Twelve-year-old Pauline Frommer made her first trip to Europe at the age of two and a half months. Bright and precocious, she seems a natural to succeed her father in the business one day.
Arthur Frommer's success story began shortly after he graduated from Yale Law School in 1953. While serving in the Army in Europe, he used every weekend to travel. "At the end of my stay in the Army," he recalls, "having nothing to do, I sat down and wrote a little volume called The GI Guide to Europe. It was written strictly from memory; it had no prices or phone numbers. I went home and started practicing law. Then I got a cable saying that all 50,000 copies had sold out immediately."
Arthur used his first summer vacation from the law firm to go back to Europe and rewrite his travel guide, for civilian readers. It became "a monster which ate up my life." But he has never regretted his choice of careers.
"The book coincided with a revolution of American travel habits," says Arthur, not giving himself credit for being a prime force behind this revolution. "When I was in college, it was unheard of for young people to go off to Europe. It was too far, too expensive. The students of the early 1960s became the first students in history to travel in great numbers to Europe. Many people think the country was greatly changed by this massive travel."
Arthur and Hope moved to the West Side in 1965, just after their daughter was born. Among their favorite neighborhood businesses: DelPino Shoes, which has some of the lowest prices in the city for quality Italian footwear, and the Jean Warehouse, where Pauline buys many of her clothes.
These days, while Hope is busy directing a play by Pamela O'Neill, Arthur is working on several new projects. One is a course he will be teaching at the New School starting in February. Titled "Great Cities of Western Europe," the course will concentrate on urban problems and their political and social solutions.
But Arthur's biggest ambition these days is to expand his company's week-long chartered tour of Jerusalem into a two-week package for Jerusalem and Cairo. Such a tour, he believes, would help create a bond of understanding in the Middle East.
"It's a dream of mine," says Arthur, "that we might be a force for peace sometime. It may not happen overnight, but I'm sure it will come."
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EASTSIDER WILLIAM GAINES
Publisher and founder of Mad magazine