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I was born in
Tokyo, Japan on November 12, 1961. No,
my father wasn’t with the military. In
fact, he’s Swiss, and was in Japan
running a travel agency that sent
Japanese tourists to America. You know
that old stereotype of the Asian tourist
with the camera glued to their eyes. Now
you know who’s responsible! Willy
Wolfgang Reich.
We moved back to the States in 1965 and
settled in Los Angeles. I attended Carl
Curtis School before moving over to
Harvard School for Boys (now
Harvard-Westlake), where I graduated in
1979. Some people say you learn more in
high school than in college. I’m not
sure if that’s true, but I definitely
learned as much. A few of my teachers,
among them Dr. John Johnson, Father John
Gill, and Jerome Margolis, made a
lasting impact on my life and I’m
grateful to them.
A highlight of my high school years was
a summer spent at Outward Bound East
Africa located on the slopes of Mt.
Kilimanjaro. I was fifteen and you can
pretty much imagine how exciting it was
to attend a camp in Kenya. At least, it
was exciting until we discovered that
every morning we had to run a mile and
then jump into a frigid pool and swim a
length before being “allowed” to begin
our daily chores.
We had one tough guy in our cabin, a kid
from Detroit who at the age of sixteen
already had a set of muscles that
would’ve made Arnold Schwarzenegger
blush, and he wasn’t afraid to use them.
Every camp has a bully and this guy was
it. Anyway, one night we’re all falling
asleep in our cabins (remember this is
high on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
We’re talking “rustic,” as in wood
floors, stone walls, and a thatched roof
that certain vermin loved!) when
suddenly, someone lets loose a blood
curdling scream. A real gut wrencher
that made the hairs on the back of your
neck stand up.
“Rat! A friggin’ rat just ran across my
chest!”
Everyone sat up, unnerved, but being the
wilds of Africa, there was no light to
turn on….just flashlights. Meanwhile as
the beams of light crisscross the cabin,
the cries are going from loud to
hysterical. “Rat! Rat! Oh, Jesus, help
me!”
You know who it was…the tough guy from
Detroit.
Naturally, no one moved an inch. And we
couldn’t help but chuckle as Mr. Muscles
actually started to cry. We’re talking
bawling here. Finally, he calmed down,
buried his head under the blankets, and
went to sleep.
The next morning he was a changed man.
Once you’ve cried just because a little
old rat ran across your chest, it’s hard
to be so high and mighty. I’m happy to
say that the incident turned him into a
great guy. From there on after, there
wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to help
out his patrol mates, or anyone else in
the camp, for that matter. Go figure!
At the end of camp, we all climbed Mt.
Kenya, which was an adventure unto
itself. Now, here’s the funny part. It
wasn’t until we were all back in Nairobi
waiting for the plane home that we
discovered that there had never been a
rat. The culprit was his bunk mate, a
real wiseacre from New York City, who’d
tied a smelly gray sock to a string and
thrown it onto the bed above him. He’d
done it just to give the guy a rise,
having no idea he was intensely
“rat-phobic.”
Boy, did we all laugh. And no one more
than the kid from Detroit.
Ah, memories.
After graduating from Harvard School, I
hightailed it back east to Georgetown
University, where I attended the School
of Foreign Service. Holding both a Swiss
and American passport, and having spent
nearly every summer abroad, I thought
the school would be ideal for me and I
was right. My four years in D.C. were
among the most stimulating in my life.
Where else could you enroll in a seminar
with newly retired Fed Chief Arthur
Burns and at the same time, work on Ted
Kennedy’s presidential campaign. I’ve
since grown more conservative in my
politics, but I’ll tell you one thing.
The Democrats have all the good looking
girls! Sorry, Laura Ingraham.
While at Georgetown, I joined Delta Phi
Epsilon, the national foreign service
fraternity, though in truth the only
service we provided was in throwing
outstanding parties for the Georgetown
campus community and our adored sister
schools, Mt. Vernon and Marymount. I
didn’t quite make Phi Beta Kappa. I
think my “D” in Financial and Security
Markets took care of that. But I did
graduate with honors in history, earning
the W. Coleman Nevils Gold Medal for
outstanding student in the field of
Diplomatic History.
So what was my first job getting out of
Georgetown? Ding. You got it. A
stockbroker. It was not a pretty sight.
Luckily, one of my clients was a friend
of George Kozmetzky, the founder of
Teledyne Corporation, and a benefactor
of the University of Texas at Austin
business school. I remember the client,
Charlie Jawetz, calling me up and
saying, “Chris, you’re a nice young
fella, but you don’t know *@#!! about
stocks and bonds! You better get to
business school before you get yourself
into trouble!”
At UT, I knuckled down and graduated
near the top of my class. By then, I was
firmly on the investment banking track.
Nothing was going to stop me from taking
my place next to Mike Milken, Ivan
Boesky, and Carl Icahn – the heroes of
the “Junk Bond” 80’s. I remember seeing
the movie “Wall Street” and thinking
that Gordon Gekko was the hero! Boy, did
I want to make money. We all did.
Looking back, it was kind of scary.
Anyway, I finally had the grades to get
the coveted interviews on Wall Street. I
remember flying up to New York for my
interview with First Boston. I’d shelled
out thirty bucks for a haircut and
bought a new navy suit. As I walked down
the carpeted hallways, I marveled at the
models of Yankee schooners lining the
walls and the shiny Quaker furniture,
guessing which office would be mine. We
ended up in a conference room and the
First Boston partner sat me down and
said, “Mr. Reich, there’s one thing we
need to discuss before we begin.”
I sat up straighter wondering if the
subject was the size of my signing bonus
or my first year’s expense account.
“Yes?”
“Actually,” he said, “I’m sorry to say
that we have no intention of hiring you.
You see, we’ve decided to cut our hiring
class in half, and we just don’t have
any room for a marginal graduate from
the University of Texas.”
Before I go on, I forgot to tell you
something. This interview took place the
week after the crash of 1987. The white
shoe firms were sticking with the tried
and true grads out of Harvard, Wharton,
Stanford, and Northwestern. I argued
that my grades were nearly perfect and
that I had written an award-winning
thesis about the deregulation of the
London banking establishment. He replied
that while my grades at UT were in fact
outstanding, my marks at Georgetown (a
mere 3.5) were clearly subpar and left
much to be desired.
Remember, Tom Cruise in Risky Business
slipping on those Ray Ban sunglasses
after he flunked the interview for
Princeton? “Looks like it’s University
of Illinois!” That was me as I left the
office in New York City. Slipping on my
black aviators, I headed up Park Avenue
saying, “Looks like it’s Geneva,
Switzerland!”
You see, like every smart grad, I had a
back up offer all set up. Mine was with
the Union Bank of Switzerland. The
salary wasn’t the $80,000 plus bonus I’d
been expecting. More like $33,000 in a
city that was even more expensive than
New York. It was there in Geneva on my
second day at work that I got the
inspiration for my first novel,
Numbered Account.
It was the best move I ever made.
If you want to learn more about why I
became a writer, you can read my little
piece about “Writing
Numbered Account.”
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