The Moon Landing Changed My Life

Forty years ago today I watched the first man walk on the moon.  My view was from a television set in my family’s living room in Grand Island, a small rural town located in central Nebraska.  The event for me was a monumental one.  However, it was not because of the Apollo moon landing.  It was because I had the opportunity to watch the first moon walk with Malcom S. Forbes.  He was the publisher of Forbes Magazine and the father of the magazine’s current publisher and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes.  

Mr. Forbes who died in 1990 had been aboard his private Convair turboprop jet on a cross country flight when his plane, which he had named “The Capitalist Tool” pulled into Exec Air, an executive jet service facility founded and operated by my parents for a re-fueling.  Mr. Forbes had no intention of being in the air when Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon.  He was not going to be denied the opportunity of “experiencing” the most significant event of a lifetime.

My mother loaded him and his two pilots into the family car and brought them to our house.  As an impressionable fourteen year old, I vividly remember spending several hours conversing with him as we both awaited the moment of a lifetime.  Luckily for me Mr. Forbes was traveling by himself.  Our conversation was all business.  He made such a great impression on me that I decided right then and there that the world of business and finance is where I ultimately wanted to be.  Eight years later I became the youngest ever trainee hired by Merrill Lynch.

I am sure that Mr. Forbes would be proud of my achievements, which include being a popular columnist for the 50 year Equities Magazine which was started by a former Forbes editor and being recognized by Forbes.com as being a leading analyst and proponent of utilizing cash flow instead of earnings to analyze companies.