A Tribute to my Father

My father, Robert S. Fiffer, was a larger-than-life character, and though he lived only 48 years (of which I knew him for nine), he had an outsized influence on both the world and me. First of all, he was big. Not tall, but heavy set. He joked that he weighed “two hundred and plenty,” and when he once shaved his beard, he grew it back immediately to hide all his “extra” chins. Born on the hardscrabble west side of Chicago (Austin), he attended public school, where he skipped a grade (as I did) and finished high school at 17. His father, who had emigrated from Romania, was a songwriter whose claim to fame was having a composition played by Lawrence Welk. But the music (which he tapped out by ear on the piano) was a hobby; Grandpa Fiffer made his living behind the counter of a small cigar store where he earned so little he allegedly hid the day’s cash receipts in the lettuce. He, my grandmother, my father, and my uncle lived in a tiny apartment behind the store. After high school, my father attended the University of Chicago for both college and law school. (He was not fit for military service, due to flat feet and a bad knee.) During the 1940s at U of C, Mortimer Adler instituted a two-year college program, and law school was a four-year stint. My dad couldn’t afford to take summers off, and as the school was on the quarter system, he finished six years of education in four, paying his $100 a quarter tuition with his Gin Rummy winnings. He was at the time, the youngest candidate to take the Chicago Bar Association’s qualifying exam, and they made a special dispensation to allow him to practice under the age of 21. That same year, 1947, my parents married. 

As my father moved up in Chicago’s legal world through hard work (he usually rose at 4:00 am and was said to read while he tied his shoelaces), he became highly successful, eventually running his own medium-sized law firm, but he never forgot his working class roots. He was overly generous with both money and time, giving to charities and stepping up consistently for community service. He tipped well and frequently gave free or discounted legal assistance to those in need, such as our carpenter or a staff member of his club (The Standard Club), both of whose sons ran afoul of the law. He also got involved behind the scenes in democratic politics, and in one race, when the opposing candidate was accused of embezzling, had play money printed up that read “Stolen by Orville Hodge.” At political and charity functions, he used the men’s room frequently, not out of need, but because it enabled him to strike up conversations with potential clients on the way in and out. Knowing how to work the system was (and still is) key in Chicago, and the story goes that when Harris Wofford (who would go on to become a senator from Pennsylvania) got arrested and put in jail during the infamous 1968 Democratic Convention, a friend placed a frantic, late-night call to my father asking him what course of action to take. My dad’s response was, “Who’s the judge?” 

He kept the door of his corner office closed, even when he was out, so his associates would assume he was in and not slack off when the boss was away. But he worked harder than all of them. The biggest deal he put together was Robert Irsay’s acquisition of the then Baltimore (now Indianapolis) Colts. The Colts’ owner, Carroll Rosenbloom, had always wanted to own the Rams, but selling the Colts involved huge tax consequences. So, in the only whole-team trade in NFL history, Irsay bought the Rams and immediately swapped them, at equal value, for the Colts, making everyone happy, especially my father, who, after the deal closed, bought me an enormous stuffed ape (“Ernie”) in the airport and bought Ernie a first-class seat on the flight back to Chicago. At one time, I had autographed photos from Johnny Unitas, Bubba Smith, Bert Jones, and other football legends, and my parents attended two Super Bowls. We spent one spring vacation in Florida at The Jockey Club and on the Irsays’ Yacht, the “Mighty I,” and my father became the team’s secretary and general counsel. 

For my parents’ 25th anniversary (1972), my dad took the whole family (I have two older brothers) across the Atlantic on the SS France, then the largest cruise ship in the world, followed by a grand tour of England, France, and Italy. I still have the key to our stateroom. I joined my parents on subsequent trips to Scandinavia and the Far East. My dad died three years later, too young, having lived, we all said, at least 96 years in his brief 48. The Jewish Community Centers of Chicago honored him for a decade with the annual Fiffer literary lecture, bringing in luminaries such as Cynthia Ozick, Alfred Kazin, Mordecai Richler, Walter Laqueur, Harold Brodkey, and Saul Bellow (whom I introduced). The University of Chicago Law School has a scholarship in his name. One of my favorite memories is driving downtown to his office in Chicago’s Rookery building, going through the tunnels on the expressway (Big John and Little John), riding the elevator up to the top floor (there was still an operator in the 70s), and photocopying my hand on the copy machine. Another is spying on him from outside our house, taking notes on a pad, while he worked at home on a weekend in his study. I have his home desk (an old library table), and some of the many classical music tapes he recorded (and cataloged methodically in notebooks) from albums or the radio. He even made tapes of “Peter and the Wolf” and “The Jungle Stories” for me, so I wouldn’t ruin his expensive phonograph. Another memory (though I have forgotten the tales themselves) is of the “Barfberry Stories” he would tell me at night before I went to sleep. On the day he died, he caught me procrastinating, reading the World Book when I should have been writing a book report. He made a notecard for me with an acronym—DOOTAAT—and explained that the letters stood for “Do Only One Thing At A Time.” To this day, I’m not much of a multitasker, and I chuckled a little when I read that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett both consider “focus” to be the most important behavior for success. I don’t always live up to Dad’s advice, but at least I was able to focus long enough to write this piece!