blurbosphere.net

After being class President of his class for four years in college at The University of Connecticut, and ultimately serving as Student body president, Lee Greif first entered the realm real of politics in 1971 when he was hired by Republican Congressman of New York, Peter Peyser. During this time, he served during the Watergate scandal which meant that he had to defend many sordid unpopular polices that were put into place by both his superiors and President Richard Nixon himself. Even though there were difficulties, there were many more memorable moments that Greif will always remember fondly. These include a dinner at the Whitehouse with the President of the US, top secret meetings with Secretaries Of State and Defense, and most importantly his meeting Randee, his first wife.

Even though he loved his work in politics with a passion, it had always been his dream to establish his own law practice. Ever since having received his degree in law, he had been eager to begin practicing it. However, his opportunity to enter politics could not be ignored. In 1974, the time had finally come to leave the political realm that he was so used to and move back up to his home state of Connecticut to practice law. What was to be a long and successful career in law was cut short however when his father in law unexpectedly took sick. Due to his illness he was required to have heart surgery which would require a long time to recover if he was lucky. Being thus afflicted he was in no way capable of running the family clothing business which had existed for decades.

Greif was faced with a very difficult choice, he could continue to pursue his long-awaited career as a lawyer, or he could put his dreams on hold and keep the family clothing business from going under. His conscience got the better of him and he decided to become the CEO of the family clothing business, but only on a temporary basis until his father in law had recovered to the point where he could once again take over. The business was a somewhat large chain of clothing stores that had existed since 1881 and was very well known throughout the area. Ever since it was established it had been successful and had gained notoriety throughout the area.

Lee Greif had never taken up any task before half-heartedly and found no reason to end that now. He decided to put all he had into the business so that when his father in law had finally recovered enough to regain control it would be bigger and better than ever before. Because of the long time needed to recover from the heart surgery, his father provided him with all the time he needed to enact his plans. Greif had learned a lot from college and the solid real world experience he learned from his five years in politics and he put all of this knowledge into use when he took over the business. He ran the business for a total of 4 years and by the time he was finished the chain of stores had grown from five stores to 11. He enjoyed running the business thoroughly, especially all of the people he met and relationships he built while doing so. 

Tags: Lee Greif