Anna's Boy

©2020 All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Print ISBN: 978-1-09832-087-4

eBook ISBN: 978-1-09832-088-1

AUTHOR CONTACT: [email protected]

TO

My parents Anna and Thomas Wood, whose genes,

guidance, and sacrifices made my life the wonderful

journey that it has been.

My late daughter, Vicki, whose gravitational

warmth kept our family together.

Alice Gloster Burnette, who significantly helped to

soften my transition into my sunset years.

Muriel McCoy, who provided the support and

environment for me to write my story.

Contents

Acknowledgments

A Message from the Author

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Appendix

Selected Bibliography

I am still learning

Michelangelo

Acknowledgments

Put simply, Anna’s Boy is a record of my cliffhanger journey through this mystery-cloaked existence called life. Hopefully, the documentation of some of the obstacles I encountered during my careers in the computer industry and corporate America, as well as my personal life, might help future travelers of color negotiate similar roads less traveled. Though much has changed, much more can be done.

In 2017, the Atlantic magazine reported that the Fortune 500 companies added eight new black CEOs between 2005 and 2011, a number that represented fewer than 2 percent of all Fortune 500 companies.

I also was motivated to leave a record of my business life for my children, Kay, Erik, Vicki, and Brian, who saw very little of me during their formative years. I want them, and their children to have a better understanding of what I did and why I spent many weeks and months away from home.

Many people helped produce this work and I’m grateful to them all. Alan Dynner, my longtime attorney and good friend, shared his writings and recollections of our Africa-related business relationship and adventures.

I offer a special thanks to Doug Smith, Doug and I met through Alice Burnette, who was my companion for almost twenty years before she passed of cancer in 2006. Doug encouraged me to write my life story, and offered to help. Doug provided the spark for me to do what I had thought about for a number of years, and not acted upon.

A shout out to Collin Woods for his cover image, it makes me look better than I did at a similar age.

I thank Wikipedia for much of the biographical material in my story.

There is no FREE LUNCH

Milton Freidman

A Message from the Author

Anna’s Boy is not a story of victimization. In spite of the struggles that we, blacks, have endured as a people, I’ve never considered myself to be a victim. Throughout the history of civilization life has been unfair to many and generous to many others. None of us chose our parents, our race, gender, the color of our eyes, or the country that became our first home. Had I been born in any other country than the United States, I doubt if I would have acquired the education and experiences needed to become the man I became. Despite tribulations, life has been good. Yet I know that there are many people with far less education and far fewer life experiences than I who are just as pleased with their lives.

I draw this conclusion from my own observations, which were supported in a recent study on happiness. The study determined that some of the happiest people in the world are in the Tonga tribe in southern Zambia and northern Zimbabwe, where they have next to nothing. They live in thatched huts, have no electricity, no running water, and no hospital system. Yet they’re happy.

In Nature Boy, a song written by Brooklyn native Eden Ahbez and first recorded by Nat King Cole, one line reads: The greatest thing you will ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return. If that’s your perception of happiness, then there are many people in the world who are happy, despite not having any of the advantages that we in the Western world hold dear. I was born and raised in New York City and I know that the attitude of some New Yorkers is, What good is happiness, can it buy money? Is that the objective—to accumulate all the toys in the world?

I’m a product of the love and sacrifices of my parents and of so many others throughout who have made life safer, healthier, and more comfortable through advances in science, medicine, transportation, and housing. My bonus for having lived more than ninety years? I saw changes that I never dreamed possible in my younger years. I saw the U.S. Supreme Court end racial segregation in the United States, Nelson Mandela freed from South African prison, the end of apartheid in South Africa, and Mandela become president of the country that had imprisoned him for twenty-six years.

I attended the opening of the Smithsonian American Indian museum in Washington D.C.in 2005.The American Indian, had a much different struggle than we black Americans, such as dealing with the loss of their land due to guns and germs..They call Christopher Columbus’s visit the encounter not the discovery.The Indians won some battles, however the Indians lost the war.In the museum, the emphasis is not on all of the struggles. Instead, the Indians have chosen to make the museum a celebration of Indian culture and values. In that spirit, that is the choice that I have made, to remember the past accurately, and I mean just that, accurately, and to focus on the present, and the future.

I was fortunate and grateful, too, that my life was briefly linked with three of the iconic figures of the 20th century: Martin Luther King Jr., David Rockefeller, and Jackie Robinson. By their words and through example, they helped shape the man I became. Although I never shook his hand or had a chance to chat with our nation’s forty-fourth president, one of the most satisfying experiences of my life occurred when I traveled to Washington, D.C., in 2009 to see Barack Obama, a fellow Columbia University Alumnus, become the first black president of the United States.

I’ve enjoyed my life; I’ve enjoyed the daily contest, and I’ve enjoyed overcoming many, but not all, of the obstacles that blocked my way.

Tom Wood

"I don’t believe in failure. Its not failure if you

enjoyed the process".

Oprah Winfrey

Chapter 1

"The arc of the moral universe

May bend towards justice, but it

Does not bend on its own"

Barack Obama

Yes, m’Lord.

These three words out of my mouth ricocheted off the walls of a London courtroom, their vibrations slapping me sharply across the face, as if to remind me that the theatre-type drama that was about to begin was not a dream. After years of delays, my time on the witness stand was here.

I sat in what the British called the dock, a witness stand that positioned me at eye-level with the three distinguished arbitrators: Lord Patrick Devlin, Sir David Cairns, and Sir Henry Fisher. They seemed relaxed, comfortable at home in their work in one of the four courts of historic Gray’s Inn, where British law clerks and apprentices have been trained since the 14th century.

Mine was the only American accent heard during the courtroom proceedings, and with a wry smile I silently offered kudos to George Bernard Shaw for his profound description of America and Great Britain as two nations separated by a common language. Despite the precariousness of the moment, another breeze of humor blew through my mind, as I realized that the fate of my business career and–indeed–the course of my life would be determined by three English arbitrators who were more suitably adorned in white wigs and black robes than in business suits. More sobering thoughts chased my smiles away, as I pondered my situation, as I watched the three arbitrators huddled in animated discussion before I began my first of twelve days of intense interrogation.

I studied the three men and, for a moment, felt hopeful, knowing that the arbitration was in the hands of three of England’s most respected legal minds. Lord Devlin, who was the youngest High Court judge to be appointed in the 20th century, was the chief/independent arbitrator. Known for his compassion, one of Devlin’s most famous quotes is: Trial by jury is the lamp that shows that freedom lives. Another former High Court judge said, Patrick Devlin could have been the greatest among us, an opinion which was widely shared in the British legal profession.

Cairns, a English judge selected by Zambia, (the nation that I had taken to this English Court) was knighted in 1955. A Liberal Party politician, Cairns served as Chairman of the Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Commission and was Lord Justice of Appeal (1970-77). He presided over several notable cases, including the Exxon Corp v Exxon Insurance Consultants International Ltd.

Fisher, lauded for his quick apprehension and ability to analyze and organize voluminous material in the shortest possible time, was the arbitrator selected by my firm, TAW, which are my initials. He was a president of Wolfson College, and the eldest son of Geoffrey Fisher, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. Fisher became TAW’s arbitrator, after Arthur Goldberg, a former U.S. Supreme Court Justice, stepped aside, at TAW’s request.

The arbitrators’ off-the-record platform chat heightened my anxiety and sent my mind whirling toward the hypothetical. Would this be the end of the line for me career-wise? What forces, I wondered, had guided this Harlem-bred black man to a higher level of the international business world in the 1970s and then sent him on a perilous spiral that now had him orbiting precariously above an abyss? I, the president and founder of TAW, an international leasing company that operated in fourteen African countries, wondered what it was all about. How had I become the central character in a U.S. $25 plus million lawsuit against the government of Zambia, a copper-rich landlocked country in southern Africa? How could I win this David vs. Goliath battle that pitted my seven-man legal team against Zambia’s team, which was two dozen-strong?

I reflected on the many close calls and cliff-hanger entanglements that I had survived in my business life over the years. None, however, was as scary as this scenario, which developed when TAW’s $80 million deal to transport tons of copper from Zambia to export in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, fell apart. I wondered if years from now I would forever remember this sparsely decorated London courtroom as the site of my Waterloo. I wondered, too, might I have another odds-defying escape tucked deep within me?

Then I surveyed the room, focusing first on barrister Conrad Dehn, the leader of Government of Zambia’s team of lawyers. Dehn was a member of one of Great Britain’s preeminent law firms. A 1952 Holt Scholar of Gray’s Inn, he was widely regarded as one of the leading advocates of his generation. People called him a well-dressed bloodhound with manners. Dehn moved about the room deliberately and with an air of confidence attained, no doubt, from the reputation he built while breaking down witnesses on the stand with withering cross-examinations.

Lawyers in the British court system have different names and different functions than those in the American system. TAW was represented by lawyers from three countries, including three British lawyers (one barrister and two solicitors). In Great Britain, the barrister is the only lawyer allowed to function as an attorney in this courtroom. Barristers, most of whom are self-employed, are the advocates. They represent clients in criminal and civil cases, draft legal pleas, give expert legal opinions, and are usually hired by solicitors directly.

Solicitors, hired by firms or organizations, have direct contact with clients and may do transactional-type legal work. In the British court system, foreign lawyers can’t participate in court procedures. Once the arbitration court convened, Alan Dynner, TAW’s U.S. attorney, and I weren’t allowed to discuss the case with each other because Alan, too, was to be called as a witness.

When I ended my scrutiny of Dehn from afar, I moved across the aisle and sought eye contact with members of my seven-man legal team, beginning with Alan, my attorney, who became a longtime friend and confidante. Alan came to TAW as an assistant to Norman Vander Clute, a partner in the company’s first outside attorney. Their firm almost exclusively handled international projects. Intrigued by Africa, Alan urged Vander Clute to replace him as TAW’s attorney. Vander Clute gave Alan the job, and he quickly proved to be an effective legal representative. The longer we worked together the more I realized that Alan, a Yale law graduate, not only was a brilliant lawyer, but he possessed the instincts of a seasoned businessman. We were often on the same wavelength, compatible from the start. We were so in tune with each other’s thoughts that at times, we finished each other’s sentences. When their law firm split, Vander Clute stayed with the founding firm; Alan went with the new firm. I chose to keep Alan as TAW’s attorney.

During my business career I’ve always believed that the person doing the job was usually more important than the name on the door. Besides, Alan was genuinely interested in Africa and its people. Because of our fifteen-year age difference, Alan often called me his big brother. In many of TAW’s previous legal fights and negotiations, Alan’s legal skills, managerial sensitivity, and tenacity helped us obtain the results we sought. His presence on TAW’s team gave me a high level of confidence, as I prepared for a courtroom battle that could end with TAW in bankruptcy and my life in shambles.

Then I targeted Frank Presnell, my assistant solicitor. I was saddened when I discovered that he was a turncoat at heart, if not in deed. Presnell’s admiration for Dehn’s courtroom skills prompted him to commit what I considered to be a serious ethical faux pas. Though he was paid to represent TAW and me, he bet Alan that Dehn would break me down on the witness stand and we would lose the case. Frank Presnell never knew that I had learned of the Presnell/Dynner wager weeks earlier. From that moment, I watched Presnell, my assistant solicitor, with suspect eyes.

Then I locked on to Bruce Brodie, my chief solicitor and a South African native. Alan recommended Brodie for the job, with some reservations, only because he thought Brodie’s South African roots might give me pause. Actually, Brodie and I became good friends, not only professionally, but socially.During the Arbitration, we broke bread together regularly. Once during lunch, he casually mentioned that his firm, Frere Cholmeley, was older than my country. The British firm was founded in 1750.

Brodie, described as cool, confident, and calm under pressure, came to us with high praise for his work in prior arbitrations, particularly international commercial arbitration. He was the recipient of a Blue, an award earned by British sportsmen and women attending universities and other schools for competing in athletic events at the university level. Of course, that earned him high marks from this hardworking former student/athlete. He was also John Lennon’s solicitor. But Brodie wasn’t without flaw. He had, after all, hired Presnell as his assistant solicitor.

A smile returned to my face as I gazed at David Hirst, my fearless, conscientious, and ebullient barrister. Some considered David, who had served as a Lord Justice on the Court of Appeal, somewhat of a showman. He spoke rapidly but always clearly, waved his arms dramatically during cross-examinations and waddled about the courtroom with penguin-like motions. He was a stickler for enforcing rules and decorum and once became emotionally agitated when someone, who worked for him, addressed him by his Christian name. He was subsequently knighted by the Queen, an honor which dubbed him Sir David Hirst.

Sebastian Zulu’s eyes were fixed on me before I looked his way. I returned his smile and was glad to have someone of his intellect, insight, and integrity on my side in a legal hassle involving Zambia, his home country. I met him when he was Zambia’s solicitor general. He impressed me then when he openly opposed an order by Zambia’s president to jail seventeen people. The president relented, recognizing the wisdom in Sebastian’s opposition. I leaned on Zulu heavily for legal advice for many years in the various African countries in which TAW did business.

After my legal team, my eyes turned to Frank Savage, an Equitable Life bank manager when I met him, still dressed the part. Clean-cut and stylishly outfitted, Frank came to mind when we landed the Zambia project. During our conversation, I told him that someone with his banking, financial, and organizing skills, combined with his love for Africa, should work with TAW. He agreed to join us as director of the Zambia project.I remembered vividly one of our early discussions after Frank joined TAW. I greatly respected Frank’s rapid rise in the corporate world and his insight in evaluating people, as well as his abilities as a manager of people. My primary experience was in the technical world, one where the set of facts on which one made decisions were usually agreed upon. I was now operating in a world where the underlying facts were not always agreed upon. I learned early in my managerial career thatengineers are people who control things, managers are people who control people, and therefore people who control people are more effective, powerful(however you may phrase it) than people who control things. Frank’s ability to operate and succeed in this world was invaluable to me.The discussion involved a lengthy report Frank produced after making a trip on behalf of TAW. I said to Frank I have read the report, now I want you to tell me what occurred Frank replied It is in the report, I answered I want you to tell me what I should know about your trip This really surprised Frank. I continued "Not that the report is not needed for the record, you may admit that you spent a great deal of time in making sure that history will be kind to what you have said in the report, I want to know what your instincts and experience tell you. Frank agreed. Later, Frank formed Savage Holdings LLC in 2001 and has served on several major boards, including Bloomberg LP, the New York Academy of Medicine, Lockheed Martin, and the New York Philharmonic.

Herb Cummings was neither a lawyer nor banker, but I considered him a valued member of my team. A multimillionaire and a gadfly, Herb often made me and the TAW team quite nervous, especially during courtroom breaks, when he engaged in small-talk with the arbitrators. He had that must-talk-to-everyone personality. He could go into a bar and within ten minutes he’d know nearly everyone. My lawyers were concerned because they thought Herb might give away our plans while chatting socially with the arbitrators or opposing lawyers, but he never did. Herb had the air of a distinguished judge or physician. He was fashionably dressed and fashionably thin. I don’t know how this came up, but later, one of the arbitrators told Alan that the arbitrators assumed that Herb was the banker and that Frank, the only other black American on my team, was one of my Hollywood buddies, just tagging along for moral support. They assumed Herb was the team member who was associated with those corporate boards.

Herb and I were about the same age and though we came from different worlds, we became close friends; the chemistry just worked between us. He was like a brother and had proven to me in so many ways that he didn’t have a bigoted bone in his body. He accompanied me on many trips to Africa and on fund-raising trips, as well. He demonstrated his friendship most clearly when he made a last-minute financial gesture that helped my firm in a significant way. I knew Herb couldn’t rescue me this time; my fate was in the hands of the three arbitrators still chatting among themselves. It was comforting, however, having Herb in my corner and a part of the fight.

After surveying the TAW team, I realized that some one who was instrumental in TAW’s early success, was missing. That some one was Sam Howard. Sam joined TAW after a stint as a White House Fellow under U.N. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg. Sam left TAW to pursue A Nobel Cause, he wanted to buy radio stations. I believe his desire resulted from his negotiations with the Prudential Insurance Co., on TAW’s behalf.Sam basically headed the TAW team over the one year it required to complete the six million dollar loan from Prudential as one of the components necessary to start the leasing operation. Near the end of the negotiation, the Prudential Team Leader, who had recently negotiated a deal with NBC’s Huntley – Brinkley to finance the purchase of the maximum, under the law, number of TV stations, told Sam, we are impressed with Tom and your management skills, you should submit a proposal to acquire a series of radio stations. I told Sam I did not think I could manage that, a start up leasing company and a start up radio station operation, at the same time.My opinion at the time, and still is that no start up of any appreciable size is easy, there are always unforeseen problems, which would require full, and complete effort.

The reality of my sitting here in this London Courtroom attest to the requirement of full and complete effort, particularly a start up with six zero’s before the decimal point.

My response was prophetic, for TAW had difficulty in raising the remaining equity for the leasing operation.

When Sam had the opportunity to pursue his Nobel Cause acquiring a radio stations, he decided to leave TAW.In addition to acquiring several radio stations, Sam went on to become the Treasurer of the Hospital Corporation of America (which at the time had one of the largest cash flows in the U.S.).Then Sam then went on to to found a groundbreaking Health Care company working with Tennessee’s uninsured. After Sam left, there were several times that I missed his wise financial advice. Sam Howard and I remain close friends today.

A negative ruling would shut the doors at TAW and probably would damage my reputation beyond repair. Such an outcome undoubtedly would brighten the day for Marshall Mays, past chairman of the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), who personally labored mightily to shove TAW into bankruptcy before the arbitration hearings began. I’m convinced that Mays, a staunch South Carolina conservative, had trouble concealing his disdain for any black man who dealt with him as an equal, as I did. Though Mays wasn’t in the courtroom, I felt his presence, lingering over the proceeding like the proverbial 800-pound gorilla.

So much was at stake and not just money. Would corporate America take a pass on any future foreign deals that might be pitched by a black entrepreneur because the arbitrators ruled against TAW? More than anything, I knew I would accept a negative ruling as a badge of failure and would feel that I had let down the black business pioneers who had made it possible for me to pursue my goals.

As I waited to give testimony in this potentially life-altering arbitration, I drifted back in time, way beyond my early years in my hometown, New York, which was nearly four thousand miles away. In the few moments left before Lord Devlin banged his gavel, I asked myself, "How did this Harlem-born grandson of a slave manage to become the focal point of this London arbitration? I then began to consider the life and times of blacks in the America, that my grandparents knew as slaves.

"We may have all come on different ships,

But we are in the same boat now".

Martin Luther King

Chapter 2

"We were proclaiming ourselves

Political hypocrites before the

World, by thus fostering human

Slavery and proclaiming ourselves

At the same time, the sole friends

Of human freedom"

Abraham Lincoln

My grandparents on my father’s side were born into slavery in Virginia, during the Civil War. My father told me that about Grandpa and Grandma Wood, and little else. That was all he knew, or maybe that was all he wanted to tell. Did my great-grandmother when my grandmother was born into slavery in 1861, face a similar dilemma as Tony Morrison’s heroine in the powerful novel Beloved.

Here are a few, not widely remembered facts and dates covering slavery in the America’s.

1501 Spanish and Portuguese bring slaves from Africa to the America’s

1619 First slave ship arrives at what is known today as Hampton Roads Virginia.As was the usual case in such slave ship Atlantic crossings, about half the slaves carried aboard died in the Atlantic crossing.

For we black’s living in what is now the United States, black slavery lasted longer than freedom for blacks has existed.

Slavery 1619 to 1865

Freedom 1865 to 2020

Aproximately 250 years under slavery.

Aproximately 150 years under legal freedom.

Black slavery in the U.S. lasted approximately 100 years longer than black freedom.

Massachusetts was the first state to legalize slavery, Mississippi became the last state to abolish slavery. (delayed ratification of the 13 th Admendment)

1819 The Attoney General of Canada declared, by residing in Canada black resident’s were set free.An estimated upper limit of the number of U.S. slaves that fled to Canada is 100 thousand.

1829 President Guerrero of Mexico abolished slavery in Mexico, which then included what is now Texas. This triggered a series of events leading to Texas becoming part of slave holding United States in 1845.

1859 The last slave ship with slaves destined for the U.S. lands in Mobile Bay Alabama.

Crispus Attucks (1723-1770) who was of African and Native American descent was the first person killed in the Boston Massacre and thus the first American killed in the American Revolution.

John Baptiste Point du Sable (1750-1818) was of African descent and is regarded by historians as the first permanent non-indigenous settler of what later became Chicago, and is recognized by historians as the Founder of Chicago.

The slave trade displaced more than 12 million Africans, some 5 million to Brazil, 3 million to the Caribbean, and less than ½ million to North America.

It should be noted, that at the time of my grandparents birth, the population of the United States was approximately 30 million, with 4 million slaves (13% of the population) as of this writing, the United States population is well over 300 million, and blacks make up approximately 13%).

According to Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, the 28th and first woman President of Harvard University, who grew up in Clark County Virginia ; Our nation’s experience with slavery began in Virginia, when some 20 captive Africans arrived on a warship in Jamestown in 1619.Black bondage existed in Virginia for close to two and a half centuries, very much longer than black freedom has.Slavery made colonial Virginia prosperous, creating a plantation society founded on toabacco production, social and economic stratification, and unfree labor.It also produced a class of white owners whose daily witness to the degradations of bondage instilled in them a fierce devotion to their own freedom.They were determined to be the masters not just of their households, their estates, and their laborers, but also of their society, their polity, and their destiny. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, George Mason were– slaveholders all. That so many of the Founding Fathers, including the leaders of the Revolution and the aurthors of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, were slaveholders is both an irony and a paradox.The Nation conceived in liberty was also the Nation conceived in slavery. Commitment to a republican form of government was incompatible with the absolute power that defined the system of slavery.Thomas Jefferson’s attraction to Sally Hemings (Jefferson’s slave), with whom he fathered five children, embodied the tragedy present at the very creation of American freedom". Many white Virginians (and white Americans — my comment —)created a narrative of an invented past and a distorted portrait of their own time to reassure themselves of the justice of their social order and of their own benevolence.