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Larry Bartlestein has played it safe all his life, and playing it safe has paid off. At sixty-four, he is a wealthy man, his two daughters are married, he has two grandchildren and another on the way, and he and Myrna will soon celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. In his set of friends, this last fact is nearly worthy of Ripley’s Believe It or Not. There were lots of early divorces, and a number more when couples reached their mid-forties. Some had still not settled in. Bartlestein read in Chicago Magazine last month that his high-school classmate Joel Meizels, the real-estate developer, had just forked over $40 million to his third wife. The figure made him whistle. The two earlier wives probably hadn’t done much worse.

To Bartlestein, playing it safe came naturally. He had been a passably good student in high school, majored in business at the University of Illinois, taken and passed the CPA exam, and married Myrna Perelman, his high-school girlfriend, soon after graduation. Myrna, who had gone to the National College of Education in Evanston, taught grade school for the two years that it took Bartlestein to get his MBA at the University of Chicago. A job offer from Merrill Lynch followed, but it involved moving to Dallas. It was around then that his father-in-law made Bartlestein one of those offers not many people could refuse.

Perelman Plumbing is a major manufacturer of sinks, tubs, and faucets in the Midwest, one of the four or five largest in North America. Irv Perelman, the first Jewish licensed master plumber in Chicago, built the business out of a small warehouse on Western Avenue, near Diversey, after returning home from World War II. A genuinely modest man, he retained the thick, callused hands of a plumber, grime permanently encrusted under his fingernails.

“Larry,” Irv Perelman said when his daughter told him about their prospective move to Dallas, “what’s it going to take to keep you two here? I’d like the business to stay in the family, and Myrna’s mother and I like having our daughters close by.” Myrna’s older sister Susan was married to a dentist in Highland Park.

“What do you have in mind?” Bartlestein asked.

“I was thinking about making you a vice-president in charge of the administrative side of the company, and eventually let you run the whole business if you turn out to be good at it. Starting salary of $50,000 a year.”

In 1966, $50,000 was serious money, more than twice what Merrill Lynch was offering to move Bartlestein to Dallas. Besides, Myrna wasn’t eager to leave Chicago. Why not, Bartlestein figured? He told his father-in-law he was grateful for the offer, and ready to give it his best effort.

Irv Perelman was of the my-word-is-my-bond school. He had no craving for power or status or glory, and he felt no need to bully or lord things over his son-in-law or anyone else. He just wanted to turn out a good product at a reasonable profit. His employees, who after five years became automatically vested in the company’s profit-sharing plan, tended to stay put, many for their entire working lives. “No need to be a pig,” he once said to Bartlestein. “Run this business right and everyone will do OK.”

Bartlestein spent long hours mastering the details of the plumbing business. When Irv Perelman turned seventy-five and stopped driving, Bartle-stein began picking him up on the way in from Northbrook. Most mornings, Irv read the Trib and then, after he put down the paper, the two generally talked business: investing profits, enlarging the plant, designing a new line, patching up troubles. After much careful effort, Bartlestein had gotten the firm’s less expensive sinks and faucets into Home Depot, which turned out to be a shrewd move. His father-in-law treated him without condescension, as if he were a full partner, which is what he made him on his 50th birthday.

One morning, on the drive down, Bartlestein mentioned that he was thinking of getting a new car, a Mercedes. His father-in-law came alive. “Do me a favor,” he said, “and buy another kind of car.” Bartlestein asked why. Irv, who never talked about his wartime experiences, answered that even today he didn’t like to think about it, but his battalion had been among the first to liberate the Jews at Treblinka. “I don’t consider myself a prejudiced man,” he said, “but the least I can do to keep the sights of those days out of my mind is not to have to drive to work with my son-in-law in a German car.”

Bartlestein bought a Lexus. He continues to buy a Lexus, a new one every three years. He has come to think the Lexus is the perfect car for him: dependable, not too showy, efficient, quietly luxurious. He has himself become a kind of human Lexus.


After the death of Irv Perelman—at eighty-one, of a heart attack, early one morning at his desk—Perelman Plumbing has continued as a family business, with Lawrence R. Bartlestein as chairman and chief executive officer. Bartlestein has invested both the company’s and his own personal profits well. He has twice been president of Temple Jeremiah. He is among the major contributors in metropolitan Chicago to the Jewish United Fund, manufacturing division. He golfs at Bryn Mawr Country Club. Myrna, a better golfer than he, regularly wins the over-fifty women’s title at Bryn Mawr. His daughter Debbie is married to a cardiologist and has two children of her own. Jennifer, his younger girl, married a documentary filmmaker and is now, after two fairly traumatic miscarriages, in her eighth month. Her husband Charlie isn’t making his nut, so Bartlestein helps out with a couple of grand a month.

At his annual physical less than two months ago, Bartlestein was assured by his internist that he is in excellent health. He does the treadmill and rowing machines at the East Bank Club, his weight is about what it should be, and all his numbers—cholesterol, blood pressure, PSA, and the rest—are good. Financially, medically, domestically, he is in the black, in the clear, sailing in calm waters.

So the question is, what is Lawrence R. Bartlestein doing in his office at 6:45 p.m. on a Wednesday night slipping his hand under the blouse of a young woman named Elaine Leslie, a designer at Perelman Plumbing? Elaine at this moment has her hand on Bartlestein’s belt buckle, loosening it with what seem like very deft hands.

Only minutes ago, Elaine Leslie was standing behind Bartlestein’s chair as he studied the designs and production costs for a new mid-priced line of faucets, a project she had brought in for his comments. He felt her hand touch his shoulder, then go upward, massaging gently, her fingers raveling the hair on the back of his neck. He pushed his chair away from his desk, and before he had time to say anything she slid smoothly onto his lap, and his arms were around her. Presently she will descend to do unbidden what Bartlestein, head of a company whose estimated worth is well over $100 million, has never quite found the nerve to ask his wife to do.

Bartlestein feels himself trembling slightly as Elaine, moving quickly, removes her blouse and slips out of her skirt. Now they are on the floor, Ms. Leslie (as Bartlestein persists in thinking of her) directing the show. Bartlestein feels oddly detached, hugely excited yet curiously outside himself, looking in. He recalls that he is a grandfather. He has had back trouble of late, and hopes he will not throw something out of whack before this session on his office floor is over. Until now, he has never in his life slept with anyone but Myrna.

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© 2008 Commentary Inc.