OCTOBER 21, 2023 – On my first visit to Cliff and Jeanette’s house, Cliff demonstrated his sound system in the acoustically live space of the living room.
“Now here’s something you’ll like,” he said after a few of his favorite selections. He switched to Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony. The only problem was that the volume was jacked up to Van Halen standards. The decibels shattered the music, Mozart being the aural equivalent of Baccarat crystal—inflexible in its perfection. But Cliff looked pleased with himself that he’d accommodated my musical tastes and seemed to be looking for acknowledgment.
“Great but not quite so loud,” I said. Cliff turned the volume down—a little—before scrolling to Skid Row from Tom River, New Jersey (so I was told) and pushing the volume back up. When he saw that my ears were hurting, he turned the system down . . . then off.
“Nice system,” I said, relieved that the demonstration was over.
“I like it,” he said proudly.
Jeanette was a little more nuanced in appealing to our family’s deep roots in classical music. From UB’s memorial service at the funeral home in Rutherford to the Lyndhurst cemetery, Jeanette drove Elsa, Jenny and me in a clean quiet late model white Accord. Cliff drove a couple of staff members back to Fun Ghoul before joining us for the burial of a portion of UB’s ashes. As Jeanette pulled carefully away from the parking spot on Lincoln Avenue, the familiar strains of Brandenburg No. 3 flowed from the car speakers—at a sensible decibel level.
“Under the circumstances,” Jeanette said, “I thought you’d appreciate some nice music.” I surmised that her purposeful choice of music and explicit explanation were more for my sisters’ benefit than for mine. She’d never met Jenny and Elsa before but knew from me, all about their lofty musical careers. They were rather busy chattering in the backseat, however, and hearing Bach in the car was no more notable to my sisters than hearing a colleague warming up for a rehearsal of the piece.
I fully appreciated Jeanette’s thoughtful gesture toward two out of UB’s three professional violinist-nieces. I felt bad that the Uber-musicians among us had ignored Jeanette’s comment—if it had even registered with my sisters—and that they’d failed to acknowledge the Bach, however many dozens of times they’d each performed it, let alone heard it.
“I really like the music, Jeanette,” I said, trying to compensate. I said it as much a cue to my sisters as a statement directed at Jeanette, but seated behind me Elsa and Jenny were too engaged in conversation to hear.
* * *
As matters progressed—and regressed then progressed again over the next four years—I was struck by the contrasting musical foundations of our “inheritances.”
Our Nilsson grandparents had left us a wondrous legacy of empyrean woods by the water. Ga and Grandpa weren’t otherwise wealthy; their roots were in the stingy, stony ground of Sweden, but their natural refinement and aesthetic sensibilities drew them deep into classical music. Grandpa became a violinist of sufficient talent and proficiency to gain work in the orchestra pits of silent movie theaters in Minneapolis. He later established a music school where he taught scores of young violinists in the classical canon. It was the proceeds from the music school that Grandpa used to buy cheap land on a Northwoods lake in 1939 and hire a crew of Swedish immigrant craftsmen to build a cabin the next year—our grandparents’ Shangri-la that would one day become Björnholm, our “Nilsson inheritance.”
My Holman grandparents, members of the privileged class with roots in Early America, had good manners but little to no inclination toward classical music. In New Jersey they (via UB) would leave behind a large pile of bricks, a ruined mansion and a haunted house on grounds once home to prosperity derived from a thriving enterprise. Only faint reminders of that business remained. Nothing wondrous could be ascribed to the properties now except potential based on square footage and “location, location, location.” Every bit as improbable as Cliff himself was the improbability that rock ’n roll music would transform that potential into our “Holman inheritance.”
* * *
Back when the managing partners of my law firm saw fit to impress upon us senior associates the need to bring in new, lucrative clients, “networking” was the by-word. “[In addition to wracking up the billable hours],” the whip-snappers would say, “you [slugs] have gotta network. You gotta join every country club and civic organization run and joined by esteemed members of the business class so that you can get yourselves known. Ya gotta network like crazy with them, all so that when they think ‘lawyer,’ they think you, and when they think you, they gotta wanna call you and not some [slug] at another law firm. Got it? It’s all about networking . . . Okay, boys and girls; class dismissed. Back to your billable hours.”
But no none of those lawyers—managing partners obsessed with growing the firm and senior associates gunning for partnership—could compare to the greatest networker I’d ever met, Cliff Witmyer. None of his effort was forced, however, and none of his genius was acquired. He was simply a natural born networker of the highest order.
It was through his network that he’d met one Steve Silverman, one of the biggest real estate developers in the state of New Jersey. What turned Steve into a loyal client and Cliff and Steve into steadfast friends was their mutual enthusiasm for rock ’n’ roll music.
When Steve decided to throw an industrial gauge backyard birthday party for himself at his family’s home on the New Jersey Shore, he dreamed of playing lead guitar with a big-name band performing on a full outdoor stage with a killer sound system and stadium quality lights in front of well-oiled, adulating fans. But how to make it happen? Through his own extensive network, Steve learned that Cliff was the man to turn a wild dream into an even wilder reality.
Given their personalities and lifelong immersion in classic rock ’n’ roll, Steve and Cliff hit it off from their initial phone call. Ever the entrepreneur, Cliff also recognized the repeat business potential—if he blew the roof off Steve’s backyard on the occasion of the initial engagement. Given Steve’s expectations—not to mention the open-air venue—this was a moonshot, but by this stage of his remarkable career, Cliff had lots of experience blasting past his client expectations.
After our “luge run,” Cliff and Jeanette invited me down to their refuge in the Jersey Shore town of Asbury Park, about an hour’s drive south of Rutherford. For years Cliff had talked about the place and urged me to make time to visit it someday. Until 2018 the stars had never aligned for me to make the trip.
“Jeanette’s heading there Thursday. You and I’ll drive down Friday, late morning,” Cliff said, assuming my acceptance of his implicit renewed invitation. “We’ll stay at our house, and Jeanette and I will show you around town and we’ll walk along the beach. Then dinner at our favorite place by the boardwalk. Saturday we’ll drive down to Steve Silverman’s place. I’ve already talked to him. He’s got nothing going on. Just hanging out with his family. He wants to meet you.”
“I’m all in,” I said. If I’d learned anything in my years of association with Cliff it was that the world is run by those who don’t hesitate.
Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
