Four Friends

by William D. Cohan

  * * *

  FOR HARRY’S SENIOR YEAR AT ANDOVER, he moved to Sunset House, a tiny dorm on the other side of campus from Fuess, run by Gil Sewall. By then, Harry and Sewall had become quite close. That fall, Harry took Sewall’s History of Art survey course (as did I) and excelled in it. “Harry was one of the outstanding students in Art History this fall,” Sewall wrote about him at the end of the first trimester. “He is a splendid young man in every respect.” Harry did well in math, too. “He is serious about his own learning,” George Best wrote, “self-motivated and very competent.” There was more. “It should come to you as no surprise that I consider Harry one of the real standouts in the Senior class at Andover,” Sewall wrote the Bulls, in a letter home. “I have had him as a student now for two years, have been wholly impressed with his performance and invigorating, quick mind, recommended him for the Washington Intern Program last spring, and currently find him the premier resident in Sunset House. Our conversations have been frequent, fascinating and sincere. I have found on several occasions his reactions and fine judgment a good litmus test for my History of Art section. I am even more heartened by Harry’s ability to move in many different groups inside Andover, maintaining cordial relations with all but never becoming absorbed in a clique or particular social viewpoint. Harry is highly independent. He thinks for himself with a brilliant head on his shoulders and his feet ever more firmly implanted in hard ground. It is all this that makes Harry a widely respected character by both students and faculty—a young man with a sensational future indeed.”

  But Harry was also still getting high a lot. Marty Koffman remembered going to Harry’s room in Sunset House with Will Iselin and getting stoned. He said Iselin kept spilling the bong water. “Harry was the first Republican teenager I ever met who was seriously Republican,” Koffman said. “Harry was the only guy I knew on campus who wanted Ford to win, which was kind of funny.”

  In the spring of 1977, though, something happened to Harry that is still mysterious and difficult to explain. Swett remembered a telling incident in the urban history course he took with Harry in the winter and spring of senior year. The conceit of the class was to study American history by studying the history of her cities. The teacher Ed Quattlebaum took the small class to Lawrence, Massachusetts, to study the old, abandoned textile mills. Lawrence was the next city over from Andover but of course it was a world away from the manicured charm of an old New England town. One day the class was meeting in the Underwood Room, where there was a large projection screen at the front of the room that could be used for slide shows. After Quattlebaum finished his slide presentation, he went around the room asking questions. “There were only about five or six of us in this course,” Swett remembered. “And he called out our names and asked us various very pointed questions. And I just remember he went to Harry and asked Harry a question. And Harry just looked back at him, and his mouth sort of opened a couple of times. And he just stared back at Dr. Quattlebaum and didn’t answer. And eventually Quattlebaum went on to someone else. And it was the most startling thing for Harry, who would be the kind of person who would immediately come back with a very strong response and an interesting response and have something to say.” Concluded Swett, “I guess he had kind of a nervous breakdown.”

  Peter Begley remembered driving through Andover the following spring on a road trip from the University of Virginia, where he was a freshman, and seeing Harry. “He was not in good shape,” he said. “He looked strung out.” Said Koffman, “Through senior year, Harry disappeared for a while. Harry never talked about it with me or if he did I’ve forgotten exactly what he said.… Somebody said he had some sort of breakdown.… He was down in Gil’s cottage. I remember once going down and Harry just wasn’t around so I didn’t think anything about it. I said, ‘Where’s Harry?’ Nobody knew and then he was back.”

  Of course, this was not the kind of thing that got talked about much at Andover in those days. He ended up taking a leave of absence but returned to school in time for graduation. There was no mention of his temporary withdrawal from the school on his record and there was no letter home from Sewall discussing it with his parents or explaining what had happened. Ironically, the winter trimester of Harry’s senior year turned out to be his best academically, with a 6 and three 5s in his four courses. The only sign that something was not quite right was the 2 he received in Quattlebaum’s history class that trimester, after receiving a 5 the trimester before. But there were no comments from Quattlebaum, or any other teachers. His younger sister, Mary Ellen, remembered that Harry took a leave from Andover but couldn’t recall the details. His older siblings Rick and Karna remembered his return home, too, but again without details. “There was not a horrific uproar in the family that Harry’s gone crazy, what are we going to do?” Rick Bull said. “Back in those days everybody had a kid that went bonkers.”

  Harry’s troubles continued at Yale, where he matriculated the following year. It probably wasn’t the right school for him, but he seemed to feel an obligation to carry on the Bull family tradition. “Going to Yale was an incredibly important thing to him,” Giles McNamee said. But he hadn’t really done much academically at Andover to distinguish himself. Harry’s admittance to Yale was not atypical of the era: He was a Yale legacy and it was a time when fully half of the Andover senior class of 300—150 people—were accepted to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. “Everybody was going in herds to Harvard and Yale and Princeton,” said Marty Koffman. It’s just the way it was at that time and Harry, along with many others, was a beneficiary of having the right DNA at the right time.

  That didn’t make him happy to be there, though. In fact, whatever had been bothering him in his senior year at Andover pretty much continued during his time at Yale, abetted by copious amounts of drugs and alcohol. Peter Begley recalled another road trip that took him and a friend up to Harvard to visit his brother, Adam. He picked up various friends along the way, including Harry. “He was smoking, drinking, and snorting enough for three guys,” Peter said. “I mean completely out of control.” Harry then just passed out in the car. “Harry seemed fairly whacked out,” he continued. “You had the feeling like Harry was burning the candle at both ends. But he was extraordinarily game. He could put away booze. He could put away drugs.”

  Harry’s time in New Haven was short: one semester, and then he took a leave of absence. He was allowed to return to Yale, but he never did. “I think at the time they called it a nervous breakdown,” McNamee said. “I don’t know what you’d call it now, but essentially this was a guy who was too young for everything he did. He punched above his weight every step of his life and it just got to him.” McNamee said the catalyst for Harry’s problem was a “romantic entanglement” gone wrong. It seemed he caught a girlfriend cheating on him with another student.

  It can be assumed the failure at Yale stung, given the expectations of Harry being the keeper of the Bull legacy both there and at Andover. “He idolized his father and really wanted to be successful,” McNamee said. Harry’s parents were “absolute sweethearts,” making the pressure on him to succeed something altogether subtler. “He was always sort of chasing some shadows,” he continued. “He was chasing his own personal demons that he brought with him. This was a kid who needed a few hours on the couch.”

  Harry returned to Chicago. He was living at home. He spent some time at his grandmother’s house in Winnetka. He worked in some menial jobs for a few months until he resolved to get back to the task of doing what he needed to do to succeed in an academic setting. The family took Harry’s departure from Yale in stride, although they insisted he get a new start somewhere else. Rick thought his brother’s problems at Yale were more or less just a continuation of the problems he’d had in his senior year at Andover. “The same self-doubt, bonkers, call it what you will,” he said.

  Harry eventually buckled down. He took summer classes at Elmhurst College, in Elmhurst, Illinois. He also worked as a clerk on the Chicago Board Options Exc
hange. After a semester and summer spent regrouping, he was ready to go back to school. The question was where. He and his father got in the car and started driving east on the Stevenson Expressway toward downtown Chicago. When they got toward Lake Shore Drive, his father asked him if he wanted to go north or south. Should he drive toward Northwestern, in Evanston, or toward the University of Chicago, on South Ellis Avenue? Harry said, “North.” They drove up to Evanston, walked into the Northwestern admissions office, and enrolled Harry into the class of 1982. Those were the days when such things could happen, especially if you were from a prominent Chicago-area family and you were transferring from Yale. And if you were as inherently brilliant as was Harry.

  At Northwestern, Harry was a star. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa. He was no longer the immature reckless party boy he had been at Andover and during his brief stint at Yale. He was finally coming into his own, and achieving the academic success that so many had expected of him for so long. “By comparison to Andover and Yale, Northwestern was a cakewalk for him,” McNamee said. “He went from being just another guy at school to being the smartest guy in his class.”

  Of course, Harry still managed to have fun. He hung out often with his older brother Rick, who was then a bond trader in downtown Chicago. Harry started off living in Evanston but then moved down to Wrigleyville to live with Rick; he commuted back and forth to Northwestern. They shared a case of Budweiser every day. “I know he had a twelve-pack every day because I was having another half a case every day,” Rick said.

  From Northwestern, Harry enrolled at the University of Chicago Law School. He wanted to be an attorney. Becoming a lawyer would be one way for him to express his admiration for his father. Harry quickly fell in with a group of law students who remained friends throughout their time together at the University of Chicago and beyond. They were smart. They were serious. But they weren’t overly serious. “Harry was fun,” said Kathy Roach, one member of the group. “Harry enjoyed life to the fullest and he was a super smart guy.” Harry was interested in the arcane aspects of tax law, which only a few students—out of a class of around two hundred—found compelling. Even for someone interested in tax law, Harry “had a heart full of gold, too, and was a smart guy who obviously did well for himself with pretty much everything that he did,” Roach continued. The summer after his first year, Harry worked at Tenney & Bentley, an old-line Chicago law firm founded in 1847 that did legal work for the Bulls’ paper company. He did research and drafted memoranda on the law of gifts, unfair competition, indemnification of corporate officers, and environmental protection.

  Ken Cera transferred to the University of Chicago Law School after one year at the Boston College Law School. “I didn’t know anybody or anything,” he said. “I just kind of showed up.” He had missed the first, intense year of law school, where covalent bonds are forged among the law students. “I was an outsider,” he said. He lived in an apartment by himself. One day, early on, he went to a law school party. He met Harry. They chatted. No big deal. The next day, the doorbell rang at his apartment. It was Harry. Cera thought it was a bit odd that this guy he barely knew was at his apartment door. But Harry just sensed that Cera needed a friend and someone to show him the ropes. “It was very generous,” he said. “I think it was motivated by nothing other than kindness.” They remained friends from that day onward: a liberal from San Francisco and the neo-conservative, establishment figure from the suburbs of Chicago.

  Harry invited Cera out to Hinsdale to meet his family. Harry offered him invitations on holidays and during vacations, when it made little sense for Cera to go back to California. He recalled the family’s “beautiful suburban” house and heard all about Bradner, “the third oldest company in Illinois,” and its history. Although the Bulls and Cera could not have been more diametrically opposed politically, their conversations were always cordial. Harry could hold his own in their debates, too. “He expressed his opinions but he was always polite,” Cera said. Reagan was a particular point of contention. Harry was a huge Reagan fan; Cera not so much. Harry was “very pro-business,” with typically conservative views: “We need less regulation. We need lower taxes. Get the government out.” But he was also utterly tolerant on social issues, including abortion.

  Not surprisingly, the academics were intense. It was a highly pressured environment with very motivated people. “It was a tough place,” Cera said. “It was very competitive. People are calculating grade point averages to the hundredths of a point.” He and Harry took tax-law classes. “Tax law is a very esoteric thing that most people in law school try to avoid like the plague,” he explained. After his second year, Harry worked as a summer associate at Jenner & Block, one of the city’s premier law firms and one of the best in the country. His focus was on corporate law and tax law.

  During that summer, Harry proposed that he and Cera share an apartment together for their third year of law school. Through a family connection, Harry had found a beautiful apartment on Burling Street, at the edge of Lincoln Park, one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city. Harry furnished the place and had a car they could use to commute the thirty minutes to the law school every day. All Cera had to do was show up, and delight in his good fortune to be Harry’s friend. “Still, to this day, I don’t know why me,” he said. “I mean, we were friends, but there were lots of other friends, but just like when we first met, for some reason he reached out to me and I guess we connected despite our many differences.” The apartment had a balcony, where they kept a barbecue. “We would sit out on the balcony and barbecue chicken or whatever it was, and drink beer and smoke joints,” he said. “We would just have a great time. That’s what I remember from those days. It’s a really great memory, and it was all made available by him.” Harry was the kind of guy who was as happy drinking a scotch, neat, as he was eating a sausage at Wrigley Field. “Give me two tube steaks, all the way,” would be a typical Harry Bull request. For his part, Cera wasn’t sure what Harry was referring to until he realized it was two hot dogs in one bun with all sorts of toppings and sauces. “I remember at the time eating three of them and enjoying it,” he said. They also went sailing together a few times on Lake Michigan in the Bull family sailboat, a twenty-six-foot Grampian named Semper Spero (“Forever Hope” in Latin). Cera didn’t know much about sailing, but it was clear to him that Harry did.

  In his third year at Chicago Law, Harry met Pam Kyros. She grew up on Chicago’s South Shore, a predominantly black neighborhood along Lake Michigan. Her grandparents were Greek immigrants who settled in Chicago and had done well in the restaurant business. After graduating Hope College, she worked at the I. Magnin store in Chicago, selling clothes while looking for a better job in the advertising business. She was working at I. Magnin when she met Harry at a brunch hosted by mutual friends. “When I arrived at the brunch, there were people mingling around in the house but mostly the crowd was spilling out onto the wooden back porch and the small backyard,” Pam recalled. She remembered being “squished” into a corner and meeting Harry. But she was in a long-distance relationship with another guy and left abruptly. “I left Harry standing there with a disappointed look on his face,” she said. “The whole way home I regretted my stupid awkward exit!” She had not given Harry her phone number. A few days later, Harry called Pam’s friend and asked her for Pam’s number. But she told Harry that Pam was dating someone else. She also called up Pam right away. “You don’t want to go out with him, do you?” she asked Pam.

  “Call him back and give him my number,” she instructed. Harry called her the next day. They had dinner. They started dating and were pretty much a couple from then on. “You [could] tell right away he was smart and funny and very engaging,” she said. “I knew he was very interested at that party because every time I turned around, he was right next to me.” At the time, Harry was about to graduate from law school, take the bar exam, and start a full-time job at Jenner & Block. Pam wasn’t quite sure what that was, though. “I kept telling people I w
as dating this guy who worked at H&R Block,” she said. “Harry was never pompous about it. He’d be like, ‘Pam, I don’t work at H&R Block.’ And so then, it became like kind of a joke.”

  Early on in their relationship, Harry needed to prepare for the bar exam. He and Ken Cera had been studying like crazy for weeks. “They had set up card tables in the living room and had all their law books and study guides spread out everywhere,” Pam said. As exam day got closer, Harry told Pam he was holing up in a hotel room to study for three days straight. He did not tell her where he was. He asked her not to call him. Right away, though, he kept calling her when he was supposed to be studying for the bar. “He was cute,” she said. On the night before the exam, she called him and suggested they go see a movie “so he could relax and stop worrying,” she said. He agreed right away.

  After the exam, Pam recalled, Harry and Ken had a “scrum,” their word for a barbecue party. Pam remembered that the law students at the scrum were comparing notes about the exam; they were all convinced they had failed. Of course, they all passed.

  * * *

  PAM AND HARRY WERE MARRIED on September 28, 1986. He was twenty-six; she was a year younger. Lots of their friends were getting married so it just seemed like the natural thing to do. “We were going to weddings all the time,” Pam said, “and then one day, Harry just said to me, ‘Well, I guess we should get married,’ and I didn’t like the way he asked me and I’m like, ‘What?’ So then he had to ask me better.” But she said yes.