While waiting for her to respond, I got my handkerchief out and placed in on my head, but it did little to staunch the flow of blood which dripped on the floor and carpet.

 

Finally, she arrived and sprang into action. Linda is a former nurse and quickly got a towel and put pressure on the wound. Then, she helped my get up and we walked into the kitchen where she continued to apply pressure. In the meantime, Anne, herself a former nurse, had called our daughter Kate who lived nearby, and she drove right over. When she saw the bleeding, she suggested calling 911. My wife, and Anne, who was on the phone with Kate agreed.

 

In no time at all the EMT crew arrived, and quickly dressed the wound but insisted that I go to the emergency room of a nearby hospital, especially since I was on a blood thinner. It is hard to express how caring, competent, and professional these men were. They got me into an ambulance, and continued to work. Carlos asked constant questions not just for information, but I guess to test my mental condition. Fortunately, I had no headache or dizziness. At the same time, he took my blood pressure which was very high, and inserted an IV to save time at the hospital.

 

At the ER the people were equally competent. They wheeled me into and room with no delay or red tape. It seemed only a minute before a doctor walked in, introduced himself, and proceeded to look at the wound. It turned out to be an artery that was bleeding, and without hesitation he put four staples into my head, and the bleeding stopped. A miracle! Who was it who came up with that idea? The rest seemed even easier.

 The doctor recommended a Tetanus shot,  and a CAT SCAN to be sure there was no internal bleeding. That kept me there for a couple of hours but Linda, Kate, and another daughter, Jane, came over to keep me company. The CAT SCAN results were negative and I was free to go home. Jane and her husband Greg drove us home where we found that Kate had cleaned up the mess beautifully. All the while, Anne had directed everything from California. 

 

I highly recommend that young men marry nurses, and have daughters. 

 

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*The chair was gifted to us many years ago by a beloved neighbor as a momento of her mother. It must have been 100 years old but I loved it because it was not only comfortable but somewhat low so that I could reach my feet. I had noticed that it had been getting a little creaky but never bothered to check it out.

A Wonderful Life: Part II

Last week I republished a 2013 interview with a local reporter who was interested in my work at the Fairfield Senior center. Here is the second part of that interview. Eight years have gone by and though I no longer teach courses at what is now known as the Bigelow Senior Center, I continue to present films in the Lifelong Learners program, the Foreign Film Festival, and the Monday series of American film-noir classics from Hollywood's Golden Age.

Q. You are one of several highly respected teachers whose brief teaching stints, several times a year, for the Fairfield Senior Center‘s Lifelong Learners Program make you a valuable commodity. What is it about teaching Seniors that you enjoy?

A. I have always been interested in learning, and the best way to learn is to try to teach something. It is especially rewarding to teach in the Lifelong Learners program at the Fairfield Senior center. It is obvious just looking at the people in class that they are intelligent, educated, well traveled, and motivated. In my very first class on Renaissance art I asked if anyone had been to Florence, and practically everyone raised their hand.

So I get a chance to explore subjects that interest me with 40 or 50 people who really want to learn, and who also have a wealth of life experience that they can bring to class.

Cong. James Himes with Fairfield Seniors

Q. Do you enjoy traveling? What are your favorite places? Are they stuff for the New York Times travel section?

A. Linda and I have traveled frequently to Italy since 1997 when we visited our youngest daughter, an NYU student taking a summer program in Florence. Since then we have gone back practically every year. It was because of these trips that I began at series of talks at BACIO, an Italian-American organization founded by Leonard Paoletta, the former mayor of Bridgeport. *

In the talks I tried to discuss the history and the culture and the art of some of the places we had visited. Most of the world’s great art comes from Italy. These talks led me deeper and deeper into Art History until the subject became a passion even before I retired.

Incredibly, this interest led me to a great discovery. One of the most beautiful and mysterious paintings of the Italian Renaissance is the “Tempest” by Giorgione, the greatest of all Venetian artists who died at about the age of 33 in 1510, more than 500 years ago. Not as well known as Michelangelo and Raphael, Art historians place Giorgione along side them in the Renaissance pantheon. To this day scholars, while universally admiring the Tempest, his most famous painting, cannot agree on what it's all about.

Giorgione: The Tempest, Venice 1509

I believe that I have identified the subject of the painting. A short version of my interpretation was published in the Masterpiece section of the Wall St. Journal in 2006, and I have been developing the thesis ever since. I have developed a website on Giorgione and also blog about the Venetian Renaissance at Giorgione et al...

Q. I see that you are a member of the Renaissance Society of America. What is that all about?

A. The Renaissance Society of America is an organization of scholars from all over the world who share an interest in the renaissance in learning and art that took place roughly from 1400-1650. They publish a quarterly journal of articles and reviews, and hold an annual meeting. In 2010 the meeting was held in Venice. At that meeting I presented my paper on the “Tempest.” 

Q. What do you particularly enjoy teaching at the Senior Center?

A. My course on the art of the Italian Renaissance, “A Tale of Four Cities,” is my favorite because of my interest in Renaissance Italy and its Art. This Spring I will repeat my “Italian Dreams” course which used four great Italian films to understand the reasons for the great migration of Italians to America. Next Fall, I will present a new course on four eighteenth century revolutions. The course is entitled “England and America in the Age of Revolution.”

Q. Do you feel that you have a following? That you have developed a rapport with your students?

A. All the classes have been very well attended. I believe that we have developed a following for the Foreign Film Festival, which I launched in 2009. The films are shown at 12:15 on the second Friday of the month. In our second season we showed  “Bakhtiari Alphabet,” a film about an Iranian tribal people and their adaptation to the modern world. The film’s producer and co-director, Dr. Cima Sedigh of Sacred Heart University, was on hand to discuss it with the attendees. We are also fortunate to have our China expert, Dr. Richard DeAngelis from Fairfield University, on hand to lead discussion of a number of films from China including the award winning “To Live.” In April we will feature Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni in “Too Bad She’s Bad,” a wonderful early Italian comedy.

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni

Q. When we watched Pagliacci, Tuesday morning, you asked your students to watch the faces of the adults and children in the operatic foreground? Why was it important that they look at the faces do you think? Did you get any feedback on that specific request?

It is very difficult for us to imagine our own parents and grandparents as young vibrant people with real emotions. Looking at those young faces watching the clowns makes me think of my own grandparents back in Italy before they came to America. Also, a good film is a work of Art. From my Art history study I have come to realize that you must try to see everything in a painting, not just the main figures. Franco Zeffirelli, the director of “Pagliacci,” put those images on the screen for a reason.

Q. What question would you care to ask that hasn’t been asked?  Why don’t you answer it?

A. It seems that I have said enough for now, but you might have asked, “Why do you do it?” When I used to counsel my clients on retirement planning, I liked to stress that retirement was not the end but the beginning of a new career. It was sad when people told me that they had no interests beyond work. Linda and I both believe that it’s important to keep active and continue to grow and learn. 

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*We made our last trip to Italy in 2017. It was kind of a farewell tour, and we had a great time visiting Venice, Milan, Florence and Rome. But even before the pandemic we realized that we had reached the age where foreign travel, like many other things, was getting too difficult.

A Wonderful Life

 

I've been publishing The Weekly Bystander for about ten years and thought that it might of interest to new as well as old readers to repeat a post from 2013 containing an interview I did back then for a local newspaper. It is in question and answer form and will be presented in two successive posts.

Q. Let’s start with some background. Where were you born? Where did you go to secondary school? What did you like about going to school? Was there a favorite teacher? Why did you decide to go to Fordham? What was special about your undergraduate work?

A. I was born in 1939 and raised in NYC in the borough of Queens. My parents were second generation Italian Americans and we lived right next door to my paternal grandparents who were both born in Italy.

In 1953 I went to Power Memorial Academy, one of the many Catholic High Schools in NYC. It was an all boys school located in a very tough West Side neighborhood that was subsequently razed to make way for Lincoln Center. The school was run and staffed by Irish Christian Brothers although there were a few laymen on the faculty. A favorite teacher was the Brother who taught the Senior Honors Literature course. I was always an avid reader but he imparted a sense of the importance and value of the study of great literature.

I went to Fordham on a full scholarship provided by the Bulova Watch Company, my father’s employer. This competitive scholarship would have paid tuition and room and board at any college of my choice. Initially, I was going to Syracuse for Engineering but probably decided on Fordham because I was uncertain about a career path, and it was closer to home. Since Fordham’s Bronx campus was only about an hour and a half away by bus and subway, I didn’t see any need, in my naiveté, to live on campus even though the scholarship would have paid for it. There was no one to advise me since I was the first in my family to attend college, and my mother had died when I was 11. Like many other things in my life, it worked out for the best since NYC itself, with its theaters, sports, nightclubs, museums, and libraries, became my campus.

Even though I had been a top student at Power, I was not prepared for the rigors of a Jesuit education at Fordham. In 1957 Fordham was probably the best Catholic institution of higher learning in the country, and the class of ’61 was probably its best ever. Even though I was only an average student I was in a great learning environment. I say average but looking back I realize that the curriculum was broad and comprehensive including four years of Theology and Philosophy, as well as two years of Latin and French as requirements.  I majored in History, a subject which I had loved since grade school. There was nothing special about my work at Fordham. Nevertheless, even though I had only average grades, I aced the graduate record exams and was accepted in the MA program at Columbia. Finally, in my last year at Fordham I met my future wife, Linda Gardella, a nursing student at Cornell University Medical center in Manhattan.

Q. You have a PhD. What was your Master’s in? Did you have to write a Master’s thesis and what was it? Were your orals tough? And your Doctorate? That was in History. What was your thesis? Did you enjoy writing it? Might it have been what led you to teach at the college level?

A. I went to Columbia on a NY State Teaching fellowship. I guess it was then that I really began to think that I wanted to become a college professor. But just as at Fordham I found myself way over my head at Columbia, a world-class institution with an internationally renowned faculty. 

I decided to specialize in 18^th century British politics primarily because I was always interested in the American Revolution, and also because I had taken a wonderful course in British politics in my Senior year at Fordham with a really great professor. My Master’s thesis was on the political career of a British general and politician who was very active in the opposition to the War with America. After completing my Masters at Columbia I went back to Fordham to continue my studies in British politics under the mentorship of my old professor, Dr. Ross Hoffman. 

It took almost 10 years to complete my PhD dissertation on the political career of General Henry Seymour Conway. I loved working on the dissertation but it was really hard work. During that time Linda and I married and began a partnership based on mutual love and respect that has continued to this day. 

I taught in a Catholic High School for a year and then she worked as a public health nurse while I took a year off to complete my course work at Fordham. After a brief stint of government work with the Federal Aviation Agency in NY, I got a call for an interview at the brand new Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. 

Q. You still enjoy teaching, why did you leave it?

I taught History for seven years at SHU from 1965 to 1972.  Linda and I bought a house in Fairfield and began a family. I was teaching as well as doing research on my dissertation and thoroughly enjoyed both.  But the Vietnam era was tumultuous for America. As the war came to an end, enrollment at the University began to decline and in 1972 the University began to retrench. I was one of the faculty up for tenure that year and none of us had our contracts renewed. In the same year that I got my PhD from Fordham, I found myself out of a job with a wife and five small children.

Nevertheless, it again turned out for the best. I got a job in the Financial Services industry and managed with Linda’s support to survive the very difficult early years. Over the years I was able to build up a very successful career as a Financial Advisor before retiring in 2008. 

to be continued...