I heard a cry, a howl with a sick sound

That changed me forever

As we passed by, a man in ragged clothing asked us for money. My friend’s oldest son quickly took out his wallet and said:

“Here you go buddy.”

I was impressed at the speed of his generosity.

A few seconds later, as we moved further along the street,

I heard a cry, a howl with a sick sound.

My friend’s son started laughing out loud and boasting that he had handed the man some foreign currency (not dollars or change he could use.)

I was horrified.

His mother chastised him but did not urge him to correct his error.

I asked myself:

How could such an educated and attractive young man with so much to give the world, do such a thing? How could this distasteful act be funny?

In that moment I saw the real wealth gap. The differences, the values, the experiences were not just a matter of lots of zeros, but rather an unfortunate insulation from the real world.

My friend was embarrassed by her son, but did not really know how to fix the problem. She had married into money. He was raised with wealth and had never known lack.

I met my friend at the local gym, and we became very close. Locker rooms are places where everything shows except your real background. She lived on Park Avenue. We will call her June. She seemed to like me for me ( I always avoided the people who just liked me because I was a daily television fixture.) So we jogged together around the Central Park reservoir and always talked about our lives.

Her big apartment with the doorman was just like most apartments in New York, but with more rooms.

The walk that summer night with her family changed everything.

It’s not that I saw all wealthy folks as evil, but rather that event caused me to study and observe their limitations. I began to understand the people that I had met along the way who had run away from their rich lives

Being raised in Bed-Stuy and later in Queens often allowed me to be helpful to those trapped in a loop of seemingly never ending riches that always had strings attached. Like so many writers before me have said,

“ I never felt poor.”

I enjoyed our one-bedroom apartment and my trips to the corner store where I could buy an occasional candy and get a warm greeting and smile from the owner Izzy. I loved jumping rope (double dutch) and playing with my friends on the cracked pavement.

Somehow some of the really rich young people I met had missed the basic info on how to interact with normal people and everyday situations. So they found me helpful.

The ones I met who had gone off to the Peace Corps or worked with major not-for-profits in poorer countries seemed to have their head on right, but others seemed to be smothered under blankets of protocol and expectations.

This caused me to examine:

• What wealth meant for me?
• How did I want my life to grow and flourish?

Working in television, I was on the track to being well off, but I didn’t want to turn out liked the “spoiled brats” I had met along the way. I didn’t want to turn out like my friend’s son who was clueless about the pain he had inflicted.

So, I “took inventory” of the people I admired. The good thing about being a daily talk show host was that you could meet almost anyone. I even created an additional show on NBC radio called “The Matter of Money.” It had a short year-long run, but it allowed me to bring in the real prominent financial experts and wealthy folks to answer my questions.

I began to develop an understanding of “authentic wealth” for myself with identifying what matters. My successful journey began and continues with the question: “What do I want?”

I was born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

Most people called it Bed-Stuy. At the time, it was seen as a clean, working class and poor ghetto. I didn’t know that. I had a great childhood skipping rope, actually double-dutch on the sidewalk, and enjoyed running to the corner store for bubble gum and getting a hello and smile from Izzy, the one and only local grocer. I set this stage because, like many writers have said:

“I didn’t know we were poor.”

That is not the story I want to tell, but it set the stage for my discoveries about wealth and wealthy people.