The Jacobs Home

On the morn­ing of April 10, a vis­i­tor to the home of Irwin and Alexan­dra Jacobs found them lying in bed, both dead from gun­shot wounds. They had lived for 40 years in their home on Lake Min­neton­ka in Min­neso­ta. High school sweet­hearts, they had been mar­ried for 57 years. They had five chil­dren and eight grand­chil­dren

The med­ical exam­in­er deter­mined that Irwin shot Alexan­dra and then turned the gun on him­self. One of Irwin’s friends said Alexan­dra “had been in a wheel­chair for the last year or so and had signs of demen­tia. Irwin was . . . dis­traught over her con­di­tion.”

I’m still reel­ing from the news. I’d known Irwin Jacobs since 1983, when he made a bid for Kaiser Steel and hired me to eval­u­ate the company’s labor prob­lems.

When he called me, I wasn’t sure I want­ed to rep­re­sent him. He was a high-pro­file “cor­po­rate raider” with a mixed rep­u­ta­tion. The busi­ness press dubbed him “Irv the Liq­uida­tor” for break­ing com­pa­nies apart and sell­ing off the pieces. Exec­u­tives, who feared he’d fire them if he gained con­trol, fought his takeover bids ham­mer and tong. In those bat­tles, he gave them no quar­ter. His ene­mies con­sid­ered him a no-holds-barred street fight­er, uneth­i­cal and at times law­less.  

Irwin in the 1980’s

Irwin’s hard­scrab­ble back­ground gave cred­i­bil­i­ty to the street fight­er image. When he was in grade school he worked for his father, a Russ­ian immi­grant who col­lect­ed old burlap bags from Minneapolis’s grain ele­va­tors, repaired them, and resold them. When Irwin was 18, he drove a truck­load of reclaimed bags past a burned-down ware­house and won­dered what had been done with the items stored inside. That inspired him to launch a busi­ness with his father’s help sal­vaging fire and flood-dam­aged goods. Those ear­ly expe­ri­ences taught Irwin “to throw noth­ing away” and “to look for val­ue where oth­er peo­ple didn’t see it,” lessons that lat­er served him well in the dog-eat-dog cor­po­rate takeover are­na.

In the 70’s, he pur­chased small under­val­ued com­pa­nies, often out of bank­rupt­cy, reor­ga­nized them, and sold them for big gains. Those deals fueled invest­ments in even larg­er com­pa­nies. He made runs at Pab­st Brew­ing, Dis­ney Pro­duc­tions, and Avco, sell­ing out to high­er bid­ders in each case. By 1983, this recy­cler of burlap bags with no for­mal edu­ca­tion beyond high school had accu­mu­lat­ed a net worth of $200,000,000.

Alexan­dra Sculp­ture Court­yard Rib­bon Cut­ting

When I met him, I saw no hint of the press’s shady char­ac­ter. Grant­ed, he was a lit­tle rough around the edges. His gram­mar wasn’t per­fect; he loos­ened the knot in his tie when he got excit­ed; and his shirt­tail wouldn’t stay tucked in. But I liked him from the out­set. A big man with a boom­ing voice, a win­ning smile, and a great sense of humor, his bound­less opti­mism was infec­tious. He want­ed an hon­est assess­ment of Kaiser Steel’s dis­putes with the Unit­ed Steel­work­ers.  I spent two months eval­u­at­ing those issues and gave him my con­clu­sions. Some­one came along and out­bid him, and he sold out.

I thought I’d seen the last of him, but the fol­low­ing year he hired me again, this time to con­duct an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion of an LA based com­pa­ny he owned. A Texas lawyer alleged that the company’s in-house attor­neys made him pay them bribes for assign­ing him legal work. Through a con­vo­lut­ed scheme set up by the in-house lawyers, they paid the Texas lawyer back for the bribes with com­pa­ny funds so he didn’t lose out. The Texas attor­ney thought the company’s Gen­er­al Coun­sel (GC) was the mas­ter­mind behind the embez­zle­ment scheme, but he had dealt exclu­sive­ly with a junior in-house lawyer and had no proof of that.  

Irwin, 2009

The fifty-year-old GC was a for­mer pres­i­dent of the bar asso­ci­a­tion and a pil­lar of integri­ty in the legal com­mu­ni­ty. Irwin’s com­pa­ny paid him a half-mil­lion dol­lar annu­al salary and he sat on its Board of Direc­tors. It seemed unlike­ly he would risk his career on a bribery scam, and there was no doc­u­men­ta­tion impli­cat­ing him.

When I ques­tioned him, he put up a good front and denied every­thing, but I thought he was lying. Sub­se­quent events con­firmed my sus­pi­cions and trig­gered an under­cov­er inves­ti­ga­tion run by the U.S. Attor­ney.

At the FBI’s direc­tion, I spent a week talk­ing with most of the company’s out­side attor­neys, ask­ing them if they’d paid kick­backs to get legal assign­ments. They all denied pay­ing bribes. Sev­er­al of them then called the GC in a pan­ic and made incrim­i­nat­ing state­ments on phone lines the FBI had tapped.

Mean­while, the junior in-house attor­ney, who had dealt with the Texas lawyer, agreed to coop­er­ate with the inves­ti­ga­tion in exchange for immu­ni­ty. In a taped meet­ing with the GC orches­trat­ed by the U.S. Attor­ney, he offered to take the fall for the kick­backs and keep the GC out of it for a $100,000 bribe. In a sec­ond taped meet­ing in Encino’s Bal­boa Park late at night, the GC hand­ed the junior attor­ney a paper bag full of cash. He sound­ed crazy on that tape, and he talked about doing harm to Irwin and me.

Irwin and his fam­i­ly

The next day, the GC snapped, bought a rifle at a Big 5, and holed up in his house. The FBI man­aged to take him alive, but the arrest­ing agents said that the rifle mis­fired and that he begged them to turn him loose and let him run so they could shoot him in the back. A sui­cide note in his pock­et blamed his trou­bles on “Irwin and his fleas.”

When the GC was released on bail, Irwin insist­ed on hir­ing round-the-clock body­guards for me. In hind­sight, I don’t think I was in any real dan­ger, but at the time I wasn’t sure and Irwin refused to take a chance, so for a cou­ple of weeks two big hulk­ing guys with guns were my con­stant com­pan­ions.    

The GC even­tu­al­ly pled guilty. At his sen­tenc­ing hear­ing, big name lawyers filed let­ters attest­ing to his good char­ac­ter, and his defense attor­ney argued he should be giv­en pro­ba­tion and no jail time. When the judge sen­tenced him to five years in prison, he faint­ed.   

I worked with Irwin off and on for the next decade. I felt as close a bond with him as with any client I ever rep­re­sent­ed, but when I left the prac­tice of law in 1993, we lost con­tact. I was busy try­ing to help turn around a strug­gling com­pa­ny and I didn’t keep in touch. He bought an inter­est in the Min­neso­ta Vikings, and I saw him on tele­vi­sion in the own­ers’ box every so often. Each time, I thought about call­ing him, but I nev­er did.   

When the news of the mur­der-sui­cide broke on April 10, I hadn’t thought about him for a long while. Since then I haven’t been able to stop think­ing about him.  

He didn’t deserve to go out this way. He was gra­cious and gen­uine, a straight-up good guy, who was fun to be with, even in the most stress­ful times. His great­est joy was his fam­i­ly. He glowed when he talked about his kids, and he was par­tic­u­lar­ly proud of a grown daugh­ter who had cere­bral pal­sy. He bragged to me about her inde­pen­dence and how she lived and worked on her own.

Irwin and Alexan­dra

He met his wife, Alexan­dra, when they were sev­en­teen, and he was crazy about her. An accom­plished stu­dio artist, she was his first and only love. 

Irwin’s friend said he couldn’t stand to watch her go away. Demen­tia is a cru­el descent into hell. I’ve lost three friends to it. I don’t know how their loved ones found the strength to con­front the unfath­omable heart­break and loss, but in each case they per­se­vered with hero­ic courage, sta­mi­na, and love. Irwin couldn’t do it. I won’t blame him or judge him for that. No one should.

I blame myself, though, for los­ing touch with some­one who meant a lot to me.

P.D.

My prob­lems start­ed with a dog’s limp. Two years ago, our brindle pit bull’s back right leg was swollen and inflamed. In the exam­i­na­tion room, the vet post­ed an X-ray on a back-light­ed screen and point­ed to shad­owy blotch­es around P.D.’s knee.

“The ACL has torn away from the bone,” he said. “He’s in a lot of pain, and it’s going to get worse.”

“Can you fix him up?” I asked, naive­ly.

I wrote a check big enough to cov­er a month’s vaca­tion at a lux­u­ry resort in Maui, and the vet rebuilt P.D.’s knee. When they brought him out of the recov­ery room after his surgery, sta­ples were stitched over a deep cut along the length of his leg, but he didn’t seem to notice. He bound­ed across the room full tilt and jumped up on me, his tail wag­ging at hum­ming­bird-wing speed.

“He has to stay off that leg for six weeks,” the vet said, look­ing wor­ried. “No run­ning or jump­ing.”

“You’ve got to be kid­ding,” I said. “Look at him! He’s nuts!”

“You have to restrain him,” the vet said. “Two weeks in a cage. Four in a small room. If he ruins his new knee, we’ll have to oper­ate again.”

Zoey

Back at home, Her­cules and Super­man, work­ing as a team, couldn’t have mus­cled P.D. into a dog cage. I gave up on it, set up his dog bed in my office, and locked us inside. Where­upon began the longest six weeks of my life. P.D. spent every wak­ing moment bat­ting around the room, bounc­ing off walls, and jump­ing all over me. It was like liv­ing in a clos­et with a kan­ga­roo on speed.

Twice he escaped into the back yard and bee-bopped up the hill to the fence-line before I could las­so him with a leash and drag him back to our jail cell.

Mirac­u­lous­ly, despite his best efforts to rup­ture his knee, he sur­vived the six weeks with­out blow­ing it out.

Three weeks lat­er, his back left leg went lame. Back to the vet. Anoth­er torn ACL and anoth­er big check fol­lowed by a sec­ond six weeks in Hell.

Dogs don’t blow out their front knees, so I thought we were done. I was wrong.

Vet’s exam room, not so cheap

I was at the back door watch­ing Zoey, our Amer­i­can Bull­dog, walk lazi­ly across the yard, sniff­ing flow­ers. Sud­den­ly, she lift­ed her back right leg, yelped, and ran over to me, whin­ing.

“Damned bad luck,” the vet said.

I wrote the now stan­dard big check and descend­ed into Hell again.

Two months after Zoey recov­ered, P.D. lodged a fox-tail in his paw that worked its way up inside his leg, requir­ing yet anoth­er surgery. I wrote the check and went back to jail.

Mar­garine

After vet bills approx­i­mat­ing the annu­al gross domes­tic prod­uct of Alba­nia and sev­er­al months of con­fine­ment in a small space with a wild dog, a pru­dent per­son would back away from ani­mal hus­bandry. Me? I dou­bled down.

Hid­den Hills is zoned for hors­es. I grew up in a Vir­ginia farm com­mu­ni­ty and I still miss White Hall and Sug­ar Hol­low, so I start­ed con­struc­tion of a two-stall horse barn to remind me of home.

I bought a lit­tle red mare, Mar­garine. I board­ed her in anoth­er barn while mine was being built and hired a horse whis­per­er extra­or­di­naire as my barn man­ag­er. “Marge will need a com­pan­ion,” she said. “Hors­es are herd ani­mals. It’s cru­el to iso­late them.”

Lily, an Andalu­sian mare, was for sale in Lan­cast­er. To demon­strate to me that she was well-trained, the sell­er spurred her up and down his cor­ral, jerk­ing her sav­age­ly one way and then the oth­er, run­ning her at full speed and then near­ly rip­ping her head off to stop her on a dime. It was hard to watch.

Spade bit

Heart­break­ing­ly, when the horse whis­per­er inspect­ed Lily for phys­i­cal sound­ness, she saw that the sell­er had bri­dled her with a spade bit. A spade bit has a “spoon,” a flat plate that goes over the horse’s tongue and pro­trudes up inside its mouth. A skilled rid­er can use it to good effect. In a cru­el rider’s hands, it’s an instru­ment of tor­ture.

I would have paid five times the ask­ing price to res­cue Lily from that guy, but the horse whis­per­er held me back. “Don’t reward his bru­tal­i­ty,” she said. “He just wants to get rid of her any­way.” She was right. I bid low and he caved in.

Lily

My barn still wasn’t ready, so we trail­ered Lily to the four-stall barn where Marge was board­ing. The first time Marge saw Lily, she laid her ears back flat and bared her teeth. We hoped Marge would get used to Lily over time, but her hatred only grew.

Mean­while, Lily fell in love with the geld­ing in the stall next to her. Every time we tried to sep­a­rate them, she had a ner­vous break­down. Although Lily’s roman­tic inten­tions could nev­er be con­sum­mat­ed (he’s a geld­ing, for Pete’s sake!), we couldn’t cure her sep­a­ra­tion anx­i­ety no mat­ter what we did.

Who­ev­er came up with the term “horse sense” obvi­ous­ly nev­er met a real horse.

By the time my barn was ready, Marge hat­ed Lily, and Lily was in love with a horse I didn’t own. The sen­si­ble solu­tion was to sell one of them and buy anoth­er horse for my sec­ond stall, but of course, I had fall­en in love with both of them by then and I couldn’t bring myself to let go of either one.

Wil­son

So in Bak­ers­field, we found Wil­son, a tall bay geld­ing with a docile, easy-going per­son­al­i­ty. I moved him and Marge into my barn and paid the board­ing fee to keep Lily at the oth­er barn where she could con­tin­ue to rub noses (and noth­ing else) with her neutered para­mour.

Every­one was hap­py.

Until we turned Wil­son and Marge out into the cor­ral. They grazed peace­ful­ly togeth­er for almost an hour. Then, for no appar­ent rea­son, Marge began kick­ing the liv­ing crap out of Wil­son. Being For­rest Gump-like, it took him a while to fig­ure out he was under attack, but once the light bulb came on, he gave as good as he got. The horse whis­per­er hero­ical­ly jumped in between them and herd­ed them back into their respec­tive stalls.

“Cuts and bruis­es,” the vet said. “They’ll be sore for a good while, but they’ll be okay.” He cleaned and ban­daged their wounds, and I wrote yet anoth­er big check. (By the way, politi­cians who are con­cerned about income inequal­i­ty could learn a lot about redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth from the Nation­al Vet­eri­nary Asso­ci­a­tion.)

Giv­en my equine predica­ment, a sen­si­ble per­son would sell Marge, but I still loved her despite her severe per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der.

Icy, Barb & Faji­ta

So I called the fence man. “We’ll run a fence down the mid­dle of the cor­ral,” he said glee­ful­ly as he hand­ed me his esti­mate.

Cute!

I swal­lowed hard and wrote the check. Marge stays on one side of the fence; Wil­son on the oth­er. Lily remains in the oth­er barn with eunuch-boy.

That’s it, I told myself. No more ani­mals. Enough is enough. No mas.

Until grand­daugh­ter num­ber three got excit­ed about chick­ens. We built a coop on the hill above the barn. One red and two whites. She named them Icy, Barb, and Faji­ta. Two days into it, Icy tried to kill Faji­ta, and Barb almost choked to death on a long piece of straw.

I know what you’re think­ing. A sen­si­ble per­son would draw the line, once and for all, at the chick­ens, but by now I’m a fatal­ist. I know it won’t work.

It’s only a mat­ter of time until, “Don’t you think goats are kin­da cute, Papaw?”

Not Bev­er­ly Hills

Right after we moved to Los Ange­les in the sum­mer of 1975, my wife seemed tired all the time. Cindy told me what she thought was wrong. I sat in the lob­by while the doc­tor exam­ined her. When she came out of his office, she was smil­ing. “I’m preg­nant,” she said.

We’d arranged to have lunch that day with the Lath­am lawyer who gave me my job offer. As I drove from Bev­er­ly Hills toward the restau­rant in down­town Los Ange­les, the prospect of hav­ing a child occu­pied my thoughts. Cindy was dis­tract­ed, too, I guess, because we rode along in silence.

“Where are we?” Cindy said, after a long time.

I looked around. Graf­fi­ti-cov­ered build­ings and a chain-link fence topped with rolled barbed wire lined one side of the street; ram­shackle hous­es with board­ed up doors and win­dows on the oth­er.

“We’re not in Bev­er­ly Hills,” I said in a hol­low voice.

I’d appar­ent­ly dri­ven through down­town into a bombed-out neigh­bor­hood. It didn’t look safe, but we were in no dan­ger of attract­ing the atten­tion of bad guys. Our mus­tard-col­ored Pin­to sta­tion wag­on hadn’t been washed since Vir­ginia; the stench of cat urine assault­ed any­one with­in ten feet of it; and its front end bore the imprint of a tele­phone pole. Our sporty ride fit right in.

I found my way back to the restau­rant. We met our friend and told him the news. When he toast­ed us, I dropped a glass of ice water in my lap.

“You seem stressed,” he said, grin­ning.

I grew more rat­tled as my role as a prospec­tive dad took shape. Back in 1953, when my moth­er went into labor, Dad drove her to the hos­pi­tal, dropped her off, and came home. About 3 a.m. the phone rang. “Yeah . . . Great . . . Thanks.” Dad told me I had a baby broth­er, and we went back to bed.

Cedars Sinai 1975

Mom said she didn’t remem­ber any­thing about the birth. “They wheeled me into a room and put me to sleep. When I woke up, they hand­ed me a baby boy.”

Times had changed by 1975. Dads didn’t go home and wait for a call. They were expect­ed to be present in the labor and deliv­ery rooms. This didn’t seem like a great idea to me. At Cedars Sinai, the hos­pi­tal where our child would be born, a dad faint­ed in the deliv­ery room, gash­ing his head on the cor­ner of a steel cart and knock­ing him­self uncon­scious.

“Maybe we should plan for me to stay in the wait­ing room,” I sug­gest­ed to Cindy.

“I want you with me at the birth,” she said.

“Right,” I said.

The deal for moms had changed, too. No more knock-out drugs. Moms remained ful­ly con­scious dur­ing deliv­ery, and a grow­ing move­ment advo­cat­ed nat­ur­al child­birth with­out any med­ica­tion, which was sup­posed to be bet­ter for the baby.

Cindy want­ed a nat­ur­al child­birth. Car­ol Bur­nett once said you could sim­u­late the pain of labor by grab­bing your low­er lip and pulling it over the top of your head.

LaMaze Class

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked.

“I’m sure.”

“Right,” I said.

We enrolled in La Maze class­es. The goal of the La Maze tech­nique is to block the pain of child­birth through relax­ation strate­gies and self-dis­ci­pline.

The Focal Point

We went to class­es every week. The instruc­tor said Cindy should stare at a focal point dur­ing a con­trac­tion and breathe through her mouth in short rhyth­mic bursts, mak­ing a lit­tle squeak­ing sound, “hee . . . hee . . . hee.” My job was to be her coach. I would set up the small stained glass medal­lion she chose for her focal point and breathe with her to help her con­cen­trate.

It sound­ed like hocus-pocus non­sense to me, but it seemed to work. In the class­es, the instruc­tor told me to grab Cindy’s leg just above the ankle and apply pres­sure while she stared at the focal point and breathed the lit­tle hee hee’s. Each week I tight­ened my grip. By Decem­ber, she could take all the pres­sure I could inflict with­out flinch­ing.

Strik­ing Dr. Going Nuts

As we approached the due date of mid-Jan­u­ary, 1976, I began to think every­thing might go well. Then the doc­tors in Cal­i­for­nia went nuts. To protest astro­nom­i­cal mal­prac­tice insur­ance pre­mi­ums, they called a state-wide one month strike begin­ning Jan­u­ary 1. We called our doc­tor in a pan­ic. He was on strike, but he told us Cedars Sinai would main­tain an insur­ance-cov­ered Ob/Gyn on duty through­out the month to deliv­er babies. We were wor­ried, but there was noth­ing we could do.

The night of Jan­u­ary 17, Cindy said it was time. Mirac­u­lous­ly, I drove her to the hos­pi­tal with­out get­ting lost. A nurse exam­ined her at 11:00 p.m. She was dilat­ed three cen­time­ters. I set up the medal­lion, and Cindy began the breath­ing reg­i­men.

Nurs­es exam­ined her through­out the night. The results were always the same. No progress. At 8:30 a.m. she was still dilat­ed only three cen­time­ters. I was exhaust­ed and hyper­ven­ti­lat­ed from coach­ing the hee hee’s, but Cindy seemed steady and deter­mined.

The con­trac­tions got stronger short­ly before nine. A cou­ple of real­ly big ones rolled through at the top of the hour. Then came an earth­quake-sized mega-con­trac­tion. Cindy closed her eyes and grabbed the bed with her fists, fight­ing the pain. Sud­den­ly, her water broke. Spec­tac­u­lar­ly. Shoot­ing through the sheets to splash against the wall at the foot of the bed.

I ran for the nurse. “Ten cen­time­ters!” she said, smil­ing ear to ear.

The deliv­ery team wheeled Cindy down the hall so fast I had to run to keep up. We banged through big dou­ble-doors into blind­ing flu­o­res­cent light and gleam­ing stain­less steel.

Amaz­ing­ly, anoth­er woman was in the midst of child­birth at that very moment, and Cedars Sinai’s only cov­ered Ob/Gyn was ful­ly occu­pied with her!

Hero­ical­ly, our doc­tor, who was wait­ing in the deliv­ery room to watch over the birth, stepped up and saved the day. With no insur­ance cov­er­age and know­ing I was a lawyer, he took his place between the stir­rups, his brown eyes smil­ing reas­sur­ing­ly above his sur­gi­cal mask.

I stood on the oth­er end of the table at Cindy’s head and held her hands.

“Push,” the nurse said. Cindy squeezed my hands and pushed.

In a mir­ror perched above the table, I saw the baby’s head crown.

Our doc­tor cupped his hands. Relaxed, calm, in love with his job, he was hum­ming the song, If I Were a Rich Man.

“One more big push,” the nurse said.

Despite her low­er lip being pulled well over her head long before then, Cindy hadn’t screamed once up to that point. She clenched my hands and pushed with all her strength and groaned/screamed from way down deep inside.

In the mir­ror, I saw our child slide out of the birth canal into our doctor’s gen­tle grasp.

“You have a son,” he said.

Tears stream­ing into my mask, I kissed Cindy’s fore­head, so proud of her.

They cleaned up our baby and Cindy held him in her arms. I’ll nev­er for­get her smile.

Lat­er, they placed him in a warm­ing tray. I stood beside it and looked down at him. He stuck his left foot up in the air and made lit­tle cir­cles with it.

I was for­ev­er changed in that moment. I still was, and would always be, the child of my par­ents, but that morn­ing I became much more. I became a father.

Post Script: I stood beside Cindy in the deliv­ery room twice more. Each birth was mag­i­cal.

A gen­er­a­tion lat­er, I got lost on the way to the hos­pi­tal in the mid­dle of the night, but I man­aged to find the place just before Cindy and I became Granny and Papaw.