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CroWninG aCHieveMent: Harvey, tHe General Counsel
Norman’s fully enclosed office must have been forty feet long, not counting its own executive washroom. But the scale and opulence of the entire operation did more than create a positively charged atmosphere in which to work. It communicated strength and success to potential borrowers and, perhaps more important, to potential investors and lend- ers who, it seemed, were showering Norman with money.
But the strength and success were not there. In June 1990, I received a phone call that was as unfortunately timed as any that was ever made to me: Kathy and I were in the midst, literally, of moving into our new home at 16 Church Lane South in Scarsdale, a home for which we had spent what was to us a very large sum of money, 80 percent of which was financed through a mortgage loan bearing a high interest rate. Putting aside the turmoil that is created by a physical move and the new eco- nomic pressure that we knew we were undertaking, the situation was tense in and of itself, as we were moving not just us but also Kathy’s boys, Dan and Dave, from Great Neck to an entirely new life in Scars- dale, and we were concerned about the effects of the transition on them. We were seated on the couch in the living room, occupying one of the first pieces of furniture that had been put in place. Moving men were all about, and Keith Kroeger, our architect, was seated with us and explain- ing the drawings of the new French doors, windows, and patio that we were about to construct. While all of this was happening, the house- keeper whom we had hired announced that she was quitting, and Phyllis walked in through the open front door, without invitation or prior notice. She was there, she said, to see where Rachel would sleep on nights that she would stay over with me. I started to deal with her politely when the freshly installed telephone rang. Allen Rothman, my assistant general counsel, was on the other end to tell me that, as he said, “it’s all over.”
I had seen signs of trouble (and the real estate market was cracking) but had little inkling that things were as bad as he told me they were. He advised me that it looked as if Coronet Capital Company was actively considering filing for bankruptcy and that he suspected that, among other things, Norman was going to ask that he be terminated.
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