Lewis was again restless and he began to look elsewhere for his next business conquest.
6
* * *
“Masterful” Man: Winning Loida Nicolas
The most important event that occurred during Reginald Lewis’s years at Paul, Weiss had nothing to do with work. He had been somewhat of a ladies’ man all through Dunbar High School, Virginia State, and Harvard, and he had never entertained the thought of a serious romantic relationship. Having resolutely set a goal for himself, he was convinced that he would travel faster without the baggage of longterm emotional commitments. He was determined to avoid marriage until he was 35, an age when he was sure he would be independently wealthy and established. He once said, “I didn’t want the responsibility of a wife before I had a real stake in life.”
But life takes some interesting turns at times and all of Lewis’s plans were about to go out the window, as far as romance was concerned.
The day after his 26th birthday, Lewis was at his desk at Paul, Weiss, working hard and planning to stay late, as usual. His desk phone rang and Reynaldo Glover, one of his black Harvard Law School classmates, was on the line. Glover had chosen to pursue civil rights law and was working in Manhattan as national president of the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council.
“Want to go out on a blind date tonight?” Glover asked. “With whom?” Lewis wanted to know. “My administrative assistant, Loida Nicolas,” Glover responded. “Her sister and I will complete the foursome.” After a few seconds of thought, Lewis answered, “Perhaps another time; I’m quite busy right now.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” Glover responded. “She comes from the Philippines.” Lewis’s eyes lit up, because he’d never dated an Asian before. He told Glover that he would be joining him and the two young ladies after all.
Like Lewis, Loida Nicolas had recently graduated from law school at the University of the Philippines. A member of a relatively well-to-do family from the province of Sorsogon, Loida was in the United States with her mother on the first part of a round-the-world trip, a gift from her father for having just passed the Philippine bar examinations. Loida and her mother were to wait in New York until her sister Imelda finished her masters degree in art history at Columbia University. Then they would travel to Europe. Rather than remain idle for several months, Loida began to search newspaper want ads. The Village Voice had an ad from a civil rights organization looking for an administrative assistant. Loida decided to apply and was hired by Glover. When Glover began to date her sister, Glover suggested to Loida that she come along on a blind date.
Going out with this Reginald Lewis fellow she’d heard Glover frequently mention would just be part of her brief American adventure, an evening’s diversion . . . nothing more.
The two men agreed to rendezvous with their dates at the Aberdeen Hotel, where the women were staying. Glover entered the hotel lobby first, followed by Lewis. As he marched toward the Nicolas sisters, Glover introduced Lewis to Loida who extended her hand, looked into his eyes with a friendly smile and said, “Hi, I’m Loida. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Lewis was taken with Loida immediately. She was attractive, had a nice figure and a decidedly classy, demure persona. In addition, she hadn’t known him 10 seconds and had already stroked his ego, the quickest way to his heart. Yes, this was definitely going to be an interesting evening.
As the foursome walked toward Glover’s Ford Mustang, Lewis reached out to hold Loida’s arm. Educated in strict Catholic schools and raised in a society where casual touching between an unfamiliar man and woman was taboo, Loida thought, “Hmmmm. Fresh!”
The group went to “West Boondocks,” a soul-food restaurant, where Lewis and Loida engaged in a stimulating conversation that covered a wide range of topics. Loida displayed a quick, facile mind—this woman was no intellectual slouch! Lewis prided himself on being able to make snap judgments about people and his read of Loida Nicolas was that she had the potential to be something more than a meaningless one night stand.
At some point, their discussion touched on the issue of race, particularly about the triumphs and problems of the African-American community. Lest Loida feel compelled to talk about race because of Lewis’s ethnicity, and perhaps to let her know he was open-minded about women of all backgrounds, he proclaimed, “I am international.”
Loida still recalls that her date ordered champagne at the bar, which impressed her. After dinner, the foursome took in a Beatles movie, “The Yellow Submarine.” While en route in the car, Lewis informed Loida that his birthday had been the previous day. “Don’t I get a kiss?” Lewis asked impishly.
Blushing slightly and not sure what to make of this forward man, Loida gave Lewis a little peck on the cheek. “How sweet,” he murmured with a smile.
Loida didn’t hear from Lewis the next day or the day after that. She had been impressed by his presence, his intelligence, and his somewhat roguish air. So she was delighted when he called three days after their meeting and asked her out.
The always fastidious Lewis took greater pains than usual to make sure his apartment was neat before he set out on their second date. His strategy was simple: After dinner and a meeting of the minds, he would take her to his apartment for a meeting of a different sort. The ambiance at the restaurant was just right, the meal enjoyable, the conversation even more scintillating than the first one. The mood was being set for a memorable evening.
At the right moment, Lewis asked Loida with studied casualness if she would like to see his Dutch friend Helge Strufe’s watercolor paintings he had at his apartment. Although she was relatively inexperienced in dealing with men, the invitation to his apartment set off warning signals in Loida’s head. Against her better judgment, she said yes.
Lewis gave her a grand tour of his abode, which didn’t take long since it was a tiny one-bedroom flat. Later, Lewis would recall his fascination with this Philippine woman deepening. He was starting to like everything about her—her poise, the way she wore her hair, her self-confidence, her perfume, the lyrical sound of her voice.
After more conversation, Lewis made his move. He drew closer to Loida and kissed her on the lips. Surprisingly, she didn’t flinch or draw away. Lewis pushed forward. More kisses followed, each more passionate than the preceding one.
Emboldened, Lewis lifted Loida off her feet and began carrying her in the direction of his bedroom. As she realized what was happening, Loida became frightened and cried out in terror, “Oh, no! no! no!” Lewis put her down immediately but continued to hold her. Somewhat facetiously, he hastened to reassure her, “I just wanted to be close to you.”
Lewis’s forwardness had brought what started as a delightful evening to a grinding halt. Loida left the apartment with a chastened Lewis tagging along at her side. The silence in the cab that took them to Aberdeen was deafening. Lewis dropped her off and was on his way.
The incident did not amuse Loida. She dashed off a dismissive letter to Lewis, “I never want to see you again. I will only have intimate relations with the man who will be my husband. I will always remember you with fond memories.”
In keeping with his personality, Lewis chose to accentuate the positive when he received Loida’s missive. The last line of the letter wasn’t so bad, was it? Lewis refolded the letter and placed it back in the envelope. He knew that sometimes, in order to get something you really want, you have to be willing to wait. This was one of those times.
Two weeks went by before Loida got another call from Lewis. Despite herself, she was intrigued by this bold man. Hadn’t she told him in no uncertain terms not to bother her anymore? Maybe he hadn’t received her “Dear John Letter,” she rationalized.
Although she didn’t know it, Loida’s letter had only heightened Lewis’s willingness to see her. If there was a prime attribute behind Lewis’s impressive accomplishments, it was his pitbull tenacity. He was like one of those cartoon characters who gets steamrollered, incinerated, and blown to smithereens but kee
ps coming back for more. When Lewis stumbled or got knocked down in pursuit of a goal, he would brush himself off and start all over again as though nothing had happened. Friend and foe alike both marveled at this side of his personality.
Loida was getting her first glimpse of Lewis’s dogged side. After a bit of small talk, Lewis asked Loida for another date. To her own surprise, she accepted.
Lewis wasn’t about to repeat his previous faux pas with the graceful Loida. This time, he would take her to dinner and that would be it. Throughout their meal, Lewis kept the charm turned up full blast. The hard-driving, aggressive Lewis could be quite considerate, solicitous, and gracious when the mood hit him.
After dinner, Lewis and Loida strolled through the streets of Manhattan, walking leisurely despite the wintry chill. Finally, Loida broke down and asked the question that had been in the back of her mind the entire evening, “Didn’t you receive my letter?”
“Yes,” Lewis calmly answered, “I did.”
Then why did he call her again, Loida wanted to know. “I will not do anything, Loida, that you don’t want to do,” he assured her. It would be totally up to her whether they would continue to see each other.
Their next date took place around Christmas and was particularly enchanting: They went to the Riverboat Restaurant at the Empire State Building. The skyline of Manhattan was sketched in lights around them. Count Basie’s band was playing. As the young couple flitted around the dance floor, Loida gazed into Lewis’s piercing eyes and bared her soul.
“Reggie, I don’t think I should continue seeing you because I feel I am falling in love with you. I don’t want to be heartbroken: Nothing can come out of this because I am going back to the Philippines.” Holding Loida a little tighter, Lewis smiled. He loved her too and was ecstatic to hear her articulate similar feelings.
“Why do you say that?” he finally replied. “You don’t know what will happen.”
Lewis and Loida became inseparable. They took in Manhattan’s bountiful entertainment and restaurant scene whenever time allowed. They were from different worlds in more ways than one and each helped broaden the other’s outlook and experiences. Loida had never eaten lobster before Lewis introduced her to the delicacy. They became regulars at Max’s Kansas City, where the lobster entree was $4.95. An avid theatergoer, Loida took Lewis to his first Broadway play, “The Man of La Mancha,” and “The Impossible Dream” became something of a Lewis theme song. Both of them loved the cinema and they were often found in one of the city’s moviehouses. Loida even got Lewis to watch several Japanese movies directed by Akira Kurosawa and starring Toshiro Mifune.
Lewis and Loida spent a lot of time in his apartment, where she learned to cook his favorite dishes, and dutifully watched televised football games with Lewis. In April 1969, four months after they met, Lewis and Loida jetted off to St. Thomas, the Virgin Islands for a brief getaway. They stayed in an inexpensive hotel with a spectacular view of St. Thomas’ pristine beaches and the beautiful, aquamarine Caribbean. Lewis loved the way Loida drew out his romantic side, and spent one memorable evening dancing in the moonlight with her to the tune of “This Girl’s in Love with You.” He had spent all his life up to now studiously avoiding commitments of any kind to the opposite sex. He was focused completely on his career. But here Lewis was, letting himself go.
The two were proof that opposites do attract. Loida’s easy-going manner and serene air nicely countered Lewis’s hard-charging, intense personality. He was from urban Baltimore, while she was born on the other side of the world in a provincial town in the Philippines. Whereas he could be blunt and astringent, she tended to be tactful and diplomatic.
But he knew all too well not to underestimate Loida and her quiet strength—his foiled seduction attempt had shown him Loida would not hesitate to stand up to him, if need be. Lewis couldn’t get serious about a woman lacking the backbone to occasionally dig in her heels and tell him where to get off. As long as it happened infrequently, of course.
Years later, Lewis would confide in his friends that while Loida was friendly and had a relaxed manner on the outside, she was really as tough as steel. “Never underestimate her,” he would say.
Lewis felt that Loida would be an ideal partner for him. As he told her innumerable times before they got married, “I’m going to marry a woman who will grow with me!”
One might expect that Lewis and his special lady cemented their fairytale romance with him proposing on bended knee in some romantic setting, engagement ring at the ready. In reality, the setting was far more prosaic—a noisy, smelly subway car in Manhattan. And it was Loida Nicolas who popped the question in May 1969, albeit in a somewhat indirect way.
“We were sitting in the subway together and I remember asking him, ‘Darling, do you want a big wedding or a small wedding?’” she recalls.
If Lewis hadn’t been ready for a lasting commitment, he could easily have turned her question into a joke. But of the scores of women he had dated, none had excited him like Loida. He had found his soulmate and was ready to settle down.
“Ah, I think we should just have a small wedding and get married in the chapel at New York University,” Lewis responded decisively. “And then we honeymoon in Paris and Venice.”
Feigning a sudden realization of what he just said, he put his hand on his head and said, “I have a headache.” Loida laughed knowingly and kissed him. There was no engagement ring and Lewis always regretted not having one. He made up for it on their 20th wedding anniversary in August 1989, by giving her a ring with a hefty five-carat diamond.
Loida’s mother, Magdalena Nicolas, had met Lewis in early 1969, at the Aberdeen Hotel. She was favorably impressed by him, particularly by the fact that he took her daughter to a black tie dinner held by Paul, Weiss, when he could have taken someone else.
Now it was time for Loida to meet the other important woman in Lewis’s life, Carolyn Fugett. Lewis and Loida traveled to Baltimore, where Loida was warmly welcomed into the Fugett-Cooper clan.
Some of Lewis’s relatives and friends were surprised to learn that he was marrying someone from the Philippines instead of an African-American woman. Such reservations invariably evaporated on meeting Loida. Everyone was struck by her intelligence and grace and how well she and Lewis seemed to co-exist, making race a non-issue.
One of Lewis’s friends from childhood days, Dan Henson, had never seen Lewis fall head over heels for anyone before. “The first time I saw him really excited was when he told me about Loida,” Henson relates. “When I learned that she was Filipino and whatever, I said, ‘What is this shit?’ But after half an hour of conversation with her, I realized how perfect she was for Reggie. I couldn’t imagine too many other women putting up with him,” Henson laughs.
For her part, Loida says her husband’s racial background was never a concern for her family, because her parents never classified people according to economic, social, or racial background.
At Paul, Weiss, Lewis was still putting in long hours, but where he had previously been working 10- to 14-hour days during the week, he started to lop off an hour here and there so he and Loida could have some time together. He never turned into a love-smitten, dreamy-eyed zombie, though—his burning ambition and unrelenting drive wouldn’t allow that.
Loida, on the other hand, was beginning to think about the ramifications of the marriage they planned. It would mean that she would be living in the United States permanently and would rarely see her family. Loida felt as much devotion and love for her kin as Lewis did for his, and she also would miss her beloved homeland.
She rarely thought about these things in the intoxicating presence of Lewis, but was mulling over their plans more and more when she had time alone to think. Developing a major-league case of cold feet, she decided she couldn’t go through with the wedding.
Lewis was deeply disappointed to hear of her decision. He was tempted to ask her to take some time and mull it over, but he knew that you couldn’t dictate affairs
of the heart. Plus his pride would never allow him to plead.
So in June 1969, after Loida’s sister Imelda finished her studies at Columbia, the two of them caught a plane to California with the intention of leaving New York and Lewis behind forever. The women planned to visit some friends at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and then go on a brief Asian tour before returning home to the Philippines.
However, in the time it took to fly to the West Coast, Loida became heartsick and miserable. By the time the women reached California, Imelda noticed her sister was walking around with a blank expression as though in a daze. Imelda didn’t say anything—she already knew what the problem was. “Everything was bleak and gray. I couldn’t see any other colors,” Loida recalls.
There was only one quick-fix antidote: A phone call back to the East, specifically to New York City. “Darling, I can’t stand it anymore,” Loida told Lewis after breaking down and calling her love, “I’m coming back.”
“No, Loida, don’t do that,” a relieved Lewis advised his fiancee. “Go back to your parents, tell them we’re getting married and then you can fly back here in two weeks. We’ll get married at NYU, then we’ll honeymoon in Paris and Venice.”
The suggestion that Loida return to the Philippines was particularly magnanimous coming from Lewis who had a jealous and possessive side. Generally though, his attitude toward women was predicated on his high opinion of himself. If a woman didn’t want him, it was her loss.
Loida already knew that in addition to his other qualities, he could be short-tempered, moody, and sarcastic. She knew that he could be very intense and that he could hold a grudge with the best of them.
She loved him because of his ambition, his sense of family, his take-charge attitude. “I wanted someone who would wear the pants in the family,” she says. In many ways, Lewis reminded Loida of her father, who was also an entrepreneur.
Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun? Page 13
