When I visited with him in 1999, he fascinated me with his vigor and enthusiasm -- like those of a teenager -- and wisdom far greater than that of my grandfathers.

Mr. Marcus’ passing today took me by surprise and sent me into a deep, silent sadness when I heard the news of his death at five o’clock. I was walking through the cattle buildings at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo at the time. I could swear that the animals began a mournful mooing while I listened quietly to my friend, Sharon Belz, on the cell phone, telling me the news.

"Mr. Stanley," as he was known, knew everybody, everyone and just about everything, it seemed. The Black Angus and brown Jersey cattle must have known and loved Stanley Marcus, too.

When I and my family first came to Texas and Dallas in 1955, we arrived by car from southwest Illinois with little more than a 40-foot trailer home and clothes in the closet. My father was an oilfield roughneck and driller, and my mother, a 1950’s housewife.

Driving down Commerce Street during our first family tour, my father pointed out the street signs and stores of Dallas. In the back seat, we kids craned our necks to look up and see the flying red horse, Pegasus, on top of one of the tall buildings. My mother made my father slow down just long enough to pause and pay her respects  when we passed the Neiman-Marcus store. It was the first of many times when the store with the hyphen and Stanley Marcus would somehow punctuate my life.

I grew up those first two Texas years in the western shadow of downtown Dallas at the Dallas West Trailer Park on West Commerce Street, a mile away from the Triple Underpass and Texas Schoolbook Depository. If Sidney Lanier Elementary was my classroom, then Commerce Street was my playground.

Over the years, Magnolia Oil had become Mobil Oil. Its trademarked flying red horse in downtown Dallas was well groomed and had, for three decades, guarded the Texas skies against any winged warrior who would dare to attack from the west or east. Stanley Marcus had his own missions;  To ensure the passion and set the trends in fashion and guide the tastes of the celebrated and uncelebrated alike, the wild and the tamed Texas ladies and gents.

My parents both worked at the Republic National Bank of Dallas. It was Dallas’ tallest building at the time. The steel-gray structure seemed to hold up the sky with its tall, pointed pillar. Just up the street and around a corner was Neiman-Marcus.

On Saturdays, the family would shop downtown. My mother promised to buy us an ice cream treat if we’d be quiet and stay close to her as we wandered through Neiman-Marcus. We weren’t wealthy, but Mr. Marcus welcomed the dreams of window shoppers as well as the dollars of well-heeled folks. A shush from mother and a threat to "Take you up to Mr. Marcus’ office for a spanking" were steely discipline in those days. We needed no further warnings.

For a 6-year-old kid, walking through Neiman-Marcus with his mother was pure torture. There was no toy department to kindle and capture my attention like the large one at Sanger’s, just down the street. But, the promised ice cream float or banana split that I knew was waiting for me across the street at H.L. Green’s on Ervay Street was well worth the punishment of having to behave.

In 1957, my family moved up from the shadows of downtown and Commerce Street, and the trailer park, into a home. I struggled through my single digit and teenage years in Irving.

Downtown Dallas beckoned me still every Saturday. My friends and I would ride the Continental bus to Dallas and spend long hours at the Palace and Majestic movie theaters. We watched Cleopatra and Ben Hur from the balconies, drinking 25-cent cups of Coca-Cola, crunching popcorn, then blowing up and popping the empty bags. We were teenaged terrors and gangsters -- Bonnies and Clydes years before Beatty and Dunaway ever hit the movie screens.

But Commerce Street was still the main box office feature on any sunny or rain soaked Saturday. Its four lanes of constant motion, sights and sounds draw me to it even today. Commerce Street thrilled us from the Old Red Courthouse to the Adolphus Hotel. It educated and enlightened us from the Commerce Street Newsstand to the fashionable aisles of Neiman-Marcus. The twenty-one blocks of Commerce Street -- they then seemed like miles -- swept us along in their own river currents all the way past the Statler-Hilton Hotel -- to the Dallas Public Library and Police station -- and brought us at last to Gordon McLendon’s Triangle Point at the Central Expressway spillway. Driving along Commerce Street even today, I get the feeling that I’m a teenager again, as my mind flashes back to all those hopes, opportunities and possibilities from my younger days.

Mr. Marcus’s store windows were like color television screens long before color televisions were sold at the suburban Sears and Montgomery Wards. We’d stand on the sidewalks for long periods of time, just looking in them. The broad and brightly decorated windows were kaleidoscopes to far away places that I’d never visited or ever hoped to see.

The annual Neiman-Marcus Fortnights were world class attractions that attracted the well-known and the world to Dallas -- A little bit of magic and a lot of style from the mind and vision of Stanley Marcus.

I thought I was the richest and most fashionable man on Earth on the day that I bought my first neck tie at Neiman-Marcus. I didn’t need GQ to tell me how to dress. I wore the look of success and had all the stylishness that was necessary around my neck, thanks to Stanley Marcus.

One morning in the 60’s, on the way to high school, I heard a news report on KLIF 1190. It said that Stanley Marcus had offered to pay the court costs of a few Dallas high school kids who’d been sent home because they wouldn’t cut their Beatle-like long hair short enough to please the principal.

Mr. Stanley was the topic and in all the conversations that day in the hallways. He’d rocked, rolled and rattled the establishment. He was one of us. He was a rebel, too. He was our hero and a champion among rebels, this distinguished man whom I still feared and had yet to meet.

Radio tugged at my sleeve in the sixties and took me from Dallas to Fort Worth. In 1974, I received an advance promotional copy of Minding the Store by Stanley Marcus. I read it – and it changed the way that I looked at life and business.

Minding the Store and Mr. Marcus taught me many things. I learned fairness and firmness, and found new faith and purpose within its pages. Stanley Marcus revealed to me so many things through his book that no other books had revealed to me before. Minding the Store  turned me into a rebel with a cause – and provided me with a road map to my future.

Regrettably, I never interviewed Mr. Marcus on my Sunday night radio talk show, "Sidetrack." I loaned the book to a friend and never saw it again.  

His Quest for the Best also found its way onto my bookshelf and into the lexicon of my daily  life.  A quarter of a century went by.  During that time, I put to good use all those things that Stanley Marcus had taught me.  

In 1999, I bought a copy of the latest edition of "Minding the Store" at Neiman-Marcus. Remembering all the things that I had learned from my first reading of it, I wrote a letter to Stanley Marcus, asking if he’d autograph the book if I mailed it to him. His assistant, Deborah Fugit, e-mailed to say that he would.

Hoping that he would be generous, I sent three copies to him for autographing. One was for me; the others were gifts for my friends. I enclosed a letter with the books. In it, I told him about my younger years on Commerce Street, my mother’s stern warning for me to keep quiet in the aisles of Neiman-Marcus, my having his book in 1974 and what it meant to me.

To my great surprise, the books arrived along with a personal letter from Mr. Marcus. He invited me to come to his office on the 8^th floor of the Crescent Center.

Mr. Marcus wrote, "It’s very pleasing to me to know that I’ve had an influence on anybody. I am delighted that I wrote, or said, something that has been meaningful to you. I’m available most of the time here in Dallas at my office in the Crescent Center. If you have an extra few moments to kill some time, call my assistant, Deborah Fugit, to set up an appointment."

I quickly called, thinking that, if I waited, he would change his mind. I asked Deborah if I could bring along a young friend, Mark Girouard. Mark’s father, Marvin Girouard, is the chairman of Pier 1 Imports,  with its headquarters in Fort Worth. Marvin had told me of his great respect for and past associations with Mr. Marcus. I thought his son would like to meet a great retailer besides his father.

We arrived at the Crescent Center on the appointed day. Both of us seemed like nervous school kids as we were ushered into Mr. Marcus’ office. The floor to ceiling and wall to wall windows looked out upon a bright and shining downtown Dallas at least a dozen blocks away. It was a view of the city that I’d never seen.

Mr. Marcus talked with us about his window’s view and those other views he’d brought to us in the windows of Neiman-Marcus. He spoke of his family, his younger years in Dallas and his time away at college at Amherst and Harvard some 70 something years before. He politely posed for photographs with us and gifted us with stories and tales that led us on journeys from downtown Dallas to Italy, Greece and around the world.

I told him that he had been our high school hero in the sixties at Irving High when he’d paid the court costs of those young longhaired rebels. He chuckled and told us that he and many others had thought of him as being a bit of a rebel, too, for most of his life.

I remember thinking on the way into his office that I’d run out of things to talk about with him. But, he made it easy. He seemed more curious about Mark and me, and what we were going to do with the rest of our lives, than we were about him. Mr. Marcus was 94 that warm and wonder-filled June day in 1999. But he seemed fifty years younger and as tireless as a young, inquisitive pup on the prowl.

Too soon, the visit ended. A few promised minutes had turned into an hour. I asked him if he’d like to attend a small luncheon in Fort Worth if I set it up and let him invite those he wanted to see. It would be nothing formal, just an hour or two with a dozen or more friends and admirers. He eagerly agreed and I sent a letter of invitation soon afterwards.

He wrote back to me, saying, "Having just put our book in the hands of the printer, we are going to concentrate on the promotion of American Greats and will be in touch with you at a later date concerning the Ft. Worth luncheon."

During the last two years, I briefly chatted with Mr. Marcus a couple of times more at dinners and receptions. We promised to someday have that luncheon in Fort Worth. Time and his passing have now forever robbed us of that opportunity.

And so, tonight, I took out the letters from Mr. Marcus and thumbed through the photographs taken two and a half years ago. I thought about this restless rebel who had crossed the Rubicon a thousand times in his life. He has left us with both his legacies and the task of creating our own legacies. We’ll have to get along without him.

Thinking back on all those promises that I made on Commerce Street as a young man and remembering Stanley Marcus’ book, "Minding the Store," I mourn.  It's not from knowing that I will not see him again.  Part of it is that he never had the chance to come to lunch in Fort Worth so that he could visit with his friends and others who had always wanted to meet him and honor him, too. 

I rejoice in knowing I had the opportunity to meet this man, this refined rebel, this legend who had such a profound effect upon my life and the lives of so many others.  I'll always remember this gentle and generous man who took the time to visit with a couple of fellow rebels that warm day in June, 1999.

If you know, admire and have had your life, or way of life, challenged and changed by a person like Stanley Marcus, I urge you to write them a letter.  Let that person know that you appreciate what he or she has done for you. Don’t wait. Time and opportunity are fleeting things and, lately, we’d lost too many heroes.

The next time you are in Dallas, don’t forget to look up at the tall buildings. You’ll see the flying red horse galloping among the clouds and prairies of the skyline. Pegasus looks down upon the city and protects it still from wicked winged warriors who might think that they could attack and bring down this great city that Stanley Marcus helped to build.

Sleep well, Mr. Marcus. We’ll miss you. Even rebels need some time to rest awhile in between the wanderings.  

Keep an eye on our friend, Pegasus, if you can find the time.  You can teach him a few things, I'll bet.  He's frisky, curious, inquisitive and a bit of a rebel, too.  He could use your steady hand and guidance.