September/October 2000
By Si Wakesberg
Si Wakesberg is New York bureau chief for Scrap.
Here are a few more memories culled from the pages of my mental scrapbook:
A Scrapman’s Island. One summer, ending a vacation in Canada, I returned to New York via the Thousand Islands, located in the St. Lawrence River between Ontario and upstate New York.
The tour guide pointed out the various islands, mostly owned by the rich and famous such as Nelson Rockefeller. My ears perked up, however, when the guide said “… and that island belongs to Abe Cooper, a scrap dealer from Syracuse.” Cooper, I knew, was the father-in-law of Harry Marley, head of the Marley’s division of Abe Cooper-Syracuse Inc. and an important official of the Institute of Scrap Iron and Steel (ISIS).
There lay Abe Cooper’s cozy little island, a reminder that anyone could work his way up in America and, whether his name was Rockefeller or Cooper, reach a point where he might indeed possess an island of his own.
The Grand Jury. Once, many years ago, I was called to testify before a grand jury as an expert witness on copper.
If anyone ever needed justification for a job, being called as an expert witness on copper—in the case of the United States vs. the Copper Producers on charges of monopoly and more—certainly gave me the right credentials.
I was nervous, never having spoken before a jury and certainly not a grand jury in such an imposing case. I can now reveal that the questions asked by the public prosecutor had little to do with the operations of the copper market—which were the questions I expected—but rather humdrum inquiries about whom I knew in the copper industry and what I thought of them.
However, the jurors also had their chance to quiz me, and their questions were different.
I was astonished that a jury handpicked in a Manhattan courthouse, consisting of people having little or nothing to do with the copper business, could ask such intelligent questions. Some of them, in fact, delved deeply into the workings of the copper market—its trends, movements, and so on.
While a few jurors seemed bored by all this, most of them were alert and quick on their feet. My inquisition lasted about an hour and a half, and I was glad to get out.
All this eventually came to nothing. After several years of hearings, grand jury questioning, and meetings, it was found that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to indict and life went on as before, while the copper market merrily continued to baffle sellers and buyers.
A Remembered Phone Call. In that long-ago era before radio was replaced by the television set, one of the dominant figures in broadcasting was Arthur Godfrey, a kind of Larry King of old. Godfrey was so well known that they named a street after him in Florida, and his popularity made him wealthy and somewhat reclusive later in life.
One afternoon, seated at my office desk, the phone rang and our switchboard operator said, “Arthur Godfrey on the phone.” I thought either she had wrongly heard the caller or someone was playing a practical joke. Arthur Godfrey! Calling me?
But it was indeed Godfrey. His voice, unmistakable if you’d heard him on the radio, was the same husky inimitable voice. “Hello,” he said, “who am I speaking to?”
After I answered, he went on, “Well, I’ve been hearing about this recovery of metals and waste paper, and I wanted to find out more about it.”
I now wish I’d taped that conversation. There I was, telling the great Arthur Godfrey all about recycling! And at the end, he thanked me. It was a phone call to be remembered.
An Israel Memory. Back in 1966, the scrap industry was planning a United Jewish Appeal (UJA) scrap mission to Israel in September. As it turned out, I was going there in July, so my scrap friends indicated to UJA that I could serve as a kind of advance guard for the mission.
UJA, ever alert, sent a car to my hotel in Israel with a driver to take me places. I saw much on that trip, thanks to UJA, but one scene was indelibly stamped in my heart.
It was the time of early immigration from communist countries. Few of them would let Jews leave, but Hungary had broken with the others and quietly allowed some of its population to emigrate. UJA took us to Lod airport for the arrival of a plane from Hungary.
You have to remember it was 1966, the Cold War was very much on, the Soviet Union was still a major force, and here was a communist country quietly permitting its citizens to leave.
I watched as these people came off the plane, and it was like a scene out of a movie. You couldn’t quite believe it was happening right before your eyes. The scene was a mix of elderly men and women, their eyes filled with tears, youngsters, babies, a babble of foreign voices, tired and exhausted faces. It was a sad, pitiable, yet happy and hopeful sight. These wanderers had come home at last.
When I returned to New York and reported to the members of the mission, I had only praise and thanks to UJA for giving me an opportunity to share this memorable experience.
Death of a Zinc Man. In 1999, a former president of the National Association of Secondary Material Industries (later the National Association of Recycling Industries, or NARI) died. He was no ordinary president and no ordinary man. Maury D. Schwartz was an encyclopedia of zinc, a historian of the metal industry, a man who searched the past in order to understand the present.
As president of Pacific Smelting Co. (Torrance, Calif.), at one time a very active and important zinc smelter on the West Coast, he was fortunate to have several distinguished individuals work for his company.
Two such people were Kurt Smalberg, who later went on to become executive director of NARI as well as president of the Steel Can Recycling Institute, and Norman Blatt, who was known far and wide in the secondary zinc industry. These two men and others helped Schwartz make Pacific Smelting a byword in the business.
Maury, however, had other and wider interests. He was, what you might call, a semi-pro archaeologist, delving into ancient copper and zinc histories and sending me scads of material as background for metal markets. He had even gone on archaeological expeditions and was an avid follower of the latest in archaeology. Many times, he and Albert Haas, who once presided over Sandoval Zinc Co. and is now retired, would engage in discussions on archaeology.
Maury lived in Beverly Hills with his wife Lois. They had an astonishingly electronic house, long before electronics became a byword. I still remember their marvelous kitchen with its equipment fit for the chef at Le Bernardin.
Long after he sold his company and retired, Maury remained umbilically connected with the metals industry, and from time to time he’d send me letters about some extraordinary development in zinc or copper. His passing removed from the scene a rare zinc maven who was passionate about the history of metals.•
Here are a few more memories culled from the pages of my mental scrapbook: A Scrapman’s Island. One summer, ending a vacation in Canada, I returned to New York via the Thousand Islands, located in the St. Lawrence River between Ontario and upstate New York.