Happy Fall everyone!

Where have the years gone? It seems like yesterday we were all at LHS.

I’ve read some amazing and interesting stories here so thanks everyone for sharing. I grew up on Bear Brook Lane, walked through the woods to Collins School, then off to Mt. Pleasant, and then to LHS. In my later years great friendships formed with Gary Weisman (who as you will see below has never left my life lol), Scott Lampe, David Katz, and Danny Paskow. Other than Dan who passed away years ago, I stay in touch with the crew. My father owned a New Jersey based wholesale HVAC business located in Irvington where I had started hanging out as a young child when off from school and loved playing with all of the motors, tools, and other stuff we sold. I worked there part time during summers and loved the business and had a natural inclination for it with both a mechanical ability and business sense, and grew up driving a forklift, picking orders, selling stuff to customers who came in, and making deliveries in a big truck as a helper, or driver once I got my license. As some of you may remember I was also the Photo Editor for the yearbook and had thousands of negatives from LHS that sadly did not make it through one of my moves.

After LHS I went off to University of Pennsylvania and left with a degree from Wharton. I had planned on doing something in finance upon graduating, and then into the family business, but my senior year my father got sick and was out of work for many months so I started going to Penn ‘remotely’ and dove into the family business, commuting back and forth every weekend so I could be with my friends to hang out and party, but Mondays I was back at work and paying myself $13,000 per year! Thankfully, I had a light course load and all of my professors allowed me to take the exams and graduate on time, but my plans for trekking through Europe upon graduation went out the window. My father eventually came back to work after about a year and his health slowly improved and we worked well together for about 14 years.

I moved into a condo in Roseland after graduation (condos were a new thing back then) and had some great years in the area with new and old friends, going to NYC, traveling, and enjoying my life.

In 1986 I met my first wife, got married in 1987, and started a family in 1989 with our son Jake. We moved out of the condo and moved to Warren since you could get a decent house for a more reasonable price back then. After a couple of years, we were surprised with our twin boys, Ryan and Lex.

After about four years we decided that Warren was not for us, and we moved back to Essex County to Short Hills into a rental house and then began the project to be one of the first people in town to knock down a house and build a new one. Nowadays everyone is doing that, but back then people thought we were wasteful and nuts. Our kids all went through the Millburn school system and had a great childhood.

Sadly, my father passed away in 1995, and by then the metrics for the family business were becoming more challenging, so we decided to sell it.

Several years later things were not going well with my first wife so we decided to get divorced, which became a very contentious process I never want to go through again! Things got so crazy at times I personally knew every cop in Millburn it seemed like as my ex was constantly calling the police when I had the kids to do constant ‘wellness checks’!

Right after I got separated, I met a wonderful woman also from Short Hills, Beth, who eventually became my second wife, but details to follow!

I then moved to a cute, old, 1960’s little rental house in Millburn just off Milburn Avenue. opposite the train station since I needed to be close to the high school for my kids as my ex moved to another town and it wasn’t feasible for the kids to live with her so I got custody and focused on shelter/food, etc. It was a huge change going from the big house to the small, kinda dumpy rental house which I thought I would be in for a year or so, but ended up living in for nine years, and to be honest was never happier. Having ‘less stuff’ (and a lot less light bulbs to change) and living a simpler life agreed with me and the boys and we really enjoyed living in town, walking to the Millburn Deli and pizza places, and as the boys got older them being able to go to NYC for a concert or sports event and take the train back and walk across the street to our house. They also became independent quickly, learning how to fend for themselves more since I didn’t baby them so things like making lunch, getting haircuts, and doing laundry came to them at an early age. I think it was a good lesson for my sons seeing that we could be super happy just being together and that living in a big house with a pool didn’t matter, but what did matter was making them feel safe and cared for and being present for them. As they got older and started driving my life became a full-time job of keeping all of the debit cards, doctor appointments, cell phones, and car registrations, inspections and insurance ID cards working and up to date!

After a few years of running the old family business I sold my entrepreneurial spirit kicked in and I decided to leave and buy a small manufacturing business in Union. At the same time in 1998 I also started a small home based business selling epoxy floor paints on this new thing called the internet, and had to figure out back then how to get a website, online store, and take credit cards over the internet so I was way ahead of my time.

The manufacturing business was plodding along, but the internet business kept growing, especially back then since we were a larger needle in a smaller haystack, and sales almost doubled every year so I sold the manufacturing business to focus on the floor coating business which has become a great company that recently relocated to Union to large warehouse facility. I also started having my sons do epoxy garage floors during the summers while in high school as they could make great money and make their own hours. I recall the second summer we got a call from the Sea Girt Fire Department to coat their firehouse floors so we decided to tackle the project, but needed more manpower so the boys called their friends from the Millburn football team and we showed up with a dozen young, big boys with zero experience but nice new matching T-Shirts and somehow got the job done and got paid! I remember the Fire Chief commenting on how young the crew looked!

I started dating Beth a few months after my separation, so I wasn’t single or dating very long. We were very compatible and things were great and it was easy to be together as she had her house in town like I did, and we made the decision to be together but live separately and not attempt to combine our seven children into a household, but to wait for them all to get out of school, and then get married. In 2015 we got an apartment in NYC in Tribeca where we still live part time. Beth won the patience award, and stuck around for twelve years, and we got married in 2017. In 2019 we decided to get back into home ownership and bought a house in Water Mill in the Hamptons just prior to Covid, so when Covid hit, we decamped to the Hamptons for a couple of years which honestly didn’t suck! We then bought a boat since that was a covid-friendly activity and still love being out on the water. Just this year we built our dream house next door and now have a small compound for our seven kids and six grandchildren along with a larger boat to accommodate the gang! This year marks almost 20 years we have been together.

Now the Gary Weisman part… Gary and I always were best friends. We went to camp together and he was best man at my first wedding. Back in 2015 I was approached by a guy I knew to become a partner in a business he was forming to import large construction forklifts from Italy, as he was currently in the forklift business. He knew how to sell, and I knew how to run a business and import, plus I had a big parking lot to park them in and used to own a small crane, so we formed a partnership, and jumped on a plane to Itay to meet the Magni family who owned the factory. We started selling and renting these big machines in the NYC area, and need to hire some help, so I hired Gary as our first employee. The business took off fast and grew nationally, and to keep a very long story short Gary is our COO and helps to run the business. He and I have worked closely daily now for ten years, have traveled to Italy and Germany, and worked many national trade shows together. I bought out my partner, and sold most of the US business back to the Magni family so I ended up becoming partners with these wonderful people from Italy, and get to travel there frequently, and took the position as CFO so my life took on a very international focus and was certainly an unexpected turn in my life and Gary and I have had a great run so far. Magni America now services our dealers in the entire US so if you see a red Magni large machine working on a jobsite, it came through our hands! I now work mostly remotely but am still actively involved in both businesses.

All of my sons are married. Jake, the oldest, is a financial planner, has his CFP, has two sons and lives in Brooklyn. Ryan and Lex both have little girls and now work with me in the floor coating business and have taken over day-to-day operations so I have stepped back from the daily grind. They live in Scotch Plains and Westfield so we get to see everyone often. One of Beth’s sons is married with two little boys, and they live in Chatham. Her two daughters live in Nashville and NYC, and her oldest son lives in Washington DC. Beth and I often say how lucky we are to have found each other, and to have been able to make a great life for ourselves and our kids.

Feel free to reach out if you are in the City or Hamptons! My personal email is danielmblum@gmail.com