following a dream

I grew up in a very wealthy Jewish neighborhood in Pittsburgh. It seemed that all around us were Jewish families with lots of money, all successful and all richly enjoying their lives.

We were jewish, but my Dad happened to be a policeman. Something shocking actually in the 50's and 60's for nice Jewish man to be a policeman.

The family story goes that my Dad only wanted to play football or baseball. When he grew up in the early 1900's there was no way, that his parents would accept anything but a doctor, lawyer, or maybe business executive for his career and future.

My dad wanted to play ball. The punishment apparently from my grandparents was, no med school, no law school no college at all. And thus my Dad rebelled joined the army, navy, and then became a policeman. One of only 6 Jewish policemen in the city of Pittsburgh at the time.

My father always had a tinge of jealousy for those who made lots of money. Jealous not so much that they made the money, but jealousy as to how they decided that making that money provided them privileges of a life with little conscience or care for others. They were rich they were bright, so they deserved the best that money could buy.

Eventually, being that the Jewish community in Pittsburgh was not too large, and being that my Dad's police precinct was in the Jewish community, many Jewish families had occasions in which they had some run in with the police, and many then feeling that in a time if need a nice Jewish Sergeant would certainly help in making the police matters disappear.

My father would do his best to intervene to help those families with 6 digits incomes, with 4 bedroom homes, with professions like doctors, attorneys, CEO's and Finance managers. The professions my Grandparents told my father were the ones that made you into someone special.

Curious, that those special professions now, in the 21st century, have given us the Bernie Madoff's of Wall Street, the Rick Wagoner's of GM, the Edward Liddy's of AIG, Dick Fuld's of Lehman Brothers. All in the whitest of white collar professions, all graduates of top universities, all supposedly the smartest of the smart, and they all have left a legacy of loss, gluttony, self serving principals and a bottom line which bottomed out.

They were not blue collar worker bee's, they were not plumbers or used car sales people, or clerks or policemen. they did jobs that were created to make America a better place. or was it to make them a better place in America?

They were the high end, the point of comparison the stars to emulate. My grandparents would have wanted my dad to be like them, UNTIL, that is they were found out to be immoral, unthinking, unabashedly selfish men who cared little for anyone around them. And who through selfish means hurt the many who held them on a higher and taller pedestal.

I'm curious how my Dad would have reacted to seeing these people who were able to follow their dream, have their dream turn into a nightmare.