A Bit of Personal Commentary—Part 4

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By Seth H. Bramson

We concluded our last visit with a reminiscence of our terrible days at 1/2SU, and other than pledging TEP, meeting some great guys, and meeting and dating a lovely young woman by the name of Molly Alderson, it was close to horrific there. You couldn’t even get a bagel in that country bumpkin burg at that time.

My still good and great friend Charlie Clark and I actually knew each other beginning in sixth grade at Biscayne Elementary School and were cordial at Nautilus Junior High, which is where we also became close with Ricky Neross, and we all remain very close friends to and through today. Charlie and I decided we would go up to—and swim for—1/2SU, which we did, living in one room in a very old wooden house on West Tennessee Street. The rent was $45.00 a month–$22.50 each. Suffice to say, I really hated it there and so I left poor Charlie in 1/2assee at the end of our first—and my only—term.

Immediately upon returning to Miami in December ’62, I went to work at the Fontainebleau and we will convey that wonderful story next issue.

Happily, though, in regard to Charlie, he returned to Miami at the end of the first year and, as I had done, transferred to U of Miami.

Now to put things in perspective I really do need to set the stage for my totally less than satisfactory relationship with Sun Tan U., which it still is.

Myrna’s first husband, the late Arthur Nemser, received his undergrad and his law degree there; Myrna’s son, Ben Nemser, did the same; my beloved stepdaughter, Saralyn Nemser, got her law degree there; my number one number two grandson, Harrison Seeman not only earned his BBA there but upon graduation Summa Cum Laude several years ago was named the outstanding graduate of the School of Business and, at graduation, was presented with a check for $1,000 by Dr. (now Congresswoman) Donna Shalala, UM President at the time. You would have thought that I would have been a natural to be part of UM. I wasn’t. I disliked the school intensely and subsequent slights and insults by that vile place have magnified that feeling massively.

At any rate, I “did” four godawful, terrible terms there, with indifferent, uncaring, disinterested faculty plus an anything but a swim coach by the name of Lloyd Bennett who was worthless as you-know what’s on a boar, sitting at one end of the pool at the Veteran’s Hospital (previously and then, later, the Miami Biltmore Hotel) smoking and dropping the butts into a little hole next to his chair, which he never removed his posterior from. (Incidentally, we-the swim team-never knew what that mysterious hole lead to!) Bennett knew less than nothing about swimming, so he gave us less than no coaching or instruction. Apparently, unlike Bill Diaz, who would come from Miami Jackson High and who was a very successful swim coach at UM, this guy—Bennett—had never even been in a swimming pool, much less learned anything about coaching swimming. He apparently took the job for some extra pay, but it sure wasn’t to build a great team. Which he didn’t. In fact, he barely “built a team.”

As noted, I put in four terms there and in my last semester I earned my first “B” in a college class, that after five semesters, which will tell you how totally unmotivated I was, how disinterested and uninteresting the faculty was, and how little I was interested in the courses, being made all the worse by said sub-standard faculty at both schools.

I was ready to quit school. However, Mom was very upset with that idea, and, of course, I was working at the Fontainebleau, the story of which, as stated above, will follow in our next chapter.

While I don’t remember how I heard or learned of it, Dade County Junior College (D C J C), today’s Miami-Dade College, announced that they were going to begin classes in a new program called Hotel-Motel and Food Service Management. They may have actually started it in September of the previous year but their new term was beginning in January and I wanted to give it a try, and thank Neil (NEIL, GOD!) I did!

The two faculty members, both near and dear to my heart, were Joe Gregg (food service management) and Jack Low (hotel-motel management), both now of blessed memory. Joe had been with Howard Johnson’s Red Coach Division and Jack had been with the family Jacobs and had managed a number of hotel on Miami Beach, including the Lord Tarleton. They were both interested, caring, interesting professors and wonderful men. To this day I think lovingly of them.

In addition to my required courses in both disciplines I took other courses from great instructors including what was then called Personnel Management. I really enjoyed it all, and my grades reflected the fact that, to paraphrase George C. Scott playing General George Patton in “Patton,” “I did love it, I loved it so,” and my D C J C grade point average, upon my graduation with my Associate’s Degree after three terms there, reflected that, and was a 3.7692, achieved by the guy who hadn’t gotten a “B” until his fifth semester in college. (Incidentally, it was there, at D C J C, that I met and became quite cordial with, “the one and only” Roby Yonge, who became so famed as “Roby on the Radio” on either WCKR or WIOD, here in Myamuh.)

Naturally, I did my required internship at the Fontainebleau and all departments cooperated fully. It was a marvelous experience and exposed me to everything and every occupation in the hotel, from food and beverage to front desk, to the sign shop, to banquets and catering, print shop, valet (front door parking), housekeeping, engineering, cabana club management and its ancillary departments (bowling alley, ice skating and others) and all else. Suffice to say, everybody there was helpful and supportive.

At some point, while I was at D C J C, the Fontainebleau’s vice president, Lou Rogers, told me how pleased the hotel was not only with my work there, but with the fact that I was doing so well at D C JC, and asked me if I would like to go up to Cornell for summer classes. My happily shocked reply was, “Oh my god, Mr. Rogers, I would love to, but I can’t afford that.” And his wonderful response? “You afford to get there. I’ll pay your housing and tuition.”

And sure enough, that summer (of ’65) I was en-route to Cornell University, the home of Ithaca, New York, to enroll in two summer classes at the fabled and still number one in the world School of Hotel Administration. Lordy, did I love it, and it was during that summer that I made the earth-shattering decision: as Sammy Davis, JR. sang in his paean (tribute) to the great Fred Astaire, “I saw Astaire go ‘pitter-pat,’ said “I can do that, yeah, I can do that,” and I looked around Ithaca and said to myself (“self,” I said!) “Man, I can do this,” and with that my mind was made up. Somehow, one way or another, I was going to complete my Bachelor’s Degree at Statler Hall, the building which housed the oldest and most venerated school of its kind in the county, having graduated its first class in 1926. (The Hotel School, not referring to the fabled Ivy League university itself, founded by Ezra Cornell in 1865, with the following words on the university’s crest: “I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study” and to which the New York State Hotel Association directed its request, in 1924, that the university begin a program in hotel management, which it did, with the program’s classes starting in 1925.)

When I got back to Miami Beach (and the Fontainebleau) I told my Mom, brother Bennett, Professors Gregg and Low and Mr. Rogers that I was determined to attend—and graduate from—Cornell. Each of them promised me that he or she would do all he could to help—and they did, Messrs. Gregg and Low writing very strong letters of recommendation and Mr. Rogers arranging for the late, great Dean Robert A. Beck (holder of the first PhD in hotel administration ever granted—by Cornell, of course—in this country, if not the world) to come to Miami Beach and while enjoying a few days respite at the Fontainebleau, to interview the young man who was so eager—and determined—to attend that great university. The Dean did, and, yes, thanks to all of them, I was granted admission to that great school, beginning in September, 1966.

At this point we take a short break, but back with you in a few days to regale you with our absolutely factual stories of my four terrific years at the Fontainebleau, what I did, some of the people I met, some of the beautiful girls I dated, including the one I wanted to marry, but, fortunately for me, as things would turn out, didn’t. Then, after that, we’ll further regale you with the story of three more years of undergraduate education in Ithaca, that culminating with my being awarded the Bachelor of Science degree by my now alma mater on June 9, 1969, Mom, Bennett, Uncle Morty and Aunt Sibyl in attendance on the single most gloriously beautiful day in my three Ithaca years.

Back with you soon and hope you came through the hurricane safely!

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