Message in a bottle

I didn't know my father well. I was seven when he had his third and final heart attack in 1965. He was 47.  Here are some of the few things that come from my direct memory:

- bald
- had a fedora on the top closet shelf and long heavy overcoats, some with a fur collar
- liked shish-kebobs
- had some big-shot job at Prudential on highway 12
- liked his Cadillacs with fins
- loved to fish
- terrible cologne
- most of the time leave him alone but solid otherwise (like me)
- drove us all on an epic western road trip in ~1963
- turned purple some night in '65; wasn't there in the morning

From indirect memory (and hearsay)

- Princeton grad ~1940; wrestler
- war hero, artillery captain. Campaigned N Europe in '44 and '45
- first US army group (6th? 7th?) over Rhine into Germany
- occupied Berlin after the war for a while
- born in NJ, married there after the war, started with Prudential
- started a family in Los Angeles circa 1948
- head of commercial & industrial loans at Prudential, later Prudential Capital
- started the Minneapolis office of PC in '55 or '56
- bought a house on the last cul-de-sac before the prairie took over all the way to Denver
- drank a bit, liked his steak and potatoes
- skirmished with my mother, warred with my oldest brother
- un-diagnosed (and fatal) heart disease that my brothers had to bear (not fatal) as well

In life I had no idea, really, who he was.  In death? I was not even allowed to the funeral. The only effect this had, by the way, was to allow me for years to fantasize that he was really a covert intelligence agent (I mean he did occupy Berlin, right?) and was on an extended overseas op; death had merely been a cover. He was coming back.

<  Just for fun, let's just skip right over the next 23 years ....  >

In 1988 -- after I'd gone through 2 years of grad school quite successfully thank you very much (MBA, finance, Carlson School, UofMn), seven years of an unhelpfully unhealthy self-directed wilderness, and four years of lackluster college, plus whatever remains of the otherwise un-accounted-for 23 years I mentioned...so let's say another decade or so, and 23 years after his death -- in the process of interviewing in my last year of grad school, I happened to snag a coveted interview spot at Prudential Capital. If that means nothing then you did not read the list above. Forget that my father had built that office from zero starting in '56 and that he had hired and trained and led the men that would build it thereafter.  No, my main interest in '88 was in the pay, which was relatively high, and the career path, which seemed great.  They did big deals; financed large industrial projects to put the insurance premium dollars to work over long horizons.  Plus they were the only capital op that was willing to interview UofM students. But I went into that interview with my lips sealed on what I knew because it was absolutely totally irrelevant in 1988.

The interview was standard hard-press. Multiple interviewers, fake quant scenarios with "how would you solve," and machine-gun questions. Suits, highest floor with good views and large windows, old bald white men at desks, etc. Kind of a Mad Men vibe but finance, not advertising, with less drama and fewer women and not 1960.  At the end of the interview, in a blunt coup-de-grace that I actually appreciated, the guy came out and said something like "uh, yeah, you didn't make it..."

"...but! wait here for a second, we have something for you."  He went away and came back with two older men.  The men (must've been boys in '65) had been direct hires of my father and had apprenticed during his "reign." They appeared to be deeply and profoundly touched by the memory of his leadership and his role in creating their careers and the foundation of what the operation had become in 1988. They shook my hand. They asked questions. There were smiles and back-slaps all around (no job, though). They even brought out dusty archival photo albums that were mostly pictures of 4 or 8 or 10 men smiling and shaking hands; they were pictures of deal closes for whatever: dams, timber, malls, jet fleet leasing, etc. These dudes had known who I was before I'd even opened the front door. I was grateful, though, that we had all played the game straight.

But I was not allowed to touch or take away anything, damn them.  But I did get one token.  They gave me a memo that he had written and that had been found in his desk just after his death. The memo looked like this and, along with the other pic below, that's the end of the story because this memo was the "message in the bottle" and I think it speaks for itself: