Who Knew!: A Collector's Memoir of Unforgettable Stories

Drawing on family lore and nonstop high jinks, Steven W. Katz weaves an inspiring multigenerational tale of love, war, boxing, and the thrill of the chase.

An attorney by trade, a real estate developer by profession, a photographer by nature, a collector at heart, and a member of New Jersey’s State Athletic Control Board (which regulates boxing) for more than twenty-five years, Katz has met many of the world’s best-known leaders, athletes, and entertainers and has nearly three hundred signed baseballs and numerous classic photographs to show for it, many of which he’s taken himself.

He is the man you want to walk into a crowded room with, the sort who would wear a yellow blazer on his seventh-grade field trip. The one with enough connec - tions to step past the velvet ropes—or the chutzpah to duck under them.

The best part of any autograph or photo, of course, is the story behind it, and Katz recalls them all:

• Cadging his way, along with his brother Richard, into Muhammad Ali’s locker room after the legendary 1974 Ali-Frazier rematch at Madison Square Garden—and taking a remarkable photo to prove it 
• Kibitzing ringside in Atlantic City with fight goers like Donald Trump, Mike Tyson, Willie Mays, Tom Brady, and Denzel Washington 
• Persuading New Jersey Governors Dick Codey and Donald DiFrancesco to participate in a video skit for his beloved wife Ruth’s birthday 
• Slipping illicitly into the VIP section at Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration, camera in hand, with a little help from the late stalwart political correspondent Roger Mudd and capturing images to rival Time’s or Newsweek’s
• Meeting Steven Spielberg and the cast of Schindler’s List at a Washington, DC reception, and then again for its re-release twenty-five years later
  
  ​Yet at our cores, we are not only who we think we are but what our families make us. Katz’s charismatic father, Stanley, a member of the elite 82nd Airborne, was shot down over Normandy on D-Day, and his mother, the anchor of the family, hailed from the venerable Walters line (along with her cousin Barbara). Both his father and mother-in-law, Abe and Millie Zuckerman, were Holocaust survivors, the former miraculously plucked from the concentration camps by Oskar Schindler. Abe would come to America after the war and contribute, like many Jewish immigrants, to the building of the postwar New Jersey suburbs. The intimacy of these family connections has indel - ibly shaped Katz’s Jewish faith, as well as his ideals, patriotism, and philanthropy. His stories are a timely reminder that the winds of fortune are there to be harnessed, if only we will cultivate the skill and muster the daring to capture them—for ourselves and the next generation.