I put the Army in my rear-view mirror at the beginning of the 1970s and got busy. It was an eventful decade. I returned to work as a lawyer, this time for the newly formed law firm of Roan, Grossman, Singer, Mauck & Kaplan (later Roan & Grossman). The Singer in the firm was Bill Singer. We had both been associate attorneys in the law firm I was briefly with before the Army. When the Army assigned me to Washington, D.C., I took Bill up on his suggestion that I look up his sister-in-law, Judy Arndt, then working on the Hill on one of the Congressional staffs. When I married her in 1974, Bill and I were briefly brothers-in-law.
Also in 1974, I took a leave of absence from my law firm to serve as General Counsel and Research Director for Singer’s mayoral campaign as he took on Chicago’s long-time Mayor Richard J. Daley and his political machine. With the anti-machine vote split among several candidates during the Democratic primary election, Singer lost. However, Daley’s winning margin had sharply dropped from his last election. Daley went on to win another term as Mayor in the 1975 general election, but for the first-time cracks had appeared in the Daley juggernaut. With the campaign over, I returned to the Roan & Grossman law firm and made partner at a younger age than was the norm at the time.
When my mother died in early 1979. I was divorced and living in a townhouse on Larrabee Street in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. In my social life, I had been dating Cathy Vanselow for a while, having been introduced to her by a friend from Bill Singer’s mayoral campaign. I was thinking seriously of asking her to marry me.
This was the lay of the land when a litigator friend at Roan & Grossman sprung on me a job opportunity he thought would fit me. He said one of his former professors at Northwestern University Law School had asked him if he knew anyone who might be interested in becoming general counsel of a fast-growing direct mail company. He said he had immediately thought of me, and I should let him know if I were interested. I was initially curious about the opportunity but not particularly excited when I learned the company mostly sold plates of some kind or another.
Then I learned that the business involved was owned by the son of John D. MacArthur, reportedly the second or third-richest man in the country when he recently died. The son, Rod MacArthur (J. Roderick MacArthur), was also a director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the beneficiary of most of the senior MacArthur’s estate. Rod’s main business at the time was the direct marketing of collector plates. It had grown very rapidly in recent years and was now at a size where it would be more economical for it to have lawyers in-house rather than remain completely reliant on outside law firms.
Of particular interest to me was the fact that Rod wanted a lawyer at hand to advise him on his burgeoning dispute with his fellow Foundation directors. The prospect of being involved in this indirect way at the birth of one of the country’s largest foundations was an attractive aspect of the work. All of these items made the situation interesting enough to look into further. In short order, I met with 58-year-old Rod MacArthur and his 31-year-old Executive Vice President Kevin McEneely.
I was also intrigued and attracted to the idea of leaving private practice and getting more closely involved in the running of a business.
Also weighing in the balance was the fact that staying with the law firm was not without risk itself. Roan & Grossman in the 1970s had not grown at an exceptional pace, and, after being defeated in his run for mayor in 1975, Bill Singer had left to join the Kirkland & Ellis law firm.
This had taken away one of the firm’s better business getters for the future. Given that there was a real risk the firm might struggle in the future, I had to take that into serious consideration also in deciding whether to accept the offer to become The Bradford Exchange’s General Counsel.
Finally, much like my decision after leaving the Army to join Roan & Grossman instead of returning to the firm I started with, I decided to again leave the certainty of a prior, known experience for the unknown world of what lay ahead.
Keeping a toe in my last pond, I acceded to Roan & Grossman’s unforeseen request that I remain Of Counsel to the firm following my departure.
While fully committed to my career change, I figured that if life in my new position somehow went awry, keeping some form of tie to my old firm couldn’t hurt.
On this basis, I began my new job as General Counsel of The Bradford Exchange. The heart of the business of The Bradford Exchange at this time was selling decorative collector plates that were to be displayed on a wall or put on a knickknack shelf. They were not to be eaten off of or, God forbid, put in a dishwasher.
The rampant inflation afoot at the time was having a wonderful effect on the collectibles business of Bradford. With a modest aftermarket in the sale of collectible plates, the plate you bought for $29 the year before was often worth considerably more the next year.
This was not entirely a surprise. With the bill coming due for the extraordinary national expenditures during and after the Vietnam War, inflation in 1979 was running at over 11 percent. President Jimmy Carter would lose the election the next year in consequence.
