CHAPTER 2

George Kogan’s Beginnings

New Yorkers awakened the next morning, on Wednesday, October 24, to the startling headlines that the day before an unidentified gunman had brazenly cut down wealthy businessman George Kogan in broad daylight and in cold blood as he walked from a neighborhood market to his girlfriend’s Upper East Side apartment. It was frightful news.

George’s apartment on East Sixty-ninth sat between Central Park and the East River in Lenox Hill, an ocean away from his beginnings in San Juan. As founding and prominent members of the Caribbean island’s Jewish community, the Kogan clan had proudly started and operated a lucrative chain of home-furnishing stores and made real estate investments that became the Kogan empire. George grew up as a privileged member of unofficial Puerto Rican royalty.

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George H. Kogan was born on September 25, 1941, a Thursday, to Solomon Kaganovitch, a Jewish émigré from Russia, and his wife Ida, a Canadian from Toronto. On the day in September 1941 when George was born, rain and snow fell in Russia, transforming the landscape to mud. The most noteworthy thing about that dark fall day was the fact that Jews were ordered to wear the yellow Star of David. For Jews in Europe, it was a frightening time. The Kaganovitch family was from Minsk, the capital and largest city in Belarus, Russia, which is on the Svisloch and Niamiha rivers. Minsk had been a battlefront city, and by the early 1930s, many residents, including the large Kaganovitch family, had evacuated to the West. George’s father, Solomon, was one of nine children born before the Bolshevik Revolution. After the conflict, members of the Kaganovitch clan fled to Cuba, then to New York. Solomon was among those who went to Cuba first, eventually passing through the Ellis Island Immigration Center’s portal—dubbed the “New World’s Golden Door”—as they arrived in America. At Ellis Island, most family members listed their occupations as “trader,” because, while in Minsk, many had labored as today’s equivalent of retail merchants. As was common at the time for European arrivals, those family members in the States Americanized their name, changing it from Kaganovitch to Kogan.

The Kogans wanted to stay together, so they sought a territory that would allow all of them in, one where they didn’t surpass the refugee quota, per the 1921 Emergency Quota Act limiting admission of each nationality. Puerto Rico, even though a commonwealth and a part of the United States, wasn’t overwhelmed with foreign immigrants seeking admittance. The San Juan area—a major port and tourist resort of the West Indies and the oldest city under the US flag—was the only location where all fifty of the Kogans could go to live. So, Solomon traveled to Puerto Rico, on behalf of the family. “He was the one who went to Puerto Rico to see if it was a good place to live,” said one of George’s cousins, who grew up with him on the island.

Solomon reported back to the rest of the family that they could buy a decent-sized piece of farmland in San Juan, not far from a growing tourist area, and everyone could be there together. Not to mention, there were ample job opportunities. And the port city’s growing population of immigrant Jews would make them feel welcome and at home.

While still on the US mainland, Solomon and other members of the Kogan family began shipping wholesale merchandise, through a partner in New York, to Puerto Rico to sell for retail on the island. And “that’s how the family business got started,” said Dr. Robert Goldstein, whose wife was a cousin of George’s; Goldstein is considered the historian of the family he married into. They named their enterprise the New York Department Stores de Puerto Rico. “It was a tightly knit community on the island,” another cousin said, “and a more tightly knit family.” From that early start, the chain of stores that would sustain three generations was born, and the Kogans had a new homeland.

While in New York, Solomon had met, fallen in love with, and married a Canadian woman named Ida. Then the Kogan clan made their pilgrimmage to Puerto Rico, converging and reuniting in San Juan.

After Solomon and his siblings opened their first department store, the business flourished, as, one by one, the family built New York Department Stores into a lucrative chain of nine stores. The Kogans expanded the business and invested in property. According to a mention in the Puerto Rico Daily Sun, “The family had several major real estate holdings on the island.” It was clearly a family enterprise, and many profited from it. “All of these siblings ended up owning the chain of department stores in Puerto Rico, and George’s father was one of the founders,” said a second cousin to George, who also eventually moved to New York. “Solomon’s kids were well taken care of growing up. There were a lot of stores.”

Solomon and Ida bought a rural property as a second home near the pastoral setting of Cayey, about thirty miles south of San Juan on the Central Mountain range. For many years, Solomon’s homestead served as the Kogan family gathering place. Each Sunday without fail, all would gather for a picnic at what they nicknamed “Solomon’s farm.” It was the perfect place to escape the touristy city, even for brief respites. Back then, “It was pre-Castro, and you had Anglos who were mostly families who either were sent to Puerto Rico to run factories, or it was more that they ended up in Puerto Rico,” said a cousin of George who grew up with him in San Juan. But the Kogan family, an enterprising bunch, made the most of it as entrepreneurs and never fell into factory work.

George was one of three siblings, including an older brother, Lawrence, and a younger sister, Myrna. Even though they lived in Puerto Rico, after grade schoool the children attended private preparatory and military schools on the East Coast. Their parents wanted them to have the best educations possible, which only the mainland, not the island, could provide.

George had a head for economics and learned the retail business from the bottom up by helping out at the stores, including working in the warehouse and unloading new shipped-in merchandise. Once he reached high school age, George was sent to an East Coast military school. But when he returned during the holidays and summers, he worked at the family stores. The next year, his sister was sent to a private boarding school in upstate New York, not far from the boys’ academy George attended, and they regularly got together. In military school, George learned discipline that would help him later on in business. Retail ended up being the only trade he would learn, carrying on in his father’s footsteps.

After high school, George enrolled at New York University. Since he’d gotten the hands-on background in running a store, George’s decision to leave Puerto Rico and expand his business knowledge was embraced by the family. George felt he was evolving and growing as a businessman, and striking out on his own as an entrepreneur was his next step. Studying at university, he felt, would help him accomplish that goal. Eventually, George wanted to become his own boss, like his father. It was during George’s years in college that he met Barbara, his future wife.