A Man for Many Seasons

Few people who met Sidney Danziger ever forgot him. Not everyone was a fan, of course. But those who knew him well became his lifelong friends.

In such fast-moving times as ours, the fame of one person is fleeting. Already, young scrap executives look puzzled when Sidney is mentioned, as if he were just some name and date in a history book. Not long ago, however, Sidney was a power in the nonferrous scrap industry—a man of strong, charismatic leadership.

Sidney began working when he was about 14 and spent most of his life in the scrap industry, moving to top positions with unerring ambition. A New Yorker pure and unvarnished, he refused to leave that city even when he became vice president of H. Kramer & Co.’s (Chicago) Ajax Metal Division in Philadelphia, then a leading brass and bronze ingot manufacturer. Instead, Sidney was the original “frequent flyer” (albeit by train), turning the New York-to-Philadelphia route into part of his routine.

Holding a clear vision of the metal industry’s future, Sidney foresaw the meteoric rise of aluminum. With Noah Butkin as partner, he established the legendary Alloys & Chemicals Corp. in the Cleveland valley. Sidney remained in New York, of course, and Noah ran the plant, where some of the best talent in the secondary aluminum industry was nurtured. Names that come to mind are Harry Gordon, Stanley Miller, Al Dubinsky, Tom Ginsburg, David Thakar, George Nagel, Milo Phillips, and Sheldon Wolfe, among others.

Personally, Sidney was a maze of contradictions. He would rail against the LME and Comex, calling them “Las Vegas gambling dens,” and then calmly proceed to use both in his daily trading practices. If confronted with this contradiction between his words and actions, he simply shrugged and called himself a pragmatist. This was long after he sold Alloys & Chemicals and was operating as an individual trader.

If some people thought Sidney behaved like a kind of dictator, it was because he saw things in black and white, never gray. One lunch at the Four Seasons, where Sidney had his customary table adjoining the pool—a coveted spot—comes to mind. Stanley Miller and I were his lunchmates, and we all had ordered something different from the tantalizing menu. We were talking rather exuberantly when the food came. Sidney took one bite of his fish, put down his knife and fork, and pronounced judgment: “This food is cold.” We, on the other hand, murmured gently that ours was hot, but by that time Sidney had summoned the maitre d’ and imperiously ordered, “Take it all back. It’s cold.” Despite our protestations, the food was removed. Sidney Danziger had spoken.

Over the years, though Sidney hurled more than a few brickbats at me regarding articles I’d written on the copper or aluminum market, I retained a sentimental affection for him. It was he who convinced me to leave my editor’s position and join the staff of the National Association of Recycling Industries (NARI), one of ISRI’s predecessors. Throughout the years, I found him the kind of friend you could go to when you needed advice. I think most of his friends found his door open anytime.

Also, no one will ever know how much he helped fellow industry members financially, but Sidney’s charity extended to both great causes and individual friends who needed financial assistance.

One of his friends, a well-known Southern scrap executive, once got into an argument with Sidney, creating a rift in their long business and personal friendship. This inventive chap, seeking to heal the rift, sent Danziger two white doves in a cage as a peace offering. This unusual gift did the trick. Sidney kept the doves for months at his office, though he left the job of caring for them to his overburdened secretary.

Speaking of his office, it was a small and dimly lit room on Madison Avenue that was cluttered with papers and magazines scattered all over the floor. Neatness was not Sidney’s strongest trait, though he knew where every letter, every report was on that floor.

Throughout his career, Sidney served many leadership positions in industry associations. For instance, he was president of the National Association of Waste Material Dealers (later renamed NARI), as well as a three-term president of the Bureau International de la Recuperation, the international scrap industry association.

Even after his terms as president, Sidney remained involved. He would attend meetings and sit in the back. And when he rose, you knew he intended to ask the speaker some challenging question.

Toward the end of his life, Sidney was beset with many ills. His physical ailments grew so bad that he could hardly walk or even move around. Yet visiting him one day at his apartment overlooking Central Park, I found him remarkably alert. Well into his 80s—he was 87 when he died in 1991—and truly physically impaired, he would still sit in front of the TV watching the business news. Talking to him, I realized that he knew everything going on in the metal industry—prices of copper and aluminum, nickel trends, what steel scrap was doing. Even more, he knew all the industry’s gossip—who was getting married and who was divorcing, who was giving birth, who had opened a new scrap facility, and who had retired. It was phenomenal.

Some days when I walk past 888 Fifth Avenue, I look up at the window where Sidney Danziger gazed out on the world during his last days. He isn’t there, of course, but I still think I see him. •