Memo: Note to Robert Lessin, Recently Disabled Vice Chairman of Smith Barney

Transcription (Scripto)

c021_001_001_020_tr

Extent (Dublin Core)

6 pages

File Name (Dublin Core)

c021_001_001_020

Title (Dublin Core)

Memo: Note to Robert Lessin, Recently Disabled Vice Chairman of Smith Barney

Description (Dublin Core)

Alec Vachon writes to Senator Dole about 39-year-old Vice Chairman of Smith Barney, who suffered a stroke and is dealing with the psychological and physical repercussions resulting from it

Date (Dublin Core)

1994-06-20

Date Created (Dublin Core)

1994-06-20

Congress (Dublin Core)

103rd (1993-1995)

Topics (Dublin Core)

See all items with this value People with disabilities

Policy Area (Curation)

Health

Creator (Dublin Core)

Vachon, Alexander

Record Type (Dublin Core)

memorandum

Location representation (Dublin Core)

New York (inhabited place)

Rights (Dublin Core)

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/

Language (Dublin Core)

eng

Collection Finding Aid (Dublin Core)

https://dolearchivecollections.ku.edu/?p=collections/findingaid&id=54&q=

Physical Location (Dublin Core)

Collection 021, Box 1, Folder 1

Institution (Dublin Core)

Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS

Archival Collection (Dublin Core)

Alec Vachon Papers, 1969-2006

Full Text (Extract Text)

MEMORANDUM

Date: June 20, 1994
To: Senator Dole
From: Alec Vachon
Re: GS to Robert Lessin, Recently Disabled Vice Chairman of Smith Barney
(End of Letterhead)

Attached is a personal note for signature to Robert Lessin, 39-year old Vice Chairman of Smith Barney. Yesterday, The New York Times Business Section featured a story on Lessin (attached) --nine weeks ago had a stroke and is now trying to put his life back together. Overall, he seems to be doing well --although some impairment on his right side, he is back to work part-time. However, beneath the lines of the article, it is clear that Lessin is struggling psychologically.

UNITED STATES SENATE
OFFICE OF THE REPUBLICAN LEADER
WASHINGTON, D.C.
BOB DOLE
KANSAS
June 21, 1994
(End of Letterhead)

Dear Mr. Lessin,
I read in The New York Times on Sunday about your recent stroke. As someone who knows something about having a disability myself, I just want you to know how much I admire your determination to get back to work and on with your life.

And if I may take the liberty of offering some advice, coping with a disability is demanding, as you have surely discovered. Every day requires new determination, and rehabilitation is often not easy. But it's worth it in the end, and certainly better than the alternatives.

If I can be helpful in any way, please let me know.

With best regards,
Sincerely,
BOB DOLE

Mr. Robert H. Lessin
Smith Barney
1345 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10105

The New York Times
Sunday, June 19, 1994
Barry Rehfeld
Executive, Interrupted: Wall Street Star Bounces Back
(End of Headline)

He didn't know what hit him. Suddenly and uncontrollably, Robert H. Lessin spun like a top and collapsed in a heap on the tennis court of his New Jersey estate.

Still unconscious, the 39-year-old vice chairman of Smith Barney climbed to his feet and assured his two young sons that he was all right. But in fact, Mr. Lessin -- young, fit, and at the top of his career -- had suffered a stroke that nearly killed him.

Now, nine weeks later -- seven in the hospital -- he is back at work. Luckily, his mind was undamaged. And since the stroke was congenital, brought on by neither stress nor exertion, he will not have to scale back his high-powered life to avoid another one.

But that life has certainly not returned to normal. He still faces months of physical therapy and, possibly, some lasting impairment on his right side. His family life has been turned upside down just as he again faces the Herculean task of helping to build Smith Barney into a Wall Street powerhouse.

At times now, Mr. Lessin seems ebullient, unruffled by his ordeal. Yet at other times, he feels the turmoil and gropes for answers about what this means for his life, both personally and professionally -- a life in which so much has come so easily for so long.

Mr. Lessin is the model of a Wall Street Wunderkind. A Harvard MBA and classic workaholic, this Brooklyn native has been known for years as one of Wall Street's most quietly successful financial strategists.

As a Morgan Stanley banker barely out of his 20's, he helped work out Ronald Perelman's raid on Revlon and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts' leveraged buyout of Safeway.

His only serious setbacks have been physical. At Morgan in the late 70's, he had a bout with Hodgkin's disease, but it was treated and done with so quickly -- with no lasting effects -- that it only seemed to add to his youthful sense of invincibility.

Just last year he was plucked by Robert Greenhill, his mentor at Morgan Stanley and the new chief of Smith Barney, to run the firm's investment banking division and become the key first recruit in a highly public bidding war for talent.

Mr. Lessin was often the point man for the newly created Smith Barney juggernaut, visiting clients, attending conferences and overseeing some 40 deals at a time.

His job took him away from his family for a week or more at a time, and with one such trip approaching, he was devoting a Saturday afternoon in April to playing with his two sons, age 8 and 10.

After Mr. Lessin was felled by the stroke, the distance from tennis court to house loomed as immense, but he somehow managed to walk there.

Then the full effects of the stroke hit: vomiting, wretching, spots in front of his eyes, headache, dizziness. His speech was slurred, his temperature soared to 103 and the pain on his right side became unbearable. The worst of it burned in his arm and leg, yet they were also dead weights that no longer seemed to belong to him.

"I was like an animal in a trap," he said. "I wanted to chew them off."

But he still thought it would all somehow go away. Just the day before, after suffering severe headaches, he had had a CAT scan. The results: negative.

And it was not until hours later that his doctor -- whom his wife, Naida, had called several times -- suggested calling an ambulance. Mr. Lessin vetoed this, not wanting to alarm the children.

In the evening, though, his father-in-law, Dr. Ralph Wharton, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, came over and insisted they go to a hospital immediately. Not waiting for an ambulance, father and daughter, plus the children's baby sitter, managed to lug the 190-pound six-footer, unable to walk by himself, to the doctor's car.

They took him to Columbia-Presbyterian, bypassing the local hospital, but the emergency room was so busy that they couldn't get a stretcher. Only through the doctor's influence could they even get a wheelchair, but it was not until 4 a.m. that he was taken to the neurological intensive-care unit. And now his illness took a name.

"I didn't know what a stroke was," Mr. Lessin said. "It meant nothing to me."

His condition gradually stabilized. "If he had been in any less good shape," Dr. Wharton said, "he might not have survived."

At first, Mr. Lessin was relatively accepting of everything going on around him. But on Monday the workaholic resurfaced and he clamored to get back to work -- somehow.

His wife had contacted Mr. Greenhill, and arrangements were made so Mr. Lessin could be briefed over the phone and by fax.

The demands of his job were much on his mind. These weren't the best of times on Wall Street, and Smith Barney was hurting along with the rest of the securities industry. While Smith Barney was still committed to building a powerhouse, Mr. Lessin conceded that the hiring spree of 1993 had slowed and it was tough finding talent.

Smith Barney had made surprising strides in two of Mr. Lessin's specialties. In 1994's first quarter, it ranked second behind Merrill Lynch in mergers and acquisitions and cracked the top 10 in junk bond issues. Still, this represented only a tenuous hold on success, with the firm still back in the pack in the overall rankings of investment banking.

"They're going in the right direction," said one leading competitor, "but they've got a long way to go. We lose 10 producers, people still come to our company because we're established. They lose three or four, and they're back to where they started."

Mr. Lessin is one of those key people.

"A lot of people were counting on me," he said, "and I wanted to be with them."

But he had to resort to extraordinary measures to take part in his working world. He was too weak to read, and a breathing tube kept him from speaking, so his wife read memos and newspapers to him and translated his sign language.

Like a Roman emperor deciding his subjects' fate, he responded to the names of job candidates by giving a thumbs up or thumbs down with his usable left hand. A chance to co-underwrite a securities isue managed by a smaller, less experienced banking house got a thumbs down.

But not all decisions could be disposed of so easily. Two managing directors were on a collision course -- one pursuing a potential corporate client in the hunt for an acquisition, the other courting one potential target.

By Friday the frustration of not being able to talk became too much, and he pushed to have the breathing tube removed. His doctors wanted to wait until Monday, but they agreed when Mr. Lessin said he would pay for round-the-clock nursing.

That weekend may have provided Mr. Lessin with the sternest test of his recovery. His pulse raced and his body glistened with sweat from the effort of breathing on his own again.

"It was like he was running a marathon," Dr. Wharton said.

Still, Mr. Lessin came through the weekend on a recovery course. His voice was weak and his throat hoarse, a true handicap for a man known as one of the fastest talkers on Wall Street, but he was ready to be freed from intensive care.

In an ordinary hospital room, still being fed through a stomach tube, he was eager to do more work, but first he had a more basic goal: to learn to sit up.

After three weeks, he was transferred to the hospital's rehabilitation center. He had a small, austere room with a view of a dim courtyard -- a far cry from his 48th-floor art-filled corner office overlooking Central Park -- but in at least one significant way it was like being at work.

As was his habit, he rose at 5 each morning and worked intensely until evening, but instead of working on deals, this avid hiker, skier, rollerblader and ballroom dancer was learning to stand and to walk.

He was determined to leave the hospital by Memorial Day, seven weeks after the stroke, and nothing distracted him from this goal. He had registered under his mother's maiden name, Misel, to avoid detection. He didn't want to see or speak to anyone but his wife and father-in-law. He accepted a brief visit from his parents, his brothers and some close associates from Smith Barney, but Mr. Lessin would allow no one else, including Mr. Greenhill, to speak to him.

But word got out. After the Wall Street Journal reported his illness, Mr. Lessin's office and home were flooded with letters and phone calls from across the corporate landscape, from chief executives of Fortune 500 companies to big players in finance like Sam Zell, Marvin Davis, Henry Kravis, Thomas Lee, and Richard Rainwater.

He assured clients by phone that even if he wasn't healthy just then, everything at Smith Barney was, and his recovery was right on schedule. "Some are going to be impressed you called them when you are sick," he said. "Others are going to be disappointed you're not at work. Probably it helps with the business you're doing with the first kind and hurts with the second. But I felt I had to stay in touch."

He made his post-Memorial Day return with a blistering round of meetings from morning until evening, sandwiched around office celebrations of his return. But as he settles into his new routine, his day is divided between office and home, where he undergoes physical therapy in the afternoons.

Some progress is clear. His voice is strong again, but other gains come step by step.

He proudly greets a visitor to his office himself, rather than, as he might in the past, have his secretary escort the guest. He walks slowly, an associate at his back, her hands at his hips. Yet, as he says, he's "back in the real world."

His wife would have it otherwise -- she would like to see more of him now than she has in the past. And friends and clients say they hope things will be different now.

"I think he's reprioritized his life," said Mr. Zell, the Chicago billionaire. "I think the quality of life goes up, getting every deal done goes down."

But Thomas Lee of the Thomas H. Lee Company, the investment firm, when told of Mr. Lessin's first day back at work, said "No one dies thinking they should have spent more time at the office. I hope he takes better care of himself."

Mr. Lessin smiles at these remarks. Young in years, manners and interests, he remains an old-fashioned workaholic attached to nurturing the relationships that keep the business coming in.

"Seeing What the doctors, nurses and therapists did, I feel like I should give something back," he said. "My wife and my family have been incredible. But there is also only so much time in a day. I don't think things will be the same, but I don't think they will change much, either. This is the way I am."

Memo: Note to Robert Lessin, Recently Disabled Vice Chairman of Smith Barney

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