Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun? (18 page)

But he knew all too well not to underestimate Loida and her quiet strength—his foiled seduction attempt had shown him Loida would not hesitate to stand up to him, if need be. Lewis couldn’t get serious about a woman lacking the backbone to occasionally dig in her heels and tell him where to get off. As long as it happened infrequently, of course.

Years later, Lewis would confide in his friends that while Loida was friendly and had a relaxed manner on the outside, she was really as tough as steel. “Never underestimate her,” he would say.

Lewis felt that Loida would be an ideal partner for him. As he told her innumerable times before they got married, “I’m going to marry a woman who will grow with me!”

One might expect that Lewis and his special lady cemented their fairytale romance with him proposing on bended knee in some romantic setting, engagement ring at the ready. In reality, the setting was far more prosaic—a noisy, smelly subway car in Manhattan. And it was
Loida Nicolas who popped the question in May 1969, albeit in a somewhat indirect way.

“We were sitting in the subway together and I remember asking him, ‘Darling, do you want a big wedding or a small wedding?’” she recalls.

If Lewis hadn’t been ready for a lasting commitment, he could easily have turned her question into a joke. But of the scores of women he had dated, none had excited him like Loida. He had found his soulmate and was ready to settle down.

“Ah, I think we should just have a small wedding and get married in the chapel at New York University,” Lewis responded decisively. “And then we honeymoon in Paris and Venice.”

Feigning a sudden realization of what he just said, he put his hand on his head and said, “I have a headache.” Loida laughed knowingly and kissed him. There was no engagement ring and Lewis always regretted not having one. He made up for it on their 20th wedding anniversary in August 1989, by giving her a ring with a hefty five-carat diamond.

Loida’s mother, Magdalena Nicolas, had met Lewis in early 1969, at the Aberdeen Hotel. She was favorably impressed by him, particularly by the fact that he took her daughter to a black tie dinner held by Paul, Weiss, when he could have taken someone else.

Now it was time for Loida to meet the other important woman in Lewis’s life, Carolyn Fugett. Lewis and Loida traveled to Baltimore, where Loida was warmly welcomed into the Fugett-Cooper clan.

Some of Lewis’s relatives and friends were surprised to learn that he was marrying someone from the Philippines instead of an African-American woman. Such reservations invariably evaporated on meeting Loida. Everyone was struck by her intelligence and grace and how well she and Lewis seemed to co-exist, making race a non-issue.

One of Lewis’s friends from childhood days, Dan Henson, had never seen Lewis fall head over heels for anyone before. “The first time I saw him really excited was when he told me about Loida,” Henson relates. “When I learned that she was Filipino and whatever, I said, ‘What is this shit?’ But after half an hour of conversation with her, I realized how perfect she was for Reggie. I couldn’t imagine too many other women putting up with him,” Henson laughs.

For her part, Loida says her husband’s racial background was never a concern for her family, because her parents never classified people according to economic, social, or racial background.

At Paul, Weiss, Lewis was still putting in long hours, but where he had previously been working 10- to 14-hour days during the week, he started to lop off an hour here and there so he and Loida could have some time together. He never turned into a love-smitten, dreamy-eyed zombie, though—his burning ambition and unrelenting drive wouldn’t allow that.

Loida, on the other hand, was beginning to think about the ramifications of the marriage they planned. It would mean that she would be living in the United States permanently and would rarely see her family. Loida felt as much devotion and love for her kin as Lewis did for his, and she also would miss her beloved homeland.

She rarely thought about these things in the intoxicating presence of Lewis, but was mulling over their plans more and more when she had time alone to think. Developing a major-league case of cold feet, she decided she couldn’t go through with the wedding.

Lewis was deeply disappointed to hear of her decision. He was tempted to ask her to take some time and mull it over, but he knew that you couldn’t dictate affairs of the heart. Plus his pride would never allow him to plead.

So in June 1969, after Loida’s sister Imelda finished her studies at Columbia, the two of them caught a plane to California with the intention of leaving New York and Lewis behind forever. The women planned to visit some friends at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and then go on a brief Asian tour before returning home to the Philippines.

However, in the time it took to fly to the West Coast, Loida became heartsick and miserable. By the time the women reached California, Imelda noticed her sister was walking around with a blank expression as though in a daze. Imelda didn’t say anything—she already knew what the problem was. “Everything was bleak and gray. I couldn’t see any other colors,” Loida recalls.

There was only one quick-fix antidote: A phone call back to the East, specifically to New York City. “Darling, I can’t stand it anymore,” Loida told Lewis after breaking down and calling her love, “I’m coming back.”

“No, Loida, don’t do that,” a relieved Lewis advised his fiancee. “Go back to your parents, tell them we’re getting married and then you can
fly back here in two weeks. We’ll get married at NYU, then we’ll honeymoon in Paris and Venice.”

The suggestion that Loida return to the Philippines was particularly magnanimous coming from Lewis who had a jealous and possessive side. Generally though, his attitude toward women was predicated on his high opinion of himself. If a woman didn’t want him, it was her loss.

Loida already knew that in addition to his other qualities, he could be short-tempered, moody, and sarcastic. She knew that he could be very intense and that he could hold a grudge with the best of them.

She loved him because of his ambition, his sense of family, his take-charge attitude. “I wanted someone who would wear the pants in the family,” she says. In many ways, Lewis reminded Loida of her father, who was also an entrepreneur.

Now certain that marrying Lewis was the right thing to do, Loida could relax and see a bit of the world before settling down. She and Imelda left California for the Philippines, by way of Taiwan and Korea. They had decided to take the long way home to give their parents time to digest the news about the marriage. Loida had written to her parents about her plans but she still was not sure that they would agree to the wedding.

Loida wrote to Lewis every day, but in the course of her whirlwind journey, she had forgotten about the two-week marriage deadline she and her fiance had set. Lewis was furious when Loida finally called from the Philippines.

“We were supposed to get married in two weeks!” he said icily, informing her that he had gone through the trouble of arranging to have their wedding held at NYU’s chapel. Loida waited for the storm to blow over, apologized, and told Lewis she needed to spend some time with her family. And since she would be the one giving up her homeland, what did he think about a wedding in the Philippines? Her family had made this suggestion and she agreed, wanting Lewis to see her in her milieu.

Lewis was caught off guard by this request, “Let me think about it.” One day, he happened to casually mention his situation to another Paul, Weiss attorney, Ed Korman.

“Look Reg, isn’t it really kind of romantic?” Korman suggested. “You’re flying 10,000 miles to claim your bride.” Lewis called Loida and told her they would have a Philippine marriage.

Loida’s father, Francisco J. Nicolas, was cut from the same cloth as Lewis. Having lost his father at 11, Nicolas had to fend for himself. At 21, he had to abandon his dream of becoming a lawyer because his fledgling lumber business was becoming very profitable. Nicolas’s lumber company eventually became one of the Philippines’s largest and best-known furniture manufacturers, NICFUR.

Francisco had great plans for his daughter, Loida. He saw her becoming a congresswoman, governor, or even senator. Those plans would be derailed however by her marriage. Naturally, he was quite curious about this African-American who was stealing his oldest daughter. Could Loida at least show him a picture?

She pulled out a picture of Lewis standing on the beach in St. Thomas, gazing intensely at the camera. Francisco Nicolas studied the man in the photograph for a few moments and smiled. He understood why his strong-willed, independent daughter had finally been swept off her feet.

Lewis flew into Manila a few days before the wedding. He was alone because none of his family members or friends could make the trip.

An archipelago of more than 7,000 islands, the Philippines was ruled by Spain for 400 years before becoming an American possession from 1900 to 1946, the year the country gained its independence. American influence was still very strong in the country in 1968, and today English is still widely spoken.

Loida came from a tightly-knit family of three brothers and one sister. The night before Lewis’s wedding, Loida’s male relatives, including her three brothers, threw a stag party for him at the house of an uncle, Pedro Manalac. Loida’s kinfolk tried mightily to get Lewis drunk, but getting blitzed was not his style. Moreover, Lewis didn’t want his future in-laws to see him three sheets to the wind. After all, he was representing the United States of America. He made it through the night with his sobriety—and dignity—intact.

Lewis and Loida were married on August 16, 1969, in a lavish ceremony that made the society pages of Philippine newspapers, including many of the country’s top business and social elite. The country’s
then Vice President, Fernando Lopez, acted as one of the godfathers of the couple.

Lewis and Loida exchanged vows at the Paco Roman Catholic church, a romantic, Spanish-era structure in the heart of Manila that was surrounded by a beautiful garden. The most memorable gift was from Clinton Lewis, who paid to have a photographer film his son’s wedding for the folks in the United States.

The Lewises began their weeklong honeymoon in Japan, where they enjoyed exploring Tokyo and Kyoto. But their next destination, Hawaii, left a sour taste in their mouths.

Loida Lewis, who had a tourist visa, was detained for 45 minutes by U.S. Customs officials after she told them she planned to live permanently in the United States with her husband. Producing her marriage certificate didn’t expedite things either.

Ironically, if she had shown them her tourist visa and said she planned to go sightseeing, Loida Lewis would have breezed through. The absurdity of that situation made her decide on the spot to specialize in U.S. immigration law once she became eligible to practice law in New York.

After they’d cleared Customs and were traveling around Honolulu, Lewis felt that some of the white American tourists he encountered were looking at him in a manner that conveyed condescension and disapproval. Having just visited the Philippines and Japan where he could relax and just be a man—not a black man—Lewis was less tolerant than usual of American bigotry. Couldn’t he simply enjoy his honeymoon without being subjected to racism? Furious, Lewis cut short their stay in Hawaii, with the couple leaving after only one day.

The Lewises stopped in San Francisco for a day before heading back to New York, to Lewis’s tiny one-bedroom apartment at 333 W. 21st Street, in a section of Manhattan known as Chelsea.

Lewis loved Loida for her personality, spirituality, and intellect, plus her family’s social status served to further stoke his ambition. He was determined to show his new wife an opulent, affluent lifestyle of his own making, even though the unassuming Loida never coveted material possessions or social status. In later press interviews and speeches, Lewis would often pay tribute to Loida, calling her “one of the least materialistic persons I know.”

Loida Lewis believed in her husband and in marriage for better or for worse. In the early 1970s, when finances were tight and even her butcher wouldn’t accept her checks, Lewis would grumble to his wife that she needed to do a better job of balancing the budget. But there wasn’t too much Loida Lewis could do. After all, the family had to eat.

Not one to sit idly around the house, Loida Lewis got a job working with Manhattan Legal Services, a Johnson-era, publicly-funded law firm catering to low-income clients. When contrasting his job with Loida’s, Lewis would joke, “Reg works for the rich and Loida works for the poor.” She worked with Manhattan Legal Services from 1970 to 1973.

In 1972, Lewis earned a particularly large fee from one of his clients. The Lewises were expecting their first child and the fee enabled them to make a downpayment on a brownstone at 351 W. 22nd Street, also in the Chelsea section of Manhattan.

The following year, their first daughter, Leslie, was born. In preparation for the birth, the couple spent seven weeks learning the Lamaze method of natural childbirth. Lewis was in the delivery room when Leslie came into the world. A very proud father, he had also seen how difficult and potentially life-threatening the process of childbirth had been for his wife. Consequently, he was reluctant to put her through it again. It would be seven years before the Lewises had their second child, Christina, in 1980.

Lewis always firmly believed that his wife should be free to develop a separate career with her own interests and goals. “Some men believe in keeping their wives barefoot and pregnant; I’m not one of them,” he often told her. From 1971 to 1979, she published a monthly magazine for the Filipino-American community that was financed by her husband.