THE PHILANTHROPIST  

From the outside, the building was an offensive sight: soot from car exhausts and chimneys blackened what were once white, limestone walls. The three wide marble steps leading to the entrance were beveled at the center with the wear of a million footsteps, and the edges were stained with urine and spilled beer. A homeless man, maybe a resident of this hotel, lay spread across the entrance. One of his hands was tucked into his pants and the other was outstretched in a rote begging position for any coin that a passerby might have the nerve to stop and give him. It was impossible to tell whether the filth on his face was an unshavable, matted beard or an unwashable grime from endless days and nights of sleeping in alleyways.

Why Mr. Hershkowitz had assigned me to this lead was obvious: I was the new kid on the block at Children's House and he wanted me to pay my dues before I'd get a chance to work among the living and call on more refined benefactors. When I walked into Mr. Hershkowitz’s office, he was sitting at his desk, peering over his wide-rimmed spectacles. “Pablo,” he said with his mouth full of peanuts as he brushed away the crushed shells scattered on the desk, “I’ve got a shot for you.”

I could tell he relished in seeing me flush with embarrassment and a tinge of rage when he called me Pablo. When he had first met me, he addressed as Mr. Almonte, by my last name, the way he did everyone at the office. But this being 1984, I mistook his resolute commitment to anachronistic formality for a genteel attempt at graciousness. I immediately said, “You can call me Paul.” The office hushed. You could even hear the typewriter stop and the account executives freeze in the middle of their sales calls. “Mr. Almonte,” Mr. Hershkowitz continued, “I’m sure you know how the Spanish distinguish between the informal tú and the formal usted. If you wouldn’t mind, I think I’ll call you Pablo.”
“But I’m not Spanish.”
“Then Pablo it is, ” he responded decisively, disappearing into his office. From that day on, to Mr. Hershkowitz, I was Pablo.
“There’s this Mr. Chester Wentworth who has an invention that he wishes to donate to the organization.”
“What kind of invention?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Should I call and ask him myself?”
“One of the first things you must learn about fundraising is that when somebody offers you something, you should not ask too many questions. You just say thank you, take what he has, and move on.”

I had not yet gotten accustomed to Mr. Hershkowitz’s style of answering simple questions with lectures on the fine points of a business that was still new to me. “Here’s the address,” he said, handing me a slip of paper.

“No phone number?”

“Why do you need his number? I gave you his address. Go there and see what he has.”

At the age of seventy-six, Mr. Hershkowitz was one of the few surviving students of the old school of fundraising. He was one of the original pavement-pounders who knocked on the doors of every residence, storefront, and office in the city, asking for nickels and dimes during the Great Depression and successfully building Children’s House from a dream to a fifty-million dollar organization. And he was always sure to remind me that he did it without air-conditioning, company cars, photocopiers, fax machines, and PC’s. He made it happen purely on a work ethic that no longer existed and a selfless desire to help the mentally-retarded children in his care. Now, with a “stable of young stallions,” as he called his staff of seven account executives, he expected all of us to earn our keep the same way he had for the past half century. I had already wanted to quit this job after two months, but my co-workers told me that Mr. Hershkowitz was one of the best motivators in the business, and I was still determined to f ind out what others saw in him that I did not. Besides, there were no other prospects for a better position in this job market.

“He said he wants to bequeath his inventions to any interested organization, so we might not be the only ones he called. I suggest you get a move on this one.”

I had a lot of sales and follow-up letters to finish, and this call was definitely going to ruin my afternoon after a dreadful morning of delayed meetings and empty promises from unqualified leads. “I’m giving you a shot, Pablo,” said Mr. Hershkowitz. I so wanted to call him Izzy, as only the agency’s largest benefactors did, but I didn’t dare.

Noticing my reluctance in pursuing this lead, he said, “If you don’t want to go, that’s fine. I’ll ask someone else.”
“It’s not that …”
“I could give the lead to Brenda. Is that what you want?" That’s exactly what I wanted because I knew this was a dead-end lead, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what I’m sure was the case.
“No, sir. I'll go right away.”

Now, standing before the Thomas Jefferson Hotel, 229 West 27th Street, I was wondering whether Mr. Hershkowitz copied the address correctly. In my three-piece suit, I worried that the seedy characters lingering in the lobby would think I was from the FBI. When I tried to walk past the derelict on the steps, he grabbed my leg with his bloodied hands.
“Gimme me something to live on,” he slobbered. I wanted to tear myself away but feared antagonizing him. My leg trembled in his tightening grip. Suddenly, a nightstick smashed against his ribs. The sound of bones cracking in their fleshy shell rang like a tin can being smashed by a passing car. Standing above him, a security guard kept the nightstick wedged against the derelict’s ribcage. The man moaned—a sound more of exhaustion than of pain—and his hand went limp, releasing me.

“Get off the man! And the hell outta here, Dokie! You know the house rules,” shouted the guard. “And don’t you be coming back till sundown.” The man fell into a stupor and lay on the sidewalk as if he were dead. “What a dog!” huffed the guard. Then, turning to me, he asked, “You the welfare?”
“No. I …”
“What you want?”
“Is this the residence of Chester Wentworth?”
“Four-O-Two. Take the elevator to four,” he muttered perfunctorily, then putting his nightstick down, dragged the derelict away from the steps and closer to the gutter.

Read on

Philip Vassallo, Ed.D., a corporate communication consultant, is working on his first two books, "Like the Day I Was Born: Forty Poems of Forty Days" and "The Art of On-the-Job Writing." He dedicates this story to the memory of his dear friend Harry Kamish.

Contact Philip Vassallo at: vassallo@aol.com

December 6, 2001
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