The talents and accomplishments of celebrated immigration attorney Leon Wildes and his two sons, Michael and Mark, aren’t limited to the legal profession.
15 Madison Avenue is one of those distinguished older high rises on Manhattan’s East Side where uniformed guards sign in everyone visiting its well-heeled occupants. The lobby impresses with its gleaming marble floors and walls baroque coffered ceilings painted in gilt and autumnal colors and a long bank of ornately sculpted brass elevators. A hushed ride in the walnut-paneled cars leads to the sixth floor home to Wildes & Weinberg specialists in immigration law.
Some people are blessed with the good fortune to get in on the ground floor of a growth business and Mr. Leon Wildes Esq. is one of them. When he decided as a newly minted lawyer in the late 1950s to specialize in immigration law he had no idea that the potential clientele would one day burgeon into the millions and that immigration would turn into one of the nation’s hottest political issues. Wildes & Weinberg founded in 1960 has grown into one of the country’s premier immigration firms. Its successes have enabled Leon Wildes to use his time talents and resources to help the Jewish community in significant ways. Today he works with his two accomplished sons who assist in carrying out their father’s legacy of law and service to the community.
It’s a huge office. As the secretary takes coats and leads us in we pass scores of cubicles and office doors housing a staff of close to fifty. Arriving in Michael Wildes’s spacious office we’re greeted by the family troika: Leon Wildes white haired and professorial-looking in rimless glasses and a lawyerly gray suit; older son Michael Wildes in his mid-forties a media-genic former mayor of Englewood NJ; and Mark Wildes the fair-haired lanky younger son who also went to law school then found his calling as a dedicated kiruv rabbi.
Each man has distinguished himself in his own way. But behind the Madison Avenue opulence of the office and the framed diplomas hanging on the walls lie three men who are in many ways simple ehrliche Yidden who desire nothing more than to do right by their community. And according to Mr. Wildes senior they are merely continuing to live according to the ways originally modeled to him by his father Mr. Harry Wildes z”l.
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