Looking Ahead

George Conklin, CEO of Guardian Life and Former Neighbor, Dies at 90

George Taylor Conklin, Jr. was our neighbor for 57 years. He joined the Guardian Life Insurance Company in 1939, and remained in that landmarked 1911 building with the magnificent mansard roof, at the corner of 17th Street and Park Ave South, for the entire of his business life. A 25-year-old economist fresh out of Dartmouth with an AB, second in class, he also brought a joint MCS (Master of Commercial Science, precursor of the MBA, discontinued in 1953) from its Amos Tuck Graduate School of Business, superb credentials for an investment research analyst. Little did he know that for the next half a century he would be sharing our destiny, both as an executive of the area’s major employer (he rose to be its CEO), and board member of local enterprises such as the Central Savings Bank and Chemical Bank, which morphed into the Chase Morgan giant.

The young man’s career progressed, despite intervening military service. George Conklin was appointed Assistant to the dynamic President of the Guardian, James A (no period after the middle initial) McClain in 1944, and progressed to the Director of Research in 1946. He pursued a parallel academic track, earning a Ph. D. from Columbia in Finance, and another from NYU in Economics, in the interim also taking courses in the Austrian School of Economics from the refugee scholars at the New School. John Angle, one of his successor CEOs, recalls that Conklin was a follower of Benjamin Graham, author of the seminal Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor (4th ed. revised by Warren Buffet). He became an Adjunct Professor at NYU and continued for many years.

At the Guardian he became head of the Investment Department in 1949, moving through the management ranks to Executive VP, then member of the Board of Directors and head of its Investment Committee, eventually to President in 1969, CEO in 1971 and Chairman of the Board in 1977. He retired from active service in 1980, and from the Board of Directors at the end of 1995.

Over the years George Conklin also served as an officer, President or Chairman of such professional organizations as the Conference of Business Economists, American Economist Society, American Statistical Association, and National Bureau of Economic Research and the New York Chamber of Commerce and Industry Association. The President of NBER, Martin Feldstein, former head of President Reagan’s Board of Economic Advisors, remembers that George was a Director and later Chairman of the NBER, who would always be there to defend the independence of the Bureau. Another NBER director, Lawrence R. Klein, Nobel Prize laureate of 1980, remembers visits with George Conklin and Avram Kisselgoff, a fellow economist. A working colleague and friend was Franco Modigliani, another Nobelist. George Conklin’s opinions were sought at various Congressional Committees, and he appeared before industry and trade association meetings, his remarks reported in the Wall Street Journal.

George Conklin also served as a Director of Guardian subsidiaries and mutual funds, Teachers Annuity and Insurance Association, Central Savings Bank, Adelphi University, The Life Insurance Council of New York, Woodlawn Cemetery and The Solomon Brothers Center for Study of Financial Institutions.

Mutually Beneficial, a textbook by Robert E. Wright and George David Smith (NYU Press, 2004), pursuing the history of life insurance in a century of changes, using the Guardian as the case study, places George Conklin as the new arrival in a staid and hierarchical executive establishment. The company was founded by German republican revolutionaries, refugees from the 1848 revolution, George was reserved young tall academician with a penchant for practical jokes, and President Daniel Lyons was a crusty actuary. But the two found each other. Edward K. Kane, retired Executive VP, General Counsel and a fellow member of the board, remembers the triumvirate that expanded on the vision opened by the trail-breaking McClain, and cleared the company’s path to a more than a ten-fold growth in its later years – two actuaries, Lyons and Irving Rosenthal, and the economist, Conklin. George Conklin advanced economic research and was one of the industry’s leading edge figures in the investment community. He moved the company into the computer revolution and new management and decentralization concepts.

“George Conklin’s contributions to Guardian were manifold and his legacy will always be remembered,” said Dennis Manning, Guardian’s President and CEO. “He led the company into a new and larger world and dynamically upheld Guardian’s goal of enriching lives.”

The date of George Conklin’s death was November 4, 2005. He passed away at home in Port Washington, LI, with his family. The survivors include widow Julie Pokorny Conklin, a former Guardianite, and four children, Sandra Conklin-Wright, George T. Conklin III, Heather Conklin Raduazzo and Holly Conklin Graham, nine grandchildren and one great-grandson.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
You are getting this review because I was inveigled into seeing a strange movie about the Hasidim of Jerusaalem, people who live on alms, and a poor Rabbi who wanders into a rich Jews’ trading room where lemons for the lulau of tomorrow’s Succot are evaluated at 1,000 shekels ($250) while he cannot afford ano rdinary one. He needs a miracle to hold a feast, build a little tabernacle and his barren wife needs another, to produce a heir. Through the miracles of faith and prayer, the Succot materializes, and with that two escaped jailbirds from the Rabbi’s past life. Now you have a plot to follow, that challenges the Rabbi’s steadfastness, his acceptance of trials as tests of faith, his ability to walk away from fights. And miraculously, the faith is rewarded, and you walk out feeling good.

LOOKING Ahead by Wally Dobelis

You may not realize it, but this is the year of our Mozart Connection. Lorenzo da Ponte, the great Mozart librettist who was buried in our neighborhood, arrived on these shores in 1805, and in October 2005 the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies of Columbia University celebrated the 200th anniversary of da Ponte’s arrival in the US with concerts and lectures.

This Metropolitan Opera season is also giving us an opportunity to revisit Mozart’s best operas, the Lorenzo da Ponte collaborations. reenacted in the spirit of its original 18th century earthiness. This season we have Le Nozze de Figaro (1786) and Cosi Fan Tutte (1790), skipping Don Giovanni (1787). The Mozartian maids and men nowadays must be in good voice as well as lithe, athletic and good actors willing to mix it up, which includes the occasional clutching, patting and rolling on the stage in a passionate embrace, to fully bring out the robustness of the environment for which the operas were created, that of intermingling aristocrats and servants of old Middle Europe, totally unlike the Upstairs Downstairs world of the class-conscious Victorian isles.

The originator of the literary genre was a rascally French watchmaker turned inventor, financier, courtier and social protester, playwright, Pierre Augustin Beaumarchais, six times married, always in the midst of suing and being sued, occasionally jailed and exiled. His circle of humorous plays debunking aristocracy, about the linked fortunes of Count Almaviva, a women-chasing Spanish noble, and Figaro, his barber, led to operatic adoptions by Mozart, Rossini and others, and may have contributed to the arrival of the French Revolution in 1789.

Lorenzo da Ponte (1749-1838), the adaptor of Beaumarchais’s tales for La Nozze, was a similar character. Born Emanuele Conegliano, son of a Jewish Italian country merchant turned Catholic, the youngster was sponsored into clergy by a bishop whose name he adapted. First as teacher and rector of the seminary, then as parish priest, the adventurous Abbe was never restrained by vows of celibacy or laws of authority. Moving to free-wheeling Venice, he consorted with the notorious seducer Giacomo Casanova, and wrote seditious verse, which caused an indictment. The poet/priest escaped to Vienna. where his charm and brilliance won him appointment as Poet to the Court Theatre, writing 40 librettos. While working with Salieri and Metastasio, the Poet to the Emperor, da Ponte became impressed by young Mozart, and persuaded the ruler, Joseph II, brother of Louis XVI’s Queen, Marie Antoinette, into patronage of the politically chancy Figaro opera, with great success. All three of his Mozartian plays – including Don Giovanni, slightly based on Casanova who seduces city and village beauties, regardless of rank and social standing – celebrate social evolution.

But da Ponte’s benefactor Emperor Joseph II died in 1791, and so did Mozart, and the poet quarreled with the successor, leading to his departure for Trieste (with the best soprano of Vienna, who was subsequently retrieved by her husband), where he met (and eventually married, as an Anglican) an Anglo-German- Jewish heiress, Ann Nancy Grahl, twenty years his junior. They had an introduction to Marie Antoinette in Paris, but she was arrested, and the family moved to London for 12 years, and the poet wrote 28 librettos and traded in rare books, until in 1805 the da Pontes with their four children crossed the ocean to the US - debtor prison was threatening - to follow Ann’s parents, who had invested in Pennsylvania real estate.

Da Ponte tried business – grocery, distillery, a delivery service in Pennsylvania, selling Italian books and culture to Americans, teaching Italian and Latin to New Yorkers – with little effect. His success came when by accident he met, in Riley’s bookstore on lower Broadway, a young Columbia graduate, Clement Clark Moore, of eventual Christmas poetry fame, who was asking about Metastasio. Moore’s father was the President of Columbia College, then downtown, and da Ponte was invited, at the age of 76, to be its first Professor of Italian, teaching Dante, Petrarca and Tasso. After the first term the attendance fell – students had to pay extra for modern languages – but da Ponte persisted, and the trustees would not let him resign. The family founded an Academy for Young Gentlemen, another for Young Ladies; they had a house at 91 Spring Street, with a bookstore downstairs, and took in student boarders. In his pursuits to popularize Italian culture, Da Ponte was able acquire sponsors for a fine Italian Opera House (built in 1833, and destroyed by fire in 1839.)

Da Ponte passed away in 1838, and was buried in the Roman Catholic Cemetery on 3rd Avenue and 11th Street, with full pomp. Early New York was not very friendly to Catholics before the massive immigrations of the Irish and Italians starting in the 1860s changed the atmosphere. The cemetery was torn down and the interred were moved to the Calvary Cemetery in Flushing, established in 1848, where a gravestone facing Laurel Avenue announces that Lorenzo da Ponte, New Yorker, is buried there, exact location unknown. He was a true New Yorker, with most of his 33 American years spent here, establishing an Italian discipline in American learning and anchoring Italian culture firmly on this continent. And he had found freedom – his “Hymn to America,” composed by son-in-law Antonio Baglioni, was a paean

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

The parks of our neighborhood had a fine season. Both Stuyvesant Square parks were gorgeous in hot colors, dark crimson, with orange and yellow highlights, red sage, blue sage, verbena, hibiscus and rudbeckia, backed up by masses of lime green coleus. We have been well cared for. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Connie Casey, our gardener for the past few years, is leaving the Parks Department to return to another profession (she teaches journalism). We wish her the best of luck and hope that the new supervisor of District 6, Ronnit Ben David (replacing Elliot Sykes) will take care of us as well.

There is this thing about gardeners – they are dedicated and focused. While being interviewed, Connie never stops her task – most recently, laying out hundreds of tulip bulbs in the triangles between rose bushes in the Eat Park’s fountain, clean- cleared of the Summer’s bloomers. Why? Well, the weather is threatening, and she has 2,000 bulbs to plant in the area. As we are talking, a lady ranger arrives, with a truckload of 2,000 more bulbs, from Bill Steyer of the mysterious Forestry, and Connie has to depart, to find space. Her final message – she may be leaving, but the park will be blooming in the Spring.

The West Park will not be neglected, another 2000 bulbs are designated for it. Also, on November 5 sixty volunteers from Friends Seminary were scheduled to plant masses of tulips and daffodils throughout the parks. As for the Summer's bloomers, they have been removed, chopped up for mulch and readied for next Spring’s use. Even the hibiscus, which I know in the South as a perennial bush; the variety used here is a Caribbean annual. Current blooming décor consists of the hardy pink-red roses, green berberis bushes of and the fuzzy leaves of lambs’ ears along the edges. The tall hollyhocks, supported by thin sticks, which we admired in the summer, were contributed by a neighbor, name of Bob, who walks his greyhounds in the park. Thanks, friend.

If you wonder what plants were blooming in the park, Connie had a list posted, which was scratched out by a vandal. We also have had tree plaques removed. Keep your eyes open for enemiess.

Speaking of hibiscus, our experience is with the tree variety, known as the Rose of Sharon, in upstate New York, a beautiful purple bloomer. Fortunately the deer do not bother it. Currently it is the bow-and –arrow deer season in Columbia County. I ran into a camouflage-dressed hunter at the gas station, replenishing supplies. He claims that, though plentiful, deer seemed to stay out of public lands, hanging around homesteads, where No Trespassing signs abound (hey, the Mayor does claim that we are more literate). This year the hunting seasons start on weekends rather than Mondays, making the woods dangerous with city hunters, arriving in droves. Soon as the gun season starts he will change into fluorescent oranges, taking no chances.

Speaking of chances, consorting with wild animals in nature brings on some risks. In addition to bears, the mountain lion, a hefty knee-high cat, has made an appearance in the Berkshires and Catskills, not good for the deer population. The hunter at the gas station, who knows his way around, having worked for Lido’s Game Farm (they arrange deer and pheasant hunts on private lands), claims to have had an encounter. The Endangered Species Department of the NYSDEC in Albany admits receiving several such reports each year, but maintains that the last cougar in the state was hunted down in 1894, earning the woodsman a $20 reward. Nowadays the only place you can meet one face to face is in the NYS Museum in Empire Plaza, the Rockefeller urban renewal extravaganza. I have tied to see one in person, while hiking in Florida Everglades, the only place where they survive, to no avail.

As to black bear, also a federally protected species, my licensed professional trapper claims having removed several, and wants to build a metal barrel to transport the captives to deeper woods, just the way they do it in Churchill, Manitoba, the world’s polar bear capital. This family has met several in that Canadian preserve, both in nature and in the transportation barrel (a mother and cub), courtesy of the management of what is locally known as the “bear prison.” Also the coyote, known hereabouts as coyot, accent on the first syllable, who give the willies to solitary hunters dragging their deer harvest through the woods. They follow the man around, in packs. The hunters know that all the coyote wants is the carcass, but, nevertheless, the lodge chitchat is that 90-odd coyote attacks on humans have been registered in New York State over the past 20 years. The Eastern coyotes, tall an crafty as timber wolves, are real, all right, their sometime howling at night bothers our cats.

If you’re wandering about having a personal licensed trapper, that is the only legal and humanitarian way to remove a family of woodchucks squatting under your deck, or deep below your garden. Our seven uninvited guests left at a price of $35 per, a bargain, much preferred by effete cityites (typical Liberal, the OC would scold) over the local alternative of gunning them down or smoking them out.

Ed.: OC, the Old Curmudgeon, is a friend and sometime contributor of wisdom to this column.

I'm not in the habit of posting other people's articles, but this is important. You may want to pass it to politicians and other influentials. The CTR program should be reinstated.

Avoiding a Russian arms disaster
By Ted Turner /Stanley A. WeissNovember 6, 2005
Hurricane Katrina drove home the staggering devastation that disasters -- natural or man-made --can inflict. Meanwhile, July's attacks on the London Underground reminded us terrorists can still strike major world cities. Now imagine the two joined together: terrorists, armed with weapons of mass destruction, unleashing Katrina-scale chaos and death in the heart of a U.S. city. Such attacks are hardly unthinkable. Roughly half of Russia's weapons-grade nuclear materials are poorly protected. In the small Russian town of Shchuch'ye, nearly 2 million shells of VX and sarin nerve gas -- each lethal enough to kill 85,000 people -- lay stacked in chicken cooplike structures. The September 11 commission said al Qaeda has pursued getting and using these weapons as a "religious obligation" for more than a decade. Fortunately, unlike hurricanes, much can be done to prevent this nightmare from becoming real. One of our first and best lines of defense is the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, created by former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, Georgia Democrat, and Sen. Richard Lugar, Indiana Republican. Since 1992, the program has eliminated thousands of Russian nuclear warheads, missiles, submarines and bombers. But in recent years, a set of burdensome congressional restrictions has marred the program and led to a series of disruptive stop-and-start cycles. Key projects vital to America's security have ground to a halt for months on end because, for example, Russian human-rights obligations were not met or the paperwork to waive them was not completed. Congress now has the chance to end such dangerous disruptions once and for all. Mr. Lugar, decrying those misplaced priorities, introduced language to repeal all the restrictions, which the Senate embraced by an overwhelming, bipartisan 78-19 vote in July. But until the full Congress approves it, CTR's vital efforts remain in danger, from both a national security and a business perspective. Danger of delay: Current restrictions carry real costs on the ground. In mid-2002, all new CTR projects -- including security upgrades at 10 nuclear weapons storage sites -- stalled for four months because the conditions could not be certified. Destruction of the Shchuch'ye stockpile was delayed some 15 months from 2001 to 2003 for similar red-tape reasons. Such stoppages not only prolong threats to America, they also endanger the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars already invested in Shchuch'ye and other projects. So long as the conditions remain, these dangerous disruptions are inevitable. Wasted resources: In a yearly drama, defense staffers and intelligence analysts must spend thousands of hours assessing Russian compliance with CTR restrictions -- even when it is immediately clear Russia cannot meet them. Nor can the president simply waive the conditions without first submitting to this annual exercise in foregone conclusions. Abetting such delays or allowing concerns like human rights, however important, to threaten human existence massively is the height of folly. We not only agree with Mr. Lugar that, during a war on terror, these artificial barriers "are destructive to our national security"; we see them undermining one of the best investments our country can make. CTR, simply is good security on the cheap. At an annual cost of as little as one-tenth of 1 percent (0.001) of the Pentagon budget, the program has deactivated and helped guard 6,760 Russian nuclear warheads. It has upgraded security to the Shchuch'ye depot and similar sites. It also helped remove all nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Today, CTR continues upgrading security and aiding accounting of nuclear weapons transportation and storage. It also works to destroy biological weapons production facilities and lock down pathogen collections in Russia and the former Soviet republics. CTR's largest current project, eliminating the Shchuch'ye stockpile, will rid us of all 2 million of those weapons -- and cost each American roughly the same as a large latte. Nor is this money "foreign aid": More than 80 percent of CTR funds go to five U.S. prime contractors that dismantle and destroy these weapons. The risk of a Katrina-scale terrorist attack with Russian weapons is too critical to tolerate any delays to these crucial efforts. Congress must act and free us to meet what President Bush calls "the greatest threat before humanity today." Ted Turner is chairman of Turner Enterprises in Atlanta. Stanley A. Weiss is chairman of Business Executives for National Security, of which Mr. Turner is a member.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis


New York’s November 8 election brings few surprises, unless you count as one the notion that this Democratic town is once more electing a Republican mayor.

The NYTimes poll two weeks before the election shows Michael Bloomberg with a 67% approval rating, up from 25% in 2003. Of course NY Republican leaders are sui generis, and only 40% of voters think Bloomberg is typical of his party, despite the large donations from his treasure chest to the Bush campaign.

Of Democratic voters, 49% are for Bloomberg; vs 37% for Ferrer (compared to Mike’s – as he likes to be known - 34% in 2001, and the 42% for Giuliani in 1993), and 57% would pull the lever for the Mayor right now, as against 30% for the challenger. Among Black voters the Mayor has 42%, vs 25% in 2001, and among Hispanics, 33% vs 52% for Ferrer, who needs 80%, and will gain some points through the two public debates.

It cannot just be the Mayor’s obscenely overwhelming megamillion dollar campaign and adroit PR work, and favors for Democrat pols that are pulling the voters. New Yorkers do not fall for propaganda, as a rule. His popularity hinges on the observations that, although arrogant, he is totally for NYC, does not take politicians’ guff, and has business skills that work – and on the weaknesses of the Democratic candidate, perceived by some as ambivalent and lacking gravitas. The Mayor’s pushy Olympics and the West Side stadium tries have been forgiven, overshadowed by successes in education, crime control, controlling the deficit and even grudgingly granted carrot-and- whip union agreements. A combination of the above has led several Democratic weighties and city newspapers to endorse the mayor.

Just consider these allies, former Mayor Ed Koch, Brooklyn BP Marty Markowitz, his predecessor Claire Shulman, Councilmembers Dov Hikind, Peter Malone Jr. and others in the boroughs, and our own Eva Moskowitz and Margarita Lopez (the latter may pay for it, if she tries for Steve Sanders’s 74th AD seat, although she seems not to have much interest in Albany). Manhattan BP candidate Brian Ellner has actually taken a job in City Hall. Then, the New York Times, the late New York Newsday, New York Observer, The Jewish Press, with more newspapers expected to join the choir.

As to the actual races, my fearless forecast features winners as well as the field, for local color (we miss the interesting early bloomers, the Cabbagestalks and Turnipseeds, and the perennials, such as George Spitz). My money is on:

For Mayor, Michael Bloomberg (R, Lib) vs. Fernando Ferrer (D) and a field - Seth Blum (no party), Anthony Gronowicz (Green), Martin Koppel (Socialist), Jimmy McMillan (“Rent Is Too Damn High”), Thomas Ognibene (Conservative) and Audrey Silk (Libertarian).

For Public Advocate, Betsy Gotbaum (D), vs. the Bernard Goetz (Libt), Jay Golub (Cons) and Jim Lesczynski (Liberal, Libt).

For Comptroller, William Thompson, Jr. (D, Working Families Party), vs. Daniel Fein (Soc), Ron Moore (Libt) and Herbert Ryan (Cons).

For Manhattan Borough President, Scott Stringer (D), vs. Joseph Dobrian (Libt), Jesse Fields (Independence), Arrin Hawkins (Soc) and Barry Popik (R, Lib).

For Manhattan DA, Robert Morgenthau (D), vs. Leslie Crocker Snyder (D).

For Manhattan Surrogate, Kirsten Booth Glen (D, WFP) vs. Eve Rachel Markewich (D).

For Councilmanic District #2, Rosie Mendez (D, WFP)) vs. John Carlino (R) and Claudia Flanagan (np).

For Councilmanic District #4, Dan Garodnick (D, WFP) vs Patrick Murphy (R, Lib) and Jak Jacob Karako (Libt).

In the race for Steve Sanders’s 74th Assembly District seat (he is leaving 1/1/2006.Good health, Steve, we are going to miss you a lot!), the candidates must be residents of the AD for at least a year, which excludes Eva Moskowitz.
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The current list of interested parties includes Steve Kaufman, Steve Sanders’s Chief of Staff (whom I knew as an ally in the City Council meetings, late in the 1980’s, when I pitched cost –benefit arguments against moving the Police Academy to the Bronx), Dan Tobias, an attorney in private practice and former District leader of the Tilden Democratic Club, Sylvia Friedman, the female State Committee member (her male counterpart, Michael Farrin, has no interest in an Albany opportunity) and maybe Jane Crotty, who fought and lost in the contest for a Councilmanic seat in CD#4 in 1992, when Andrew Eristoff had to spend a king’s ransom (mostly in legal fees) to win the honor. Darren Bloch and Dan Cavanaugh, both CD#2 contestants in the September primary, have withdrawn. It is rumored that Scott Stringer’s Assembly seat has eight contestants.

The special elections have no primaries, the two Democratic County Committee members from each election district have that rare opportunity of voting in two meaningful meetings, the early one in December, and in a late one in February, should Governor Pataki decide to hold such elections – he is empowered to hold the ADs unrepresented until the November 2006 election. The Republicans have their own ritual.

This column also thanks the Citizens Union, and congratulates Louise Dankberg, District Leader of the Tilden Democratic Club, who has been elected 1st Vice Chair of the NY County Democratic Committee