Financial History Issue 117 (Spring 2016) | Page 12
EDUCATORS’ PERSPECTIVE
Celebrating 20 Years
By Brian Grinder and Dan Cooper
We waited nervously in the library of
the Museum of American Financial History — the former name of the Museum
of American Finance — one brisk October
afternoon in 1995. Several weeks earlier,
we had received an email from New York
University’s Ed Altman. Dr. Altman had
noticed an article we recently published
in Financial Practice and Education (FPE)
entitled “Applications of Financial History in the Teaching of Modern Finance.”
He wrote that he was on the board of a
small financial history museum in New
York City and that he had forwarded our
article to the founder, John Herzog, who
was interested in meeting us.
We didn’t know who Mr. Herzog was,
but as recently graduated Ph.D. students
in finance from Washington State University, we were well aware of Dr. Altman’s pioneering work on predicting
bankruptcy. WSU, located in the hilly
wheat fields of the Palouse in southeastern Washington, is a long way from New
York, so we were honored when Dr. Altman noticed our work. Since we both
planned to attend the Financial Management Association’s annual meeting in
New York City that October, we set up an
appointment to visit the Museum while
we were in town.
Our meeting with Mr. Herzog went
well. He asked if the Museum’s magazine, then called Friends of Financial History, could publish excerpts from our FPE
article. Then he surprised us by asking if
we would be interested in writing a regular feature for the magazine. We quickly
agreed, and Educators’ Perspective was
born. We were excited but concerned
about this new opportunity. Did we have
enough material for four articles a year?
We figured that we were good for about
two years. After that, who knew?
After our meeting, we viewed the Museum’s exhibits, which at the time were
located in a stairwell in the Standard Oil
Building at 26 Broadway. Dr. Altman
wasn’t kidding when he described the
The Educators’ Perspective column first appeared in the Spring 1996 edition
of this magazine, then called Friends of Financial History.
Museum as small! One exhibit in particular caught our eye; it featured Hetty Green,
known as “The Witch of Wall Street.” Neither of us had ever heard of Hetty Green.
Her story fascinated us, and it gave us our
first topic for the new Educators’ Perspective column. Our articl