As I celebrated another birthday earlier this month, I reflected back on another year filled with joy, excitement and, unfortunately, some tragedies. Although neither was a member of my family, I wanted to share my feelings about two men who were positive influences on me during my “early years” growing up in Woodmere, Long Island, NY.
The first, chronologically, was Roy Goldfarb. Roy and his wife Bobbie were among my mom and dad’s best friends and their daughters Lori and Joann were close in age to my sister Bonnie and me, respectively. Roy was a successful business owner, but he was also one of the few friends of my parents who actually was interested in what I had to say about sports, the world, politics, school and even the stupid stories about whatever trouble the “geniuses” in our school had gotten themselves into.
Roy was a true man’s man — he loved good Scotch, a good cigar, gambling and talking about business, sports and life. He always made me feel welcome in his house — equipped with one of the earliest versions of a “man cave” I had ever seen. His den featured an eight-foot-long aquarium built into the wall, like a living big-screen TV (before such things existed) and his sweet, playful terrier dog, Kelly.
I remember one vacation our families took together in Paradise Island, The Bahamas (long before The Atlantis was built), when Roy came late for the after-dinner show. He had good reason, as he was riding a lucky streak the likes of which he (nor many other people) had ever experienced.
I can’t tell you exactly how much money he won that night at the craps table (because I don’t think he even knew himself at that point), but there were four full boxes of chips, many of $100 and higher denominations. For the purpose of this story, let’s say it was about $50,000.
The 14-year-old version of me got dollar signs in my eyes and the kind of smile I usually only beamed at 14-year-old girls back then. “Mr. Goldfarb, do you always win like this?,” I asked.
“Kid, no one always wins like this,” he replied. “I lost about a third this much yesterday, so I was just trying to get even and happened to hit a major lucky streak.”
“You lost that much money yesterday?,” I said, wide-eyed. “How can you afford it? And, how much gambling is too much gambling?”
“How much money did you bring on this trip, Gary?”
“I don’t know. $20 maybe?”
“How much do you have at home in your piggy bank?”
“I don’t know…maybe $100?”
He handed me a $100 chip and said, “Even if I double your money, how much do you think you can afford to lose that you won’t miss it?”
“Ummm.”
“The answer is if you don’t know the answer, you can’t afford to lose any of it. And, there are too many people in every casino who are losing money they can’t afford to lose. Don’t ever be one of them.”
Roy may not have been related to me, but he showed me that the good life didn’t come without a lot of hard work and was indeed worth working for and savoring.
And then, there was Stan Brooks. Those of you who are from the New York metro area know my high school friend Bennett Brooks’ father as the gravelly, but somehow dulcet voice of NewsRadio1010 WINS-AM. Stan already was entrenched for many years as the WINS news update anchor when I first started to drive and his amazing voice was equalled only by his ability to condense major news stories into a few seconds each and still make sure you had all the details you needed to get the full story every time. “And, even after 50 years, he was still getting to the scene of a story before reporters half his age,” said WINS news director Ben Mevorach.
Bennett and I weren’t best friends growing up, even though he lived just a few blocks from me in Woodmere, but I did love going to his house to hear his dad talk about the gas crisis, civil rights, women’s lib and the state of the media in our country’s #1 media market.
In other words, he was one of the first people who got me thinking about a job in the information business — and my degree from the University of Florida actually was in broadcast, not print, journalism, in some small part because perhaps I saw myself as Mr. Brooks’ replacement if he ever decided to retire.
But, after more than 50 years, Stan Brooks never did retire. He filed his last report on Nov. 21 and passed away, after a cancer diagnosis, on Dec. 23, at age 86.
Although I always have been comfortable writing to fill space in print, I definitely preferred the idea of being able to tell a story the way I talk and Stan was someone worth modeling myself after. But, after 20 years (as of next month) of doing this job, I still know that I’m still not even in the ballpark of being the guy to replace him.
Rest in Peace, Stan and Roy — you were two of the good ones.
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