On October 19, 1987, the stock market crashed hard. Together with my Columbia Business School classmates, we watched the market news that day with both awe and no small measure of trepidation.
That Fall, I had taken the trouble to enroll in a class very heavy in demand – “Securities Analysis” taught by one very notable professor (among several) named Jimmy Rogers. I have mentioned him numerous times in this blog because he shares an interesting commonality with my Dad, Bernard Olcott.
Jimmy hailed from Demopolis, Alabama (some stop-light out towards Mississippi) and was one of the few faculty members who didn’t speak in a flat Manhattan accent. No Sirree, he spoke with what could almost be called a southern “coon-dawg” accent. The opposite of a very different accent spoken by Professor Elliot Zupnick, whose cadence was marked by the thickest Bronx-ese, complete with “dese, dems, and doses.”
Jimmy’s solitary affectation was wearing bow-ties, a habit he had picked up as an Oxford student. (Leaving aside his penchant for asking of the birth years of attractive female students in order to send his servant to the wine cellar of his home in search of that very vintage).
