Chapter 1

To say that the past four and a half months in Ron Zizzler's life had been a bummer would be a gross understatement. It was without a doubt the worst time period he had gone through in his fifty years of life.

It started when he was at work in his office which was located in the Willis Tower. He was waiting for a phone call from his wife of twenty five years Laura, telling him that she had finished her shopping on Michigan Avenue and was ready to meet Ron for a late lunch. The phone call he received however was from a police officer who told him that his wife had been involved in a motor vehicle accident and was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Ron rushed over to the hospital. When he told the emergency room staff at the hospital who he was and who he wanted to see, he was shown to an interview room. He was told he would be seen shortly. In a little while a doctor with some blood on the blue scrubs he was wearing came into the room and broke the news to Ron that Laura was dead. He said that she was brought into the hospital with serious multiple injuries and was non-responsive. They tried to do everything they could but they couldn't revive her. The doctor left Ron in the room alone to grieve.

After some thinking about what had just happened and what he had lost, Ron wiped away his tears and left the room. He was met by a police officer who expressed his condolences and told him what had happened. The officer said an older senior citizen who was driving his vehicle didn't see and ran a red light. That vehicle was struck by a vehicle which had the green light causing the senior citizen's vehicle to lose control and strike five pedestrians that were standing on the street corner waiting for the light to change to cross the street. Two of the pedestrians were killed with Laura being one of them while the other three being seriously injured.

Ron thanked the officer for the information and left the hospital. He phoned his secretary Gloria and quickly told her what had happened and said he wouldn't be back in the office for a few days.

The wake and the funeral were attended by a large group of mourners. Laura was a popular high school chemistry teacher which resulted in a large number of present and former students to attend as well as current and former teachers along with Ron's son Kyle, friends and relatives.

Ron was in a daze at the wake has he thanked those who attended and received their condolences. He didn't remember much of what they individually said. They as a group all said Laura's passing was a great loss. He did remember the large funeral procession to the cemetery. A number of Laura's former students had become police officers and they provided a police escort to the cemetery.

After Laura was laid to rest and Ron was back in their house, he had time to think about their life together. Ron had gone to Northwestern University on a football scholarship. While he had been a quarterback in high school, he was converted to a defensive back at the university. He did get into a few games and made two interceptions in his freshman year. At the end of the year he received a physical which disclosed that he was starting to lose his hearing. The diagnosis was that the physical contact he was receiving in playing football was causing the hearing loss.

The coach and the university were a class operation. Ron was told that because of his deteriorating hearing condition he didn't need to play football and he would retain his full four year scholarship. Ron was an excellent student and received his undergraduate degree in finance.

When Ron was a senior at the university Laura was a freshman. She was a sister of a good friend of his and was very good looking. Some would say that she was the epitome of what a good looking college co-ed should be. It wasn't till after both Ron and Laura had graduated that he started dating her and three months later he proposed to her. They were married shortly thereafter and were blessed with having a son they named Kyle.

After receiving his undergraduate degree, Ron went on to receive his MBA degree from the university. The university graduate school was ranked in the top five universities in the nation in awarding this degree.

Laura started teaching at a local high school and with taking some night and summer classes received a Master's degree.

Because of his MBA degree Ron was recruited heavily and was hired by a large investment bank that also marketed mutual funds as an investment analyst. He was performing well in doing this job and had made some very good stock recommendations.

Ron had been employed there for two years when he received his second performance evaluation which was excellent. For his response to the evaluation, he attached a six page single space previously written response which recommended that that the firm offer a new type of mutual fund which he termed a 'Transition Fund'.

He said there currently were two schools of thoughts on stock selection; the Efficient Market Hypothesis which said that all known information on a stock is immediately reflected in the price of the stock so an investor cannot beat the market and should invest in index funds. Somewhat opposing that was the theory that investor psychology plays a large part in stock selection and that affects the price of a stock.

Chapter 2 »