Bob Gnaizda
He’s not the type of person you would expect to love children, because he’s operating on a different level from the rest of us already and children are that much further behind when it comes to political analysis and world news. But he doesn’t see them as helpless, he sees them in all of their potential and imbues them with the burden of the future, and so treats them with a kind of reverence. Just when you see him winding up a monologue on fiscal policy or barriers to homeownership in a meeting with a leading federal regulator, he’ll pause to introduce that leader to an intern or student or whichever colleague’s young child he’s inexplicably dragged along. He always wants the conversation centered on the future, and for him it’s never a waste of time.
Similarly, Bob is not the type of person you’d expect to passionately love chocolate. At least not nearly as much as he does. But once you discover his secret, he’s the type of person you want to impress with a perfect canelé or just the right kind of chocolate chip cookie. He’ll devour them all vigorously but then will lean back to assess, if you ask his opinion, and with all the seriousness of a legal argument he’ll make the case for this texture or that flavor or how the frosting was “almost as good as it was last time,” even if you made it yourself and find it minorly insulting, because he’s committed to honesty and fair judgment. And even if the frosting is indeed not quite as good as last time it will still near midafternoon at the office when he’ll pause from a long-winded dictation and ask in his raspy Brooklyn voice, “you got another one of those cupcakes for me, Rebecker?”
If you come to Bob with a problem that can even remotely be addressed with a legal fight, he’ll take it on as if it’s his own. Sometimes it seems as if you’re interrupting whatever other fight he might be working on, but, in fact, nearly every legal tangle he embraces with full passion and commitment is one that’s been brought to him by someone he loves or respects. Every so often he’ll digress to an email addressing an airline’s CEO to ask for his own refund for a flight delay and cite a barrage of invented statistics, but the vast majority of the time he’s writing on behalf of a colleague’s sister who was conned by a mortgage broker or a minority small business owner who couldn’t get a loan.
He takes his work so seriously, with standards so high, that everyone who works with him lives in varying degrees of anxiety or outright terror. When I interviewed to be his “deputy” (in classic Bob style of inflating the banal title of “assistant”), I sat in his humble office with a small assembly of his coworkers to answer the question, “why do you think you’d be a good fit here?” They didn’t know I had already known Bob for years, so when I answered, “because I’m not afraid to tell Bob when he’s full of shit,” the room was dead silent. Then, after a beat, Bob burst into approving laughter and his colleagues hesitantly, then gratefully, joined in.
And so began my time with Bob as the only underling who would dare argue with him, whether on big strategic items or on smaller issues such as “would you please consider adding a few niceties to avoid sounding so rude?” (he’d usually insist against it but would never notice later if I added in a superfluous “hope that you’ve been well”). During painfully brief breaks, when he’d often still pace the office hallway asking, “are you ready to continue now?” I’d field emails from anxious colleagues asking questions such as, “what did he mean by ‘research the history of the demographic breakdowns of federal loan data’?!” or “what article from 1972 does he expect me to find?!”
Bob doesn’t like attention. If the attention can benefit a cause he cares about or help him build an argument, he’ll allow it. But he’s not interested in speeches and praise and photos with big shots. If you give him a stage to discuss the plight of low-income potential homeowners, you’ll have to drag him off of it even after everyone has patiently endured twenty minutes of statistics and history, but you can’t convince him to talk about himself. That is, unless you’re lucky enough to find yourself with him in a quiet, uncrowded place and you happen to ask about what exactly he was doing in Mississippi during the 1960s, and suddenly his eyes are twinkling as he tells you his best stories, the ones of ingratiating himself with suspicious officials through friendly baseball trivia or his tale of faking a federal order to hold hearings in the deep south about the mistreatment of Black voters. To most of us it’s history come to life but to Bob it’s just tales of the good old days, hiding people on the floor of his backseat so that he could stir up legal trouble to shake down the powers-that-be.
Bob is often too busy to cook but when he does it’s startlingly delicious, and, strangely enough, he’s most famous for his perfectly executed lunch sandwiches that he makes with great care and attention to every detail of garnish and condiment. And he’ll make a seafood stew complete with squid and mussels, flavorful and tender. And you wouldn’t expect it but he exercises on a small trampoline in his home, holding onto a bar and with great seriousness jumping and counting and then getting off to lift his small free weights. And he really loves flowers, so much so that he’ll stroll the neighborhood and pick them, even if they’re questionably from someone else’s garden, and he’ll put them in glasses and cups all over his house. And he doesn’t joke much, so, when he does, it takes a moment to catch it. “Bob, it’s absolutely pouring out there - a torrential downpour!” Stepping outside, “Yes, such a downpour, hurricane-force,” and then a pause with that eye twinkle and you have to confirm if he’s teasing, and he’ll confirm soberly, “yes.” Bob has no self-awareness of his eye contact at all, so it makes it easier to catch when he’s teasing you, or also when he’s sizing you up or writing you off.
Bob is revered for his work but those close to him know that, for Bob, family always comes first. I’ve heard the story about how one of his son’s wanted to play soccer but there was no coach, so Bob read a book about coaching soccer and declared himself the coach. When he talks about his sons he lights up, not in the familiar fatherly glorifying way, but in a discerning and authentic analysis of their best qualities. But for Bob, “family” extends far beyond his relatives, and encompasses the hodgepodge crew of major politicians, Latino and Black pastors, Filipino women and other friends and, yes, even the foes he’s corralled throughout the years. You think you’re having a business meeting but suddenly Bob insists that you bring the kids and shoot some rubber-band-balls into trash baskets in the hallway and then demands that you all do it again soon. If you’re less fortunate and fail to win his favor, he’ll hurry you through the meeting and rush you out and tell everyone within earshot the exact ways in which you were wasting his time - usually through your obsequiousness and false promises that he can spot a mile away.
Bob will long for something with all his soul and simultaneously accept the world exactly as it is, with the pragmatism to take the small steps to inch forward towards an achievable goal. He’ll insist that the worst case scenario will never come to pass, and then when it does, he’ll befriend every enemy in sight to mitigate the damage and insist that they were nearly friends all along. But if you are his friend and he sees you cave to the pressure, so help you, he will snub you or take you to court, even if you’re the goddamn Governor of the fine State of California. And just because he appreciates the spirit of your work doesn’t mean that he approves of your strategies, because while his colleague Cesar Chavez may have done some good things, he really wasn’t doing things quite as effectively as Bob would have liked.
One day I flew down to Southern California with Bob for a day of meetings, and when we awaited our flight home from the Burbank airport that night we found that it had been delayed by 6 hours. I panicked immediately and texted some coworkers, “what am I supposed to talk about with Bob for SIX HOURS?!” and they jokingly texted back their best wishes, so known is Bob for his disinterest in casual time-filling conversation. So I sat nervously across from him at a tiny airport cafe table until he got tired of his newspaper and then started asking me the predictable introductory questions such as, “what are you going to do with the rest of your life?” Over the hours I learned that Bob could talk poetry and love and dreams and disappointments. He bought a chocolate bar filled with mint cream and cracked it in half for us to share. By the time we boarded our plane he was so sensitive to my fears of further delay in getting home to my children that he pulled out of his pocket a shiny quarter and distracted me with a bet he knew he would lose: “if we’re out of here in less than an hour I’ll owe you this quarter,” and dropped it into my palm as we finally took off twenty minutes later. I tucked that quarter in the small pocket of my purse knowing I’d never spend it.
Bob has had his rough patches. When his health began to fail in 2015, and worse yet in 2016, he began to withdraw from his work and his community. There were days that I’d drive to his house to bully him into coming to work, plying him with cupcakes or cookies, and he’d still turn me away. It took years for him to resign himself to his failing health and accept help from those of us who love him, but, once he did, it opened up a new world to him, as much as he initially resisted. He no longer closes the door on visitors and friends but instead waves us all in, eyes twinkling, more present than ever for the moments of love and companionship. For better and worse, he’s less stubborn than he’s ever been. After I gave a toast that was partially a roast at his 80th birthday party he hugged me close and I think I heard him say, “I love you” which I interpreted mostly as an accident. I never needed to hear it to know it, but recently I did tease him about it, “you once told me you love me, but I think it was by accident” and he looked surprisingly fierce as he muttered, “I do love you.” It turns out that I did need to hear it after all.
We all have our favorite memories of Bob, many of them characterized by Bob surprising someone with an accidentally hilarious social faux pas or by getting carried away in a lighthearted moment and, say, enthusiastically and awkwardly dancing to “YMCA” at a party. I’ve known Bob more than half my life but my favorite memory is a defining one from early on, when he casually made a provoking comment about girls being more compliant in school and less creative than boys, and I, with a mix of caution and overconfidence, started to debate him. I remember how he stopped what he was doing and looked me right in the eye to listen to my spontaneous arguments, absorbing each one before firing back a statistic or theory, as I gathered steam and stood my ground. When the conversation finally ended I wasn’t sure who had “won,” but was stunned at having been taken so seriously by someone who I was sure would never condescend to value my opinions. But that’s Bob, who has always picked out the least conspicuous people, those of us most superficially beneath him, to lift up and elevate with thoughtful regard and the casual insistence that the world should dignify us as well.
Bob sees the world as it is, yet he moves through it as if he can just mold it to his will and forge new pathways towards justice and equality for all. He doesn’t care how he looks along the way, just feels a need to set things right. Somehow, the world has known better than to argue with someone like Bob, and has bent and twisted to allow him to change it for the better. He changes all of us for the better right along with it, pushing us towards our dreams and our full potential, waving away our failures and shortcomings as minor irritations, mere temporary obstacles to our grand achievements. So long as Bob believes in you it’s that much easier to believe in yourself, and, in the moments when you don’t, he’ll always find some chocolate to share.
Bob doesn’t like attention. If the attention can benefit a cause he cares about or help him build an argument, he’ll allow it. But he’s not interested in speeches and praise and photos with big shots. If you give him a stage to discuss the plight of low-income potential homeowners, you’ll have to drag him off of it even after everyone has patiently endured twenty minutes of statistics and history, but you can’t convince him to talk about himself. That is, unless you’re lucky enough to find yourself with him in a quiet, uncrowded place and you happen to ask about what exactly he was doing in Mississippi during the 1960s, and suddenly his eyes are twinkling as he tells you his best stories, the ones of ingratiating himself with suspicious officials through friendly baseball trivia or his tale of faking a federal order to hold hearings in the deep south about the mistreatment of Black voters. To most of us it’s history come to life but to Bob it’s just tales of the good old days, hiding people on the floor of his backseat so that he could stir up legal trouble to shake down the powers-that-be.
Bob is often too busy to cook but when he does it’s startlingly delicious, and, strangely enough, he’s most famous for his perfectly executed lunch sandwiches that he makes with great care and attention to every detail of garnish and condiment. And he’ll make a seafood stew complete with squid and mussels, flavorful and tender. And you wouldn’t expect it but he exercises on a small trampoline in his home, holding onto a bar and with great seriousness jumping and counting and then getting off to lift his small free weights. And he really loves flowers, so much so that he’ll stroll the neighborhood and pick them, even if they’re questionably from someone else’s garden, and he’ll put them in glasses and cups all over his house. And he doesn’t joke much, so, when he does, it takes a moment to catch it. “Bob, it’s absolutely pouring out there - a torrential downpour!” Stepping outside, “Yes, such a downpour, hurricane-force,” and then a pause with that eye twinkle and you have to confirm if he’s teasing, and he’ll confirm soberly, “yes.” Bob has no self-awareness of his eye contact at all, so it makes it easier to catch when he’s teasing you, or also when he’s sizing you up or writing you off.
Bob is revered for his work but those close to him know that, for Bob, family always comes first. I’ve heard the story about how one of his son’s wanted to play soccer but there was no coach, so Bob read a book about coaching soccer and declared himself the coach. When he talks about his sons he lights up, not in the familiar fatherly glorifying way, but in a discerning and authentic analysis of their best qualities. But for Bob, “family” extends far beyond his relatives, and encompasses the hodgepodge crew of major politicians, Latino and Black pastors, Filipino women and other friends and, yes, even the foes he’s corralled throughout the years. You think you’re having a business meeting but suddenly Bob insists that you bring the kids and shoot some rubber-band-balls into trash baskets in the hallway and then demands that you all do it again soon. If you’re less fortunate and fail to win his favor, he’ll hurry you through the meeting and rush you out and tell everyone within earshot the exact ways in which you were wasting his time - usually through your obsequiousness and false promises that he can spot a mile away.
Bob will long for something with all his soul and simultaneously accept the world exactly as it is, with the pragmatism to take the small steps to inch forward towards an achievable goal. He’ll insist that the worst case scenario will never come to pass, and then when it does, he’ll befriend every enemy in sight to mitigate the damage and insist that they were nearly friends all along. But if you are his friend and he sees you cave to the pressure, so help you, he will snub you or take you to court, even if you’re the goddamn Governor of the fine State of California. And just because he appreciates the spirit of your work doesn’t mean that he approves of your strategies, because while his colleague Cesar Chavez may have done some good things, he really wasn’t doing things quite as effectively as Bob would have liked.
One day I flew down to Southern California with Bob for a day of meetings, and when we awaited our flight home from the Burbank airport that night we found that it had been delayed by 6 hours. I panicked immediately and texted some coworkers, “what am I supposed to talk about with Bob for SIX HOURS?!” and they jokingly texted back their best wishes, so known is Bob for his disinterest in casual time-filling conversation. So I sat nervously across from him at a tiny airport cafe table until he got tired of his newspaper and then started asking me the predictable introductory questions such as, “what are you going to do with the rest of your life?” Over the hours I learned that Bob could talk poetry and love and dreams and disappointments. He bought a chocolate bar filled with mint cream and cracked it in half for us to share. By the time we boarded our plane he was so sensitive to my fears of further delay in getting home to my children that he pulled out of his pocket a shiny quarter and distracted me with a bet he knew he would lose: “if we’re out of here in less than an hour I’ll owe you this quarter,” and dropped it into my palm as we finally took off twenty minutes later. I tucked that quarter in the small pocket of my purse knowing I’d never spend it.
Bob has had his rough patches. When his health began to fail in 2015, and worse yet in 2016, he began to withdraw from his work and his community. There were days that I’d drive to his house to bully him into coming to work, plying him with cupcakes or cookies, and he’d still turn me away. It took years for him to resign himself to his failing health and accept help from those of us who love him, but, once he did, it opened up a new world to him, as much as he initially resisted. He no longer closes the door on visitors and friends but instead waves us all in, eyes twinkling, more present than ever for the moments of love and companionship. For better and worse, he’s less stubborn than he’s ever been. After I gave a toast that was partially a roast at his 80th birthday party he hugged me close and I think I heard him say, “I love you” which I interpreted mostly as an accident. I never needed to hear it to know it, but recently I did tease him about it, “you once told me you love me, but I think it was by accident” and he looked surprisingly fierce as he muttered, “I do love you.” It turns out that I did need to hear it after all.
We all have our favorite memories of Bob, many of them characterized by Bob surprising someone with an accidentally hilarious social faux pas or by getting carried away in a lighthearted moment and, say, enthusiastically and awkwardly dancing to “YMCA” at a party. I’ve known Bob more than half my life but my favorite memory is a defining one from early on, when he casually made a provoking comment about girls being more compliant in school and less creative than boys, and I, with a mix of caution and overconfidence, started to debate him. I remember how he stopped what he was doing and looked me right in the eye to listen to my spontaneous arguments, absorbing each one before firing back a statistic or theory, as I gathered steam and stood my ground. When the conversation finally ended I wasn’t sure who had “won,” but was stunned at having been taken so seriously by someone who I was sure would never condescend to value my opinions. But that’s Bob, who has always picked out the least conspicuous people, those of us most superficially beneath him, to lift up and elevate with thoughtful regard and the casual insistence that the world should dignify us as well.
Bob sees the world as it is, yet he moves through it as if he can just mold it to his will and forge new pathways towards justice and equality for all. He doesn’t care how he looks along the way, just feels a need to set things right. Somehow, the world has known better than to argue with someone like Bob, and has bent and twisted to allow him to change it for the better. He changes all of us for the better right along with it, pushing us towards our dreams and our full potential, waving away our failures and shortcomings as minor irritations, mere temporary obstacles to our grand achievements. So long as Bob believes in you it’s that much easier to believe in yourself, and, in the moments when you don’t, he’ll always find some chocolate to share.
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Our interview with our alumni magazine - we both graduated from Columbia, although a few years apart :P
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