CPA firm thrives despite loss of partners

September 7, 1998
Rusty Cawley Staff Writer

"Man plans and God laughs" -- a Jewish maxim

PARK CENTRAL -- Buddy Raden got the bad news from his boyhood friend and business partner, David Vogel: The Delta 727 jet carrying Buddy's boss and David's father -- Philip Vogel -- had crashed just south of D/FW International Airport.

It was Aug. 31, 1988. That morning, the founder of accounting firm Philip Vogel & Co. P.C. had boarded Delta Flight 1141 with his wife, Dallas altruist Thelma Vogel. The trip to Salt Lake City was to be the first leg of a vacation to Vancouver.

The flight lasted only a few seconds.

The 727 jet began to wobble almost from the moment its nose gear left the ground. The plane hit the ground once ... twice ... a third and a fourth time. It belly-flopped into a nearby field and snapped in two -- just behind the wings.

Buddy, David and Phil's brother, Larry Vogel, gathered around an office television set to glean whatever news they could from the disjointed on-site reports. They watched helplessly as black smoke roared from the jet's tail section.

Elsewhere in the Vogel office, staff members placed frantic calls to authorities at D/FW International and at Delta -- seeking some clue as to the Vogels' fate.

Buddy Raden had known the Vogels since his early childhood. Raden's father was an apparel manufacturer in postwar Dallas, a Vogel client as well as a Vogel friend.

The two families often spent leisure time together, usually on weekends and holidays. Buddy and David took to the playgrounds, the ball fields and the swimming pool. Indeed, it was hard for Buddy to recall a time when he didn't know David.

As teenagers, they both attended Hillcrest High School. When the news came in November 1963 that President Kennedy had died in Dallas, 16-year-old Buddy Raden was eating lunch with David Vogel at a steakhouse in the Preston Center. (Eighteen years later, when the word arrived that President Reagan had been shot, Raden would find himself in a cafeteria at Thanksgiving Square ... eating lunch with David Vogel.)

Even after Buddy Raden's father closed his plant during the late 1960s, the Radens and the Vogels remained close.

Thus, after graduating from North Texas State University in Denton, Buddy Raden took his first job ... with Philip Vogel & Co. It was 1970 and the company worked out of the old Hartford Building downtown with fewer than 10 employees.

At the helm was Phil Vogel. A meticulous man with a warm smile, Vogel could completely charm those around him ... not by talking, but by listening intently to every word said to him.

Born in Yonkers, the son of a baker, Vogel had joined the U.S. Army in January 1941. He fought with the 44th Infantry in southern Europe and, after the fall of Berlin, he went to Fort Chaffee, Ark., to prepare to fight in the Pacific. He was there when Japan surrendered in August 1945.

His years in the Army had taught Phil Vogel a lesson: There was life beyond the Hudson River.

So in 1948, with his wife and their two sons, he moved to Dallas.

Vogel placed a newspaper ad and soon found a job as the chief financial officer with a Dallas bakery. For more than a decade, he tinkered with the idea of opening his own accounting firm. He did so in September 1951.

Changing the niche

Originally, Philip Vogel & Co. found its niche with apparel makers. More than 50 thrived in the Dallas market during the 1950s and '60s. But as that industry began to fade, Vogel & Co. expanded to other forms of manufacturing, as well as to real estate.

Phil Vogel led the firm, using his charisma to bring in new clients. He also proved to be a visionary when it came to quality control, introducing peer reviews to Vogel & Co. years before the practice became standard in the accounting industry.

When he caught his partners mulling too cautiously over a key decision, he would cut through their doubt with his favorite phrase: "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

His partners included George Holtzman, a quick-on-his-feet accountant who became Buddy Raden's mentor. Holtzman could gauge a situation within minutes and recommend a precise course of action. He was the partner the other accountants sought for advice.

And there was Ed Lax, that rarest of accountants: a cut-up. He was known for making wisecracks, causing his peers to giggle and titter at the most inopportune times.

Phil Vogel insisted the firm work six days a week. As a result, the business partners also became best friends. They had little choice.

But in 1982, George Holtzman succumbed to cancer. Four years later, Ed Lax went home early on a Saturday ... and died of heart failure that evening.

After each death, the CPAs brought out a list of the late partner's clients and reapportioned the workload. That was easy. But George and Ed were more than partners; they were friends. Dealing with their loss was the hard part for the tight little family of accountants.

A letter in the mail

During the 1980s, Phil Vogel handed the reins to son David, who became managing partner. Phil and Thelma began to spend more time in the community working on charity projects.

In particular, the Vogels found a special need in Dallas. Thelma reasoned: How can a homeless mother get a job if she has no safe haven for her children? Thus was born The Alcove, a day-care center sponsored by the Dallas Jewish Coalition for the Homeless.

And then came that awful day: Aug. 31, 1988. The wait for word on what had happened to Phil and Thelma lasted all afternoon and into the night.

At around 9:30 p.m., the authorities finally called David. They requested a copy of his parents' dental records.

Of the 107 people aboard Flight 1141, only 13 died. The passengers sitting on the row ahead of the Vogels survived, as did those immediately behind the couple and to each side. One witness claimed the Vogels died while helping other passengers find the exits, but that account was never confirmed.

The crash happened on Wednesday. On Thursday, hundreds of the Vogel family's friends received a letter in the mail, typewritten over Thelma Vogel's signature. It urged them to support The Alcove.

On Friday, more than 2,000 mourners filled Shearith Israel Temple to say farewell to the Vogels. The mourners wept, laughed, shared stories. The rabbi summed up the Vogels' lives: "Lose yourself in service to others."

Back at Vogel & Co., the surviving partners suffered in silence, unable to find the words to discuss their loss. Instead, they did as they'd done after the deaths of George Holtzman and Ed Lax. They redivided the client list -- and moved on.

None took the deaths of Phil and Thelma Vogel as hard as did David Vogel. He soon resigned his post as managing partner, handing the reins to Buddy Raden. He attended the synagogue twice daily for 11 months, as prescribed by Jewish tradition.

In time, David Vogel returned to his place within the Vogel & Co. universe: chief rainmaker. Like Phil Vogel before him, David Vogel could bring the clients through the door.

For the next eight years, he did that job and did it well. Then something inside David Vogel went wrong. His friends and partners found it impossible to explain. At first, melancholy descended upon the young accountant. Then depression.

Late one night in October 1995, Larry Vogel got a phone call at home: His 49-year-old nephew had killed himself, leaving behind a young wife and two small children, plus two other children (both in their early 20s) from a previous marriage.

The death of David Vogel's parents had generated headlines in both The Dallas Morning News and The Dallas Times Herald. Columnists continued to write about the Vogels for years after the plane crash. But David Vogel's death passed virtually without a word written.

Names on display

Exactly a decade has passed since the crash of Flight 1141.

At Sparkman-Hillcrest Cemetery near Northwest Highway, Philip Vogel rests with his wife beneath a tombstone that bears the initials "N.V.N.G." The letters stand for his motto, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

The Alcove, the day-care facility that Thelma Vogel championed to her last day, is now the Vogel Alcove.

Today at Philip Vogel & Co., only two shareholders remain from the first generation of partners. Management is firmly in the hands of the second generation, still led by David Vogel's childhood friend, Buddy Raden.

Forty-seven years after its birth, the company emphasizes estate planning for its customers, many of whom have sold their companies during the economic boom of the late 1990s and are now worth millions of dollars. The firm also has expanded into valuation services, giving clients a confidential, third-party assessment of the fair market value of their assets.

On a large board in its reception area, the firm displays nameplates for each of its shareholders and CPAs. The list includes the names of Phil Vogel, David Vogel, Ed Lax and George Holtzman.

When those names come up in conversation, it is often in the present tense. David Vogel's office remains empty, as if his return were expected at any time.

In his own office down the hall, Larry Vogel (Phil's brother and David's uncle) sits with his hands folded neatly upon his thick chest. At age 69, he moves nimbly and speaks lucidly-- even though it's been little more than a year since he was severely injured in a car accident that killed his wife, Marilyn.

Larry Vogel shrugs. "You know, there's this old Jewish saying that goes, `Man plans ... and God laughs.' And it is so true. You can't plan anything. You do and, just like that, everything changes. It's almost silly to try."

This story is based on interviews with Bernard A. Raden, Lawrence Vogel and Ronald S. Fiedelman, all shareholders at Philip Vogel & Co., plus upon contemporary news reports of the Delta crash and the Vogel funeral from The Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Times Herald.

© 1998, Dallas Business Journal

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