Interview with Jesse Masyr

Interview with Jesse Masyr

Masyr, Jesse ; Gashurov, Irene

Harpur College – Seventies alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in law; Harpur College – Alumni on Harpur Law Council Board; Harpur College – Alumni in New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in Connecticut

Partner at Fox Rothschild in New York. He specializes in real estate law and is responsible for bringing legislation that permitted sidewalk cafes to Manhattan. Prior to joining the firm, Jesse was the founder of the Land Use Department and a named partner in the law firm of Wachtel Masyr & Missry LLP. He also previously served as Deputy Borough President of Manhattan, where for five years he represented the Borough President on the Board of Estimate.

2018-11-16

In Copyright

Jesse Masyr, '73.mp3

2018-11-28

Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni

80:12 minutes

Alumni Interviews
Interview with: Jesse Masyr
Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov
Transcriber: Oral History Lab
Date of interview: 16 November 2018
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(Start of Interview)

JM: 00:03
My name is Jesse Masyr. We are currently in my law firm in midtown Manhattan at 101 Park Avenue, and apparently, we are going to attempt to extract, well, the memories I have left.

IG: 00:20
Very good. And so, you graduated-

JM: 00:24
I graduated in 1971, and I enrolled in 1967 so I was in the four-year program.

IG: 00:34
So, tell us a little bit about your growing up. So where did you grow up?

JM: 00:41
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. I was born in Brooklyn. I grew up in Brooklyn, and it was actually my intention to be educated in Brooklyn, but my parents felt strongly otherwise, and that is how I sort of wind up at Harpur College. Was not my desire. I really wanted to go to school in New York City at the time. To me, everybody I knew was going either to Brooklyn College or to Queens College and but my parents felt that my parents are first generation Americans, and they were sort of very liberal, but they were but they had come about, and the McCarthy era had really scarred them in a sense that they thought my radicalization at that time would somehow go on my permanent record, and I would, I was, I was involved in 1965 particularly with something called the New York City's high school Students for peace. And they thought that that would put an anvil around me. So, my father said to me, "No, you are not going to school in New York." And so that is that is why, to me, SUNY was an inferior brand to CUNY, and not knowing anything about SUNY, had helped out to make that judgment, by the way, and that that is how I wind up in Binghamton, because I did not want to go there.

IG: 02:05
So, there was an element of fear ruling your-

JM: 02:10
Yeah, my parents, my parents really felt that, you know that it would be go on my record, and at some time later on, when I was looking to join the professional ranks of the world, somebody will remember the hardest it is to imagine that in 1965 I was part of a number of peace demonstrations and walk outs and demonstrations against the Marines, all kinds of embarrassing things that I did as a youth.

IG: 02:35
Where did you go to high school?

JM: 02:39
Lafayette High School, which does not exist anymore. They closed it because it was, it was a substandard school when I went to it, and it got worse as the years went on.

IG: 02:55
What were your-your parent’s expectations?

JM: 02:59
Very simple. The you-you had you had a choice. Growing up in my family, you could become a doctor or a lawyer, and I failed at becoming a doctor, and therefore I defaulted in becoming a lawyer. My brother was successful.

IG: 03:14
He is a doctor.

JM: 03:16
Well, I do not think so. He is an oral surgeon, so they never counted to me, but, but he did go to Columbia Physicians and Surgeons for his dental degree. So that was winning. The odd thing is, my brother's five years older than I am, and he was still living at home, going to at that time, he was actually going to pharmacy school before he went to dental school, it was okay for him to go to school in New York because he was never political. Had no interest in anything of that nature, and so I did, and my parents said, you are out. So, it was weird that my brother was still there. But I have often said "My brother was an only child."

IG: 03:52
[laughs] So they-they had the idea of Harpur College or?

JM: 04:02
No, they-

IG: 04:03
How did you come upon?

JM: 04:04
Well, because my parents, I was in a lower middle-class family, so I was not going to be able to go to a private school. And so, the other thing to me was, was just state school, and I did all the research myself. So, it to me, it was the choices, not doing a lot of research, was either I was going to go to either Stony Brook, Albany or Binghamton. Buffalo, I never would have considered because it is in another country, as far as I could tell, and I did not want to go to Stony Brook. It was Long Island, and I had enough experience with kids from Long Island not realizing they were all going to Harpur. When I got to Harpur, I had complete culture shock, because I thought Binghamton, I would be meeting people, basically, who were more intimate with cows than anything else. And then I realized it was a New York City Long Island School.

IG: 04:05
Yes.

JM: 04:07
Although nobody from my high school went there, but virtually no one from my high school went to college. So, it was not the real issue.

IG: 05:08
So, what was the reputation? You really did not have too much to go on if you thought it was a cow school.

JM: 05:15
Yeah, I thought it was a cow school. I really did.

IG: 05:17
So-so when you arrived. And so did you have an idea that you would want to be a lawyer when you-

JM: 05:24
No-no, I know- no, because there really was not- the lawyer was sort of the failure. You were going to be a doctor because I was Jewish and that there was no other alternative, you know, that, or a rabbi. And I had gotten that. That had passed when I was 13. I did not do that anymore, and so I took two years of science. I was a science major my first two years, and by the end of my second year, I think I was on academic suspension or threatening suspension. I was I was a failure in science. I was complete, and I changed majors and graduated with a history degree and a GPA low well enough to get me into law school. I basically aced the last two years, but the last two years, it is interesting that you mentioned, it is 1970 1971 and there was a lot of disruption in the school at that point. 1970 in the spring semester, is Kent State. And the school shut down. And then in 19- in my senior year, I was involved in something called the college volunteer program to combat drug abuse, and was a founder of something I do not know if it still exists at Binghamton, called High Hopes, which was which was a drug. It was a crash pad, as far as I can tell. But at that in 1970 before he went totally [inaudible] crazy, Nelson Rockefeller was going to cure everybody before he decided in 1971 to put everybody in jail forever. And so, he funded something called the college volunteer program to combat drug abuse, and funded each of the universities, and I became one of the initial directors and founders, of which we named High Hope sarcastically, and set up the drug clinic, and then spent my life that my senior year, going around Broome County talking about the evils of drugs, which was about as ironic and sarcastic.

IG: 07:33
So, what was this program? What did it promote? Was it abstinence?

JM: 07:39
No-no-no, we drugs were still good then.

IG: 07:44
Yeah.

JM: 07:44
I mean, and it was really about people having bad LSD trips.

IG: 07:50
Right.

JM: 07:50
And so, we were behind. I do not even know if these structures, I have been back to school. Four years ago, there was a post office building near Student Center, and the back of that was given to us as basically a place where people were having a problem with the drugs, they took that we could sort of walk them through that and calm them down.

IG: 08:13
So, you, but you, it was not like a methadone [crosstalk]

JM: 08:16
No-no-no-no. We did not. We did not. That was not really-

IG: 08:20
Medicinal.

JM: 08:21
-a real problem that was, you know, in 1970 it was more about people taking Angel Dust and people taking LSD and then going, it was hard to get mushrooms, very hard. We could talk about that. It was always rumored that somebody had them. But it never was. They always had LSD, because it was very available, because the it was a real, able source near Binghamton for LSD, which was Cornell. Cornell graduate chemistry students were in the manufacturing business in the (19)70s, (19)60s and (19)70s.

IG: 08:59
I am awestruck. That is related.

JM: 09:05
That is why I made the reference to you better [crosstalk] yes.

IG: 09:08
So-

JM: 09:11
That is why there is such a great, famous, Grateful Dead concert that occurs-

JM: 09:15
Yes

JM: 09:16
-at Binghamton at that point.

JM: 09:17
Yeah-

IG: 09:17
In in 1968 or-

IG: 09:17
Yeah, 1960

JM: 09:22
No.

IG: 09:22
No?

JM: 09:23
No. It was later. It was later. The famous Dick's picks concert, I think, is (19)70.

IG: 09:30
I see. So, what was the apart from, you know, this kind of, I do not know. What was it, an anti-drug, drug culture, what were some of the topics of conversation among your friends and yourself? What-what did you I mean, apart from-

JM: 09:57
Well, I mean-

IG: 09:58
-the usual, you know, dating, what-

JM: 10:00
Well-

IG: 10:00
What are the political sort of you know-

JM: 10:03
There was that huge cloud hanging over all of us, because all of us were now living under the yoke of that that our student deferments from the draft would expire upon graduation and going to graduate school, with the exception of going to medical school, you would lose your exemption. And so, the Vietnam War was hung over most of discussions, because it was not, it was not popular, as they make the hope that does not come as too much of a surprise. And so, remember this Kent State, so I was very political at the time. I do not think the school was very political.

IG: 10:46
Really?

JM: 10:47
I did not sense that. I mean, there were a lot of people there who were what I would call straight and were not involved in that, were not involved in the drug culture not involved in the anti-war movement at all. Kent State, I thought was-was surprising that galvanized the students to strike, although, if history, if I remember, by the time the students decided to strike, the faculty had already shut the school in protest. So, the faculty was probably more radical than the student body was.

IG: 11:24
What you know-

JM: 11:28
And (19)68 remember also is the year that a lot of us went and worked for Gene McCarthy.

IG: 11:34
I did not know that.

JM: 11:35
Yes, and it was to my parents love and joy. I actually cut off my hair in the famous go clean for Gene movement.

IG: 11:47
That must have pleased them.

JM: 11:49
Momentarily.

IG: 11:50
Momentarily. How did you, I mean, how did you, you know, find that opportunity to work for Gene McCarthy? Is that something that I mean, you just said New Yorker, you probably-

JM: 11:56
No-no. It was somebody on campus who was, who I remember, I think, who I know is no longer alive, who was politically active and much more attuned to being anti-war, and it was really an anti-Lyndon Johnson sentiment more than anything else, and enlisted a lot of us as volunteers to go work for Gene McCarthy. And I do remember the great celebration the night that Lyndon Johnson announced he was not running for reelection. It was an instant partner.

IG: 12:40
Right. So, I mean, what was your platform? I mean, what was a platform that you supported essentially anti-war and-

JM: 12:49
Not sending me to Vietnam? was my platform. I mean, I was, it was one of complete self-interest.

IG: 12:57
But do you think that there was sort of, you know, pervasive era of anxiety that many of the male students experienced.

JM: 13:09
I think there was, for a lot of reasons, there was anxiety. I think there was a feeling that the youth, our youth, was seen as threatening to social structure, that lot of people saw us as an enemy, in essence, disrespectful, disruptive. And I do remember—it is funny what memories you have, and maybe they get manufactured. But I do remember when-when Kent State occurred walking through the Student Center, and the song that was blasting over and over and over again was Jefferson airplanes, Volunteers of America, and we are all outlaws in the eyes of America. And I think that was a feeling that a lot of us, I certainly had, that feeling that we were seen as disrupting the social fabric that our parents and had sort of instructed us to obey, and we were being disobedient, and the rallies and the anti-war movement, the demonstration in Washington against the Pentagon. I mean, I think those were seen as us versus them kind of events.

IG: 14:35
So it was, you know, a rebellion against your parents, you know ideals or value expectations.

JM: 14:45
Not so much their ideals, but their but their social structure, their standards. This is how you behave, and you do not stick your head up that much above the fence post, because you make it slap down.

IG: 14:58
That is. Very much an immigrant mentality.

JM: 15:02
No, I understand you remember, they are first generation, and they are from, they are Jewish, and everybody who did not come over got exterminated. And so, there is sort of that I understood that growing up, and I grew up in a hard to believe in Orthodox Jewish community, and I did not. I really perceived that being Jewish began with the Holocaust. There was no history before the Holocaust. That is all I heard about; all I was taught about it. It permeated everything, including expectations of what your future could be.

IG: 15:40
Right, and that and that, you know, that probably felt at some point as a burden as well.

JM: 15:48
No question about it.

IG: 15:49
Um, so you know what was the new order that you were hoping to bring about?

JM: 15:58
You are giving us way more credit than we would ever have deserved. I do not think there was that I least could not articulate at that time, and I do not remember anybody articulating to me an alternative solution, other than Lyndon Johnson should not be president. I do not think there was I certainly as I evolved later on. But I do not think there was an anti-Nixon feeling before. It was just got Lyndon Johnson out of office. He was killing us. He was doing this war that was just taking us away and slaughtering us.

IG: 16:35
So, you just wanted to be kind of unshackled from these figures and from your parental, you know, expectations, but you did not really, I mean, you did not sort of, you know, see what a future would be like.

JM: 16:56
Certainly, was not that skilled or motivated, [crosstalk] to have those expectations, I mean. And frankly, the last thing, if I was given a list of things to check off, the last thing I would have been able to check off that I was going to be a lawyer really caught me by surprise.

IG: 17:18
Before we talk about that. Who were some of the faculty that made an impression on you? Was there anybody who really stood out in your memory and then kind of determined you to-

JM: 17:37
I cannot say that. I do call one history professor that I thought was one of the most brilliant people I had ever met. His name, his name was Africa [Thomas W. Africa]. He was an ancient history professor. But that is really do not have much more recollection than that.

IG: 17:57
So, you do not, you know, you do not remember that your academics kind of really opened your eyes to seeing the world in a different way.

JM: 18:06
No. [crosstalk] It was purely the social I grew up in, this sort of Brooklyn essence came up there and was extremely liberated, because I was first time, I did not have parental control, and I was with other people who similarly felt that way. And so, it was clearly the socialization that that molded changed me more than the academics. No, plus the fact I was not really particularly great at academics or science, for sure.

IG: 18:41
But you became great at academics.

JM: 18:44
I became great at succeeding at academics.

IG: 18:47
I see.

JM: 18:47
I think, I think there is a difference.

IG: 18:50
There is a difference, there is a difference. There is a difference. But so, have you kept in touch with any of your fellow students?

JM: 19:03
Only by coincidence.

IG: 19:04
By coincidence.

JM: 19:05
Yeah, that we sort of met later on, did not keep did not keep continual touch, and then somehow, professionally or socially, “You went to Harpur?" "Yes-yes, yeah." Do not even remember them and being at Harpur at the time I was at Harpur. They were not in the social scene I was in. So, I do have friends that are from Harpur in the same time I was there, but they were not friends of mine when I was at Harpur. And those people that I am was friendly with, unfortunately, are not alive. I was very friendly, extremely friendly with a guy who-who unfortunately has the same answer, the same ending, to the people I was to the people I was closest to. Both died from drug related deaths. One, his name was Rick Juan, who unfortunately made the Today Show, because right after graduation, literally right after graduation, he got on a plane, went to Amsterdam, and within 24 hours, had died of an overdose of heroin. And then the other was. The name was Alan Goldstein, who became a doctor, a surgeon, but had a lifelong addiction problem, and ultimately died of liver disease that was created by his lifelong drug addiction. And he had he was a drug addict while he was a doctor, which shows you how brilliant he must have been.

IG: 20:39
No, well, I mean, it is an addiction. It is a disease.

JM: 20:43
Then he had had a terrible car accident one night after leaving the hospital, because he was drugged up and got-got really badly hurt. And I think that ultimately was the cause, the predicate cause, of his death. So, the two people I were closest to no longer alive.

IG: 21:04
Do you think the drug use back then was different than you know, people knew less probably about addiction?

JM: 21:20
I think, I think I had a pretty I think I had a pretty good-

IG: 21:23
No?

JM: 21:24
No. I think I had a pretty good idea of the level of drugs that were being used at the time I was going to school, and I do not recall the heavy, dangerous drugs being used. There was a lot of not marijuana, believe it or not, there was a lot of hash. I never really understood that, but it was a hash school, and there was a lot of hallucinogenic. There- people were not going around with lots of barbiturates or heroin. There always is heroin, but it was not prevalent. And to the extent that there were amphetamines, they were more obviously, more valuable around finals than at any other time.

IG: 22:16
I assume that they are still

JM: 22:18
And-and people those days remember, amphetamines where-where you could get them legally. So, everyone was stealing their mother's extra drill and, you know, bringing it up to school. But I did not perceive drugs at that time to be there were- no opiates were not prevalent. There was the beginning of the synthetic drugs that were coming on the-the Angel Dust, the MDA, which was fucking people up quite-quite much, but it was just beginning. It was not as prevalent.

IG: 22:55
when you know, did people talk about Timothy Leary, yeah. Were you interested in that kind of mind, expensiveness-?

JM: 23:05
Very-very much-

IG: 23:07
-experience.

JM: 23:08
Very much so in 1969. No, the summer of 1970--Alan and Rick and myself went cross country to go out to San Francisco, to track down Owsley, who was the great manufacturer of LSD out in San Francisco. So, yeah, it was something I was, I was interested in. I was, by nature, though, too much of a chicken to ever develop a drug problem,

IG: 23:41
Right-right-right. Well, you know, that is, that is very interesting. So, you know, but you, you were not a hippie, and because you aspired to this very kind of establishment, and uh-

JM: 24:00
I think I would have wanted to be, yeah, but I could not, because of the, you know, from the time I was five years old, yeah, there was either become a professional or-or you would have to be somehow, put on a boat, set a fire.

IG: 24:14
Exactly.

JM: 24:16
Yeah. So yeah, I would have loved to be hippie.

IG: 24:18
Yeah. You would have loved to yeah too, yeah, because you did not drop out, you just kind of dabbled.

JM: 24:24
Yeah.

IG: 24:24
Yeah, it was-

JM: 24:25
Yeah.

IG: 24:26
-dabbled. So how do you think your classmates would remember you from that from the years at Harpur College?

JM: 24:39
Annoying.

IG: 24:41
How so?

JM: 24:47
I just-just use my general reaction. I think I was a little bit pushy, perhaps manipulative. You know, I mean, I manipulated myself into this directorship of this drug clinic as a means. The real reason I became director of drug clinic is it gave me an opportunity to come back to school in August. And at that point, staying at home in my house was intolerable. It was literally intolerable. My parents took one look at me. You know, my hair, which fortunately I had then, as opposed to this thing. But then it grew this way. It did not go that way. I mean, I never got it to be long, but it would go out and out and out, and so that would just drive them crazy. And from an early age, I from the time I was 13 years old, I was living in Greenwich Village. The music had caught me. The folk music era of that time had captured me.

IG: 25:48
Where did you listen to? Where did you go?

JM: 25:52
I went to you had delicate balance in the village then, because you could only go to a place that did not serve alcohol, because you are underage, significantly underage. So, there was the Gaslight Cafe, which was on McDougall Street, but it was until later that was able to go to the bitter end. And the village van, the Village Gate, which is no longer there. I actually have helped redevelop it so it was there, and it was the cafe walk across the street where you could go to so I could listen to Tom Paxton. I saw Bob Dylan, and I got addicted to that. I mean, I to the point that my father, I think, rightfully, felt like he wanted to kill me. Because how many times can you play that thing over and over and over and over and over again. And so that music really was the changing point for my enlightenment, and listening to Phil Ochs. And then when I was in high school, on the high school paper, I actually my next-door neighbor was an accountant for a guy named Grossman, who was manager of Dylan, Peter, Paul, Mary, number other people. So, he got me interviews with-with performers, Eric Anderson, Philip and I wrote these up for my high school newspaper. So, these were, you know, idols to me, but I was, that is where I was spending all my time. So, my parent’s joke, just really, and my brother was, you know, listening to, you know, 45 rock and roll, and that had no interest to me whatsoever.

IG: 27:37
Right. Well, they, were, you know, the really, the- these Balladeers were the voice of change, you know, and, and also of kind of building, not camaraderie. What is this word that I am looking for among the young people, right? They-

JM: 28:02
I think it is camaraderie. I think it is a shared purpose, or shared ideal, I mean, and also, really what it was-was a rejection of the status quo. And, you know, the gray flannel road was not, was not the road that you had to take. And they were talking about an alternative, and I was completely hooked on that idea.

IG: 28:28
But that alternative was artistic-artistic. It was liberal. It was-

JM: 28:35
Yeah, it was liberal, it was political. It was rejecting the past, that the norms of the past are not necessarily in concrete and they do not have to be adhered to. And you can change things. You have that ability, and therefore you do not have to subscribe to, eventually, the life I live, but nonetheless, you have to subscribe to go off and find a job and find your place in society. That is the norm. I say that in all due respect, sitting here in a law firm that I am a major partner in.

IG: 29:19
Right-right-right.

JM: 29:21
Well, you know, there was a point in my life when I found that you could buy things with money, and so it became somewhat more important.

IG: 29:25
So, did that? You know, when did that point come?

JM: 29:30
After law school.

IG: 29:31
After Where did you go to law school?

JM: 29:35
I went to law school Tulane in New Orleans. And so, you may ask, why does a nice Jewish boy who was, who was dumb enough to go to school in Binghamton, where the sun never shines, go to where the sun, unfortunately never, not does not shine. And-

IG: 29:51
Maybe that is the reason.

JM: 29:52
No that was not the reason. I went to Tulane to avoid going to the army. It is you- it is a short story, and I will make it as short as possible. As you probably have researched and noticed there was a lottery system, and I had not a particularly good number in the lottery. In fact, in May, no before May, in April of my last year, I got my letter from Selective Service telling me that I was about to be reclassified and I was going to be drafted, and I will save you all the details, unless you want them. The reason I picked New Orleans is new the way the draft worked was that every draft board had a number of people that had to supply. If your number, was you had to take a simple example. You had to supply 100 people. If 100 people enlisted, nobody got drafted out of that draft board, “Okay,” so I had done extensive research on how I was not going to go to the to the army, and Louisiana had a process which was subsequently declared illegal, but fortunately not at the time that first time, felony offenders in New Orleans were given the choice of enjoying the hospitality of the Louisiana penal system or enlisting. So, by the time I got down to New Orleans, I had already been drafted. I kept on bouncing them back and forth saying, I am in Binghamton. I was drafted out of Brooklyn. Oh, we will send it up to Binghamton. When I got to Binghamton, I was already back in New York, and send it back to New York. And then eventually I went down to New Orleans. I went to register you had to go when you changed jurisdiction, at the draft board. And I remember having all my documents because I had a second way I was going to get out of the draft if the first way did not work. And I went to register it in Louisiana and New Orleans at the draft board. And I think my number was 110 and the guy looked at me and he said, "Get out of here." Would not even take me said "Get out of here. We are not going to get to 60," and that is why [crosstalk] I had no [crosstalk]

IG: 31:55
How did you feel? How did you feel when he said-

JM: 31:58
I felt ecstatic because I did not have to use my backup, which was I also worked on extensively to have a backup.

IG: 32:06
Which is a backup?

JM: 32:07
There was a, there was a great doctor in New York called Alan Sorrell--long gone, who was a specialist, an allergist, a specialist in inducing asthma attacks to get you not out of the draft, but it would get you a deferment for six months. And so, he was able to induce in me a series of asthma attacks that I had to get certified by a hospital because they knew Sorrell was a no-good nick.

IG: 32:35
How do you induce an asthma attack?

JM: 32:37
He- I guess the same way in theory, how you build up resistance to an allergen. But he did it in the opposite. He broke down my resistance. And ultimately what he had determined I was most allergic to was cat dander. And if you are allergic to cat dander, you are particularly allergic to kittens who produce more dander. And so, he I do not through a series of shots. I have never asked him, never asked him why. He then said to me, I think you are ready. "Come in next Thursday." I came in next Thursday, and he had two Persian kitten, Persian kittens, and he locked me in the closet with the two kittens. And it was like when these senior once is opening up “You okay." I could feel myself drowning, literally drowning, and then when I could barely breathe, he said- he was on 30th and Second Avenue, and NYU hospital right across the street. He said, "Okay, you are ready go to the emergency room." And that is so I had my asthma attack.

IG: 33:35
I see, I see, but it was temporary-

JM: 33:37
Yeah.

IG: 33:38
Any-

JM: 33:39
Yeah.

IG: 33:39
-lasting-

JM: 33:40
But that is how I went too late. I had no expectation; I was going to be able to succeed at law school. Because I thought law school was going to be hard, and little did I know law school was at an intellectual level for me, at least of what I would call junior high school.

IG: 33:58
Really?

JM: 33:59
College was much, was much tougher to get through the courses at Binghamton than it was at law school. Law school was purely regurgitation. You just read it vomited right back at them. And, “Wow, you are brilliant."

IG: 34:13
Right-right. And so, you did this right after college.

JM: 34:16
I went directly I was- started too late in 1971 and graduated in (19)74.

IG: 34:24
Your brother was no longer of draft age.

JM: 34:27
Oh no, he was in medical school. He was dental school--got you, got you an exemption.

IG: 34:34
Right-right-right-right. Did you share your strategy for avoiding the draft with any of your friends?

JM: 34:42
Yes.

IG: 34:43
Good.

JM: 34:44
All of them.

IG: 34:45
All of them.

JM: 34:45
This was a team effort. I mean, everybody had a thing they were doing to get out of the track. Some of the people I remember going to school with went to dental school, although they did not really want to, because that was some. Went to podiatry school, which apparently got you eligible for not going to the draft. Those things did not really appeal to me.

IG: 35:11
What you know, what role did- what were your I do not know women. They were part of, certainly your, you know, you know, rebellious, rebel, student rebellion. But how did you? Did you during that period when you know you wanted to see the world differently, and did you look at women differently? I mean, did you your expectations of what their role was, or did you still look at women and think, "Well, you know, this is going to be a girlfriend, and then eventually a wife or a partner?"

JM: 35:54
Yeah.

IG: 35:54
And then-

JM: 35:55
I did not have-

IG: 35:56
You did not have.

JM: 35:57
-very progressive new vision of what women were.

IG: 36:01
What- I had not asked you before, what did your parents do?

JM: 36:06
My father was in the garment manufacturing business. My mother was a bookkeeper.

IG: 36:12
I see.

JM: 36:12
My father was sick my entire life. He had as a young child, develop scarlet fever before the invention of penicillin, and in those days, it could kill you, and if it did not kill you, it scarred your heart muscle. So, he had heart disease the entire time I knew him. He died at a very early age of congestive heart failure, just right after I graduated law school, he died.

IG: 36:40
but he got to see you a lawyer.

JM: 36:43
Not really by the time, by the time I came back to New York, which was a year after graduating law school, I disappeared for a year after graduating law school, because the idea of being a lawyer had no appeal to me whatsoever. I mean, I have to caution you by telling you-you have not asked me what I do as a lawyer.

IG: 36:44
Oh, I have not [crosstalk]

JM: 36:54
I was extremely, very different kind of practice, and I am one of those few lawyers you will ever meet who actually loves what he does. It is to me, it is a, it is a hoot, what I do for a living, and cannot believe I get paid to do it a lot of money too. But I did not want to be a lawyer after I graduated from law school, so I went to Europe for a year.

JM: 37:30
Oh, where did you go?

JM: 37:39
Mostly throughout France, and then stayed in Spain for about seven months, at a time when it was extremely cheap and Franco was still in charge of Spain, and so being an American was hardship.

IG: 37:56
Yeah-yeah. This was in the mid– (19)70s.

JM: 37:59
1974. I was- I only regret that I was in Paris when Nixon resigned. I think I would have enjoyed seeing that here, but I spent 1974 in Europe and came back in (19)75 and by that time, my father was really about to die. He was months away from death, and so he could not attend my swear. To my amazement, to my utter shock and amazement, I had passed the bar exam. I mean, I took the bar exam and figured this was bullshit. I was not passing this, and somehow, I passed it, and so I came back, got it, got admitted, which is a cute story, but and then my father was too ill to attend my swearing in, into the bar, and they never saw any of the early success I had, which I had a remarkable early success at the age of 29.

IG: 39:00
What was a remarkable- I am so sorry?

JM: 39:05
I was, I was appointed deputy borough president of Manhattan at age of 29 which was, and still is, the youngest person ever in the history city to be appointed to that position. And when I left it in 1983 at the age of 33 to this day, nobody, even at the age of 33 has ever been appointed to that position.

IG: 39:26
What did you do in that position? What did it entail?

JM: 39:29
The city of New York, back until 1986 was governed by a body called the board of estimate, which was made up of the five borough presidents, one from each borough. The mayor, the controller, is something called the City Council President, which does not exist anymore, and they govern the city of New York. The City Council of the City of New York had no authority at all, and so I represented the borough president on the board of estimate. He never went in all the years I was there, he never showed up once the principals did not really show up. It was run by staff, and so I was essentially the governing power of New York at the age of 29.

IG: 40:09
What kind of decisions did you make?

JM: 40:10
We decided all land use matters and all contracts, all land use matters development in the city, and all contracts greater than $10,000. We met every other Thursday in public session. We would start at 10am and it would run to about three o'clock in the morning. In 1986 the United States Supreme Court ruled the board of estimates unconstitutional because the borough president of Brooklyn had as much had the same vote as the borough president of Staten Island, despite having five times the population, and that violated the one person one vote law, and so the board was declared unconstitutional--was abolished, abolished 1986 but from 1979 to 1983 I sat on the board.

IG: 40:58
What kind of things did you accomplish?

JM: 41:02
We changed a lot about the way Manhattan is developed. We shifted development from the east side to the west side, part of recapturing 42nd street Times Square area from the sewer. It had become - And this was also a very heavy time, because New York had was emerging out of its bankruptcy. And so, it was coming back alive. And the it was just to be in that position at that time, was by grace.

IG: 41:38
You loved it. It was-

IG: 41:40
Right.

JM: 41:40
And it is-

IG: 41:40
Because New York City is so dynamic.

JM: 41:40
And, yeah, and when you do it at my level, you are you have the great ego satisfaction of carving into the city of New York so I can show my fingerprints, which is kind of egocentric.

JM: 41:40
It was fantastic. The only problem is, the person I worked for was a complete lunatic, and I needed to leave. I mean, the idea that I left, it was people, "What do you mean? You are leaving this job." I mean, the reason I have a beard, by the way, yeah, is I was 29 years old, and I had 109 or 113 staff, of which all but three were older than me. So, I needed to look older quicker. So, I grew a beard, which I kept. I left because I could not take the craziness any longer. He was just he was so irresponsible, and he had wanted nothing to do with the job. He loved running for office. He hated serving in office. Running is fun. Serving is-is not fun. I mean, actually, doing the job is work. And he did not come from the world of work. He came from the world of campaigning. And so, after a while, I just could not take it any longer. And this was just I wanted enough of it. But by that time, I had learned something which, because I had voice, I had not practiced law yet. It was 10 years after law school. I still had not been a lawyer, and I was a political hack and but I had learned the development world and the land use world of New York, and where I sit here today is one of the more prominent land use attorneys in New York City. So, buildings, shopping centers, apartment houses, radical changes in the infrastructure of the city I am a part of. And to me, I come to work every day, and I know what I am doing to do today is not what I am going to do yesterday, and it will not be what I am doing tomorrow.

JM: 42:07
Wonderful.

JM: 42:10
Yeah-

IG: 43:35
It is wonderful.

JM: 43:38
And-

IG: 43:39
Have you- I am just curious, have you met Trump? And uh-

JM: 43:43
I know I am in Donald, if you do the research, I am in Donald's first biography.

IG: 43:48
Oh wow.

JM: 43:48
I knew Donald well in the- when I was when I was the deputy borough president, because at the time, he was in a war with the Leona Helmsley, and we were also, now you have gone on this road. [crosstalk] You may end this, but my boss's father, lawyer, and confidant, and who I got to know fairly well was somebody I am sure you have never heard of Roy Cohn, so we knew Roy really well, and I spent a lot of time in Roy's office. As a result of that, Donald was Roy's client also. So, while we were never friends with the Helmsleys, we were by nature friendly with Donald. And when Donald tried to build a convention center on the west side for freak on the condition to be named after him, we were advocates of Donald's. And when he got into his spat with Leona, we sort of came out on his side. I. And then, when I eventually became a land use lawyer, I just recently had met up with a former associate of mine who worked for me at the time, and we remembered the story. We spent two and a half hours in Donald's office. He called me up one day because he knew me and I knew him. He said, "Come over the office. I want to hire you." In fact, he had no intention hiring me. He was, he was having a fee dispute on how surprising with his lifelong lawyer, and so he wanted to sort of let the word go out that he was maybe going to move his business to me. And we spent two and a half hours in his office, which I remember, we talked Deborah and I, who was my, she was my urban planner then; we talked about it, that we had the same memory, that it was an office filled with photographs of him, and he showed off to us for two and a half hours. Now, I am nobody, you know, we are two hairdressers that show up and wait a minute, I have to call Kathie Lee, because she just gave birth, and apparently, she had just given birth and in front of us, he was doing this, and I remember vividly, so now send me a retainer. I am going to build the world's largest building in downtown on the waterfront. There was a site called two bridges that the city was actually thinking of developing at the time. And I remember going down the infamous escalator in Trump Tower, and my associate turned to me and said, I will never forget she looked at me, said, "Not for you." And so, we never sent him the retainer, and that was probably the last time I spoke to him, because he called me up about a week later. He said, "Where is the retainer?" He said, "Retainer." I said, "I am sorry. I will get it out to you immediately." I lied, and that is last time I spoke to Donald.

IG: 46:43
What do you I mean, that is really fascinating? I did not know this about your professional background. What do you think are, you know the qualities that owe to your great success? You know what-what is it a predisposition? Is it an ability to I mean, you have demonstrated this by how you found an out from the draft, um-

JM: 47:19
Doing development in New York is difficult because it is supposed to be it should not be easy. I think I have an ability to do two things. One, I can see the finish line and figure out how to get there, how to how to navigate through the process, and the key to this is try to convince people that they want what you are suggesting and you want because nobody really wants change.

IG: 47:56
I mean, how do you do that? How do you how do you convince people that they want what you are suggesting.

JM: 48:03
Well, I mean, the first is an inherent idea in New York that we will constantly evolve and it could be worse. So, I am providing you something that could be better, and try to position that there is merit in what you are doing. And part of it, by the way, what is essential in, it is actually believing it. I do believe that it is better to do what I am proposing than not, that we are creating jobs. We create a place where people live. New York is not some Jeffersonian area where there be agriculture. We are a center of commerce, and we all have an opportunity here because of the commerce. And if you kill that, you there is no quality-of-life reason to live in New York. It is dirty, it is noisy, it is you go to sleep at night and you could read in your room without turning on the lights. There is so much ambient light here.

IG: 48:59
Right-right-right.

JM: 49:00
So, the only reason to be here, it is a place to-to be able to create enough economics to-to be able to support your life. And I think what I do furthers that, that ball, and all the years I was at deputy borough president, my position always was that, you know, that change, if managed correctly, is more beneficial than not that the that the alternative is not successful, and as God would only do because the Old Testament, God is one mean bastard. The irony of it is that hoisted on my own petard, that is how I met my-my wife of 37 years.

IG: 49:52
How do you meet her?

JM: 49:54
So, it was 1979; we were crawling out of the morass. We were still, we were still a punch line on Johnny Carson, you know the muggings.

JM: 50:08
And you were, you were already working on-

JM: 50:10
I am the deputy board president.

IG: 50:15
You were already working.

JM: 50:15
And-and one of the things that I was a big supporter of, and convinced my boss to be a big supporter of, which is going to sound crazy to you, was what was just beginning with sidewalk cafes and restaurants as a way of bringing people back to the street and increasing commerce.

IG: 50:28
It is priceless. Yeah.

JM: 50:29
And so, and we were, and I convinced him, and he even pay attention to shit. So, I was a huge supporter of sidewalk cafes, which was now becoming hard to tell you this controversial, because it was creating noise at night, which I thought was great and so but I basically had to screw you. This is how we come back from the morass. My boss, at that time, had a friendly relationship with a publisher named Ed Down, publisher McCall's magazine. He would visit him from time to time to pick up whatever you want to think he picked up. And like in every important man's office, the most important person is not the man, but his secretary, who was ever the gatekeeper is it turned out the secretary lived on West 69th Street on the west side, and she said to my boss, one day, "There is a terrible thing. There was a restaurant on the corner of 69th in Columbus called the Red Baron, and this bastard has an application for a sidewalk cafe, which will destroy life as we know it. So, can you kill it? Because we had the authority to kill it?" It was up to us. And so, he came back to see me, came back to the office. River dropping. And he said, was this cafe 69 she got to kill it, right? And I said, I asked them why? And he tells me “Head Down-Secretary, "Kill it. Kill it. Kid," I said to him, "Let us have some fun." The people on the Upper West Side did not vote for us. We, they were they. We got slaughtered upper west. I said, "Why do not we just fuck with them?" He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "The 69th Street block association is probably one of the strongest block associations. Why do not we go meet with them and we will play good cop, bad cop in front of them. You be sympathetic, and I will tell them what assholes they are." And he said, "That would never work." I said, "It is going to work". So, we go up there. They have 50 people. 50 people over a fucking sidewalk cafe. We come in there and Andrew, my boss, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, asked the question, which turned out to be brilliant. He said, "By a showing of hands, how many people here were born in New York?" There were two hands, Andrew and mine, right? So, this is the last one, and closed the door society, and they start to explain how this intrusion into the side street will just destroy life as we know it on Earth. And I go at them. I am very confrontational with that. And you people just the I mean, you all moved here. I mean, you destroyed it. On and on. We leave. Not to be surprising, on the Upper West Side, in a block Association, there is so many lawyers and so many psychiatrists. The psychiatrists decide that the borough president himself is a wonderful man. That short prick is the problem. Got to deal with the short prick. And they assign the Vice President to the block association to go lobby me, the woman who will become my wife.

IG: 53:30
Oh!

JM: 53:31
And I am as arrogant a prick as you are going to find. Get away from me. She keeps she comes see me. I think she is very attractive, obviously, I think she still is, and I am as cruel as humanly possible, because I know I am going to have to vote for them. I am going to have to do this because he is because they go back and report to the secretary. Next time he comes up to his office, she is her heads exploding. He comes back to me, goes, "What are you doing? [crosstalk] Stop it." "We will be fine. It will all be okay." And that is how I meet my wife. She comes to fight city hall, and eventually there, there is flirtation and there is friction, and then the night of the vote to every to her shock and surprise, it is like you son of a bitch, you did this to me this entire time, and from that date of the vote, we then were never apart afterwards, we got married a year later.

IG: 54:37
So, tell me a little bit about her where, what was her background? Did she-

JM: 54:42
She was-

IG: 54:42
New Yorkers?

JM: 54:43
Well, she was one of the people the room. She could not raise her hand. She was born on Long Island out near Suffolk County, and came to New York to find her way. She was in the catering business.

IG: 54:56
I see.

JM: 54:57
And she was struggling.

IG: 54:58
Yeah.

JM: 55:00
But she was having a great time living on the Upper West Side with all the other communists, Trotskyites, [inaudible] types, and she became very active in her Block Association, and that is who she was. And she had not been married. I had been married to a Harpur College, someone I met at Harpur.

IG: 55:24
I did not know. Well, of course, I mean, I did not ask, I did not ask.

JM: 55:28
She was a year behind me. We got married for no reason whatsoever, other than the fact that everyone in our social circle was getting married.

IG: 55:42
Really? That is so interesting, because on the one hand, you are social progressives-

JM: 55:46
Yeah. But-but-

IG: 55:47
Yet you are embracing marriage. And-

JM: 55:49
Yeah-yeah, I was-

IG: 55:49
-an establishment career eventually-

JM: 55:50
A complete one.

IG: 55:52
Yeah.

JM: 55:53
Complete wimp, and we got married. I have a suspicion that she, like me, never thought we should get married, but it was her family. She had come down to live with me after graduating from New Orleans, started working, helped support me in my last year in law school. And I think her parents were very-very conservative, Orthodox Jews. My current wife is Polish Catholic, and she was under enormous pressure from her parents and all my friends at that point in law school, all the social friends we had were now getting married that year. And everybody got married last year at Tulane. Because, if you were Tulane had, besides being, despite being a somewhat progressive school for southern school, had a particularly sexist point of view about scholarship money. If you were married, it was assumed that your spouse could go earn living, and therefore you were not entitled to any financial support, even if the woman you were marrying was a Tulane student, and so everybody got married in October, because financial aid had been set in September. And so similarly, we got married like everybody else in October. And six years later, we separated in New York after she graduated law school.

IG: 57:21
You had seen each other through law school and well, beginnings of your career.

JM: 57:26
Well, I did not so much see her through law school, as much as that was my justification that I could leave this relationship, that she had helped me through law school. So, I supported her through law school, and then got her a job by extortion of the using my authority I was still, I was deputy royal president when I was married to her, and I was divorced for about an hour and a half, and I was able to use my-my power to force the law department to hire which did not last, and she actually did not want to be a lawyer.

IG: 58:11
What kind of cases are you-

JM: 58:13
I am good on time.

IG: 58:15
Okay, what kind of cases are you working on now? What are some of the-

JM: 58:20
Okay. You want me to show up?

IG: 58:21
Yes.

JM: 58:24
Really, viciously honest. Probably the case of most visibility. I am going to tell you things you can all Google it. So that is-is something called Industry City, which is 30 acres of industrial property in the waterfront in Brooklyn, which is part of what we call the innovation economy, as artisanal manufacturing is flourishing in New York. And we are really the incubator there, and we are changing the land use there. To give you five seconds about American land uses. We are what I would call junkyard zoning. The idea was always to take the dirty uses and put them as far away from the residential uses, and then gradually the uses, the less and less intense, come to merge in the middle. What we have learned is we do not want to live that way anymore in the 21st century, our-our manufacturing is not as dirty as it once was, because we do not do dirty things anymore. In America, we do not manufacture foundries. So-so the idea that you have to separate that from where people live is not the same reason, and now people want to live closer to where they work now. And also, manufacturing is now part of academics. I mean technology, technology schools are, colleges are very much a part of the new innovation economy. And so, the zoning basically says, "Well, if you do heavy manufacturing, you cannot do any of these other uses nearby." And what we are doing at Industry City is saying, for the first time in New York, "No, we are going to change that." We are going to actually be able to bring academics into manufacturing so they can coexist. And so, the guy who is the, you know, the glass blower is our artisanal we are the largest maker of drones is there an Industry City?

IG: 1:00:24
Where is industry city?

JM: 1:00:26
Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which is along the water. So-

IG: 1:00:32
How interesting. And what are the schools involved in this?

JM: 1:00:36
Well, we do not have one.

IG: 1:00:36
You do not have one.

JM: 1:00:36
We do not have one because we are not permitted. So, we believe, so far, the only Mellon has come into New York and gone into the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is a city owned site. We are privately owned. We are the largest privately owned industrial site in the city. We have had, we have had significant interest from engineering schools, saying, call us when we can do this. So, we think we will be able to bring in as much as 700,000 square feet of academic uses into the manufacturing world. So that is the most interesting thing I am doing now. I am also-

IG: 1:01:20
That is fantastic. That is fantastic.

JM: 1:01:20
I am representing Brooklyn Hospital, which is the last independent hospital in Brooklyn that has not been swallowed by Mount Sinai or Columbia Presbyterian. And what we are trying to do there is stay independent there. There is a rationale why independent is better than not being independent, because when you become affiliated, it is one shop for everybody. So, we have- we were saying it is part of our propaganda, but we think it is true that we are best able to treat our unique population needs because they are not the same everywhere. Populations predominantly black and brown, and there are certain unique medical issues, but we cannot afford to stay in business, because, frankly, we do not have the wealth that Mount Sinai has and Northwell has. So, we are saying to the city of New York, look, we have this beautiful campus in Fort Greene, right next to Fort Greene Park, which is beautiful park. Let us significantly increase the permitted density on our site, and let us monetize that by selling it to developers, so we will have this pot of money that will allow us to stay alive as an independent institution. So, I have just begun that process.

IG: 1:01:22
What do you mean increased density?

JM: 1:01:22
In other words, when you own this piece of property in New York, depending on what zoning district you are in, you can build x. So, we are saying, “Let us build x up here, and we can sell this and create our own endowment without any government subsidy of cash.” So, we are doing that in Queens. I am currently working for Kauffman Astoria Studios and rezoning five blocks around them to create in Queens the first mixed use arts district that will include housing.

IG: 1:01:22
How fantastic.

JM: 1:01:22
I tell you. [crosstalk] And then I do normal shit--apartment houses in Manhattan, which, yeah, I have done, in my opinion, some of the most attractive buildings in New York, and also have been responsible for some of the ugliest things that have ever been built. And I take my daughters around and show them that.

IG: 1:01:22
Are they both lawyers?

JM: 1:01:22
No, neither one. My-my oldest daughter is a teacher, and my youngest daughter is a hippie. She is living the life that I thought I aspire to, but having seen it, I do not, do not want it, but they were great. They were both happy, and they had, you know, they were fortunate enough not to know what a college loan looked like, and I was never happier than writing tuition checks. I said to both of my kids, go to school for as long as you want. They both went to private schools, the idea they would go to SUNY was they would burn their hair first. So, my older daughter went to Hobart, which is uniquely situated between Rochester and Syracuse, a pit, and my younger daughter went to Hartwick in Oneonta. And then she did not my younger daughter did not go to any graduate school. My older daughter went to Philadelphia School of Fine Arts to get a Master's in Fine Arts and in something that I believe has not been economics since Gutenberg printmaking and. Then, fortunately, she then found what she wanted to do, came back to New York, which pleased us to no end, and went to Fordham to get her master's in education. And as I said, we have said to we always said to our kids, go to school. Not a problem. We will pay tuition and support you to go to school forever and as long as you want. And we always were sad that my younger daughter did not want to go to graduate school and still finding her way. But they both live in New York.

IG: 1:01:22
That is- you are very lucky.

JM: 1:02:05
Yeah, I am very lucky, but except for one thing, which I am extremely lucky about. So, in 1992 I was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. I had developed a stuffed nose, and I went to see an ear, nose and throat doctor who looked up my beak, and he said, you have a polyp that is huge. And he said, we have to cut it out. And at that time, I was doing this was land use lawyer, and I said, I cannot do it. Next week. I have a hearing. He said, "Not a problem. It is a polyp. It is a polyp." And he said, "We got to take a small piece of it first." And I said to him, "What is the chance it is cancer." He looked at me like there is no chance where you would need it. You are a moron. And literally, that was on a Thursday, and on Monday I got to Houston, we have a problem. Phone call. It came back hot. Is a renal clear cell carcinoma in the nth point sinus, which is a pocket of air that sits right here, where your brain sits on. And had it been benign, it would be just as dangerous, because it could grow and break something called the cribriform bone, which your brain sits on top of. And I went to three doctors, three surgeons, who said to me, the last guy gave me my check back. I will never forget that gave me my check back. And I finally found the guy at Sloan Kettering who became, ultimately the head of head and neck, John Shah. And he said, "I have never done it." He said, “Frankly, there is probably never” he said, “Nobody gets cancer there.” The first thought was, this cannot be so you must have it someplace else. So, I went through a series of tests of find that cancer, you know, and they could not find it anywhere else, and it was nowhere else because, and they said, "Okay." He said, "In theory, I should be able to do this, but it is going to take two surgical teams. We need to bring in a neurological team and-and I am the head and neck guy." Because they are going to have to flip your lid and take your body apart like you missed the potato head. 15 hours of surgery, two surgical teams, and they were able to so I have a scar that goes from here to here, oh, my God. And I have one that goes on the side of my nose. As you can see-

IG: 1:03:14
It is inconspicuous.

JM: 1:03:14
I had- I was such an arrogant prick that I said to Shah, "Do we need a plastic surgeon?" And he looked at me like, "Son, what do you think I am?" [laughs]

IG: 1:03:14
Yeah, exactly.

JM: 1:03:14
"You want a plastic surgeon." And-and I had the operation, and what it resulted in is I am somebody who has zero sense of smell, because they had to sever the olfactory nerve. And so that is, that is what that is that was the only price I paid. His brilliant surgery was able to take the tumor out. It was encapsulated, had metastasized, and I was [crosstalk]

IG: 1:08:57
Saved your life.

JM: 1:08:58
[crosstalk] saved my life. I was back at work in 30 days.

IG: 1:09:06
And that changed-

JM: 1:09:07
Nothing.

IG: 1:09:08
Nothing.

JM: 1:09:14
Because I was never sick. I mean, I have stuffed nose, I mean, I did not have, you know, cancer, the jaw.

IG: 1:09:21
You are afraid that you might die.

JM: 1:09:23
I could not believe I was going to die. What I was most afraid of, you said, because this is, you know, Jewish whining piece of shit. I was afraid of disfigurement and pain because I have zero tolerance for discomfort. And so, but I just could not get you, I mean, I was otherwise healthy. Again, I am going to die, right? Made no sense. And so, I guess I never thought I would die.

IG: 1:09:55
And you were, you were young, you were young.

JM: 1:09:57
I was 42 years old--it occurred-

IG: 1:10:00
Yeah.

JM: 1:10:00
The operation occurred to my 42nd birthday, and I lost one day of my life. I mean, I was gone for an entire day, and-and then, you know, I got punished for being the arrogant schmuck I am anyway. So-so when you have brain surgery because he had to take this bone away and drain my brain. So, the first problem they always have is that, did they put everything back correctly? And so, until-until you are, you are stable, you are under the control of the neurological team. And I, they would not, they do not hand me back to my real doctor. They had a neck doctor. So, they come in every day, [inaudible] Sloan Kettering. There is no- I am on painkiller because face, but there is nothing they do because they are just worried you are going to get an infection if you have brain surgery. And so, it is every day take a temperature, and every day they want to see if you are confused. So, what is your name? Why-why are you here? So, on the fourth day, they came in to see me, and at this point, I am fine, I am off the pain killer, and they say to me, why are you here? And I said, I just killed the Archduke Ferdinand [Irene laughs] worldwide anarchist movement. They do not say, stop it.

IG: 1:11:31
Because they lef.t

JM: 1:11:32
They back up. And next thing is, you hear footsteps. My wife is sitting there looking at me like and then you hear people running full speed into the room. So, the doctors, guys and my surgeon, the head neck guy, came to see me that night, and he looked at me, said, "You are really a jerk." He said, "You are being punished now they are not turning you over for another day". I am one of the few people you know that got expelled from Sloan Kettering. I was supposed to be there for-for three weeks, and after two weeks, they asked me to leave.

IG: 1:12:10
That is the point of honor.

JM: 1:12:11
Because there is nothing wrong with me. I do not look disfigured, right? And I am on the head and neck floor, which looks like a Fellini nightmare, yeah, people and every day you line up for treatment. It is a gulag, and there are people there that are so horribly maimed and destroyed by a hospital. Mr. So and so you look carefully, look terribly dead. You are going home, and I am there with the New York Times reading it with a cup of coffee, and they told me, we will see you tomorrow. There is nothing they could do for me. So, I started getting stoned and so and great thing is Sloane, which is on York Avenue, the people will be lined up at night, 11 o'clock at night, smoking cigarettes through the trade. And I am the last one on the line smoking a joint. They bust me in the patience lounge on the 15th floor, outside with the head of terrorists. But I am smoking a joint that point. They said, "We think you should leave the hospital." Okay? And I was dismissed a week early.

IG: 1:13:11
And you did this deliberately to get-

JM: 1:13:14
No. I was so bored.

IG: 1:13:15
You were bored.

JM: 1:13:16
I was bored beyond belief. I had visitors. The people were amazed. It was coming to visit me. The Queens borough president was seeing came to see me, the Bronx borough president. I knew all these people. They are my friends from the days working in government, and they would say to me, "What are you doing here?" I said, I have no idea. I have no tubes in me. Can you imagine being in a hospital for two weeks and they do not take blood? I think it violates a law or something.

IG: 1:13:39
Yeah, and especially when, when people are significantly-

JM: 1:13:43
But blood would not indicate. All they did was take my temperature to see if I spiked my fever. And that was, I mean, that is so I am bored to death. And every day I am walking to the Gulag, you know, for the treatment. And I there is no treatment to give me. There is nothing to do. It is done. I had a nose job, basically, the mother of all nose jobs, nonetheless. But it was a nose job. That is what I had. They took out my septum, and you boom, and I have a sinus here, that is, you know, unencumbered by chambers. And then they had a gross but they had pulled tissue, so things up, but it all was inside. And, you know, there was no post operative treatment. And walked away, and came back only a few times to the hospital because Shah was no longer interested in me. It was clear that I had survived. And so he is, he is a scientist. I am of no interest to him. So, after my second return visit, he said, "We will let the resident look at you. I would not let him operate, at least. Why am I going to let him look at me? We are done." He said, "Okay, we are done."

IG: 1:14:55
Yeah. I mean, we could talk about this. [crosstalk]

JM: 1:15:07
You graduated from Harpur things like this.

IG: 1:15:10
But that is so interesting, so interesting. And you are, you know, natural storyteller.

JM: 1:15:18
Yes, which is the ability to be a [inaudible] so I have to be I do not do this as much anymore, but I used to stand up in front of hostile communities and get them to first see that I was a human. So, it is hard to hate you. I have always told clients the magic in doing these projects is you got to keep showing up. So, the first day you show up, everyone hates you, and the second day, they still hate you. By the fourth or fifth time you are a person now, and so you got a cold, you okay, you feel all right, right, because all of a sudden you are humanized. Now, once I am humanized, I can start to tell you about my project.

IG: 1:15:59
That is actually very excellent advice to you know, young people listening to this tape, and-

JM: 1:16:10
You promised me, no one is going to listen to this tape.

IG: 1:16:12
No one is going to listen to this tape, we are going to excerpt. And you know I am thinking like, what section?

JM: 1:16:20
About Harpur and plus, I have a huge complaint you do not make Harpur paraphernalia. You only make SUNY Binghamton paraphernalia. Those of us who graduated, when we graduated, do not really tell people we went to SUNY Binghamton. It was not SUNY Binghamton when I was there.

IG: 1:16:46
No.

JM: 1:16:46
Actually, that is not true. It became SUNY Bingham while I was there. But I did not get admitted to SUNY Binghamton. And my diploma says Harpur College. I mean, so, but you do not have any paraphernalia.

IG: 1:17:01
Meaning?

JM: 1:17:03
T shirts, hats.

IG: 1:17:05
I see, I see, okay, so that that is something that we can work on.

JM: 1:17:09
The number of us who are Harpur graduates, every year or less, we like World War One veterans.

IG: 1:17:16
Yeah, I know, I know, but, but I mean that this is the way of life. But, yeah, there quite a number of you still very active. These are the people that I spoke to and-and they share your sentiment that they really identify as Harpur graduate rather than Binghamton.

JM: 1:17:33
Yeah.

IG: 1:17:35
So, you know, maybe as a concluding you-you, you certainly can conclude with any thoughts that you-

JM: 1:17:45
I have no closing statement.

IG: 1:17:47
You know, so, so what-what lessons did you learn from this period in your life that-

JM: 1:17:53
I grew up.

IG: 1:17:54
You grew up.

JM: 1:17:55
I mean, yeah. I mean it-it made me be responsible for me, yeah, which I was never before, and it was a great environment, it was safe, it was secure, and maybe it was none of that, but I certainly felt it, I did not feel I was I was so amazed that I was now responsible for going to school, and nobody was there to tell me to go to school. I mean, it sounds kind of dumb, but wow. I mean, if I do not go, no one is going to call me up and say where I was. And somehow it made me an adult. Began it began to make me adult. I do not know if I am there yet, but, but it was- I was not a child, at least anymore, and I was somewhat responsible, or at least I thought I was going to become responsible for me. And I then made my own choice without consultation with anyone that where I was going to law school, you went through the application process by so without talking to any my parents, my family, my brother, and I think I was on my way to being on my own, and I owe that to Harpur [crosstalk] and the music was good.

IG: 1:19:27
And the music was good.

JM: 1:19:28
Paul Butterfield would perform there, the Turtles. I saw the Turtles there. Saw the Grateful Dead, and then also went to Ithaca to see the Who, when they just started doing Tommy and I am old.

IG: 1:19:43
Well, you share this love with the Dean of Libraries, because I think he, he is, he is a bit younger than you.

JM: 1:19:53
So is most of the western world.

IG: 1:19:56
No, do not say that. No, and, and so he went to see the Grateful Dead. That was a very highlight of his young life. Any concluding remarks?

JM: 1:20:10
Thank you, Irene.

IG: 1:20:11
Thank you very much.

(End of Interview)

2018-11-16

Irene Gashurov

1971

Jesse Masyr

Partner at Fox Rothschild in New York. He specializes in real estate law and is responsible for bringing legislation that permitted sidewalk cafes to Manhattan. Prior to joining the firm, Jesse was the founder of the Land Use Department and a named partner in the law firm of Wachtel Masyr & Missry LLP. He also previously served as Deputy Borough President of Manhattan, where for five years he represented the Borough President on the Board of Estimate.

Audio

Harpur College – Seventies alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in law; Harpur College – Alumni on Harpur Law Council Board; Harpur College – Alumni in New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in Connecticut

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