His favorite Jake Wirth achievement took place at a Christmas luncheon, which his daughter Lisa attended. It was in the late 70's and obviously the arms race, as always, was Jerry's topic of that day. His special worry was the mounting debate over the proposed deployment of ABM's around the country. The three of us kicked the issue around furiously and quite creatively, we thought.
For years thereafter, Jerry always claimed to me, quite seriously, that we had hatched the strategy that day at Jakes for the defeat of that particular ABM program.
Just before our subsequent Christmas luncheon, Jerry would say, "Well, Tom, what problem will we solve this year?"
Eventually the Christmas lunches went uptown -- to the Ritz Carlton. The core personnel was the Galbraiths, the Tony Lewises, the Winships and Mary McGrory. Corsages, smoked salmon, fine wine and non-stop political story telling, mostly of earlier times, set the tone, No pigs knuckles there.
When the student revolution hit its peak in Cambridge, we talked often about his university problems. The lead figures were Jerry Wiesner of M.I.T. and Nathan Pusey of Harvard. To say their style on crisis management was different was an understatement.
Wiesner always kept an open door for student priorities. Pusey operated through surrogates.
Wiesner kept the police off campus. Pusey brought them in to the Yard. Harvard had violence. MIT had peace.
Locally, Jerry was the university president with the deepest commitment to Boston's black community. He spent hours, with the help of MIT faculty, shaping and financing an experimental public school in Roxbury. Jerry was in the forefront of the civil rights movement in Boston during which he and Laya made many enduring friendships.
When Jerry and his associates made their successful bid for the purchase of Channel 7 TV, Jerry insisted that Ruth Batson, the dynamic Roxbury leader, join them. Ruth has lived very comfortably ever after.
Through every contact I ever had with Jerry, I always felt the motivating influence was the beautiful Laya.
