Here’s Looking At You Kid

By Leo Melamed

Fred Arditti Memorial Celebration December 16, 2005
CME Executive Center

I will read a letter to a dear friend that I wrote the day after.

My very good friend, Fred Arditti passed away yesterday. To say I loved him doesn't begin to explain the depth of feeling for him. Three years back, on Friday, December 27, 2002, he called to tell me that he was leaving Mayo where the test results showed that he had a terminal case of pancreatic cancer and had about 4 months to live. So his death was no shock after a heroic battle that lasted almost three years. But the loss was nevertheless still quite devastating. We were very close on many fronts, but on a market-related intellectual level I have no one to replace him. He was a brilliant economist, who during his tenure in the 1980's at the CME devised the specifications for the eurodollar contract, one of the most important financial instruments ever launched, and the most successful of all CME products. His formula for cash-settlement of this complex instrument is operational to this very day and the fulcrum of its success. In his honor, on June 19, 2003, the Board of Directors of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange established the Fred Arditti Innovation Award. Treasured by Fred, the Award gave him special courage to endure the impossible battle for life that followed. Nobel Laureate in Economics, William Sharpe, was chosen as the first recipient and Fred was a featured speaker at the inaugural event on January 18, 2005.

But even more important to me, Fred was a deep thinker who understood the world and how it worked. We met regularly to touch base and review the universe around us. Without previous discussion we always assumed that our feelings and views about current events, news, politics, literature, things of note, people, sports, markets, would be identical. We were rarely disappointed. Especially about matters concerning the opposite sex. Thus, it was always a delight to be together, something to anticipate. We also had similar views and introspections about the movies and shared an equal love of the medium. I cannot remember a single instance when we disagreed although we were both very harsh critics. Clearly, the best movie ever made was Casablanca. “Here’s looking at you kid,” the most poignant line. And Dashiel Hammett was the best detective story writer. The Maltese Falcon, the best detective story. Sam Spade the greatest detective. The gorgeous redhead Brigid O'Shaughnessy his favorite character.

We would meet almost weekly for dinner. He would order countless selections, not necessarily to eat them, but to taste them. In a Chinese place we would need an extra table to cover the choices. His breadth of knowledge seemed boundless, indeed encyclopedic, and a source of constant wonderment to me. He was also well read in the classics. He was, of course, a non-religious "Sphardic" Jew, the Arditti name of old Spanish origin. Sometimes he would have trouble with his name. I learned this first hand once when the hotel didn’t have his reservation which I know was made for both of us. Suddenly, Fred said to the clerk “look under D.” Sure enough, Fred R. Ditti had a reservation. To my chagrin Fred’s knowledge about secular Judaism was quite limited. But he was a willing student. He would delight in my impromptu lessons and was thrilled to listen to my renditions of I.L.Peretz’s fables, and always asked for more. His laughter was unabridged, genuine, and boundless. And infectious. He howled hilariously when I read to him that section in “Cousins”—my still unpublished second Sci-Fi novel—in which Fred Arditti, the richest man on the planet, a direct descendent of his who invented the Arditti Curve for making money in the stock market, is the lover of the story’s main character. A year later he would ask, “is that section still in the book?”

But he was never so certain of his opinion that it could not be changed. Sometimes, after a heated discussion which would include his piercing questions, he would fall thoughtful for a time, then resurface from his revere and quietly say, “I think you may be right about that.” He had an incomparable memory, remembering words uttered by someone decades before. He was also a baseball aficionado who could recite from memory batting averages of people long gone from the scene. He was very modest, reluctant to receive praise. Instead, he was highly sensitive about the feeling of others and unnecessarily shared praise with everyone around him. In fact, he refused to say anything negative about anyone, even people we both disliked. Sometimes, during recent days when he was under morphine, he would call me back after a conversation to determine whether maybe while under the drug he inadvertently said something bad about someone and made me promise that I would erase any negativism from my memory.

But above all, he was a unique and genuine friend. Someone with whom I formed a very select mutual admiration society. Someone with whom I could share my most intimate thoughts or musings. Someone who would hold my confidences sacred. Someone who I could turn to for advice and who would never disappoint.

Fred, here’s looking at you kid!

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