In
the early 1960s I was elected president of the San Francisco Young Republicans, a
4,000 member organization held together by the desire of young newly
arrived single San Francisco women to meet men and vice versa. Elected
with me was a secretary, whom I didn't know, who turned out to be a
beauty. She was charming, sweet and truly innocent. Something I had
never encountered in a 22 year old beauty. The reason turned out to
be, that she had always previously been fat. After high school and the
debutant ball of that era, she started seeing a shrink to lose weight.
It worked.
She fell in love with the shrink and they had an affair. When her parents found out they drove the shrink out of town and my secretary was left to mope in love-sick pain. She lost a lot of weight and emerged as the swan.
We both ended up at the Bank of America. Me starting the marketing research department, she as a secretary in the legal department. At the time, the Bank was trying to buy property in the heart of San Francisco for a new headquarters. I knew about it and knew about the completely unwilling owner of the main block the bank wanted. The owner was an old miser named Luigi. My gossip sources told me that he was also a lecher. I went to an Executive VP in charge of the new building and suggested he send my Young Republican secretary to take notes at the meetings with Luigi. The EVP later put me on the building committee in return for my brilliant suggestion. The brand new interest in selling his land, on the part of Luigi, led to a final agreement (based not on a sale of land but a 99 year lease).The Bank of America building was and still is a major landmark in San Francisco. My secretary married an English count within a year.