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Steve Agins
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…name’s familiar, but who the hell is he?
In our the class Last Will and Testament it said something about Steve leaving a collection of get well cards and finger painting a car. Well, yes there was this thing about a condition that made him/me the skinniest guy in class, when I was there. But much of the time I wasn’t there, spending far too much of our Junior and Senior years at North Shore Hospital. But thanks to the best friends any man could possibly possess, I did get to both of the proms. And yes, I have maintained a life long interest in cars.
You see, I probably owe my life to Dave Bloomgarden, Jay Doumaux, and Al Posnack. Oh yes, there was this modern medicine stuff, but for a kid who was sick the best friends are indeed the best medicine.
And so they are today: my best friends. Other than my wife Ronne who means more to me today than yesterday even, and tomorrow will top even that, my high school friends remain a foundation of my life.
My health did improve enough for me to maneuver four years of college into six. I’m sure you will recall that we as young adults were convinced we were smarter, stronger, faster, and more invincible than any one else. Some were, I wasn’t. In fact many of us had youngsters of our own who couldn’t recognize their parents’ knowledge and wisdom for a couple of decades yet.
I was one of those, and as my life improved I became convinced that nothing could ever hurt me again. I even tried my hand at driving a racing car- a particularly bad idea for a youngster who a year earlier could hardly stand on his own two feet. That post adolescent incident cost me a year in hospitals and I’m still recovering today, more than 40 years later.
And who saved my life? Certainly the doctors and my parents were tops. But the other medicine came from Dave Bloomgarden, Jay Doumaux and Al Posnack along with Fred Grayson from the class of ‘57. This time I was determined to leave those get well cards behind and they were and are my enablers.
My wonderful daughter Jennifer was born during the late 60’s. Today she’s the mother of our grandchildren Kevin and Camille, which makes me the youngest grandfather in history, at my current age of 35. OK you got me, 55. As I write this in July 2007, Kevin has just captured a second place medal class in Tae Kwan Do at the Junior Olympics and Camille took 5th in hers. Their athleticism must be in the genes, but they sure aren’t in mine.
The month Jennifer was born, I picked up a little sporty little used foreign car that was advertised in buy-lines, which I still drive.
Early in my work life I edited a magazine for travel agents and got the wanderlust which led me to free lance travel writing when not on the job of promoting travel and tourism, and a series of very full passports. A move to a public relations agency specializing in travel only fed that urge to see the world.
Sun Valley Idaho, the ski area, followed me from the agency as a free lance client, and I’m pleased to have represented them for 40 years of positive image building.
American Express recruited me to manage public relations for its Travel Division, and I advanced through its bureaucracy after developing a program that made senior management very happy, to manage all four of Amex’ divisions within a few years. Then the investment bank of Goldman Sachs & Co. recruited me to help organize a public relations operation partly modeled on my American Express business model. A third big financial services company recruited me and fool that I was, I left Goldman for the tax shelter business. When that company crashed and burned six years later, I returned to my career roots and became Agins Communications. Like so many of us who start small consulting businesses while we wait for the next great job to come along, I rather liked working alone, made a decent living, and got to enjoy life a great deal more than earlier.
While employed I’d renovated a brownstone on the upper west side (just look at my ten cents an hour labor hands) and was living frequently alone, in a triplex apartment during this period.
The next great job never came long but the first great woman, the former Ronne Bassman did materialize and transform my bachelor life, and not a moment too soon, I must add. Then the real benefit of being self unemployed (a free lancer) became obvious. I could be the house husband while Ronne held a real job as a director of school social work programs in school systems. Wow, my very own social worker! How lucky can a guy get?
I’ve been privileged to work with some other exciting clients. We extended the life of The Fantasticks for 5 or 6 years after the Sullivan Street landmark had posted closing notices. And we represented Sergey Brinn and Larry Page of Google fame to the world’s telecommunications community, before they were the hottest ticket in town. Ditto a fellow named Gordon Moore who had founded Intel many years earlier and was about to receive the coveted Marconi Lifetime Achievement Award presented by our client, The Marconi Society at Columbia University.
Ronne and I sold the brownstone in the early 90’s (who knew?) and moved to our current location in that big square building that you see just south of the George every time you cross to New Jersey.
Don’t forget to wave or even call us at 201-944-4037. You may find us in the pool, terrace gardening, or perhaps I’ll be tootling around town in my 43 year old antique car, the same one I got the week Jennifer was born.
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