That Oh Yeah Moment

It was late June 1984 and I had just gotten the New York Times to do a Sunday Business section feature on my boss, Ben Holloway, the chairman of Equitable Real Estate Group. It was a big deal story — we had just become a subsidiary of Equitable Life and we were positioning ourselves as the biggest “independent” institutional investment advisor in the real estate industry. We had $30 billion under management and we were trying to expand our pension fund client base.

Anyway the Times sent over a photographer to take Ben’s picture. He was an asian fellow, boylike in stature and very soft spoken. You couldn’t really tell how old he was, but he was not a boy. We trooped up to the roof of 1285 Avenue of the Americas, Equitable’s then headquarters, for one of those skyline shots. The only problem was the 10 foot-high building parapet made it impossible to see the skyline without taking a chance Ben and the photographer would fall off the building. Sometimes photographers would get upset about bonehead pr guys, who didn’t scout out shoots adequately, but this guy calmly went to plan B — a basic head and shoulders picture.