My father completed his naval service in 1945, signalman third class on a sub-chaser in the Atlantic, to attend Loyola University in New Orleans, Louisiana. An incredible shift of prospects for a boy who lost his own father at 11 in the midst of the Depression. He recalls bringing home $6 on a Friday night to add to his mother’s weekly wage of $11. After a brief stint in journalism and public relations for Russell Long’s, son of Huey, senate campaign (in those days this meant tacking posters to telephone polls) he applied for a job as an investment broker with MLPF&B. One of his proudest achievements was the perfect score that he made on the Wall Street licensing exam and the letter of congratulations that he received from the chairman of the firm. I have this letter. After training stints on Wall Street and with the commodities exchange in Chicago, he returned home as the 18th registered broker to the branch office in downtown New Orleans, near the RKO Orpheum Theatre, The Roosevelt Hotel and a pleasant walk from Kolb’s Restaurant. His office manager was Darwin Fenner, son of founder, and a prominent and pompous member of the New Orleans social set. Eight or 10 years into the job, he accepted a sales position with a customer’s firm, Continental Can Corporation (Raul Vigore – there’s a story here about Astor, his lovely daughter, Tommy Patin and the gorgeous Beverly that should be told someday) to sell boxes throughout Louisiana. I remember the brown Ford Galaxy issued to him as a company car which replaced the beige, enormous Pontiac Firechief. How impressed were the 4 children. He returned to Merrill Lynch after travel on the two lane state roads lost its thrill. That Merrill took him back – this is the early 60s – speaks of his capabilities. There were struggles in the early sixties and then the market exploded. By the late 70s, and with the injection of electronics into the business (I recall the pretty girls, a criteria for hiring, in the office updating stocks on a chalk board from a ticker tape machine and my dad sending interoffice memos via pneumatic tubing system) the brokerage business expanded from stock and bond investments conducted between gentlemen (it was not a perfect world and Bourbon Street before the tee-shirt shops, Gulf Coast fishing trips and chartered jets to Las Vegas helped many a deal along) to a raucous bazaar of selling stocks, bonds, insurance, real estate, financial advice in a nearly incomprehensible array of products, instruments and packages.

It’s all over now. Bank of America, really Nation’s Bank of Charlotte, bought Merril Lynch (it dropped Mr. Bean a long time ago and added Mr. Smith and then dropped Pierce, Fenner and Smith. Look whose laughing now) a couple of days ago as ML could not unwind itself from the sub-prime, housing tangle. Not to worry and not long to be missed. The RKO is gone, joined by The Roosevelt and Kolb’s. Merrill, like the once powerful v-8 Firechief, is off the road and into pasture.