June 10, 1998
by Peter O. Safir
THE PHOTOGRAPH on p. 43 is of Dick Erdman, Ken Wilson, and Robert Mertz ’65 taken under another (not Blair) famous arch. It’s Nimrod’s Castle in the Golan Heights. Dick is currently with the State Dept. in Tel Aviv, and Ken was visiting from Washington, D.C.
Ken Zuckerman reports that after eight years of red tape, he has begun construction of the Ocean Trails Golf Club on the oceanfront in Palos Verdes, Calif.
Phil Hocker writes that life is good, as, in January, he and wife Jean celebrated the birth of their second grandchild, Abigail Harris. The first is Isabel Coughlin. Phil has spent the last 10 years establishing and running the Mineral Policy Center in Washington, D.C., advocating environmental reform of mining laws. Recently, he has handed that group on to new leadership and is now “surfing” the Internet and other business opportunities around town for a new adventure.
I received a letter from another of our Class of ’67 Scholarship students, Elisabeth Spigel ’99, daughter of Robert Spigel. Elisabeth writes to express her extreme gratitude for the financial assistance that has been provided by the class. She is a psychology major, a member of the women’s crew team, and on the Varsity Student Athlete Advisory Committee.
© 1998 Peter O. Safir and The Princeton Alumni Weekly. Used by permission.
Steve Grossman ’67 and a debt-ridden DNC
Around the turn of the century, when the paternal grandfather of Steve Grossman ’67 left Romania and settled in Boston, he started the Massachusetts Envelope Co. and hung out at local Democratic clubs. Two generations later, the company is still in business -- and his grandson, a self-styled “genetic Democrat,” was the person chosen to straighten out a fundraising morass as chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
At Princeton, Grossman wasn’t especially political, writing a thesis on Stendhal, joining Tower Club, and founding a student course guide, which he credits with getting him into Harvard Business School. An interest in public service was sparked in 1978, when he spent a week in Israel on a leadership development program.
That experience led him to take active roles in Jewish charities, including -- at the suggestion of Kitty Dukakis -- raising the first million dollars for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Impressed, Kitty’s husband, Michael Dukakis, tapped Grossman as a cochairman of his 1988 presidential bid. “I always saw myself as a grassroots activist,” Grossman says. “As a kid, I went door to door to get petitions signed with my uncle in southeastern Massachusetts.”
After Dukakis’s campaign fizzled, Grossman found himself working with an unexpected patron. Future Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown was in the running for DNC chairman, but his stint heading Jesse Jackson’s 1988 Democratic convention operation seemed to hinder his chances of attracting Jewish support. Grossman called Brown -- who didn’t know him -- and offered help. Brown won the position and elevated Grossman to the DNC board.
Later, as president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Grossman met another future patron: then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. Grossman had been assigned to brief the governor before a speech to AIPAC; he was struck “by how a person who did not have a great deal of knowledge could absorb so much information and give such an extraordinary speech the next day,” he says. “I thought to myself, This is a man whom, if he ever runs for President, I will do everything I can to elect.’”
In January 1997, while at home in Boston watching a football game on TV, Grossman received a call from Vice-President Gore asking him to come to Washington to talk about “the future of the party.” Figuring the conversation would include an offer to become national chairman of the DNC, Grossman talked over the idea with his family. His father told him that “you don’t say no to the President.” He agreed to take the job, provided he could still live part time in Boston.
Though a few years earlier Grossman had helped the Massachusetts Democratic Party climb out of its debts, the DNC’s financial house was in far worse order. At its worst, the DNC was $15.3 million in the red, much of that for legal expenses related to fundraising investigations. But Grossman has managed to reduce that number by more than half.
As Grossman often does in conversations, he cites Jewish writings to explain why he took a job that he knew would be arduous and possibly thankless. “There’s a saying that we are not required to finish the task,” he says, “but nor are we permitted to desist from it.”
-- Louis Jacobson ’92 in Class Notes Features of The Princeton Alumni Weekly
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