I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

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RONALD HAMOWY
ROTHBARD AND HAYEK:
A PERSONAL MEMORY
Biographical outlines of the life and work of Murray N. Rothbard and F.A.
Hayek—listing their major achievements and their accomplishments, awards and honors—
are easily available. Rather, I thought I would recount a few of the many fond memories I
have of these two men, which might give you a small sense of what they were like and how
I felt toward them.
I first met Murray and Joey in the mid-1950s, soon after starting college, through
George Reisman, who had been a friend of mine since junior high school. George and I
formed part of a group of somewhat strange kids who had little in common with our fellow
students. While we shared a wry sense of humor that kept us continually laughing whenever
we were together, we each had our own private eccentricity, George’s being to read Adam
Smith’s Wealth of Nations from cover to cover while still in the ninth grade. George had
managed to find his way to Ludwig von Mises’s Thursday evening seminar at New York
University and I began joining him when I moved back to New York City from Ithaca in
1956. It was there that I became acquainted with Murray and Joey, and this soon flourished
into a very close friendship.
From that time until Murray’s death in 1995, their apartment on 88th Street and
Broadway was a second New York home for me whenever I visited the city, and I felt as
comfortable there as at my mother’s apartment in Queens. Nor was I the only regular guest.
Among the regulars were George Reisman, Ralph Raico, and Leonard Liggio who, together
with Murray and Joey, spent most of our time together doubled over with laughter at our
burlesques of the social democratic left and the National Review right.
Murray and Joey’s guests, especially we regulars, were always warmly received and
made to feel welcomed no matter how late we stayed, which occasionally was as late as
five or six in the morning. Joey was a terribly generous hostess and no matter how often
I or other members of our group showed up, she would bring out a tray laden with liquor
and mixes.
Since we were all ardent movie fans, we often went to the movie houses on Broadway,
especially to the New Yorker, a revival house that served us in the same way as does Turner
Classic Movies today. And it seemed that when we weren’t spoofing our enemies or composing
parody operas (Murray’s magnum opus was a Randian operetta entitled “Mozart was a Red”)
we spent our evenings playing board games (nothing as intellectual as chess, mind you, but
those whose boxes were customarily marked “fun for ages 8 to 80”) like Mille Borne, Monopoly,