People ask me why Gotham is such a good fit for me and Josh. The answer is our Dad - a lawyer whose client’s sought him out not just for his advice in his area of expertise or their businesses, but for his friendship and advice across all areas of their lives.  He was the essence of "it is better to give than receive but what goes around comes around" and gave generously of his time, effort and dynamism to many who still tell “Sam Stories. As a lawyer and entrepreneur he would have a lot of helpful advice to share with his children about their businesses, networking, friendship and lives. Never was he the silent type. But I think of him especially today, March 6.  (It’s a funny thing when a major sad anniversary in your life comes round, especially if it changed your life forever and was unwelcome at the time.  You become tired and achy, because the body remembers and knows, even before the mind does.)

I vividly remember where Josh, our family and I were the morning of Saturday, March 6, 1993.  It was two days between Josh’s birthday and Dad’s 58^th birthday. We had spent Friday night celebrating that the stroke our Dad had just experienced was a minor one, and the “bullet” had missed him.  But that Saturday morning, when Dad was in the shower, a blood clot took aim for his brain and settled there.  By the time Dad came out of the shower it was clear he needed to get to the hospital, and equally clear he would have none of it.   As we begged him to go, he called his cousin and waited to feel better, while the minutes ticked by.  When finally we convinced him, Josh drove Dad and Mom from Port Washington, NY to Englewood Hospital (in NJ - that’s another story) in record breaking time.  I picked up our brother David at the airport and brought him to the hospital.

What we didn’t know that day, in the days before T.P.A. and other interventions were routine, was that it was already too late for Dad (even though he survived for another 5 ½ years).  Strokes “bloom” (what a strange spring like notion for a truly destructive process); and his “bloomed” for days. But as he lost movement in his left side, he kept his determination to live a full life; as he lost his judgment, he kept his intelligence; as he lost his math skills and ability to drive, he kept his ability to communicate.  And communicate he did.  Before the stroke he was challenging, brilliant, dynamic, funny, vibrant, He never had much of a filter on his mouth (that too was lost) but was able to maintain unusually strong and loyal friendships.   After the stroke he communicated his frustration and anger with no filter.  Even so, his friendships and business, established before his illness, well survived his stroke.

Twenty years later (and 15 years after his passing) I miss the Dad who (without the cloud of his stroke) was the essence of Gotham’s motto.  He built a wildly successful business out of the friendships he cherished and developed, and he gained lasting friendships from the business he loved. It is a model I hope to emulate.  If ever he had attended a Gotham lunch, no one at the lunch would ever have forgotten.  So… why is Gotham a good fit for you?