Tom, Abe--Both Beat Hardships

At first glance it is hard to understand how Mayor Tom Bradley and Abraham Spiegel became such close friends because the two men appear to have little in common.

Bradley’s personality is reserved and he has a reputation as a penny pincher. Spiegel greets friends effusively and has been known to hand out $5 bills to every parking attendant in sight at the City Hall garage. Spiegel can be brutally outspoken as well.

Bradley’s politics are liberal. Like the mayor, Spiegel is a registered Democrat, but he holds more conservative views--once pledging, for example, a significant sum toward the Ronald Reagan presidential library.

Bradley, 71, is the son of Texas sharecroppers. Spiegel’s Old World origins are evident in his accented English. Born in 1906--11 years before the mayor--Spiegel spent his early years in a village in Czechoslovakia where his family owned a lumber mill.

On closer inspection, however, the two are not so different after all.

“The mayor, like Abe, is somebody who’s overcome tremendous hardships, a . . . minority who became successful,” said a source close to both Spiegel and Bradley.

When Bradley was in high school, he disregarded the advice given to many blacks not to try for college. He was a track star at UCLA, and then went on to a career as a police officer, studying law at night and eventually establishing a private practice. In 1963, he became the city’s first black council member; 10 years later, he became its first black mayor.

Spiegel, a Hebrew scholar, survived the Nazi Holocaust. He tells stories of being kept alive by a friend in an Auschwitz kitchen who slipped him raw potatoes. Spiegel’s wife also lived through the horrors. But their 2-year-old son, Uziel, died in the gas chamber in 1944.

After the war ended, Spiegel emigrated and made a fortune building modest tract homes in the San Fernando Valley and Orange County. He bought Columbia Savings & Loan Assn. in 1975. Home is a low, rambling mansion north of Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills, where Columbia has its headquarters. He also has a string of other real estate and investment corporations and partnerships. At least twice in recent years, Columbia has leased space in buildings owned by Spiegel--including the glassy new Third and Fairfax Plaza.

Bradley resides at Getty House, the mayor’s mansion in Hancock Park. His personal investments in stocks and bonds--some of them arranged by Spiegel--and his dealings with local financial institutions have tarnished the mayor’s once squeaky-clean reputation.

Bradley and Spiegel consider their friendship very special, according to sources close to both men.

“I see it when they greet each other, the feeling of good will and pride in Abe Spiegel’s eyes,” said one source.