My father was called many things by many people in his life. But I and my friends, once we became teenagers and found the temerity to approach him on what we fancied was something like equal footing, called him The Chief.

In reality, he and his accomplishments towered over us, despite the fact he was well under six feet tall. He had a presence though - magnetism - and a zest for life that filled every space he occupied, not in any kind of a showy way that caused him to be the center of attention, but rather with confidence and gravitas, and a wealth of experience that made him the embodiment of authority.

He was a mostly evenings and weekends presence when I was a child because he was in sales. He owned his own wine and liquor distributorship, but he was also its hardest working and best salesman.

When I grew older and got to observe him in settings beyond our home (where everyone under his roof lived under his rules), or the file-jammed office from which he issued edicts and commands related to his business, I saw he could talk anyone into buying whatever he was selling. This born talent made him a wildly successful fundraiser for charitable causes and the arts in the community where we lived. It allowed him to get legislation passed at the local and state levels without ever holding political office. And it allowed him to get me out of all manner of difficulties with my schools and, later, the law, in my wild and profligate youth.

For a time I thought I might be like him, and tried to follow in his footsteps, but  all I ever managed was an ability to enjoy the fine things in life that his unflagging determination and natural salesmanship won him. I reveled in the glow of being at his side in the best hotels, the finest dining rooms, and the best seats in the house at Super Bowls, Kentucky Derbys, US Opens and Heavyweight title fights.

I loved when he’d regale me with tales of his own youth, living in Miami before getting his start in the liquor business, of hustling with his brother  selling Johnson’s Baby Aspirin as “hurricane pills” to Blacks in Liberty City when storms rolled up.

I imagined the glamorous life he led as an investor in racehorses, known by name to all the porters in the clubhouse at Hialeah Park; as a nightclub owner and talent manager to comedians Slappy White and Redd Foxx; as a friend and running buddy to Joe DiMaggio, and to reputed mobsters Jimmy Blue Eyes and Meyer Lansky.

When I was old enough to hear the good stories, he told me of the pre-Castro days in Havana, of taking speedboats across the Florida Straits to spend days at a time gambling in the casinos, or shacked up in a hotel room, only ever calling the front desk for more ice, fresh towels and another pair of hookers.

He told me he felt the world change the night he was having dinner in a raucous samba club in Havana, when Castro’s men came in and shot Batista’s Chief of Police at the next table.

The antics of my own youth seem pale imitations of my father’s wild ride, as do the not-inconsiderable successes of my professional and adult life. Many times I heard my mother and others say, “They broke the mold when they made your father.”

While I will never achieve the scale of living or the successes he did, I did learn from him the values of honesty and courage, of fearlessness and gratitude, of giving without expectation of reward, and of friendship and fidelity. He always shared his wealth and good fortune with those around him and he prodded others who had more than him to give more than he did. He helped his employees and his friends attain things they never could have on their own, and he gave generously, anonymously, of his time and his money to education and research. As good a life as he had, he always believed the world could be a better place.

The Chief died at 64 of prostate cancer a few days after New Years in 1988.

The months preceding his death were hard, for him and for the many people who had come to depend on his generosity, guidance and direction in life. Before his death I spent weeks sleeping on the sofa in the outer room of the hospital suite where he lived out his last days, breaking only to fly to San Francisco for the New Years Dead shows when he went downhill after a final operation to relieve excruciating pain in his spine revealed a body suffused with cancer.

My sister was apoplectic at my selfishness in abandoning him at the end in his virtual coma. “What if he DIES?” She screamed as I left for the airport.

Two nights later, as I sat in my seat on the Jerry-side risers at the Oakland coliseum, surrounded by five of my best friends in life, I felt the band play an epic rendition of He’s Gone just for me, and I knew The Chief and I would be OK.

I returned home and though he never recognized my face or called me by my name again, I was able to hold him in my arms as he drew his last breath, and to whisper in his ear, “I love you Dad, I love you so.”

Six months later, a friend of mine, an A&R guy at Warner Bros. Records who I had introduced to Muhammed Ali (a close pal of a friend of The Chief), thanked me for the introduction by taking me to Atlantic City for Ali’s birthday party, where I sat next to Cheryl Tiegs at dinner and enjoyed the pleasure of  shoving Donald Trump in the chest to make him sign my souvenir boxing glove.

The next night, we had ringside seats for the Heavyweight Championship fight between Mike Tyson and Larry Holmes. Before we got ready to leave for the arena, I went downstairs to the spa in the Trump Palace Hotel for a steam and a sauna, one of The Chief’s most beloved guy rituals. The place was empty as a tomb and I enjoyed the quiet and the stillness, and I thought about how much my Dad would have loved doing what I was doing right then.

I sat alone in the sauna when the cedar door creaked open, and in through the shaft of bright yellow light came a white haired old man who moved slowly but was clearly still in great shape for his age. As my eyes adjusted again to the darkness of the sauna, I recognized the Yankee Clipper.

“I will be a motherfucker,” I thought to myself. “I’m sitting in the fucking sauna with Joe fucking DiMaggio!”

I’d heard legendary stories of DiMaggio’s guarded nature and of his lust for privacy. I’d heard he could be a real prick. But I turned to him anyway and said, “Mr. DiMaggio, you don’t know me, but I understand you were friends with my father back in New York and Miami in the Forties and Fifties, Buddy Lazar, from Avenue K in Brooklyn.”

He looked at me, thinking. “Yeah, I remember your father, how’s he doing?”

I couldn’t tell if he really remembered or if he was just being, what, friendly? Agreeable?

“Well, you know, he always spoke very highly of you and he said you guys had some good times together, playing cards and running around some,” I told him, which was exactly what my father had told me.

“I wouldn’t bother you in this situation,” I continued, “but I thought you’d want to know he passed away in January.”

“I’m sorry,” Joe DiMaggio told me. “Your father was a good guy.”

I was happy to hear him say it, but I already knew that much. What I didn’t know was that would probably be the closest I would ever come again to being in The Chief’s footsteps.