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12 Who Made It Big

12 WHO MADE IT BIG by Jason Marks

Abraham D. Beame '28

"The record will clearly show that the actions 1 took enabled us to put the city into shape."

In front of the building where Abe Beame (RBA, 1928) works, is a monumental statue of Atlas carrying the weight of the universe on his shoulders. His mighty bronze muscles straining against the burden, the titan from Greek mythology is condemned by the gods to hold the sky aloft for all eternity.

Mayors of New York City must feel somewhat like Atlas from time to time, but Mr. Beame doesn't buy the analogy. An unpretentious, hard-working man with a realistic view of things and what his son Buddy has called "a very good perspective on himself," Abe Beame shuns histrionics; he prides himself on his restraint. So when he describes what it was like to govern New York City during the darkest hours of the fiscal crisis, his tone of voice is reasoning and dispassionate:

"When MAC (Municipal Assistance Corporation) was set up, I suggested to Felix Rohatyn that we meet to discuss what we ought to do jointly to improve investor confidence." The financial markets closed to the city in May, 1975. "I recommended a freeze on the salaries of city workers and a reduction in the city work force, and Rohatyn, an increase in the transit fare and the institution of tuition at City University. We also wanted to set up a joint task force to come up with a joint program."

Tremendous pressure, however, Beame says, was exerted upon him to "commit the city to a program of its own to win back investors. The Board of Estimate, Comptroller Harrison Goldin, Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton and others cried for action; the press played up `the Mayor's inaction'; I was not going to let myself be pressured into breaking my agreement with MAC. It was probably my roughest period in office. But I didn't get excited, and I tried not to jump to conclusions."

The former Mayor of New York is seated in his office on the 27th floor of the International Building at 630 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Wearing a dark blue business suit with blue tie, he sports a tiny emblem of the Big Apple in his lapel. Eyes bright blue and face ruddy, Beame at 74 looks hale and trim. He is Chairman of the Advisory Board of the UMB Bank and Trust Company, a subsidiary of United Mizrahi Bank Ltd., Israel, as well as Chairman (appointed by President Carter without pay) of the National Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relationships, an agency concerned with improving the interaction among Federal, state, city, and local governments through a more effective functioning of the Federal system.

"And I didn't make decisions not based upon the proper deliberations," Beame continues in regard to the fiscal crisis. "There was a lot of conferring before making a judgment. I avoided shooting from the hip; even though it wins you temporary plaudits and gives the impression that you don't pussyfoot, it's not good. in the long run. But I made the decisions that had to be made. At a press conference on July 24, 1975, I submitted a program, and that same day the board of directors of MAC would meet to recommend the same program." The result, Beame says, was a joint agreement that incorporated what he and Rohatyn had recommended, including a commitment to the principle of cooperation among Federal, state, and city governments and the banks to combat the fiscal crisis. Beame, whose administration has been sharply criticized for its handling of New York's financial situation, does not feel that his side of the story has been adequately presented. He asserts that while he was Comptroller, he complained about the city's budget practices but that a comptroller does not determine policy; that when, in 1973, he became Mayor, he .inherited a $1.5 billion deficit from the Lindsay administration; that built into the system by state law was the right of the city to borrow in advance against anticipated revenues; that everyone was to blame for the fiscal crisis ("U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Bill Simon, when chairman of our debt management committee, did not tell us we were doing wrong"); and that through President Carter's economic-stimulus package in 1977, he, Beame, was able to balance the budget, cut taxes, and leave a "cash surplus" to incoming mayor Edward I. Koch.

"All these things were underplayed," Beame says gently. "The record will clearly show that the actions I took enabled us to put the city in shape. I regret that because of the fiscal situation, we were unable to go to market or to upgrade our school and hospital facilities and rehabilitate our run-down buildings. I'd also strongly campaigned to add 3,000 to the police force, but the fiscal crisis turned off the valve; instead, I had to cut the municipal work force by 62,000, including 6,000 police."

History will perhaps record Mr. Beame as a New York mayor who, like his predecessors Robert Wagner and John Lindsay, was dedicated to social reform, but who ultimately was forced to pay the price for the ambitiousness of the Liberal dream. Beame defines Liberalism as "helping the underprivileged and the disadvantaged to be given an opportunity to succeed in society." But like many Liberals, he has felt compelled to adapt to events. "Since Proposition 13, there has been a fever to cut back on social programs: inflation, it has been felt by most economists, could be materially affected by a balancing of the Federal budget. A lot of liberals have become conservatives . . . There is some movement of those who believe that inflation is the number-one problem because it hurts most the poor and the underprivileged, and that the best way to bring down inflation is to reduce government spending. That doesn't mean you shouldn't develop programs to lighten the blow in certain target areas, or meet, for example, the needs [ 1980] of the Northeast for gasoline, oil, and heating." In his role as chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Intergovernmental Relationships, Beame is striving to chisel away at what he calls a "marbleization" of the intergovernmental system caused by the growth of Federal bureaucracy. The Feds, he says, have become frozen into supervising such areas as rat control and fire protection, whereas the enormous burden of welfare and Medicaid now carried by the states should be borne by the U.S. government.

On the wall behind Abe Beame's desk are framed certificates formally attesting to his election as Comptroller (twice), appointment as Director of the Budget, and election as the city's 104th Mayor. Throughout the office are photographs of various dignitaries including heads of state whom Mr. Beame welcomed to New York as guests during the celebration of the nation's Bicentennial. Among the famous faces are those of presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Carter, vice presidents Humphrey, Rockefeller, and Mondale, cardinals Francis Joseph Spellman and Terence James Cooke, Mrs. Mamie Eisenhower, Arthur Goldberg, and Israeli prime ministers Mrs. Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, and Menachem Begin. On a separate table are photographs of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, Emperor Hirohito and his wife the Empress; William Richard Tolbert, President of Liberia (since assassinated); and King Juan Carlos I and the Queen of Spain ("I lunched with them at the Trade Center . . . . We got very friendly; they were the warmest, most down-to-earth heads of state I met during the Bicentennial").

The former Mayor, whose unaffectedness is disarming, tells an anecdote about the reception given the Queen of England when she visited New York for the Bicentennial:

"My granddaughter Julia, who was then three or four years old, walked to meet her as she got off her yacht in a ceremony at the Battery. Julia was to present the Queen with a bouquet of flowers, but she's a stubborn kid and when urged to `Give the flowers to the lady' she replied, `No, I like this, I want to keep it.' " The news photographers from round the world caught little Julia precisely in this moment of recalcitrance. "Finally, with some more urging, she presented the bouquet," Beame recalls with a chuckle.

The man who as mayor of one of the world's great cities wound rub elbows with the world's luminaries was raised as a child in a Lower East Side, cold-water flat. For a time, he lived with an aunt because there was not enough money to keep him at home, and as a young man he rarely held less than two jobs. Perhaps because New York has been good to him, Abe Beam e has a special fondness for the city. Eschewing "confrontation politics," reported Robert Daley in The New York Times, Beame as mayor sought to promote harmony among New Yorkers by walking through their neighborhoods and talking to them about their problems; individual communities would then follow up on these "walk-and-talk" tours with action of their own. Urging continuation of the program, Beame says, "It's the only way to lick crime in all the boroughs. The average person doesn't see or speak to his neighbor in New York. When people are encouraged to walk the streets together, they recapture the streets and develop a feeling of camaraderie that discourages crime." Beame is also proud of having changed "little City Halls" into neighborhood service organizations set up to help the community and to work with city agencies. "The New Yorker is a very warm, decent person. He has his own peculiarities, but when the chips are down, he comes through. I remember during the blackout of 1977, 1 was riding through the streets with Police Commissioner Michael Codd and a man with a searchlight was directing traffic. Nobody asked him to be there, but there he was."

Abe Beame is not, however, a native New Yorker. His father Philip who had a restaurant in Warsaw (then part of Russia) was a revolutionary. The underground used to meet in his house, and one day they got word of a police raid. Philip Beame sent his pregnant wife to her sister-in-law in London. He himself would go to America and send for her. And so Abe was born British in London and lived the first three months of his life there before coming to the Lower East Side.

In New York, his father found work in a stationery manufacturing plant where eventually he became foreman of the factory. Philip Beame was a socialist in the New World and took his small son around to the meetings. When that party disappeared he joined the American Labor party, and when the Communists appeared to be taking control of that organization, he was among those who split off to the new Liberal party. Young Abe was reared in that whole atmosphere of liberalism.

After attending the City's public schools, Abe Beame enrolled at the School of Business and Public Administration. At that time the old Free Academy Gothic structure was being demolished to make way for the building that now stands on the site, and Beame remembers going to classes uptown at the Grand Central Palace, an exposition hall. He recalls particularly professors (now deceased) George Monroe Brett, who was chairman of the Accounting department, and John Hastings in Economics as "stimulating and down-to-earth teachers who made you feel at home." From the age of 13 until his senior year at the Baruch School, Beame worked days in the stationery manufacturing plant where his father was employed. Attending classes at night, he graduated with a BBA degree cum laude in 1928, the same year that he married Mary Ingerman-or seven years after he'd challenged her to a game of checkers. While still in college, Beame and his friend since childhood, Bernard Greidinger, started their own accounting firm. Beame was 25 when his first son was born, and 30, his second. Beginning in 1929, he taught accounting and commercial law in New York City high schools and Rutgers University. Beame's political roots are in the Madison Democratic Club in Crown Heights, which he joined at the age of 24. It was not until he was 40 that he went to work for the City; in 1946 he was appointed Assistant Budget Director and set up management improvement programs that saved New York some $40 million the first year. In 1952, he was promoted to Budget Director. Ten years later, in his first run for political office, Beame was elected Comptroller of New York City, and served in that post until 1965, when he ran for Mayor against Republican John V. Lindsay and was defeated. During the next four years of private life, he was an investment counselor and director of the American Bank & Trust Company. Reelected comptroller in 1969, Beame introduced improvements in the handling of pension funds and of the municipal debt, as well as warned repeatedly of unsoundness in the City's fiscal and management practices. In 1973, at the age of 67, he ran again for mayor and was victorious. During his administration, federal aid for mass transit was for the first time obtained; a long-range $440 million tax reduction program to attract business to New York City was initiated; a separate Cultural Affairs Department was created to oversee the City's support and funding of the theatre and the arts; contracts that granted municipal workers cost-of-living adjustments provided they produced on the job were negotiated without strikes or antagonism; labor and the City forged a unique partnership under which loans from union pension funds helped buttress the city's shaky financial position; the attrition and laying off of 62,000 City employees were necessitated by the fiscal crisis; and the Mayor's Office for the Aging was upgraded to a full department headed by a Commissioner, with the pursuit of federal funds resulting in a growth of services for the aged at a time when the city was strapped for money. In 1977, Beame ran for reelection as mayor but was eliminated in a hotly contested Democratic primary in which none of the candidates won the required 40 percent of the ballots cast. "A shift of 3,500 out of one million votes would have put me in the runoff," Beame says. "But just prior to the primary election, the SEC report broke and misled the public about the strength of the City's short-term notes." The report, Beame says, gave the impression that a moratorium-instituted in 1975 on payment by the City of short-term debts owed to its creditors still existed, whereas actually it had been struck down by a Court of Appeals Decision. "The press picked up on the SEC report," Beame says, "and did not focus on the court ruling. That annoyed me." The SEC would finally rule there was no case against City officials in regard to their handling of the budget crunch.

Since returning to private life, Abe Beame has had to wind down from the pressures of the mayoralty. "No position in government is more in the front line of defense than the Mayor's, and that is especially true in New York City." But Beame remembers as well the gratifying moments: the unexpected sympathetic reception he got from the nation's reporters when he appeared before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and answered President Ford's "Drop Dead" attitude toward federal loans for New York City, and the wellspring of affection for the "Big Apple" expressed by out-of-towners during the closing moments of the Democratic National Convention in New York in 1976. "The members of the Texas delegation turned up placards with letters that together spelled, `Texas Loves New York,' and I told them how thrilled we were by their response, and I invited them to a Going-Home party."

Abe Beame's job with the UMB Bank and Trust Company takes him to Tel Aviv, Israel, once a year on a trip which combines business with sidetrips for pleasure. The Beames' two sons are both married: Edmond is a* professor of Renaissance and Reformation History at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, and Bernard (Buddy), who lives in Chappaqua, N.Y., is employed in public relations and managed two of his father's campaigns for political office. The Beames have five grandchildren. Although he has not been active in the practice of accounting for 35 years now, Abe Beame has dealt with accountants over that period. "From my observation," he says, "Accountancy is a tremendous field, ranking close to Law for its contributions to business and for the remuneration it affords." How one defines the word "Success," Beame says, "depends on what you set as your goals. It was not my goal to become a millionaire. You can wear only one suit a day, and three meals a day are all you need to survive. I never thought money was the important incentive. I felt achieving the respect and the regard of the public and my colleagues was much more important."

"Thank you, Mister Mayor."

Out on Fifth Avenue, Atlas continues to bear the universe aloft upon his shoulders. Atlas is stuck with his burden; Abraham Beame has dropped his.

Victor Besso '47

"The hardest part of my job is making the right decision;-knowing as much as possible about as many things as possible . . . . "

When Victor Besso (BBA, 1947) was awarded the red ribbon and silver cross making him a knight or chevalier in the Legion of Honor, he joined some pretty select company.

The prestigious decoration, conferred upon Mr. Besso, an American, by the French government on April 17, 1978, honored his twenty-eight years of "devoted, efficient, and fruitful work in the service of France's commercial influence throughout the world."

Besso is the senior vice president and director of Intsel, an international trading firm based in Manhattan and serving as export representative for the French corporation Pechiney Ugine Kuhlmann (PUK), the largest producer of aluminum in the world outside North America. Intsel is owned by PUK, which is among the world's 100 biggest companies, with 1980 sales of over $9 billion.

The Legion of Honor was created by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802 to reward the achievements of France's military heroes. It was later extended to include foreigners and to embrace persons who have distinguished themselves in the arts, sciences, business, and the professions. Among the Americans who have been admitted to this elite circle (the American Society of the Legion of Honor was founded in 1922) are names Charles Lewis Tiffany's among them that glitter like diamonds in a velvet showcase: Bernard M. Baruch, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Mary Cassatt, Charles Lindbergh, Charles W. Eliot, Adolph Ochs, John J. Pershing, Jascha Heifetz, Theodore Roosevelt, Howard Rusk, Leonard Bernstein, William J. Fulbright, Estee Lauder, David Rockefeller, William S. Paley, and Arthur Rubinstein.

When Victor Besso became a knight in the Legion of Honor (Napoleon's Legion d' Honneur traces back to the medieval order of Saint Louis), he was described by his sponsor, Andre Jacomet, conseiller d'etat to President Giscard d'Estaing, as "a knight in the full sense of the word as it was used in the Middle Ages . . . . the valiant servant, dynamic and likeable, faithful and loyal, of a great cause or an honored master." Besso also heard himself praised for such qualities as courage, fairness, kindness, love of life, a will to win, and a sense of humor. In his acceptance speech, he responded humbly (although he will tell you he is not by nature modest):

"As many of you know, I have been blessed with a particular knack for languages that allows me to masquerade as a Frenchman when among Americans and as an American when among the French. As a consequence, I often found myself with exciting tasks such as defending the French during DeGaulle's gold raids or of explaining the American presence in Viet Nam. Because of my love of both countries, it has not been a chore but, rather, a challenge."

Besso was also described by M. Jacomet as having "in the course of the years . . . undoubtedly become the greatest world expert on the aluminum market." Just as iron and steel transformed life in the nineteenth century, aluminum has had a measurable impact upon modern industrial society. The car, the airplane, and intricate weaponry all depend upon aluminum. One-third lighter than copper, it has increasingly replaced copper in the high-voltage transmission of electricity. But the production of aluminum from bauxite, a red clay ore much of which is mined in Caribbean countries, itself requires a huge output of electricity. Pechiney has gained a substantial share of the American market because its technology for smelting aluminum uses less kilowatts per ton than its competitors'.

When I visited Victor Besso in his offices on the 35th floor of the Random House building, it was the day before Good Friday and the third day of a massive transit strike in New York City. He had jogged to work that morning from the midtown hotel that had become his temporary home away from his home in Great Neck. The view from his windows encompassed the soaring U.N. stalagmite and the East River, a turquoise glaze in the brilliant sunlight. Besso, in light blue shirt and darker blue tie, a youthful, buoyant man of ready laughter, with soft hazel eyes and contemplative gaze, was on the phone to Paris:

"Quelle est votre opinion? Quelle quantité?" The tone was cordial and inquiring.

His desk was a clutter of notes and reports. Around the room were art objects including paintings obtained by him on his travels in the Far East and figurines sculptured by his daughters. A studio portrait of him and his wife Bernyce showed them dreamy as a pair of honeymooners, her head on his shoulder, a younger Besso bearing a faint resemblance to Clark Gable. Another, autographed, photograph caught Besso among others on a balcony above President Carter and Deng Xiaoping at a reception in the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C., culminating the visit to the United States of the Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China. A framed certificate granted by the government of France contained the words "Ordre National de la Legion d' Honneur. "

"Bonnes vacances . . . reposez vous, eh? . . . Alors . . . bon weekend. . . ." When Besso hung up he summoned one of his staff experts: "Joseph, come in a minute . . . I spoke to Arnaud . . . we're in business; he'll take two hundred tons." The two men savored briefly the moment. Then Besso was on the phone again:

"We've got one of those great New York days .... It's beautiful . . . Guatemala.... Costa Rica.... Dos cientos doce . . . . doce?" The conversation continued, Besso scribbling figures, checking his notes. The two phone calls seemed deceptively simple until he explained to me what had happened. The call to Paris involved the sale of 200 metric tons of aluminum foil to a French manufacturing company for processing and sale to cigarette makers throughout France, where there was a shortage of the material. The second phone call to Coral Gables, Florida ended in the sale of 1,000 tons of aluminum ingot to Thailand for conversion into cables to conduct electricity. In little more than half an hour, Besso had consummated two transactions totaling $2,750,000.

"This goes on all day, uh?" I said.

"I hope so. I'm lucky to be associated with a major producer. We work very closely with them and with their agents and correspondents all over the world." Besso was on the phone once more: "Hello, Taro. . . kon banwa. . . . " He was saying good evening to someone in Tokyo. Besso speaks fluent English, French, and Spanish, has a working knowledge of German and Italian, and knows some Russian. His parents, Edward and Daisy, who were born in Greece, are Sephardic Jews, and the language that young Victor heard spoken around the house was ladino, a Judeo-Spanish dialect from the Middle Ages. Besso's exposure to the Gallic influence began in 1939, when he spent a few months in France, and to the Russian in 1946, while he was stationed in Shanghai as a member of the U.S. Air Force. He also studied two years of German in high school. This rich linguistic heritage is very much a part of Besso and must have helped to determine his career direction. In any event, he knew early as a young man what he wanted. At Baruch School of Business, he was on the Student Council, a member of Sigma Alpha Honor Society, and president of Theatron. He wrote and directed the "Class Night" shows and was one of the originators of the Faculty-Student Show. Besso, in fact, met his wife-to-be while she was acting in Theatron productions and painting sets backstage. He also formed many lasting friendships in college; among his friends to this day is Maurice Nadjari, former New York State Special Prosecutor, whom Besso admires greatly for his "integrity."

During World War II, in 1943, Besso left college and enlisted in the U . S . Air Force, rather than wait to be drafted. He explains with wry wit: "I just didn't want to be an infantryman. I'm delighted to be able to say I have never been shot at or fired upon in anger, and I'm certainly not ashamed of it!" Hostilities with Japan ceased while Besso, an air force navigator, was on his way to join the Flying Tigers in China. He served with the Troop Carrier Command in Kunming and then in Chungking, the wartime capital, before serving for one year in Shanghai as chief navigations officer for China. He returned to the USA in August, 1946, to resume his educational commitment at the 23rd Street building, where he majored in Foreign Trade. The late Professor I. Harold Kellar was especially helpful to him: "He taught me a discipline. We cut out articles of consequence to foreign trade from magazines and newspapers. Kellar made me aware of the importance of source materials for information." Besso today reads religiously three dailies: The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the American Metal Market, as well as countless other publications and economic reports from around the world, to keep abreast of developments in his field.

After Besso graduated, cum laude, from the Baruch School of Business, he got a job in export packaging, then switched to freight forwarding, and finally joined a textile exporter. When he left that latter boss to work for Bunge, a large commodity trading firm, Besso shortly found himself confronted with one of those turning points in a young man's life that can either make him or break him. "They hired me as a trader," he recounts with characteristic frankness, "but I was not yet capable of fulfilling the job as a trader. I was fired. It was a .blow to my pride and a hardship-our first child was on the way and we needed money. But being fired is sometimes a useful experience; I wasn't going anywhere in the job. Sometimes it's good to stir up fate and find a new path."

That was the only job from which Besso was ever fired, and one day about fifteen years later, he would enjoy the sweet satisfaction of completing a big business deal with the firm that had discharged him (but the man who'd given him the pink slip, now president, didn't even remember him from that previous unhappy experience). But those first years after graduation from college were not easy. In 1949, Besso joined a French company that eventually was taken over by Intsel. Because his work now was in chemicals, he started attending Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute nights and studying Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering. Then came another crossroads of decision:

"I had to decide whether to get an engineering degree, and when I went to my former chemistry professor at Baruch, Ross Baker, he said, `No; make a lot of money and then you can hire all the engineers you want.' So I dropped night school after I got just enough technical knowledge to keep out of trouble." It was only after being assigned to Intsel's non-ferrous metals division in 1953 that Besso was exposed to real trading in metals. In two years, he became director of that division and, by 1960, was second in rank at Intsel, whose trading activity expanded rapidly under his leadership.

Besso then pioneered what was to become a multi-billion-dollar-year activity, shared by more than a score of companies throughout the world: international trading of aluminum, as a commodity. From those innovative transactions at Intsel grew the concept of a partnership between the Pechiney-Ugine-Kuhlmann group's aluminum producers Aluminum Pechiney and Howmet Aluminum Corporation and its commercial arm, Intsel, for the exclusive purpose of trading in aluminum, in all its forms. Thus were born Pechiney Trading Company (PTC) and PTC Partners, both under the direction of Besso, with an international network of offices that provide the communications links making it possible to react instantaneously to the various opportunities for sales or purchases or trades that may arise for aluminum anywhere in the world.

As noon approached in Besso's office, the air perceptibly hotted up; employees streamed in for advice and consultation, the phone calls continued. When time permitted, he told me: "The hardest part of my job is making the right decision; -- knowing as much as possible about as many things as possible .... I need to always know everything about aluminum all over the world. Much depends on my ability to get that information." Among the reference works on his shelves were Mineral Deposits, Metal Statistics, and The Making, Shaping, and Treating of Steel.

His deepest pleasure on the job, Besso said, derived from "creating my own idea and carrying it through to fruition." When through the AID program, the United States was financing assistance to under-developed nations, Besso played a major role in one of the trade negotiations. AID was inviting offers of US-origin urea for export to Viet Nam; Besso, knowing that the US was a net importer of nitrogenous fertilizers, persuaded the appropriate government agencies to allow Intsel to ship European-origin urea and thereby supply the AID-financed needs of the Viet Namese farmers. As a quid pro quo, Intsel bought and exported the counterpart value as surplus agricultural commodities from the Commodity Credit Corporation. Thus, the United States was enabled to sell off some of its agricultural surplus, the balance of trade was improved (by the export of these grains), the equivalent nitrogen units did not have to be imported into the United States, and AID funds bought more urea per dollar than if the purchases had been of US-produced urea. Owing to Besso's virtuoso skill as trader, negotiator, advisor, and convincer, all the pieces finally clicked into place. "You must have the best people," he says, "and you-must have the best communications."

There is a finely honed, tensile quality about Besso; the words flow from his lips in swift, orderly progression to keep pace with his thoughts. "I would say to the student interested in a business career: first decide upon a specialty -- finance, commodities, sales . . . whatever field you feel comfortable in. Then learn as much as you can ask questions. Start at the bottom; it's the only place where you can learn. And remember, honesty has a great deal to do with selling; -- you create not only a customer, but a friend who depends on you for honest information. But to do that, you need accumulated knowledge.

"Besso, who is not particularly handy around the house, calls his wife Bernyce his "perfect counterfoil. She can do anything with her hands: an architect, contractor, sub-contractor, interior director. She designs and makes jewelry, sews, crochets, is a great mother and a fantastic cook and hostess." The Bessos have three daughters: Janet, 29, is a cum laude graduate of Brandeis University and a vice president with Chase Manhattan; Vida, 28, married, is an office manager and a summa cum laude graduate of Hartford University, Connecticut; and Carol, 23, also a graduate of Hartford University, works in the music publishing division of United Artists Corporation. Besso used to be away from home "about forty percent of the year" and as much as six weeks at a time. How does he handle the problem of being away from his family?

"Poorly," Besso said.

Another member of the staff came in and there was a hurried discussion about when and where to have lunch-a business one. Then Besso, who has done his share of hiring over the years, said to me, "If somebody is aggressive and wants responsibility, the only way to get it is to take it. Period. Nobody gives it to you." He pointed to the telexes and correspondence on his desk -- matters awaiting not only his attention but that of his associates. "You have to take responsibility be concise in thinking, speaking, writing." Then with a pride forged in the fires of experience: "Otherwise, there aren't enough hours in the day."

Gertrude Alman Stern `49

"I guess maybe I learned instinctively to live in a man's environment . . . . And in the field in which I was destined to work fashion retailing-the woman's opinion is traditionally sought after and respected."

The usual stereotypes simply do not apply to Gertrude Alman Stern (BBA, 1949), one of the most successful business women in America.

Her father, Morris Alman, died during the Great Depression, when the young girl was twelve years old. At that tender age, she couldn't have done much to help the family right? Not so. She worked part-time and made a vital contribution to its support.

Growing up poor during the Depression must have inflicted a cruel wound on the child's psyche. She felt wretched, deprived, miserable? right? Try again. As the oldest of four daughters, Gertrude Alman sensed what was expected of her. She had no choice but to adopt overnight an adult role.

Seven strenuous years of combining evening school with a fulltime day job wore her down, exhausted her, robbed her of her youthful energies right? Not true. "I thrived on the routine," Mrs. Stern recalls. "It never seemed too much at the time. I felt privileged to go to college at all, and proud to be a part of the City University. To be admitted in those days, girls had to meet even higher academic standards than boys did. And besides, the ratio of men to women (about ten to one) at the School of Business was any girl's dream."

And Mrs. Stern's career in the male-oriented world of business has been marked by a torture-some, unceasing struggle to assert her rights as a woman right? Not at all. "I didn't find being a career woman quite as difficult as some militant women make it seem. I had a lot of guts, stick-to-itiveness. I guess maybe I learned instinctively to live in a man's environment; I never felt like I had to fight hard as a woman. And in the field in which I was destined to work in fashion retailing the woman's opinion is traditionally sought after and respected."

Today, Gertrude Alman Stern is executive vice president of Allied Stores Marketing Corporation, a subsidiary of Allied Stores, Inc., one of the nation's largest department store organizations. Business Week (June 21, 1976) cited her among the 100 top corporate women in the United States.

Seated behind the desk in her 17th-floor office in midtown Manhattan, Mrs. Stern is a study in elegant composure. Of rose-petaled complexion, with close-cropped hair, she wears a rust-colored dress of Honan silk (she was among the first in fashion retailing to pioneer for foreign markets, in both Europe and the Far East). Around her wrist is a gold bracelet with sapphires and diamonds, designed by Schlumberger for Tiffany's; her earrings are of gold, with diamonds; on the fourth finger of her left hand is a gold wedding band, with diamonds. She is wearing also two necklaces: one of Chinese jade, the other made for her in Paris and containing very old natural stones in black, white, and beige. An opulence that, interestingly enough, does not call attention to itself but rather is discreet and tasteful. The decor in her office, Mrs. Stern says, is calculated to convey "a living room atmosphere, not an austere executive look." The room contains photographs of her nine nephews and nieces (the Sterns have no children but "my sisters' children make up for it") as well as sketches and paintings created by them. The desk flanked by tropical plants in floor pots and the two chairs are French reproductions, and at the back of the room is a couch upholstered in bright colors. On her desk are decorative animals (from Allied's "Young World" or children's department, or gifts from business friends)-a Taiwan squirrel, a Chinese horse, a Uruguayan duck. On the floor, resting on all four paws, is a stuffed toy lion with tawny mane and black-buttony eyes. Rather than fearsome, he looks perpetually playful, yet Mrs. Stern is quick to admonish:

"Don't use the lion as a symbol!" Some men, after all, are prone to stereotyping highly successful women as having clawed their way to the top. The sales volume of Allied Stores Corporation during 1980 was $2.3 billion. The year before, the Allied "family" which comprises over 200 stores including the Jordan Marsh complex in New England and Florida, Stern's in New Jersey, Block's and Donaldson; s in the Midwest, Joske's in the Southwest, and Bon Marche in the Northwest purchased the Bonwit Teller and Plymouth specialty shops.

Might, then, the fondness for ornamental animals stem from a hungering for the luxuries (toys) that are normal to childhood but were denied her because her family was poor? Nope. While she was growing up, Mrs. Stern says,, she wasn't conscious of being "poor"; she was too busy meeting her responsibilities. Besides, hers was a loving, tight-knit family, and she was consumed by thoughts of securing an education as the time-honored passport to success. So much for the notion that she must look back upon her childhood with intermingled bitterness and regret. If any single material object in her office epitomized Gertrude Alman Stern, perhaps it was that necklace from Paris: lustrous, intricate, and inseparable, the polished stones were strung-linked-together much like the turning points in her life.

Her father, an accountant, had emigrated from the Ukraine. So it was probably natural that while attending Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn, her first part-time job (at 75 cents an hour) was to teach English to immigrants preparing to apply for U.S. citizenship. Soon thereafter, she became assistant to Dr. Louis Reynolds, chairman of the school's Foreign Languages department, a contact which helped her break into fashion retailing. Introduced by him to a buyer at Abraham & Straus, she obtained part-time work there as a sales girl. Soon, still in high school, she was working part-time at A. & S., for $13 a week. One day at a staff meeting, store vice president Ruben Askanaze pointed suddenly at her and said, "Look at her, she'll sell the fixtures off the floor. I'm going to make a retailer out of her." He recommended that she be admitted to the Executive Training program once she graduated from high school. When the store later offered to help finance her college education toward a degree in Retailing, Gertrude Alman faced a hard decision. The ideal arrangement, as A. & S. had suggested, would be to resume working for it on a part-time basis so that she might devote the bulk of her effort to her studies. But the girl was now a provider in her family. "I had to turn down the offer," Mrs. Stern says, "because I couldn't afford to work only part time. I really had no choice but to work full time and go to school at night."

From 1942 to 1949, Gertrude Alman attended the Baruch School of Business nights while working full-time at A. & S. during the day. "I would take the subway from Hoyt Street, Brooklyn," she says with pride, "and do my homework on the train. At 6:50 p.m., after a tuna fish and sliced egg sandwich and chocolate malted at the George Washington Hotel coffee shop, I would start my evening classes. They lasted until 10:40, then it was back on the train to Brooklyn." During World War II, the ratio of men to women at the School of Business reversed, and marriageable males became as scarce as nylon stockings. Then as the war drew to a close, the service men returned. Among them was Bruce C. Stern, whom Gertrude Alman met while she was studying for her BBA in Retailing and he his MBA in Marketing. She helped him with his Master's thesis and she married him. Today Mr. Stern is in the food brokerage business. When their wives are crashingly successful, men feel threatened -- right? "My husband has never felt competitive toward me in my growth," says Mrs. Stern. "He has always been very open, complimentary, supportive."

When the young woman believed she was not getting ahead fast enough, she started looking for another job. "I didn't tell my mother I was thinking of leaving A. & S.; the family couldn't afford to lose my income. It was only after I'd accepted another job that I told her." It was with Ann Lewis Shops, a chain of ready-to-wear stores, as an assistant to the buyer in sportswear. But after a brief exposure to chain-store operation, she found that it stymied her creativity. Gertrude Alman placed an ad in Women's Wear: "Experienced in Department Store and Specialty Store retailing specializing in Sportswear." That took gall, Mrs. Stern admits, for she still had a lot to learn. The ad reaped numerous replies, including one from Allied Stores. Gertrude Alman began her career with Allied as an assistant to Marion Jarett, who was regarded as the dean of sportswear buyers.

"A must for getting ahead in a large organization," Mrs. Stern says, "is to do the things that will single you out from the crowd." Her chance to impress came during her first week on the job. Asked to secure in a hurry 50-dozen blouses for one of Allied's stores, she naively assumed the assignment would prove simple. But the fabric, rayon crepe, was in short supply after the war; actually, rounding up all those blouses on such short notice posed a trying test. Employing some judicious arm-twisting ("I intimated that he might be needing me sometime when his business wasn't so good"), Gertrude Alman not only got the blouses but she doubled-checked with the shipper to make certain that the store would have them in time for Saturday's business. Her feat was brought to the attention of top executives in the company, who began to perceive her as a comer. But her expectations regarding her relationship with Miss Jarett were not fulfilled. "I'd been drawn to her by her reputation, but I soon came to feel her viewpoint was antiquated. I didn't think she was flexible enough to swing with the times. She was slow to accept fresh ideas, and the sportswear market was beginning to explode."

Mrs. Stern counts among her strengths an ability to market both herself and her product as well as a gift for divining the trends that fashion will take. "I convinced Management that the one Sportswear department at Allied should become more specialized and be split up into separate sections, each staffed with its own experts riding it for all it was worth." Mrs. Stern defines the art of salesmanship, in part, as knowing the other person's answers before you ask the questions, then motivating him to give the answers you want from him.

Gertrude Alman's perception about the future course of fashion proved accurate. The sportswear business burgeoned, and she was appointed division manager of Sportswear when it broke away from Ready-to-Wear at Allied and became a division of its own. When the vice president of all soft lines was scheduled to retire, he named her his assistant to prepare her to take over his job. She was named vice president and subsequently became executive vice president of the Marketing Corporation, the position which she now holds. "Allied has been good to me," she says. "The fashion retailing business is a good business for people who want to grow in a field where they can make a name for themselves quickly. Maybe the starting salary is not the highest, but eventually the jobs become high-paying. You get to see quickly the fruit of your efforts -- in the sales and profits in the stores.

"Young people can climb the ladder quite rapidly; in the stores, there is a lot of movement of personnel. But you have to put up with the possibility you may have to start elsewhere than in New York. Moving one's family from city to city can be difficult for some, but you have to be ready to relocate."

What kind of person does Mrs. Stern look for when she hires? "Someone who is hungry and anxious and wants to make a name for him-or-herself quickly. Those who don't have the motivation to earn a living don't seem to make it with me." The necklace comes full circle; it seems only natural that Gertrude Alman Stern should seek in others a reflection of that enormously ambitious young girl who worked all day in sales and attended college at night.

As executive vice president of Allied Stores Marketing Corporation, Mrs. Stern's duties are manifold: she strives to develop the apparel and accessories business, predict trends in fashion and act upon them and upgrade the quality of goods and services in Allied's family of department stores and specialty shops. "We're talking now [ 1980] about the `Preppy look' -- Shetland sweaters, buttoned-down oxford shirts, tartan skirts, flannel blazers. The romantic look of lace and ruffles, chiffons and georgettes, Victorian collars. You have to forecast trends long before you have any real indication where your new methods of operation are taking you. You can go very wrong." What are the signs of a fashion movement in the making? For one: "When something is hot at the end of a season, it has a good chance of exploding at the beginning of the same season the following year." Has she ever predicted wrong? "If I have, I won't admit ." To keep abreast of the latest, most "In" looks, Allied offers a lot of foreign merchandise including sweaters, knit dresses, and gift items from the Far East and jewelry, accessories, and knitwear from Europe.

The Sterns reside in Briarcliff Manor, Westchester, where they belong to a local country club and where during the golfing season Mrs. Stern seizes every opportunity to hammer drives down the fairway and chip onto the greens. The couple are theatre-goers (she liked especially Tom Conti's performance in Whose Life Is It Anyway?), enjoy opera, and have a passion for ballet (she admires intensely the art of Natalia Makarova). Mrs. Stern cultivates old friendships from her college years and from her travels. She still sees Herb Gruber, an alumnus of the School of Business and now vice president of Parkson Advertising Agency in Manhattan. Among her friends overseas are Franco Luzi, based in Florence as director of Allied's offices in Italy ("Florence is my home away from home," say Mrs. Stern), and Lydia Dunn, who started in Allied's office in Hong Kong and rose to become board member of its Swire & MacLaine store there. Awarded the Order of the British Empire decoration, Miss Dunn is a member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (equivalent to our Congress) and known internationally as a trade negotiator.

Now that Gertrude Alman Stern has been for some time an executive vice president in the field of fashion retailing, she wants to rise still higher -- right? Show men that there's no limit to what a woman can accomplish? "My dreams have been pretty much achieved," she says. "Not many women get much further. We're working toward as good a retirement plan as we can get. We expect to continue to travel and we want a nice home in the Sun Belt."

The strand of gemstones round her neck is not open-ended. But then, that too is the beauty of a necklace. Right?

Bert N. Mitchell `63

"That's where we hope to arrive. But we're not there yet. And if they fail to recognize we're not there yet, we'll never get there."

There are fresh-cut flowers at each table and somewhere in the dimly lighted restaurant is the sound of a trickling fountain. The walls of natural cement are lined with racks of bottled vintage wine and contain little windows facing on painted scenes from the market established by the emperor Trajan in ancient Rome. The prices on the wooden-board menu are expensive, but the mood of the well dressed noonday diners is mellow, amiable, relaxed. Bert N. Mitchell (BBA, 1963) orders a white wine and the spaghetti piccata (lemon and butter) with white clam sauce. Mr. Mitchell, 42 years old, is the managing partner of Mitchell/Titus & Company, one of the largest black-owned operations and among the top 500 of the nation's 28,000 accounting firms.

"I suppose you could call me a country boy," says Mr. Mitchell, a warm, soft spoken, cogitative man who despite the demands upon precision in his work enjoys a good laugh and seems quite at home with the mystifications of life. Attired in a blue pinstriped suit styled by the black designer Carl Davis, Mitchell wears a gold bracelet on his right wrist and his mustache and sideburns are neatly groomed. A silk handkerchief unfurls from his breast pocket. "I dress to suit myself." he says. "I couldn't care less whether I give that modest professional appearance."

Mitchell, Jamaican born, was brought up on a farm of less than 20 acres where his father grew corn, potatoes, citrus, and cassava. "I was raised in a society that placed great stress on academic achievement as a tool out of poverty. Neither of my parents went past the fifth grade; they recognized the value of an education. When I came here at the age of 20, New York City was the promised land. It was the optimum time for me; I was ready for college."

The restaurant, in the East Thirties, is a short country walk from the Park Avenue suite of offices where the 75 people of Mitchell/ Titus work. They represent roughly 20 different nationalities; more than 40 percent are black. Mitchell/Titus is part of a profession dominated by eight giant firms. Whereas, for example, Mitchell/ Titus has seven partners and 150 clients, Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co., one of the largest firms, has 1,879 partners and more than 50,000 clients worldwide. Mitchell/Titus's largest audit to date has been a three-year contract to check New York City's finances as a member of a six-firm consortium led by Peat, Marwick. The $3 million contract represents the first independent audit of the city's finances.

To compete in a realm towered over by the "Big Eight," Mitchell/ Titus specializes in the government and not-for-profit sector -- an area much neglected by the big accountancy firms, which concentrate during the November-to-April months on lucrative corporate work. Billing its staff out at $21 to $125 an hour (the big firms generally charge 12 to 20 percent more in fees), Mitchell/Titus has achieved contracts from the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Ford Foundation, and the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, among others:

"For us, there's much more to Accounting than just numbers," Mitchell says. "Let's suppose a client comes to us and wants to set up a payroll system. The traditional response would be: `We'll set up a system whereby you can pay your employees once a month. That way you'll save a lot of money in payroll preparation you won't have to write as many checks, you'll have fewer salaries to pay in the payroll department, and you'll reduce the cash flow.' But let's say that that arrangement would be a hardship on the employees, who insist they need their paychecks once every two weeks. At Mitchell/Titus we feel that it is our obligation to take the human element into account and help our client understand the needs of his workers and constituents. The success of his program depends on his being aware of the needs of the people in his community. And we in this firm are so close to those who are deprived in our community and for whom freedom of access and of finding out how the system works is not available. The approach we employ is not a luxury to us but a fact of life. Friends, relatives, and members of our families are among that segment of our community." Mitchell is quick to add: "Not that we are geared more to public service than to profit. We have to survive as a firm. Our approach is to help the. not-for-profit sector serve its constituents better or to achieve its proper objectives through comprehending their needs."

It is not hard to perceive why Mitchell was a straight-A student in Kingston Technical High School (Jamaica's equivalent to the Bronx High School,of Science). When 1,500 students from throughout Jamaica competed for 130 high school seats in a government sponsored entrance exam, Mitchell was among those to emerge successful. When Mitchell dropped from first in his class scholastically to third during his freshman year, his father wanted to know, "Why third?" And when Mitchell broke his right arm during the second term, he wrote his examinations using his left hand.

Mitchell came to New York with his parents and six brothers and sisters in 1958 with the intention of becoming an engineer. Working by day as a bookkeeper, he attended the Baruch School at night only to discover that the school offered no advanced engineering courses. He took his first accounting course instead, and a succession of high test scores persuaded him to revise his career plans. At Baruch, Mitchell was a member of Student Government, the Student Council, and the Student-Faculty Committee; was on the debating team, wrote stories for The Reporter, and was president of the Accounting Club; and won the Masonic award as the student who accomplished the best balance of achievement in academic and extracurricular activity. His future looked promising, but then reality set in.

"When I graduated in 1963," says Mitchell, after taking a sip of the white wine, "there were less than 20 blacks in the class and only four black accountants. I wanted to work for a `Big Eight' firm, but they weren't ready to hire blacks at that time. But J. K. Lasser, a major CPA firm, hired me. I was the first black person to work for them. They treated me like a person, instead of a black person." In 1966, Mitchell worked for Intra-American Life, a black insurance company started by a black man, Clarence Jones, and then he became assistant to the controller of the Ford Foundation, which had offices in 25 developing nations throughout the world. Mitchell's work took him to most of these countries, and he set up a system designed to record the some $70 million in expenditures by the Foundation in such areas as agriculture, education, public administration, and population control. In 1969, Mitchell became a partner with America's oldest black-owned accounting firm, Lucas, Tucker, & Company (founded in 1938). Mitchell's independence of mind did not take long to assert itself.

"I had ideas on how to practice accounting," Mitchell says, "but as senior executive of the firm, I found that a lot of my partners would not support my views. When I tried to get them to change their thinking, they were recalcitrant. I was so fervently convinced that my views were the right ones that I resigned from the firm. The partnership simply had not jelled; -- there was a difference in business philosophy. "

Mitchell left in 1973 to start his own firm with a staff of six. Wasn't it a scary experience to take off on his own? "In 1973, I was making $25,000 with Lucas, Tucker, but in the marketplace I was worth well over $100,000," Mitchell says. "I was already recognized by the profession as one of the leading accountants in the nation. I didn't want to go to another firm; I was thinking futuristic we had a mission. I think I understand the business; I'm not prepared to take a back seat to anybody black, white, or any color -- when it comes to what I do. I'm good . . . that's what turns me on -- I'm good." The waiter, in tuxedo jacket, arrives with Mitchell's spaghetti piccata and my veal Milanese. The owner of the restaurant, Nicola Paone, stops by briefly and informs us that William F. Buckley, Jr., dines here. High on the walls, painted in large letters, are words in Latin identifying the scenes from Trajan's market place: "Unguentarium" or cosmetics; "Creopolion" or butcher shop; and "Taverna Vinaria" or wine tavern. The emperor Trajan -- in order to keep the streets of ancient Rome as clean as possible -- ordained there be but one market within the city proper. The "marketplace" to which Mitchell has alluded is perhaps not that orderly.

"With my own firm," he tells me, "I started all over again. Now we're bigger than they are." Did that make him gloat with satisfaction? "No, no, that's not my bag. My bag is just to be true to myself. I'd been burned with partners, but I realized I couldn't succeed without one. Bob Titus is the firm's `inside man' he makes the machine run on a daily basis. I market the firm, bring in clients." Mitchell/Titus has given Mitchell the opportunity to put his own ideas into practice. "Our formula is very simple. We employ at high salaries the most qualified people we can possibly get at the most senior level. Traditional practice is to secure as many juniors as possible out of school and train them. My idea is to hire people who already have the experience. They have the dexterity to deliver all types of services because they've been there." Four of the seven partners at Mitchell/Titus are Baruch Business School graduates who came to the firm with a background in accountancy, but according to Mitchell, experience in that discipline need not be an absolute must:

"There are two kinds of accountants the loyalists and the joiners. The loyalist says `I want to be an accountant'; the joiner is someone who wanted to be-or was something else. The joiner makes the better accountant. While the thought process in accounting involves accuracy, accuracy doesn't necessarily mean exactitude. Accounting is an art: it tells the story in a logical and conclusive fashion of what happens to a business. And current accounting practices and theories permit a freedom of interpretation depending on the criteria the accountant uses. The truth is elusive; two and two can equal five." Mitchell distinguishes between the specialist narrowly concerned with accounting and the individual who joins the profession after having been "exposed to the give-and-take of the business and professional world." Apparently there is room for both. "There's a tremendous demand for accountants," Mitchell says."Accountancy has one of the highest rates of employing people."

There are no other blacks in the restaurant. What, I wonder to myself, would Bill Buckley make of that? Later, in another connection, Bert Mitchell, a staunch advocate of Affirmative Action, seems, without realizing, to touch upon my thoughts. "Baruch is a great school; it's my school and I love it gave me everything I have. But it must develop a sensitivity to what we're about as people. Mitchell/Titus made a modest donation to Baruch College -- money to be used as a scholarship award to an outstanding black accounting student. Accounting faculty at Baruch said that such an award would have racial overtones and that race should not be stipulated. This is the problem we face in the inner cities. We must be aware of colors -- we cannot be color-blind. Of the 200,000 CPA's throughout the country today, perhaps 2,000 are blacks. The position of the faculty at Baruch is designed to do some good . . . . That's where we hope to arrive. But we're not there yet. And if they fail to recognize we're not there yet, we'll never get there." Getting there helps make being able to dine in a restaurant like this one more likely.

Mitchell is using the "editorial We." He and his family reside in Laurel Hollow near Oyster Bay, in a secluded area not far from Long Island Sound. They live in a contemporary California-style house of glass and wood built into the side of a hill. The Mitchells own three cars: two Mercedes-Benz and a Mustang. Mitchell gives a great deal of credit for his success in business to his wife Carole. He met her at Baruch where she was studying marketing and sociology. After a period as a housewife, she is now in social work and going to school for additional training in that endeavor. "Carole is cool, calm, and supportive. I'm grateful to her for her moral support when I needed it; she goes along with my decision-making. A great lady." The Mitchells have three children: Tracey, 17, Bobbin, 15, and Ronald, 10. One of Mitchell's happiest moments was occasioned by the birth of his first child. The proud papa went around trembling with excitement and telling everyone within earshot, "I have a daughter now!" But his wife, he says, is "the real family person. Carole lives for our kids. Her fulfillment is to see them succeed at what they're trying to do, and her greatest challenge is to instill in them good conduct and a good education."

Although Mitchell spends 60-70 hours a week on the job, he still finds time for a variety of avocations. A gifted golfer who has played Pebble Beach and Spy Glass in California, he has carded scores in the 70's; a jazz buff, he enjoys the work of singer Carmen McRae, "Cannonball" Adderley on alto sax, and Miles Davis on trumpet; and a devotee of Hemingway, he admires that writer for "how he copes with the difficulty of writing simply and how he paints with words." Mitchell says he also learned about how to write simply yet informatively -- a skill of particular value to an accountant -- from his composition instructor at Baruch. "When Mr. Anthony Penale asked us to write a 300-word composition, he would count the words.

If he wanted 300, he meant 300 -- not one word more or one word less. He would, for example, ask us to describe a room; I might have done it in less, but I don't think in more." Mitchell recalls fondly as well Baruch Accountancy professors Emanuel Saxe, John Neuner ("He was a tough disciplinarian"), and Abraham Briloff with whom he took graduate work toward his MBA degree in 1968 ("He gave us the courage to speak out for what we really believe in").

After the coffee, no dessert, Mitchell elaborates upon the subject of Success: "Success has a floor but no ceiling. When I go to Japan or Thailand, I see street signs but have no idea what they say. I compare that to someone who is illiterate he only knows that if the car is painted yellow, it takes passengers. Much depends on what message the individual receives: does he read The Times or does he read the Daily News?" Mitchell's ideas unfold like the flowers on the table -- with a slow, steady, expanding logic all their own. "You can't teach people a knowledge of accounting and at the same time give them the liberal arts knowledge they need to enter the wider world after college." As a member of the State Board of Public Accountants and author of more than 50 published articles in the field of accounting and business, Mitchell seeks a five-year college curriculum. "Students thereby would receive an exposure not only to their business specialty but to the liberal arts, the science of economics, and the communicative skills. More and more it is being required of business graduates that they be able to write, speak, learn, and listen more effectively. You can't teach all this in a four year curriculum. Accountancy is probably the newest of the major recognized professions in the United States, but it is the only one that does not require professional schools. It's a ludicrous system, in which students are not properly prepared . . . . Only about four percent of college graduates pass the CPA exam the first time. The rest would be better off spending another year in college than to keep taking the exam until they finally pass it."

It is close to three o'clock and we are the only diners left in the restaurant. The waiters hover restlessly in the vicinity and Mitchell says to one of them, "You want us to leave now." Out on the street, he moves with an easy, rolling, almost cocky stride. Bert' Mitchell is his own man.

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