Weill's a fascinating character. The son of immigrant parents, he clawed his way through Wall Street twice. The first time was an ill-fated effort to control American Express.

That ended in his being kicked out of the company into a kind of a land of lost executives, an office far from the Four Seasons restaurant, Weill's favorite watering hole and the epitome of good eating in New York City. (Weill liked to eat—and drink—though lately with mortality coming on, he's supposedly mending his ways and exercising and dieting.)

The days in limbo didn't last very long, however. After a year or so, Weill came roaring back, successively taking over Shearson, Lehman Brothers, Commercial Credit Corp., Williams Insurance Company, Travelers Insurance, a lot of other companies and finally Citibank.

His method of attack was typically American: lay people off, cut costs, instill loyalty, work long hours and make your job your life.

For a while at American Express he shared power with a Southern patrician (who also eventually got kicked out of the company). Later at Citibank he shared power for a while with its powerful founder. But in the end the company wasn't big enough for both men, and Weill eased Citibank's head out the door and took over sole control of the conglomerate.

Along the way he made a lot of enemies, got a lot of revenge over those who dumped him, stayed married to the same woman, lived an epicurean if unhealthy life, and now, having designated his successor, is trying to figure out how to slide gracefully into retirement.

It's not likely he will. He's too challenged.

Weill and many of his contemporaries are fascinating because they are second-generation immigrants. Michael Dukakis, the former and unlamented Democratic candidate for president, was one, too.

Weill's Jewish, Dukakis is Greek, but it really doesn't matter. What's fascinating is how their parents and grandparents came from humble, sometimes desperate backgrounds and how they instilled the drive to succeed in their children.

And succeed they did, rising not only to a new economic level, but to the top of their chosen field of endeavor.

Sometimes when the third generation shows up, they are a lot less driven, although that certainly isn't the case with Weill's children. His daughter has blazed a trail through New York's financial canyons, which does credit to her father.

What also makes all this fascinating is the fact that almost all of us in one way or other come from immigrant families, and all of us are inspired (or not) by the struggle our great-grandparents or grandparents or parents had to reach the good life in the United States. In varying degrees, immigration is the fuel that drives America. One wonders what the country would be like without it.

A lot less dynamic is my guess. The need to succeed and the chance to do so are part of this country's history and culture.

But in a lot of other places in the world, they're not.

There class, birth, parentage and even the village where one grew up has much to do with what happens to one in adulthood.

One could also argue that without the tradition of individual freedom that so far has built The Republic, stories like Sandy Weill's wouldn't happen here either. The saving grace of the United States—from the days when the Pilgrims came here to practice their own religion to the present when the boat people fled from Vietnam—has been a place where dissidents can go and do pretty much as they want and succeed.

There is a caveat, though, I think.

It's this: those who come also have to respect the system that made this a better place to live and work. And they, too, have to make it work.

We're currently undergoing the greatest immigration the nation has experienced since the 19th century. It's a time not without stresses and strains. New people with new cultures and new customs add to what's already here, and it takes a while for all this mix to merge into a successful system.

But that doesn't mean it won't or that the end result of that mixing will be any less successful than it was for Sanford Weill and his contemporaries.

The mixture in the melting pot will one day be all American, a different American than we've known, but American nevertheless.

Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Los Gatos Weekly-Times.