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Glucksman, it was Fuld, it was Pettit, it was a team," Newmark said. "Lehman Brothers

in those days was a team. And the team worked together, and we were all successful. We

all got paid."

Tucker became Pettit's deputy in sales while Lessing, a salesman, rose to be Tucker's

deputy; Gregory worked in mortgage securities in the 1970s and rose to become head of

high-yield bonds and, in the 1990s, of fixed income.

Gregory was always considered to be bright, although also unusually impetuous and

emotional for a banker. He was sometimes seen openly crying in the office, which he

tried to hide, and sometimes seen losing his temper, which he didn't attempt to hide. He

was, in those days, very much a Pettit man, constantly mocking the more taciturn Fuld.

"Joe used to be considered a loose cannon," recalls Robert "Bob" Genirs, a partner during

this period. He remembers Fuld in particular shaking his head at some of the things

Gregory either said or did. "Dick confided in me at times that he was skeptical of Joe,"

says Genirs.

Before work each weekday morning, the Ponderosa Boys would stop off at a gym in

lower Manhattan, just a short walk from their office, and, alongside business competitors

from Goldman Sachs (including its future CEO, Jon Corzine, and Robert Giordano, its

co-chief economist), run on treadmills and lift weights. They took pride in being the first

through the doors of that gym, and were often greeted with the Bonanza theme music as

they walked in. Liz Neporent, who was a trainer at the gym, had coined the nickname for

the bunch, and assigned each of them a character from the show. "Tommy was the goodlooking one-- Adam; Steve was Hoss, and Joe, for obvious reasons was Little Joe. " She

said Chris, "the leader . . . always the first in, was Pa. "

Neporent came up with the idea because Lessing, the chubbiest of the group, was always

the most reluctant to "do what he was told" when it came to personal fitness. While the

others ran and lifted competitively, pushing each other, Lessing was often strolling on the

treadmill. Occasionally, though, he'd crank it up to full speed for about a minute and yell,

"Come on!" as he ran and "Yee-haw! Yee-haw!"

Those screams were what gave Neporent her Bonanza theme: It sounded as if he was

rounding up cattle.

Neporent remembers that the four men were, by far, the most generous members of the

gym. "Other bankers would give us a card with $20 in it for a holiday tip. These guys

gave us thousands of dollars. They never knew it, but we really relied on their Christmas

bonus to live. And sometimes if they called us out to their homes for a personal training

session, they'd send a limo to pick us up. I remember stepping into this limo while my

neighbors were gawping. No one else did anything like that for us."

The Ponderosa Boys were driven, competitive risk takers, unafraid of peers with better

resumes and sharper suits--and they were completely united. Between 1984 and 1995

they were the architects of what would become the new Lehman Brothers. Their tiny

division fought for its life and grew into an investment bank whose values would reflect,

for a short while, what those men dreamed of creating: a firm that encouraged a

militaristic loyalty and a hardscrabble resourcefulness exemplified by the credo "The

Trader Knows Best" and a selfless embrace of the "one firm" mantra.

In 1980, as they looked around Wall Street and saw the excesses of the era, Tucker and

Pettit made a pledge to one another--they swore they would never turn into assholes if

they made money.

They would be unique. They would be the good guys of Wall Street.

Chapter 3

The Captain

"Team," "team," "team" . . . I' m not sure Chris Pettit uttered a sentence that didn't

mention the word.

--Ronald A. Gallatin, former Lehman partner

A pickup basketball game delivered Chris Pettit from the Vietnam War. He had served

nearly three of his required eight years of military