AL SOMMER SPOKE ABOUT "GOOD PEOPLE, IMPORTANT PROBLEMS AND WORKABLE LAW" IN A SPEECH DELIVERED TO THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE COMMISSION in 1984
AA ("Al") Sommer, Jr., served as Commissioner of the SEC from 1973 to 1976 [sic]. Mr. Sommer died on January 14, 2002.
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"It is a great privilege in any event for me to be here at this annual high point of the Commission year. It is an even greater pleasure and privilege to be here in the year in which the Commission has celebrated its 50th anniversary.

"As Frank Wheat pointed out recently, 'whenever two or more old SEC hands get together, with or without martinis (parenthetically it is hard to think of martinis without thinking of the late beloved Ray Garrett ) they usually fall to reminiscing about what happened when they were there.'

"I'm no exception to what might be called, 'Wheat's law.' The last time I spoke to a large group of staffers was when I took leave of the Commission in April 1976; the time before that was when I joined the Commission in August 1973. In between there were the three years of my life in which joy and satisfaction and happiness peaked, the three best years of my life. I expressed that judgment of the years in April 1976, nothing since then has caused me to modify that judgment in the least. It is not to flatter that I say the biggest reason for that were the freewheeling, enormously stimulating, utterly delightful times I had working with the staff -- indeed, "good people" -- on, indeed, "important problems". Were I to let nostalgia run free, you would miss lunch, dinner and more, and I would "get the hook". But surely simply a partial enumeration of some of the "important problems" of that day will evoke in many of you vivid memories: questionable payments, fixed commissions, the '75 amendments, municipal securities. "Good people": Harvey Pitt, Alan Levenson, Aaron Levy, Syd Mendelson, Lee Pickard, Sandy Burton and so many, many others, not to mention my colleagues on the Commission: Garrett, Hills, Pollack, Owens, Evans and Loomis."

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