L. Jack Davidson Part V: Back to NYC

Jack and Lillian were married in Vina del Mar, Chile in 1968. When Lillian was pregnant with their first child, they emigrated together to New York.

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Our first son Jan was born in New York, in December 1968.

(And then—?)

Then we lived in New York. We were going to come down to live in Salvador, to move back to Salvador. We started living in New York in June ’68, by a year later we wanted to come back to live in Salvador. At that point, the Salvador-Honduras war broke out, in the summer of ’69. Lillian was a Honduran citizen. So coincidentally, the day I was going to—I worked for NBC as a sales analyst in New York. The day I was going to hand in my resignation, I got a telegram from somebody in Salvador, saying, “Hold off. It’s not convenient for Honduran citizens to come back to live in El Salvador at this point.” So we stayed until January 1970, until she got permission to come back to Salvador. At that point she was pregnant with Jaline, who was born in March 1970 in San Salvador. We moved in January, and Jaline was born in March.

(And then—?)

And then we lived here—we’re going to go into another part—anyway, Jason was born here in November 1971, and then Jessica was born here in October 1974. So our three children were born here, only Jan was born in New York in December 1968. And we lived here. Lillian opened the Country Day School. I worked with my father until the end of the ‘70s, when the war—when things started to get difficult here. My father, in December 1980, went for a trip to Germany because a friend of his had passed away, a very close friend. We had agreed that my father would come back, that I would stay in the office, ( we didn’t both leave the country at the same time), that I would stay until December 31st, I would leave, and he would be back to open the office again January 2nd. We had done that before, taken our vacations that way. One of us would take them until New Year’s and the other one would be back after New Year’s to open it. That’s what we had planned to do between 1979 and ’80. (pause) No, between ’80 and ’81, December 1980 to 1981. At that point, on December 18th, Jorge Weill got kidnapped. I stayed here. My father didn’t come back to Salvador. He stayed in Guatemala. I stayed here, marginally involved in that, until the end of January and then went back to Guatemala. And then my whole family got into an uproar about my coming back here, so I didn’t come back and went down to New York.

Lillian had left right after Jorge’s kidnapping with the children and we were going to spend Christmas—I was going to fly up for New Year’s and we were going to spend a vacation in January with the children in New York and then come back. So she went to New York. I stayed with my sister for a while and then got a residential hotel apartment, put the children in public school in New York. I flew up in January. I left here for a weekend and didn’t come back for 22 months. I went to New York, where Lillian was with the children, and then we ended up renting a house in Scarsdale, because that was where the better school system was, and that’s how we went back to New York, because that’s where we had lived before and that’s where we had more contacts.

(You had lived in Manhattan?)

We had lived in Manhattan, but living in Manhattan with four children was out of the question, because rental was too expensive, and then the private school would have been prohibitive. So we had to go somewhere where the public schools were good.

(So Jorge was released in January?)

Jorge was released in late January. I had left before that. He came to New York afterwards. Then we lived in New York until—I never came back here until the end of ’82, but then just came back for visits.

(And your father stayed in Guatemala?)

My father stayed in Guatemala and would come—at the beginning, none of us would come. The people who worked with us would come to Guatemala, and I would fly to Guatemala and we would have business meetings in Guatemala. Then after a while my father started coming every other week or something between Guatemala, and I would come a few times a year.

(Was it Jorge’s kidnapping that really shook everyone up, or was it Ernesto Liebes’s kidnapping?)

Ernesto Liebes was kidnapped, and when he died I was in Europe, but I was in Europe for Jorge’s wedding at that time. And I came back to live here. No, it was Jorge’s kidnapping, it was the whole situation. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I don’t know what would have happened if he would not have been kidnapped, because we had planned a vacation and we had planned to return. Maybe we would have, maybe we wouldn’t have, I can’t tell you that. But it was certainly influential. It certainly made a difference, let’s say.

(So you’re with the kids, it’s 1980?)

It was early, early ’81. We rented a furnished house in Scarsdale, only because Lillian inquired that that was where the best schools in the area were, so we rented a furnished house. Luckily, it was a crazy woman from New Zealand who just wanted to get out. It was the middle of winter. It was February 1981. And she even rented me her car, because I didn’t have a car. We didn’t have a television set. We didn’t have anything. So we moved in there with our suitcases and about a hundred dollars worth of Pottery Barn dishes, and that was it. Fortunately, Ernesto Freund told me, “If you rent something, don’t rent on a year basis. Rent it on a school-year basis.” Because we didn’t know what was happening in Salvador, how long we were staying, nobody knew. We were all sort of in flux. Ernesto said, “You’re never going to go back in the middle of the school year with children. So if you’re going to rent a house, rent it so that the end of the contract has to do with the school year.” That was the advice he gave me, and I followed it. So when I made the contract with this woman with the furnished house, I made it from February 4th to July 4th. Because that way it was the end of the school year and the kids would finish their school year and then we would see what we would do.

In March of that year Lillian found a house that we were then able to buy. We were able to buy that because we didn’t have a long-term commitment with the rental house. And then we bought a house which was in terrible condition, but we fixed it up a little bit. We’ve since fixed it up more. That’s how we moved into the house that we still live in now.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC