THE ADVOCATE 727
VOL. 79 PART 5 SEPTEMBER 2021
Canada on a work visa. His original employer was not happy and refused to
consent to the transfer of his visa. The luxury hotel hired Gerry, who made
sure that everything went smoothly and that the visa was transferred. Several
months later, we were working late and decided to have dinner at the
dining room at the luxury hotel. The food was good, but the service was
very slow. The maître d’ was an arrogant-looking man, and I had the feeling
that he had written us off as a couple of losers. At any rate, we were seated
in the worst part of the dining room and rarely saw our waiter. To our surprise,
the new general manager came into the dining room, saw Gerry and
immediately came over to talk to him. “Mr. Goldstein, I am so pleased you
have come to my dining room. How has the service been?” Gerry said it was
pretty slow. The manager was obviously upset and spoke to the maître d’,
who then started hanging around our table. Could he get us this, could he
get us that? Gerry said it was a bit late and he didn’t want anything more.
You can’t judge a book by its cover, and that was certainly the case with
Gerry.
On one occasion, a lawyer joined our firm whose performance and conduct
were really quite disappointing. Things came to a head at a meeting at
which he said that if we wanted him to leave, we should just say so. Gerry
said, “We want you to leave.” “When?” the lawyer asked. “The end of last
month would have been good,” said Gerry. In fact, the lawyer left the end
of the following month. He was moving his things out on Saturday morning
and I was there to supervise. Things took longer than expected and I had an
important social engagement at noon. Noticing my discomfort, the lawyer
said it would be OK for me to go because he could finish on his own, lock
up and put the key under the door. On Monday morning, the receptionist
told me she felt like something was missing. In fact, a painting was gone.
We had two antique paintings of famous early steamships, the Great Eastern
and the Great Western, and the space where the Great Eastern had been
hanging was empty. It was obvious what had happened, but of course I
couldn’t prove anything. I made an insurance claim and after a lot of negotiation
the insurance company agreed to pay $5,000. When I went to Gerry’s
office to tell him, he said, “Why don’t you give your friend a call and tell him
to steal the other one?” That was vintage Goldstein.
Gerry was happily married to his wife Gail for 44 years. They had no children.
As far as I know, Gerry had two hobbies: collecting Western (cowboy)
paintings and collecting automobiles. I think that at any given time, he
owned as many as six automobiles. His first high-end car was an early-’80s
Datsun 240Z. He had an Escalade (which he said had been owned by Laura
Dern), a Hummer, two Cadillacs and a late-’70s gullwing Corvette. He used