Our nation’s poet delivered the commencement speech at the United States Military Academy.
He took the opportunity to discuss military issues.
I tell a story sometimes about a man
who was a great, great real estate man.He was a man who was admired for real estate
all over the world, actually, but all over the country.He built Levittowns.
He started as a man who built one house,
then he built two,
then he built five,
then he built twenty,
then he built one thousand,
then he built two thousand and three thousand a year.And he got very big,
very big.He was great at what he did.
You see them all over the country still
Levittowns
so a long time ago.But he was
uh
the first of the really, really big home builders.And he became very rich
became a very rich man
and then he decided to sell.He was offered a lot of money by a big conglomerate
Gulf and Western
big conglomerate.They didn’t do real estate,
they didn’t know anything about it,
but they saw the money he was making;
they wanted to take it to a public company.And they gave him a lot of money,
tremendous amount of money.
More money than he ever thought he’d get.And he sold this company
and he had nothing to do.He ended up getting a divorce
Found a new wife.
Could you say a trophy wife?
I guess we can say a trophy wife.It didn’t work out too well
But it doesn’t
And that doesn’t work out too well, I must tell you.
A lot of trophy wives doesn’t work out,
but it made him happy for a little while at least.
But he found a new wife.He sold his little boat and he got a big yacht.
He had one of the biggest yachts anywhere in the world.He moved for a time to Monte Carlo
and he led the good life.And time went by and he got bored.
And fifteen years later,
the company that he sold to called him and they said,
“The housing business is not for us.”You have to understand,
when Bill Levitt was hot,
when he had momentum,
he’d go to the job sites every night.
He’d pick up every loose nail,
he’d pick up every scrap of wood.
If there was a bolt or a screw laying on the ground,
he’d pick it up
and he’d use it the next day
and putting together a house.But now he was spoiled and he was rich,
he was really rich.And they called and they said,
“This isn’t for us, this business.
We need to do other things.
Would you like to buy it back?
We’ll sell it back to you cheap.”And they did.
He bought it,
he bought it.
He thought he made a great deal and he was all excited.But it was fifteen years later,
he lost a lot of momentum.Remember the word momentum
and he lost everything,
it just didn’t work,
he lost everything.And I was sitting at a party on Fifth Avenue one night a long time ago,
and you had the biggest people in New York,
the biggest people in the country,
all in that party,
and they were all saluting each other,
how great they were,
they were all telling each other,
“I’m greater than you.”
It gets to be really,
gives you a headache sometimes,
but they had all these people telling their own stories about how fantastic.A cocktail party,
and I looked over,
and I was doing well,
I was,
I don’t know,
I was invited to the party,
so I had to be doing well.I was very, very young,
but I made a name in real estate.And I looked over,
and at the party sitting in a corner all by himself,
nobody was talking to him,
was Mr. Levitt.He had just gone bankrupt,
lost everything,
he had lost everything,
his home,
everything.And I went over and talked to him
because he was in the real estate business
and I loved real estate,
and I said, “Hello, Mr. Levitt, how are you?”
He said, “Hello, Donald, it’s nice to meet you.”
He knew me from being in the business.
I said, “Uh, so how’s it going?”
He goes, “Not well. It’s really not going well,
as you’ve probably read,
it’s been a very, very tough period for me, son.”
And I said, “So what happened?
it’s just, anything you can do?”
He goes, “No, there’s not a thing I can do.”
He said, I’ll never forget,
he said, “I’ve lost my momentum,
I just didn’t have it.
I used to have it but I lost my momentum.”So it’s a story I tell,
and you have to know when you have the momentum,
but sometimes you have to also know when you’ve lost the momentum
and leaving a field,
sometimes leaving what you’re doing sometimes is okay,
but you gotta have momentum,
but you have to know if that momentum’s gone,
you have to know when to say it’s time to get out.And it’s a very sad story,
I remember that story so well like it was yesterday.