Penn. “Certain things about him were too intense,” she remembered. But he continued to pursue her. And bit by bit she relented. In 1970, he proposed to her, and she said yes—because he was Ed Rendell, because it was hard to think of anyone else in the world quite like him. She later quipped that of all the Jewish men in the world, she “married the one who didn’t care about money.” It was true. Ed Rendell didn’t care about money. But he did care about other things, with as much zeal as anyone who has made millions on Wall Street cares about money, and the intensity that Midge Rendell saw others had seen as well—galvanizing when it was focused, scary when it dissolved into temper tantrums and fits appropriate to children. “He was different,” said Midge Rendell in recalling her first impression of him during those courtship days at Penn. “Everything about him was different.”
There had always been something devilish and dramatic about him, the way he memorized the names of all the U.S. senators when he was a little boy, the way he loved to play football in the rain in high school because it felt so heroic, the way he once tried to get the guests to leave his Christmas party in the wee hours of the morning by serving them a special hors d’oeuvre of dog food mixed with mayonnaise, the way his eyes moistened when he talked about the death of his father. He couldn’t sit still for more than a minute or two, and there was a perpetual frenzy to him. But he also possessed his own vision—not making money or excelling within the closed world of a corporate law firm as David Cohen had done, but something far riskier. He was one of those people who seemed destined for one of two things in life—early success or an early heart attack.
Much of Rendell’s persona came from his father. An ardent New Dealer, Jesse Rendell took his son to Zabar’s, the delicatessan over on Broadway, where they cupped their ears to a radio and listened to the 1952 Democratic National Convention. Emotional and full of life, Jesse Rendell wept when Adlai Stevenson was beaten by Dwight Eisenhower in the general election later that year. He lived and died each fall with the New York Giants in football and each spring with the New York Giants in baseball, and during the short period of time father and son were together, Jesse taught Ed to seize the intensity of the moment as if there might never be another one. When he died of a heart attack while hailing a cab, there was a sense of absoluteshock in the family. Just two days earlier Jesse Rendell had played football in the park with his two boys. Nothing seemed wrong with him. But looking back on it later, Ed Rendell realized that his father, in his voraciousness for life, had also done everything wrong from a physical standpoint, smoking four packs of cigarettes and drinking a fifth of liquor virtually every day. By most accounts, Rendell’s mother, Emma, had the opposite temperament of her husband’s. When Ed and Midge started dating, they would go to New York to visit her. The apartment was dark, Midge recalled, and Emma was invariably in bed watching television. When she did rise, it was to walk over to the closet and see where Midge bought her clothing, since Emma’s family had been in the fashion business. Other than that, Midge could not recall seeing Emma actually out of bed until she and Ed decided to get married. “I’d kind of have to peek into the bedroom to say hello to this woman,” said Midge. “It was the weirdest thing.”
What money the Rendell family had growing up in New York did apparently come from Ed’s mother’s side of the family. She was a Sloat, of the fashion-designer Sloats, makers of a popular line of women’s skirts. Ed’s father worked as a middleman in the garment district, buying raw material from textile mills and selling it to manufacturers. He never made much money, but as Rendell later recalled in a lengthy profile in
The Philadelphia
There had always been something devilish and dramatic about him, the way he memorized the names of all the U.S. senators when he was a little boy, the way he loved to play football in the rain in high school because it felt so heroic, the way he once tried to get the guests to leave his Christmas party in the wee hours of the morning by serving them a special hors d’oeuvre of dog food mixed with mayonnaise, the way his eyes moistened when he talked about the death of his father. He couldn’t sit still for more than a minute or two, and there was a perpetual frenzy to him. But he also possessed his own vision—not making money or excelling within the closed world of a corporate law firm as David Cohen had done, but something far riskier. He was one of those people who seemed destined for one of two things in life—early success or an early heart attack.
Much of Rendell’s persona came from his father. An ardent New Dealer, Jesse Rendell took his son to Zabar’s, the delicatessan over on Broadway, where they cupped their ears to a radio and listened to the 1952 Democratic National Convention. Emotional and full of life, Jesse Rendell wept when Adlai Stevenson was beaten by Dwight Eisenhower in the general election later that year. He lived and died each fall with the New York Giants in football and each spring with the New York Giants in baseball, and during the short period of time father and son were together, Jesse taught Ed to seize the intensity of the moment as if there might never be another one. When he died of a heart attack while hailing a cab, there was a sense of absoluteshock in the family. Just two days earlier Jesse Rendell had played football in the park with his two boys. Nothing seemed wrong with him. But looking back on it later, Ed Rendell realized that his father, in his voraciousness for life, had also done everything wrong from a physical standpoint, smoking four packs of cigarettes and drinking a fifth of liquor virtually every day. By most accounts, Rendell’s mother, Emma, had the opposite temperament of her husband’s. When Ed and Midge started dating, they would go to New York to visit her. The apartment was dark, Midge recalled, and Emma was invariably in bed watching television. When she did rise, it was to walk over to the closet and see where Midge bought her clothing, since Emma’s family had been in the fashion business. Other than that, Midge could not recall seeing Emma actually out of bed until she and Ed decided to get married. “I’d kind of have to peek into the bedroom to say hello to this woman,” said Midge. “It was the weirdest thing.”
What money the Rendell family had growing up in New York did apparently come from Ed’s mother’s side of the family. She was a Sloat, of the fashion-designer Sloats, makers of a popular line of women’s skirts. Ed’s father worked as a middleman in the garment district, buying raw material from textile mills and selling it to manufacturers. He never made much money, but as Rendell later recalled in a lengthy profile in
The Philadelphia
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