When you meet Marc Saxe, your first impression will be that he’s calm—and always ready with a smile. He doesn’t fit the stereotype of someone who sells timeshare properties—and perhaps that’s because his background is also not what you would expect.
Saxe is 70 (“Telling you that is like being shot in the head—it’s a big number!” he says) and a Palm Desert resident; he was born in Indianapolis and grew up in Dallas. He spent a large chunk of his life shuttling back and forth between Texas and Colorado before finally settling in Southern California.
Saxe and his older sister were born into a family of Lower East Side New York Jews. His parents had been high school sweethearts, yet subsequent marriages combined two families so that, as Saxe claims, “My aunt is also my cousin!”
Saxe’s father was in the fur business when the family moved to Dallas, and later became a representative for several clothing lines before opening his own business.
“My dad got ill in 1963,” recalls Saxe, “and he was treated for an aortic aneurism by none other than the famous Houston surgeons, Dr. Michael DeBakey and Dr. Denton Cooley. That was a big deal!”
Saxe recalls browsing in an old book store and finding a Yale University album with the name of his grandfather—one of the first Jews to get a law degree from that school. “I remember the name had been scratched through and a Jewish star drawn next to it. You don’t forget things like that.”
Growing up in North Dallas, Saxe and his family lived in a largely Jewish area of the city, and he was unaware of discrimination in that setting. “While in high school, I remember spending many nights a week attending open houses for Jewish kids in a very supportive environment.”
He attended college at the University of Houston, majoring in political science with a minor in computer science and math. “I actually dropped out after one semester, because I wanted to see if I would get drafted, but then I went back,” he says. “I actually thought I might become a lawyer, like Perry Mason. But then the 1960s came along. My brother-in-law was in Vietnam, and I felt pressured by the threat of the draft. The people in student government were making sense to me, so I got involved in the free speech environment at UH. In the late 1960s, the counter culture was really happening.”
It’s not surprising Saxe gravitated toward jobs in sales, given his father’s background. “My first job was when my dad was working at the Merchandise Mart in Dallas. His friend gave me some stuff they had leftover and told me to go sell it. I knocked on doors, and I did sell it all—even things like mustache wax, for heaven’s sake. I also worked selling ice cream.”
Through all those years, Saxe was also interested in music. He began playing the guitar at age 14.
“I played around with friends and at the occasional restaurant. Some of my friends had moved to Austin, where the music environment was really happening in Texas,” he says.
Saxe moved to Denver and got a job teaching music. He also went into a graduate program in architecture for a year. “I eventually went back to Austin to hang with my old friends. Then I (went) back to Boulder, doing landscape design and working with developers.
“I was constantly going back and forth between Texas and Colorado, but I realized I was in my mid-20s and needed to get serious about guitar and music if I was ever going to. I originally came to Southern California to go to the famed Dick Grove School of Music in L.A. I had to choose between performance art and composing/arranging. I chose the latter.
“I went back to Colorado in the early 1980s and focused on the production side of music. I’m still writing. I like to write songs that tell a story. I’m working on putting in a home-recording studio, and I wouldn’t mind being a ‘one hit wonder’ and hearing one of my songs on the radio.”
When Saxe answered an ad to sell timeshares, he got hooked, and is still in that business today.
“In the old days,” he says, “there were a lot of con artists. I used to say half were idiots, but a quarter knew what they were doing. I didn’t want to teach anymore, so I learned how to do it, and found it was fun. I was talking to real people, and it was like sitting around just talking with friends. I don’t know any other job that lets you put aside everything about your own situation and just focus on the fun and economics and emotions associated with what you can offer to others.
“Selling is a lot like acting. You have to have a different persona so you can effectively respond to different people and their needs. The timeshare business is perfect for someone like me.”
Saxe met Cathy, his wife of 32 years, in 1985 at Antone’s, an iconic site near the University of Texas campus in Austin. “It was April Fool’s Day, her birthday, and I was hanging with some friends. She and some of her girlfriends came in, and I asked her to dance. She said it was her birthday, so I gave her a kiss. Then I got her phone number. We were married less than a year later. I have to say, Cathy stabilized me. She’s the keel to the boat.”
Saxe’s philosophy of life: “A tai chi master once said to me, ‘You don’t dig a lot of holes; you want to dig one deeply.’ That never made sense to me. I admit I’m something of a dilettante, and I wanted to dig lots of holes—not get stuck doing the same thing all the time. I guess I’m totally schizophrenic: Each thing I do fills some part of my personality. I don’t see how someone can walk through life and be blind to everything other than what they do.
”There’s a median in life. I like being in the middle of everything. If you look around, there’s always somebody better off and somebody worse off. My feeling is that you need to be happy with where you are.”
If you know Marc Saxe, you can see that he is.
Anita Rufus is also known as “The Lovable Liberal,” and her radio show airs Sundays at noon on KNews Radio 94.3 FM. Email her at Anita@LovableLiberal.com. Know Your Neighbors appears every other Wednesday.