Here is Robert Hollander’s story in his own words.
Early Life
I was born January 23rd 1928.
My father died June 1928 when I was five months old so I never had a father virtually.
And then of course in 1929 the big recession started and my mother was left with four children ages 13 to four months until she moved in with her mother, my grandmother, who died when I was 2 years old. And that was the last grandparent I ever had.
Never had a father and never had a grandparent.
Growing up in the Depression my mother and my two aunts worked, so we always had food on the table but nothing else.
When I was about ten or eleven years old, in the alley behind us lived two families. Two brothers who had all their own homes and families and they were accountants and they got to go once a year on a train and eat stay at a hotel with maid service.
And I was so naive you know growing up in this depressed area that you know that to me sounded like a glamorous life. So I decided I wanted to be an accountant at an early age.
After high school, there was no money in the family. I mean zero.
Army
I joined the Army when the G.I. Bill was still available. I joined the army for an 18-month enlistment.
On my way overseas, I was going out of San Francisco.
On the way out, some friends in Los Angeles wanted me to stop and see them for a couple of nights.
I Fell in Love with L.A.
It was new and exciting.
Homes being built for the returning vets and large buildings being built.
That was exactly the opposite of all on Brasco where it was an old. An old and very stable town and there wasn’t anything going on.
The biggest thing was it is still is the corporate headquarters for the railroad
When I got out of the service, I came back to California to go to UCLA.
I got into UCLA in 1952 and things were booming.
I passed the CPA exam which is a two and a half-day exam in my last year of college. So then I had to have two years’ experience, so I went to work for a national company called Arthur Ewing Company.
And you had to get certain things in those two years and obviously a huge company like that I got it. So I became a CPA in 1954.
That was early.
Some public accounting firms don’t pay well. And one of the managers I had worked under came and said he was now vice president of the company that worked in missile research. And that was fantastic. And he offered me a job at two and a half times my current salary at Arthur Ewing Company.
This company was called Space Technology Labs.
It was working for the Air Force and it had super technical direction and supervision of the three missiles that were being built.
At that time the only missile was what Germany used in the second world war. Well, it was very exciting.
I had to get clearance before it could do anything. And I got my clearance.
It was interesting that the secretary of the Air Force actually had an office here in our building that we were using as technical direction.
The army had a missile development plant in the east. They had gotten burned from the super designer of the missile for Germany, Wernher von Braun. So our thing was you know let’s hurry up and get one of these missiles ready to beat von Braun.
In the meantime in the middle of this, Russia set up Sputnik that went round the world. Beep beep beep. That was the first time in history that any country had beaten us in any kind of technology.
So we were put on 48 hour weeks to catch up.
And obviously we did catch up during this period.
Marriage
In 1957 I was married to Blossom Kessler.
By this time I was established, so she worked only till my first daughter was born. And then she had the luxury of being staying home and raising the children. She did a great job.
I had three children. Two girls and a boy.
After six years at Space Technology Labs, I met a man named Al Lapin, who is one-third owner of the IHOPs, which were just really getting started.
So he offered me a job as corporate controller. We had several other subsidiaries, but I was a corporate controller. He said that when they went public I would get stock options.
So that intrigued me. And sure enough, after I was there as controller for two years, we did an IPO and I received a few stock options and was happy there.
I met another man named Lewis who had an independent accounting practice. And he had more business than he could handle. So he offered to take me in as an equal partner, which was fantastic for me.
And public apartment being in business for myself always appealed to me even though I was doing these jobs in private accounting.
So he and went out were able to bring in several huge clients so that we were very very profitable. For 30 years we were partners together.
And it was interesting that one client was a small firm in Beverly Hills that we acquired through Al lapin. It was the Spanish International Network that had the television stations in New York, Miami, San Antonio, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
And so we added certified audits because for their bank borrowings.
I did their work until I guess it was 1980 when they were bought out by Hallmark Cards. Hallmark wanted to diversify and so they bought up this company for a huge number in cash.
Hallmark had you know millions and millions of cash, so the deal was not subject to any financing or anything.
So then after about 30 years, my partner decided he wanted to set up a little lending company that we could operate in conjunction with our accounting practice.
I decided now was too risky. So we split up. I took the accounts that I was basically responsible for and he took his and we split.
And after that, I took it in a couple of partners, but it never worked out. So I decided I would just stay on my own and start to narrow down and look forward to retirement.
In the interim Chuck Lewis and I had syndicated limited partnerships where we would be the partner and we invest in real estate.
That worked out pretty well.
The final piece was we had a restaurant we owned on the strip in Las Vegas. It was opened by and Avis and a
coffee shop and was not very successful. Then Denny’ss took it over and it was fantastic. We had built into the rent overages and we were really made a lot of money.
So I was able to semi-retire for a good period.
I moved in with two people that I had trained and they worked for me and Chuck Davis.
They had offices office in Valley Village in the valley.
So I used their balance at that time. I used their services and their people if I needed them, and you all the administrative work and the rent was paid by them.
I just didn’t want any more lease obligations and knowing I had to make payroll and payroll taxes. I’d had enough of that.
Retirement
So that from there really I just wound down until 2015 and I just decided I couldn’t do anymore. So I left my practice with these two people and they paid me part of the proceeds for a period and I retired.
50th Anniversary
After Blossom Passes
My wife died in 2010. We had a big house here where we raised our three children. I owned the house for 50 years.
After managing that house for eight years I decided, whoa, my life was just a terrible life.
You know I have to make my own food, do my own dishes, take care of the laundry, and have the people clean the house.
I decided, who needed that!
So I came here to CityView, a retirement senior living facility where they have things going on all day long.
It’s an active community. And you know they have maid service every day and they clean the shower in the bathroom until everything shines and make the beds and I don’t do anything and then they do the washing once a week.
I’m kinda a bum now. That’s kind of the story of my life.
Family Life & Travel
Obviously, in the early years, we loved family life.
We took a lot of vacations and to show the kids New York and Washington D.C. and Philadelphia and all the places and then all along the coast. Then we traveled with the kids.
Once they were growing up and on their own, we transferred to foreign countries.
We went to Israel, Russia, all the Scandinavian countries.
Paris, England, Scotland. Then we went to China and Japan and the two of us and we would take tours.
We liked England we went back a second time.
So we did the driving thing too. But the first time we decided it was best to be with somebody who knew the area could drive and take us there.
We enjoyed travel the most of anything.
We join an organization that had senior classes all over the country. You’d recognize the name but I can’t remember what it is
We would go within the US to these classes. We went to Alaska. We went to New Orleans.
We went to Houston and had these classes in colleges that the professors would do there.
This was all during the summer and it was this very interesting. That’s what we did.
We both kind of liked that travel and being exposed in new places and new people. The people were all pretty much our age and so we made friends.
Not friends that we had for life, but just while we were doing a two week tour or a one week class.
We knew everybody, so it was just a very congenial affair.
