January 2003

NYSSCPA Life Member Nears Century Mark
A Look Back at One of Accounting’s Consummate Trusted Professionals

In 1959, when Benjamin Somers sold his share of an accounting practice, he figured he and his wife Birdie would start enjoying the good life. But then he got his second wind and retirement was put on hold for another 40 years.

Born in Austria on April 18, 1903, Ben, as he is called by his friends and family, had dreams of becoming a chemist, but fate, much to the benefit of a long list of future clients, would deal him a different hand.

When he was only eight months old, Ben’s family moved to New York City, where he would spend the next three-quarters of his life. He attended P.S. 64 and graduated from Stuyvesant High School when he was 16.

After leaving school, Ben found a job as a shipping clerk. Though it wasn’t exactly what he had in mind, he was grateful for the opportunity.

“Any poor boy growing up in New York City at that time had difficulty. If you didn’t know anyone who had influence, you couldn’t get a proper job,” said Ben, who added that his Jewish faith also presented employment problems for him early on in his career.

As luck would have it, Ben’s job as a shipping clerk would not last very long. Shortly after Ben came on board, the bookkeeper left, but not before he asked the young man if he would like to learn how to keep the books—single entry ones that, interestingly, Ben says he would never see again. Ben accepted the offer, thus beginning an accounting profession that would span the next eight decades.

While tending the books, Ben took night classes at City College and soon received his degree in accounting. Over the next several years, he held down different bookkeeping and office positions, but knew that he wanted to get his CPA license. He joined a small accounting firm, Samuel W. Webster & Co., and in 1930, passed at “first crack” the CPA exam. (Believe it or not, his certificate number is 3298.) Though most of the country faced a period of hardship, the early 1930s, ironically, were especially good to Ben. On March 14, 1931, he married Birdie, who he said was very helpful with his career, especially early on, and struck out on his own, helping to support both his and his wife’s families.

It wasn’t long though before Mr. Webster asked Ben to come back and become a partner of the firm.

During the next 20-odd years, during which he joined and actively participated in the New York State Society of CPAs, eventually becoming a life member, Ben helped the firm grow and worked closely with a number of clients, including finance companies, brokerage houses and advertising agencies such as Ted Bates and Benton & Bowles. But none were more important to Ben, though, than the Richmond Organization.

An international music publishing company, the Richmond Organization began in 1949, founded by Howard Richmond, a former press agent for bands and artists such as Glenn Miller, Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore. An almost immediate success, the organization started to accumulate many clients, and Mr. Richmond quickly discovered that he was in need of some outside help to handle his company’s accounting and tax responsibilities. His brother-in-law, Bernard Gartlir, a New York attorney, put him in touch with Samuel W. Webster & Co., and not long after, Ben Somers found himself an integral part of the company.

From the moment that Ben set foot in the Richmond Organization’s offices, Mr. Richmond took an instant liking to the CPA.

“He came to me as a man who knew his business. He enhanced all of our opportunities with good business sense and was a terribly important influence on my vision for the future,” Mr. Richmond said of Ben. “He was a neutral adviser who gave me the best information he could, but he didn’t push it down my throat.”

According to Mr. Richmond, Ben embodied the trusted professional ideal that all CPAs aspire to. Through his guidance, Ben enabled Mr. Richmond to do the “right” things, encouraging him to report the little gifts that it was then customary to give to disc jockeys, or helping him to find the proper way in which to charitably assist struggling songwriters, musicians and their families.

Mr. Richmond remembers that whenever a financial situation arose that had any hint of impropriety, Ben never failed to give him one simple but priceless piece of advice.

“Ben always said to me, ‘Start with the assumption that they are going to see this. Then say, “How am I going to explain it,”’” Mr. Richmond recalls.

Given that Mr. Richmond attributed every positive development in the financial aspects of his business to Ben’s “touch,” it perhaps is no wonder that he eventually offered Ben a position.

In 1959, after Ben sold his share of Samuel W. Webster & Co., he flirted with the idea of he and Birdie traveling around the world, but Mr. Richmond was anxious to maintain their professional relationship and asked Ben to be a consultant to the organization. Ben went on to take the position and worked in the unofficial capacity of CFO for the Richmond Organization until 1979, when he handed the reins over to Gary Spiegel, the company’s current CFO.

Mr. Spiegel says he regards Ben as his mentor and close personal friend. Their ties may even extend beyond their friendship, however. Ben’s mother’s maiden name is Spiegel.

“It’s something we like to believe is possible,” Mr. Spiegel said.

For his part, Ben says Mr. Spiegel is as bright as they come in accounting even though he (Mr. Spiegel) has never practiced as a CPA, and considers his decision to hire Mr. Spiegel “the best judgment I made in my entire business career.”

Ben holds nothing but the highest professional and personal regards for Mr. Richmond too, who he said always had confidence in Ben’s business and financial decisions and was overly generous with him and all of the Richmond Organization staff.

“I look back very fondly on my relationship with Mr. Richmond,” Ben said. “He treated me so well. I wasn’t accustomed to anything like that.”

When Ben first started working with the Richmond Organization, he knew very little about music publishing, but over the years he picked up the “romance and passion” of the business while helping to steer the organization toward sound fiscal decisions. According to Mr. Richmond, it was Ben who encouraged him to be one of the first American music publishers to start his own subpublishing companies overseas so that the organization’s material, which included works by Woody Guthrie, Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter and Pete Seeger, could be protected and new songs by The Who, Black Sabbath, Joe Cocker, The Moody Blues and TRex, among others, could get developed. With Ben’s help, the Richmond Organization eventually established a presence in 11 countries outside the U.S. Ben traveled to many of those countries so that he could become familiar with their tax and business laws.

Among other things, Mr. Richmond also credits Ben with setting up the company’s pension and profit-sharing plan as well as redesigning its royalty payments system. Ben, who continued to advise the company on financial matters until only two years ago, also helped Mr. Richmond conceive of and establish the Songwriters Hall of Fame in the early 1960s. In the music publishing business, the Hall of Fame is the equivalent of the Oscars.

Today, Ben and Birdie, who will celebrate their 72nd wedding anniversary on March 14, live in West Palm Beach, Fla. About nine months ago he lost most of his vision and he has to use a walker to get around, but as things are, he says that he’s happy that he’s “made it this far.”

Ben said he feels especially fortunate to be surrounded by his family, which includes their daughter Marilyn Epstein, and her husband Albert, both of whom he says are “wonderful” and have been instrumental in helping Ben and Birdie tend to their affairs. Their other daughter, Harriett P. Sherman, a former schoolteacher and travel agency owner, passed away eight years ago. “I miss her greatly,” Ben said.

Ben and Birdie also have five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, one of whom recently became engaged and another who just began college.

When asked what he thinks of his pending 100th birthday, Ben remembers an arrangement that he made with an associate of his many years back. According to Ben, he and this fellow accountant were to reunite on the day Ben turned 100. Only problem, Ben says with a chuckle, is that he has no way to get in touch with him and he’s not even certain the man is still alive.

Though a big birthday party might be in order, Ben said he has no idea what, if anything, his family may be planning. He said he’s actually ambivalent about celebrating the occasion, but then again, he notes, “I doubt they are going to ask me my permission for what I want.”