Transcript of interview with Michael Saltman by Barbara Tabach, December 16, 2014

AN INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL SALTMAN An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach The Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries ?Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV - University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes, Stefani Evans ii The recorded Interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iii PREFACE O In 1942, Michael Saltman, the son of a rugged Canadian entrepreneur and of an educator, was born in Flint, Michigan. Michael spent a fulfilling childhood in Flint, where his family was involved in the Jewish community, even helping start a new temple. However, his life changed dramatically when his father passed away during his teenage years. At his mother's insistence, Michael went to law school after graduating from Michigan State University, and received his Juris doctor from Wayne State University. From Detroit, Michael headed to London to participate in an LL.M. program, though he quickly withdrew and landed a position with a life insurance and investment company in London. Michael soon relocated to the company's Geneva office, where his job included establishing operations in Israel. It was during these trips that he more intensely connected with Judaism and his Jewish identity. Michael left the company to join a former colleague at Shareholders Capital Corporation, where he met his wife Sonja. The couple moved to Munich, where they lived until 1975, until moving to Las Vegas. In Las Vegas, Michael became a successful real estate developer. His projects include apartments, shopping centers and office parks, like Village Apartments, Campus Village Shopping Center and Renaissance Center. He later opened Food 4 Less grocery stores in Nevada, Utah and California, eventually buying the Kansas-based company from Lou Falley. He and his partner later sold the company to Kroger. Michael served on the local Jewish Federation's board of directors, and Sonja is a longtime board member for the Anti-Defamation League's regional office in Las Vegas. In 2003, Michael and Sonja co-founded the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution within William S. Boyd School of Law. Michael's other efforts to promote peaceful conflict resolution include the production of Streetball Hafla, a movie shot in Israel about Jewish and Palestinian teenagers interacting in basketball camp. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Michael Saltman on Decmber 16, 2014 by Barbara Tabach in Las Vegas, Nevada Preface iv Discusses family background; paternal side's migration from the United Kingdom to Canada, where father was born; maternal side's origins in Lithuania and eventual move to Michigan, where grandmother, mother born. Describes mother's academic achievements; getting job as high school teacher in hometown; parents meeting when father's family moved to Michigan during the Depression. Mentions father's career in wholesale grocery, furniture, real estate.. .1-5 Talks about Jewish community in childhood home of Flint, Michigan; getting into law school and excelling; using post-graduation scholarship for LL.M. program in London, and later dropping out. Describes interest in international law; getting job in London with life insurance company; perks of working as an expatriate. Relocates to Geneva, then France; reconnects with Judaism during work trips to Israel; developing professionally and personally 6-12 Describes taking new job in London with mutual fund, where he met his wife Sonja; relocates to Germany soon after; falls in love with Munich. Mentions Sonja involvement in Jewish organizations, though not Jewish. More about career in Munich; impact of '74 oil crisis on industry; helps close Munich office; starts own business entity. Talks about differences between living in Europe, Michigan, Las Vegas; going into real estate development in Las Vegas.. ..13-19 Elaborates upon real estate development career and projects in city and partner, Larry Larkin, including Larkin and friends' attempts to covert him to Mormon. Recalls getting into grocery industry; opening Food 4 Less stores; negotiating with Lou Falley to buy Food 4 Less company over round of golf; selling to Kroger. Mentions parallel of his career to father's. Describes partnership with Rob Burkle in grocery business endeavors 20-26 Returns to talking about real estate development projects; success of Renaissance Villas Apartments; surviving 2008 Recession. Discusses Las Vegas' changes over the past 40 years, including how local businesses could access financing; opening up of lending market; influence of various cultural communities, like Jews, Mormons, Italians. Talks about city's population growth; consequences of 2008 housing bubble burst; the current rebound 27-31 Talks about raising children-daughter in California, son in Las Vegas; son now working for him, keeping him engaged with Las Vegas. Describes his involvement with Jewish community over the years; serving on Jewish Federation board; working with Meyer Bodoff; Ner Tamid membership. Talks about creating basketball program in Israel for Jews and Palestinians; producing movie featuring its impact called StreetballHafla, with government support 32-36 v Discusses establishing the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution at University of Nevada, Las Vegas; assistance from Dick Morgan; hiring Jean Sternlight; advisory board members. Reflects upon the center's programmatic agenda and new possibilities. Remembers experiences with anti-Semitism, as child, in college and in business. Mentions involvement with World President's Organization 37-43 Index 44-45 vi THE SOUTHERN NEVADA JEWISH COMMUNITY DIGITAL HERITAGE PROJECT at UNLV University Libraries Use Agreement Name of Narrator: n<cJU Name of Interviewer: 3 / ^ g B A f Z A ~7?F&A <2hf We, the above named, give to the Oral History Research Center of UNLV, the recorded interview(s) initiated on Kr, along with typed transcripts as an unrestricted gift, to be used for such scholarly and educational purposes as shall be determined, and transfer to the University of Nevada Las Vegas, legal title and all literary property rights including copyright. This gift does not preclude the right of the interviewer, as a representative of UNLV, to use the recordings and related materials for scholarly pursuits. I understand that my interview will be made available to researchers and may be quoted from, published, distributed, placed on the Internet or broadcast in any medium that the Oral History Research Center and UNLV Libraries deem appropriate including future forms of electronic and digital media. There will be no compensation for any interviews. Signature of Narrator Date Signature of Interviewer Date Oral History Research Center at UNLV Libraries 4505 S. Maryland Parkway, Box 457010, Las Vegas, NV 89154-7010 702.895.2222 vil This is Barbara Tabach. Today is December 16, 2014. I am sitting with Michael Saltman. Would you spell your last name? S-A-L-T-M-A-N. I like to start first with what you know about your family ancestry. What do you know about grandparents or the roots of Saltman family? Great stories. I did a 23andMe genetic DNA test. You know that test? I've heard of it. It's a test where they process your saliva and out comes all these great historical elements in your family. Males get the father and mother's side; females only get the matriarchal side. My father's origins were most likely Jewish from the Sephardic side of the Jewish world. Most likely, and I'm just guessing now, after the Inquisition in 1492, when the Jews were thrown out of Spain. I'm sure his family was part of that group because he went from Spain into France, and France into the UK, and that family stayed in the UK for many, many years. I don't know what the name was; it could have been anything from Saltman to Saltzman to whatever, but Saltman became the name in the UK. Sometime in the mid-1800s they went to Canada. I don't know why, but somehow they ended up going to Canada. My great-grandfather took the family from England or Scotland?don't have that origin down like I'd like it?to Winnipeg, Manitoba. That's where my dad was born and his eight siblings; all born in Winnipeg, Canada. So all my life I heard these great stories about my dad's family, the hardy pioneers in the fifty-four degree below winters and trotting to school in three feet of snow. I think he only went to the eighth grade, so only through eighth grade with the snow. But cold, hockey, pioneering, baseball, sports, rugged outdoorsman; that was my dad's side. My dad was that kind of rugged sort of a guy. What was his name? 1 Sidney Morley Saltman. Never could figure out where the Morley came from. Probably some UK connection they would have had because it's got a real British ring to it. It does have a British ring. Sidney Morley Saltman and all his brothers and sisters. Just to flash forward for a moment on my dad's family, I'd always wanted to go to Winnipeg, Canada to just see what that was like. I had never been there traveling as extensively as I have. About a year ago, Sonja and I went with some friends to Churchill, Manitoba to look at the polar bears before they went to the ice. We flew back from Churchill to Winnipeg and I got into a car with a driver and toured around Winnipeg. I found my dad's house on 214 North Austin Street in Winnipeg, Canada. That was a real emotional experience for me because he was my hero. He died when I was fourteen. He had a heart attack on January 3, 1957. So from one day to the next he was gone. That was a real difficult experience, but it was also a life-defining experience for me, too, because it created an incredible amount of independence in Mike Saltman. But going to see the house...my wife sat in the car with my friends and I walked over to this funky, really tall, wooden-framed house where these eight kids were born. There's a bit of a mystery about his father because he'd come home, make a baby and he'd leave and who knows where he went. He went all over the world. He went to the Yukon, looking for gold probably. He went to Montana looking for sapphires. He found the stone in Montana. He went to California. I'm not even sure where he died. He was a bit of a wanderer, philanderer maybe. I'm not quite sure what his whole thing was. It kind of ran in the Saltman family because they're all a little bit crazy. That's the Saltman side. My mother's mother was born in Lithuania and moved to Hungary as a youngster. My grandmother's mother came from a good Jewish family and she ended up falling in love with and 2 marrying a poor violinist, so the story goes. They moved to Clare, Michigan in the 1860s, so maybe one of the early waves of Jews to the U.S. My grandmother was born in Clare, Michigan on a farm in 1880, 1890. Her father, the violinist, was killed in a farming accident. I think when that happened the family imploded, and my grandmother ended up going to New York and lived with her sisters for a few years. The she went back to Clare, Michigan. They sold the farm and she moved to Bay City, Michigan, as a youngster. So my grandmother and her beautiful sisters? and she had a beautiful family, really, nice, wonderful people. My grandmother married a Voight, V-O-I-G-H-T, Isadore Voight from Latvia, but her maiden name is Barkin. She was a Barkin. Her family was called an Efroiken and Barkin, two families from Hungary and Lithuania. The Efroiken side moved to South Africa, which is part of my story, and the other side moved to Michigan. So we have the South African family and this Michigan family on my mother's side. My grandmother then moved to Bay City and she became a well-known person in the community, was involved in all kinds of community activities, Jewish and non-Jewish. She had a grocery store. The story is in the Depression she had a little grocery store and she would give food away; she'd let people sign credit and never got paid. That was the kind of woman that she was, Anne Magidson Voight. My mother was born in Bay City, and she had two sisters and a brother. Her name was Beryl Marie Voight, before she got married to my dad. She was a young, bright woman. She graduated from high school when she was sixteen. She was admitted to Eastern Michigan University, which was then called Michigan State Normal, because she wanted to be?she probably wanted to be queen of the world, but she could only be a teacher. That's the way it was, right. Just women were ascribed certain roles. She got in a car on her own at sixteen years old and drove 3 from Bay City to Ypsilanti, Michigan. I don't know how she ever did that. She never seemed that tough and hardy to me, but she was tough. It was probably a two-lane roads all the way from Bay City to Ypsilanti. She went to school there. Came back. Graduated. Got a degree in Ypsilanti as a teacher, at Michigan State Normal. Came back to Bay City with a well-known family and couldn't get a job teaching because she was Jewish. She couldn't get a job at Bay City Central High School teaching. Her uncle, who was a prominent investment broker or manager someplace in Michigan, had a pretty big reputation. He was the one that somehow engineered for her to get a job teaching in Bay City, Michigan. So this Jewish woman, Beryl Marie Voight, probably twenty years old, twenty-one years old, started teaching in Bay City, Michigan, against all odds. Amazing to me...woman, Jewish...can't get a job. How things have changed. And then I'm not quite sure when?'36, '37, '38?she met my dad. He was a real romantic guy, a big guy and real charming, and I'm sure he just charmed her to no end. He had moved to Bay City? During the Depression, in the thirties, plus the drought with the Red River in Canada, the two death knells for that community, his whole family moved to Michigan. So his sister Fan moved to Flint, Michigan, and they all followed her. She might have been like the tough, most important sister of this group. She moved to Flint, Michigan, and her husband moved up from Detroit to Flint, and they all followed her?my dad, Sid; his brother Bill, his brother Hy, his brother, Abe? they all moved and there were a couple of sisters. Aunt Belle was a piano player in Canada, in saloons, as a kid and she moved to Vancouver. Another one, Aunt Lil, became quite successful and she moved to Vancouver. That family is still in Canada, but my dad's group all moved into Michigan. I think I've heard the story of how my mom and dad met. I'd like to refresh my memory on 4 that. They met someplace, I think, in Bay City. I've seen early pictures of my dad driving in Bay City, in whatever car he was driving because he probably always had the latest vehicle. They fell in love and got married in '39. What kind of work was he in at that time? He had a wholesale grocery business. He was doing well. Interesting because I ended up in the grocery business. He was also a real estate developer later and I ended up in the real estate business. It was interesting because we hadn't had those discussions as a kid. We didn't really talk much about that. He had a company called Serve-U-Well Groceries, doing wholesale groceries. I'm not sure where that went, or how that even started and ended. But what I knew growing up, at seven, eight, nine-years-old, was that my dad was in the furniture manufacturing business and he made dinette sets for kitchens. One of his claims to fame was he made dinette sets for the company that manufactured Airstream trailers and that was a big deal for me because even today when I see an Airstream trailer I often wonder, what's inside that little kitchenette there; is that one of my dad's? Have his signature on it, right? Hard-working guy. He went from the furniture business into the real estate development activity in the latter part of his career, but he was just a young guy; he was forty-eight years old. Then at forty-nine that was the end. He smoked. He was an athlete who smoked. He had a heart issue in '45 or '46, right after the war. I remember seeing him in the hospital, around '47 when I was five years old. That was a pretty tragic thing to see your dad, this big, powerful guy in the hospital. But then he made it out of there and went back into business, and he had different entrepreneurial activities going on. He probably would have been quite successful because he was just a young guy getting started and then he died at age forty-nine. Like I say, I was fourteen and then my life 5 changed significantly. It's always hard to lose a parent at a young age. Yes, and a role model dad, too. Yes. Did you have siblings? I had a brother two years older. It didn't have the same effect on him, I don't think, as it did on me, but I was closer to my dad. Again, I'm not a hundred percent sure how that all happened back then. I kind of lost some of the details in the miasma of all that history. But I had a wonderful childhood. Even after my dad died, I had a great high school career; I loved my high school setting and had lots of friends and went off to college. Then my life started taking off. So you grew up in Bay? I grew up in Flint, Michigan. Then it was the epicenter for the automobile business and manufacturing, a real successful environment. What kind of Jewish community was Flint at that time? Pretty substantial, a couple of big temples. We belonged to Temple Beth El, and [there was] Temple Beth Sholom, which was the conservative temple. We were in the reform temple. My family was involved in starting the temple in some way with different families getting together. It was a pretty elaborate Jewish community, well-known throughout the community. It's one of those things where I'm wondering if the people in that community were seen as people from Flint who were successful doing their businesses, or were they also seen as Jewish people that were doing things that were successful? It's just one of those old questions, but it fits into this discussion of being Jewish. Absolutely. I'm not quite sure where that fits in here. I am seventy-two years old now. I still haven't figured it 6 out yet. I may never figure it out. We need those questions to keep us going. Right. That was my Michigan career. Then I went from Michigan State undergraduate to Wayne State University Law School at my mother's insistence because I got a job when I graduated from college. I was living in California. I had a really good job, getting paid handsomely for those times. I had my own car and apartment and was having a great time. My mother got on the phone one day and said, "Aren't you going to go to law school?" I said, "Well, I haven't really applied." She said, "Well, you need to apply. If you don't do it now, you'll never do it." So I drove back to Detroit. I couldn't get into University of Michigan; it was too late; it was already August. They would have let me in in January of that [academic] year, but I was too anxious; I always want to get started and not waste my time. So I drove down to Detroit and went directly to Wayne State University Law School. I didn't even know where it was or anything about it. But I walked in. It was a pretty successful looking place; it was an impressive building. I met the dean of the law school in the admissions area, and I had my LSATs, GPA, and letters of reference with me. He let me in on the spot. "We have one spot open for you. These letters of reference are strong." He said, "Your GPA and you've got a great career as an undergraduate. So we're going to let you into the law school." That was a really wonderful experience for me because now I had three years of law school. That was great and that was Detroit. When I graduated from law school in 1967...I had won a book award in one of my international law classes, won the book award in law school where you get the top grade in that particular class. I didn't have any other book awards. My mentor, Professor Junger, had his eye on me. I liked this guy a lot. He motivated me. Whenever I had a teacher that really motivated me, in business, any part of my career, or in sports, somebody I really look up to like a father figure, 7 even though he was probably just a couple of years older than me. I really was inspired, did well in his class, got the book award and got a scholarship to do one more year of study, the Alexander Freeman Scholarship. It was for one year of paid study paid. I applied in the UK and got accepted at the University College London-London School of Economics joint LL.M. program. Off I went, in August of 1967, I flew to London. I remember flying around the UK getting ready to land and I was so excited. I looked down and it was all green. My picture of London a gray, dark, non-landscaped environment. It was all green; that was pretty exciting. It was a lot lusher than you expected. Exactly. Fabulous. I landed in London and took a taxi to my little digs-a bedsitter-and started school. I was in the LL.M. program for a few months. I didn't really care for the program, but I was really in the UK just to enjoy life in a different part of world. London, yes. It was fabulous. Nineteen sixty-seven London, you can imagine. I wandered all around town everyday. I had a really well-known professor in my sea and air law program. He's a prominent figure that wrote the definitive book on air and space law. But I couldn't stand the guy because he'd always dictate to us; never get a chance to talk. He and I would get into arguments in class. I was already a lawyer, so I was kind of playing with house money then, right? I slowly dropped out of that program and put an ad in the Financial Times saying, "Young lawyer seeks interesting international challenge," or whatever. Did you always know you wanted to do international law? I was always interested in political science and economics, the world and geography. As a young boy I would read the first World Book Encyclopedias that came out. I read The New York Times on Sundays; my mother would have that in the house. I grew up in a home where there was lots of 8 discussion about the world, politics, geography, people and culture. So I was always interested in that process. The concept of international was just an extension of that early thought process. So all of a sudden here I am in the international community. I'm in London. I don't think of it as international as much as I'm not in the U.S. right now; I'm in the UK. I put this ad in the newspaper, never thinking I would get any offers. I'm totally wet behind the ears. I just got admitted to the bar; I wasn't even sure of that yet. I didn't have that result. There was no email, of course. I went to Majorca for a little holiday. I came back after about two weeks and I went to my post office box: I had a huge pile of mail, offering to have me come and talk about work. That was a shock. The reason, I think, was that all the U.S. big investment companies were starting to move into the UK and Europe with mutual funds and other financial features and activities, and they were looking for lawyers and accountants with a U.S. background. I got interviewed by a number of companies. I ended up taking a job with an English life insurance company that was processing life insurance and investments. I was like a junior lawyer. It was called International Life Insurance UK Limited. It was owned by the famous [Bernard] "Bernie" Cornfeld from Investors Overseas Services. Do you know that name at all? No, I don't. That's a really great piece of research. IOS is what it was called. I'm going to write that down. IOS was very controversial even then, but it was by far the biggest mutual fund investment organization maybe in the world at the time, outside the United States, based in Geneva. They had a big English insurance arm and they had a group in London that hired me. That was the one that paid me the most money and they paid me in American dollars. My friends in the UK, young lawyers I had gotten to know, were getting hired by English solicitor and other firms where they 9 would use lawyers, and they were getting paid the English standard. I thought that was always unfair, but I wasn't going to complain. Were there always perks to being an expatriate? Yes, there were even more perks then because, I think, it was a double tax treaty; I paid no tax in the UK, and I was paid more. I didn't get any kind of housing allowance, but I was able to move out of my bedsitter, which was about the size of this piece of paper, into a big flat and bought a car. I didn't go opulent, but all the sudden my lifestyle changed. It was tough because my English friends would come over to see me, and they hadn't made the leap because an English guy would get out of his legal program with his admission to the bar, or whatever he was doing in terms of barristry versus solicitorship, and they would get paid whatever they were and I was getting paid an order of magnitude above them because I was working for a U.S. dollar company even though it was based in Switzerland. I was happy; I was loving it. I went to work. First I went to work in Wembley, which is outside of London. I would take the underground to Wembley everyday to my office. I hired a couple of young lawyers to work for me. I had a boss that never did any work, so I basically was able to take over the department. I learned real quickly what that business was all about. Shortly after that they asked me to move to Geneva, which is the headquarters of the company. So I moved to Geneva and lived in the InterContinental Hotel for about three or four months before I could find a place to live. I worked on a street called Rue-de-Lausanne, 119 Rue-de-Lausanne. It was a very famous address in Geneva then. Then I moved into France because I couldn't get a living permit in Switzerland. You have to qualify. But I could work there. I lived in a little town called Gex. Actually, I worked in a little town called Cessy, A-I-N in the prefix of Gex, which is under the Jura Mountains in a really 10 beautiful part of the world. I rented a house. It was fabulous. I used to drive and whistle to work everyday. I loved it. It sounds exciting. It was very exciting. That's the move that connected me to Judaism. My first two places I went to setup the company's insurance connections to the mutual fund world were Greece and Israel. Greece was interesting because when I went I got on the plane and realized I don't know one word of Greek, which is pretty interesting for a kid in 1967-68. I didn't realize that taxi was at least one cognate that I could use so when I got off the plane I could take the taxi to the hotel. But going to Israel was a real watershed event for me. What year was that? Right after the '67 war, October of '68. Even though my identification with the Jewish community was somewhat sketchy as a youngster, even though I grew up in a Jewish home and joined a Jewish fraternity and became a leader in that Jewish fraternity, I wasn't actively engaged in the Jewish community in any meaningful way until I went to Israel and saw what it was like to be a Jew in Israel. That was really a great experience. Tell me what you observed about that. My heart swelled. I think being in Israel with all the Jews around, everything from street cleaners to hookers to the president to the doctors to the lawyers to the military and tough people, it was just an incredible experience. Every place I went I was working with Jews. My lawyer I worked with there was a prominent lawyer, happened to be Jewish. There they probably don't say, "He's a Jewish lawyer, that friend of mine," because everybody is Jewish. There's no discussion about it. Yes, different context. Right. I'd go back and forth a lot. I'd spend maybe a week or so in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem putting 11 these complex structures together. One day I was at a big party. Chaim Topol, the actor that was in Fiddler on the Roof, I think it had just come out and he was really world famous at the time. I went to this big party or some kind of a reception for him. I didn't know anybody there. I'm standing in this big room with hundreds of people in the room and everybody goes in to have dinner. I didn't want to walk up and say anything to him. I'm just the young lawyer guy, right? So I'm standing there and all of a sudden the room is completely empty. It's just Topol and me in this huge ballroom. He yells out, "What are you doing over there? Who are you? Come over here." In that booming voice of his. So I walked over and introduced myself to him. He said, "Come and have dinner with me." He put his arm around me. Then I went to have dinner with Topol that night, what a great experience. Wow. That is one of my very favorite movies. Me, too. He was a terrific part of that film. Oh, yes. No idea where he is today. I don't even know if he's alive any longer. Because that's the way he's known, yes. Exactly. It was fabulous. I started getting more and more into my own style. I started meeting more people and I was going back and forth, between Geneva and Israel. I just loved the experience there. What do you mean by your style? How I represent myself, who I am. My personality started coming out more and more. I've always been real active and really out there. But this is one where all of a sudden now I'm dealing in an international business community. I'm meeting lots of different people at various levels of the economic world and business community. I was able to carry myself well. I learned what I 12 was supposed to do really well. I had my substance down. So I got a sense of who I was and I was doing it reasonably well. But I didn't necessarily like the company. Particularly, there were some things about the company that were just...the continual race for the gold-plated desk at IOS. In probably '69, I returned from a trip to Israel and handed in my notice in Geneva to the head lawyer. One of the lawyers that had worked there had gone to London to work for a company in London and he said, "If you ever want to leave Geneva and come to London and work for me, I'd love to have you come and work for me." I looked him up and I went back to London, in '70 or '71. I walked into the office of this company called Shareholders Capital Corporation and there standing in front of me was this gorgeous blond woman who was working there. My story goes I took the job because of Sonja. I'm going to guess you got divorced somewhere in all of this moving about and everything. Yes, I eventually got divorced. Because a single man would be able to move around a little faster. The single man was moving around, right. So Sonja is your wife today. Yes, Sonja is my wife of long standing. You haven't met Sonja then. No, I have not. You will. I look forward to it. Sonja is terrific. She was working in this office. She had come from Austria. She was just biding her time, probably learning English. Her English was a lot better than my German, which was nonexistent. Her German, of course, is mother tongue. I was lucky to be able to