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We were finally able to give my dad, Robert F. Maguire III, the Amarillo Slim of Los Angeles real estate, his long overdue memorial. “The Wild Life of Rob” was generously sponsored and masterfully emceed by longtime and loyal supporter, D. Michael “VK” Van Konynenburg. A sizable crowd of friends, family and former colleagues gathered in the Maguire Gardens, next to the LA Central Library that he saved with an act of creative financing in 1989.
Below is my speech, “Rob Maguire Lived,” that I delivered on May 10, 2022.
My father liked pomp and ceremony. Even though we descend from a long line of bog Irish peasants, he liked to wear kilts. I don’t wear kilts, but in his honor, I will do him one better. First, my hard earned doctoral gown, next my black belts, my grandfather’s medal for valor from the Israeli government, and my chapeau.
Okay, that’s better. Let’s get this long-postponed party started.
Welcome to Robapalooza!
Rob Maguire lived.
Perhaps my family’s greatest strength, and greatest weakness, is our unwillingness to accept or consider, the limits of the possible. As most of you know, when confronted with those limits, Rob had a standard, one word answer: BULLSHIT!
My theosophist great-grandfather, Frank Maguire, embraced Darwin’s theory of evolution in the late 1800s, my grandfather Robert Maguire, Sr., attempted to hold Nazis accountable at Nuremberg, my grandfather Robert, Jr., risked his life to transport Jews to Israel. And finally, my dad built much of downtown LA, backed his janitors in a strike, won a pyrrhic victory against Dreamworks over Playa Vista, and put it all on the line in a bad bet on the Blackstone Group. If nothing else, we Maguires are not risk averse.1
Born in Clackamas, Oregon, in 1935, Rob could make his exotic childhood sound quite romantic, but when he described it towards the end of his life, he said simply, “I had no childhood.” The day after the Pearl Harbor attack, his father, Robert Maguire, Jr., enlisted in the Army Air Corps and served as a flight instructor during the war. Jean Shepard, his mother, was a writer who chronicled raising eight-year-old Rob on the Washington coast during World War II in her book Beside The Point: “Robbie was persistent. ‘Mommy what is a virgin?’ ‘Well, er um, Robbie, a virgin is, a virgin is—a girl who isn’t married.’ ‘Well then, Mommy, who was Joseph?’ ‘Joseph? Oh.’ I walked right into that one. ‘Joseph was Mary’s husband.’ ‘Yes, but Mommy, I mean the virgin Mary. You just said a virgin wasn’t married, don’t you remember?’
When World War II ended in 1945, my grandfather moved his young family to the Philippines where he worked as a pilot for Far Eastern Transport. For my ten-year-old father, this was his “nadir” and later described it as “a horrible, horrible period of time with no relief.” Not only was his father gone most of the time, there was an ongoing guerrilla war called the Hukbalahap Rebellion or “Huk Rebellion.” He recalled the nights he hid under a table, listened to gunfire from the communists’ raids, and wondered “what was going to happen next.”2
My grandfather first flew Jews from Shanghai to the Middle East, then moved to Tel Aviv, Israel, where he worked for Alaska Airlines and flew Jews from Yemen, Iraq, and Iran to Israel during Operations Magic Carpet and Ali Baba. When Alaska Airlines withdraw from the operation, my grandfather stood up Near East Air Transport, hired planes, pilots, and flew more than 40,000 Jews to Israel. During this time, my father lived in Tel Aviv where he worked as a mechanic’s assistant and even accompanied his father on some of these flights. By the age of 14, he was a competent pilot.3
After my grandfather remarried and started another family, Rob was sent to school in Paris. He later called his time at Ecole Privée Fides, also known as “the Paris English School” in the 7th arrondissement, two blocks from the Eiffel Tower as “his French liberation.” After he made friends with an older classmate named Charlie von Munsterberg, his life changed forever. Von Munsterberg introduced Rob to French bohemians, artists, and intellectuals including Consuelo, Comtessede Saint-Exupéry, widow of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince. Rob and Charlie spent much of their time riding their bikes around the countryside sleeping in tents in the “fabulous” French campgrounds. “The English School made a valiant attempt to teach me,” he said, “but most of the time they had a hard time finding me.” When Rob returned to the United States to finish high school more than a year later, he was a worldly, Gauloises-smoking, trench coat-wearing sophisticate who had experienced the aristocratic good life in Nice, the bordellos of Place Pigale, and the jazz clubs of St. Germain. Above all, these experiences left Rob with not just a sense of independence, but great faith in himself, and a feeling that he was destined to do big things.
Again, while all of this sounds very romantic, the truth is that my dad’s early years made chaos and instability his natural habitat. I believe that this gave him an appetite, not just for taking big risks, but also doubling, then tripling down, again and again and again. For Rob Maguire, it was not so much about the money, it was about the game, the caper, the action, and the deal.
After a brief stint in Ocean City, New Jersey, where he attended high school and excelled as a paper boy, Rob arrived in California. My dad finished high school at Saint Monica’s where he played football, learned to surf, and worked at a Union 76 station, where few customers escaped without buying new wiper blades, a quart of oil, often both. However, Rob quit this job in disgust after his short-sighted boss refused to grant him a sales commissions on all the coolant, wiper blades, window washing fluid, and oil he was selling. When he told me about this more than 50 years later, he was still pissed off by his boss’s lack of business imagination.
Next, Rob moved into the car business and bought extremely used, woody station wagons. After a fast triage “restoration” and a $29.95 Earl Scheib paint job, he would resell them at a great profit. His taxing social life made it difficult to be an especially good student, so after high school he matriculated to Pico Tech (also known as Santa Monica City College). There he played football, surfed, and hosted BBQs catered by the local pet store where he bought horse meat and claimed, that after a good soak in teriyaki sauce, “it tasted just like beef.”
Rob eventually transferred to UCLA and lived in a house on Beverly Glen Boulevard that feature an exciting rope swing that went over the cars driving down Beverly Glen. It was around this time that he met my mother, Joan Tewkesbury, who was visiting family in LA. At the time, she was living in New York City where she was playing the role of the Ostrich in Mary Martin’s “Peter Pan” on Broadway.4
My mom was on a date with “a really nice guy” at Rosy’s Red Banjo in Westwood when in walked Rob with his friends, Tommy Landau and Tony Edgeworth. My mom’s date went to the bathroom and my dad walked over and introduced himself. When my mom and her date got up to leave, he yelled, “What’s your phone number?” She walked over and wrote it on his hand. He called the next day, moved in a week later, and after 6 weeks they drove to Reno where the matron from the ladies’ jail served as the witness to their wedding. My parents honeymooned in San Francisco, ran out of money, and his new mother-in-law wired them $100.
My dad’s first big job was at Security Pacific Bank where his boss, Richard “Dick” Flamson III, called him “Bubbles” for his “effervescence” and promiscuous lending practices. It was during this time that Rob learned about banks, debt, financing and above all, as his old friend John Cushman put it best, “that a dollar borrowed is a dollar earned.” Bubbles rose quickly and was named the youngest vice president in the bank’s history. My sister, Robin, was born in 1963 and I followed in 1964.
Rob entered real estate in 1965 and first developed industrial and housing projects, then built his first high rise, the Northrop Building in Century City in 1968. During the 1970s, Maguire Partners developed Peter’s Landing in Huntington Beach and did other projects. He divorced my mom, remarried, and fathered two more children, Alec and Jennie. After he turned an old office building in downtown LA into senior housing, he focused his attention on downtown LA and was intent on breathing new life into it.
My dad’s career really took off during the 1980s after he teamed with the yin to his yang, the level-headed, soft-spoken, and sagacious Jim Thomas. For a time they really complemented one another as Jim provided a steady hand and adult supervision.
Ned Fox, Mike Croft, Rick Gilchrist, Arlene Miller, Peggy Moretti, and many others rounded out a great team at Maguire Thomas Partners that was responsible for the most productive period in his career: Crocker Center, Library Tower, Gas Company Tower, rescuing the old library from demolition, Playa Vista, and too many other projects to name.
When my dad and Jim split up in 1996, so began the tabloid period of Rob’s life and career. First, his public battle with Dreamworks over the Playa Vista project. Before giving up on building a Dreamworks studio in West LA, Jeffrey Katzenberg offered this parting shot, “All great stories tend to come down to one of three things: Love, greed or ego. This great story has got two, and love’s not one of them.” At the time, my dad complained to me about the strange leaks of classified information that were appearing in the press and said, “They can only be getting it from my phone calls.”5
Next, Rob attempted to sell Library Tower, at that time the tallest building west of the Mississippi. Just before he was about to close the deal, the 9/11 attacks occurred, and many began to rethink tall skyscrapers . After he was waterboarded 183 times, al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed claimed, according to President George W. Bush, that he “had already set in motion a plan to have terrorist operatives hijack an airplane using shoe bombs to breach the cockpit door, and fly the plane into the tallest building on the West Coast. We believe the intended target was Liberty Tower in Los Angeles, California.”6
After my father somehow managed to weather this storm, he earned the sobriquet, “the cat with 10 lives.” In 2004, after an epic and manic roadshow that nearly killed Rick Gilchrist, Peggy Moretti, and many others, he successfully took Maguire Properties public. While his stock price climbed in the early years, I sensed overconfidence and trouble. Not only was Rob flush with cash, he was uniquely ill-suited to run a public company and answer to a board. The decision to buy the Blackstone Group’s massive real estate portfolio months before the subprime crisis turned out to be an act of real estate seppuku. This decision triggered a perfect storm of events that ended with his purge from the company he founded, built, and that bore his name.7
While he was always stoic, resilient, and optimistic, it was hard to watch a reversal of fortune that would have strained the imaginations of Homer or Hesiod. Worse, Rob’s greatest strength, his unwillingness to consider the limits of the possible, now became his greatest weakness. Despite the Herculean efforts of his wife Laurie Gilmore, his long time and incredibly loyal consuliere Arlene Miller, sergeant at arms Bob Goodwin, counsels O’Malley Miller and Mike Hennigan, loyal adjuncts Javier Bitar, Stephan Khudic, Mark Finerman, Kristos Stavropoulos, Steve Mlynarczyk, and many others, there was simply no righting this ship.
Although it was a sad end to an amazing career, I am incredibly proud of my dad because—whether it was cooking, skiing, riding mountain bikes, rowing, dancing, making deals, or offering unsolicited advice on how to promote my books—he was all in, all the time.
Rob Maguire still lives today and not just through the buildings he left behind, but through his children and grandchildren. When he was 5, my first son, Robert Seaborne Maguire, asked me why we didn’t live in a mansion like his grandfather. I told him that mansions were big and hard to clean. This was not a satisfactory answer. My son, like his grandfather, is persistent. Next, I told him that if he wanted a mansion, he would have to do well in school, get a good job, and work hard. He nodded affirmatively and said, “I can do that.” After, his three-year-old brother, Joe, looked at him and asked, “Seaborne, can I live in your mansion?”
Today, Robert Seaborne Maguire is 16. The rational, reasonable, Apollonian older brother will attend the US Naval Academy’s summer seminar for high school juniors they are considering for appointments to Annapolis. Joe, his Dionysian 15-year-old younger brother, received a scholarship from Ballet Hawaii where he will train with former dancers from the Bolshoi Ballet and American Ballet Theatre. Rob Maguire lives.
Throughout my career, when dealing with Khmer Rouge killers, corrupt defense contractors, lying government officials, duplicitous spies, and more recently, the tech barons who now rule Hollywood, I pause and channel Rob. Before I am even conscious of what I am about to say, a single word forms and comes out of my mouth, all by itself: “Bullshit!”
Rob Maguire lives.
Postscript
My speech was followed by excellent tributes by Rick Gilchrist, Buzz Udell, and O’Malley Miller. Next, we enjoyed margaritas (one of Rob’s favorites), listened to a mariachi band, and told stories. Afterwards, I returned to one of my favorite hotels in Los Angeles, The Miyako, in Little Tokyo. I was not ready for bed, so I went to a bar across the street for a beer.
I was watching an LA Kings hockey game when a Mexican American guy in his mid 20s sat down next to me. We talked about sports for a few minutes, then he told me that he was about to graduate from Cal State with a degree in engineering. He said that he had landed a job as a surveyor, but added that he had a ten-year plan to transition to real estate developer. When I asked him why he wanted to become a developer, this son of Mexican immigrants said, “I grew up in East LA and used to climb onto the roof of my parents’ house and stare at Library Tower, trying to figure out how they built it. That is what made me want to become an engineer. One day, I’ll build a skyscraper just like it.”
Rob Maguire lives.
NOTES
1. Library renovation: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-06-04-me-4841-story.html?_amp=true;https://www.lapl.org/collections-resources/blogs/lapl/feels-home-belle-burden-and-back-again-p7; Robert Maguire and Robert Maguire Jr: https://www.ameu.org/Current-Issue/Current-Issue/2019-Volume-52/Fact-and-Fiction-in-Palestine.aspx; http://cup.columbia.edu/book/law-and-war/9780231146463; Janitor’s Strike: https://www.recordcourier.com/news/2001/dec/20/janitors-accept-new-contract-ending-3-week-old-str/
Playa Vista: https://apnews.com/article/b07d22bb4911bb8155b38843aa43ff86; https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB847327083373396500 ;
2. Huk Rebellion: https://history.army.mil/books/coldwar/huk/ch4.htm
3. Operation Magic Carpet: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/18/us/robert-maguire-jr-94-pilot-who-airlifted-yemenite-jews-dies.html
4. Joan Tewkesbury: https://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/joan-tewkesbury
5. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB847327083373396500; https://www.newsweek.com/pellicanos-tactics-trial-83809
6. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the plot to bomb Library Tower: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna11254053; https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/04/why-al-qaida-s-plot-to-bomb-l-a-s-library-tower-didn-t-warrant-torture.html
7. Maguire Properties Group IPO: https://www.globest.com/2002/11/13/maguire-going-public-in-890m-ipo/?slreturn=20220419051849; The Blackstone Group purchase: https://labusinessjournal.com/news/maguire-blackstone-sign-3-billion-deal/; Rob’s ouster from MPG: https://www.dailynews.com/2008/05/20/maguire-properties-inc-directors-oust-founder-robert-f-maguire-iii/; Rob’s post purge letter to the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/opinion/lweb21maguire.html
8. Peter Maguire: http://www.faintingrobin.org/founder.html