By Tom Kirvan
Legal News
George Cassar skipped childhood--out of necessity.
He also learned how to become a capitalist during that formative stage in his life.
While most males his age were focused on playing sports or that other time-consuming pastime--chasing girls, Cassar had a different goal in mind while growing up.
Survival.
He did, of course, and now is an estate planning, taxation and probate attorney with the Southfield-based firm of Maddin, Hauser, Wartell, Roth & Heller, where he is a partner.
Yet, even on his pathway to legal success, Cassar hasn't lost sight of his humble upbringing, a time when he juggled multiple jobs to help pay for his Catholic school education and to lend financial support to his mother, a single woman who couldn't read or write but was determined to provide for her four children.
"When my parents separated in 1980, my mother did her best to raise my three older sisters and me by cleaning houses and taking on various other odd jobs that paid very little," said Cassar, whose mother, Maggie, was one of 11 children immigrating from Malta, the tiny Mediterranean country. "It was a constant struggle for her and us, accepting welfare, food stamps and charity from family or strangers. But all the while she insisted that we get a quality education. She knew that was our ticket out of tough times."
Now, each of her four children has found a level of professional success that at best seemed unlikely when they bounced from house to house as the rents kept climbing while they were growing up. Cassar has been practicing law at Maddin Hauser since 1998 and holds a master's in taxation from Wayne State University Law School. His oldest sister, Josephine, is director of financial aid at St. Clair Community College. Middle sister, Janet, is an emergency room doctor, while his youngest sister, Patricia, is a manager at Charter One Bank.
"We had very little money-wise growing up, but what we did have was family, anchored by a mother who believed in us and instilled a strong work ethic in each of us," Cassar said. "A lot of people work their way through college and graduate school. We needed to work our way through junior high, high school, college, and beyond if we were going to have any chance of making it."
Cassar's father, who also immigrated to the U.S. from Malta, owned a party store in Detroit, spending virtually all his time there seven days a week.
"He was seemingly never home," Cassar said of his father. "My mother would make dinner for him at midnight when he would get home from work, believing she needed to provide him a hot meal and not a plate of leftovers. We didn't see a whole lot of him as kids."
After the marital breakup, it quickly became apparent that his father's business had suffered from a series of self-inflicted financial and legal troubles, according to Cassar. The problems left Cassar's mother and her four children to fend for themselves when the alimony and child support ran dry.
"I remember coming home one day when I was 11 and seeing all of our stuff out on the front lawn because we were being evicted," Cassar said. "That is a sight you never want to see. It's hard to know which way to turn at that point and the welfare line was our next stop."
All of Cassar's relatives did what they could to help, but it was one particular aunt and uncle that stood out the most with a helping hand, providing a series of job opportunities that gave a seemingly destitute family a sense of hope.
"My Aunt Maria's then new husband, Robert J. Paquette, who is not a blood relative of ours, in effect became my father and looked after my mother," Cassar said. "He gave us a chance. He didn't give us hand-outs, he gave us a chance to work, to prove ourselves worthy of the opportunities he was providing. My aunt was my mother's youngest sister and my uncle was a self-made man, starting Siding World in Detroit, a business that has grown to locations across Michigan and into Ohio and Indiana. I know now that he was simply giving back."
Cassar attended Our Lady Star of the Sea school in Grosse Pointe Woods as an elementary and junior high student, advancing to Notre Dame High School in Harper Woods. To help with his tuition, he worked as a part-time janitor before and after school, signing over his paycheck.
"That only began to cover the tuition, so my mother pleaded with the priests to allow us to continue to go there, that she would eventually make good on the debt to the school however many years it took," Cassar said. "She worked out a deal with them. She wouldn't take no for an answer. And eventually, by the grace of God, they were all paid back in full."
In addition to his janitorial work, Cassar landed a second job at a doughnut shop, lying about his age in order to obtain the minimum wage post. Other time was spent working for his uncle or cutting lawns and shoveling snow.
"Any hour that I wasn't in school, I was working, doing whatever it took to help us make ends meet," Cassar said. "My sisters did all that they could do as well. It just became a way of life for all of us. There wasn't time for sports or any extracurricular activities at school. We needed to work. It was ingrained in us."
In 1989, Cassar graduated from high school, earning admission to the University of Michigan, where he would obtain a degree in psychology and meet his future wife, Carolyn, a student in the pharmacy program there.
"She lived in Marshall and during the summers I was working all day with a landscape company, then I would drive two hours over there to see her after work," Cassar said. "My car knew the way down I-94 by heart."
Fate would take him to Drake University Law School in Des Moines, where his interest in tax law was piqued.
"I had a wonderful federal tax professor and we really clicked," Cassar said. "He really sparked my interest in tax law."
During law school, Cassar clerked at the U.S. District Court in Detroit, a job that offered no pay but looked good on his resume. The summer clerkship forced him to keep one eye on the law and the other on a landscape job, then to a better paying job with his uncle at Siding World, all the while continuing with the lawn cutting and odd jobs on the side to help pay the bills. Following graduation from law school in 1996, Cassar landed a job with a small Southfield firm, a stepping-stone to his post at Maddin Hauser after he obtained his L.L.M. from Wayne State University Law School.
"When I interviewed here, I asked Michael Maddin (managing partner) to 'just give me a chance,' that I would prove myself to them in short order," Cassar said. "Fortunately, he gave me that chance."
Within the same time frame, he offered another proposal, to his fiancée Carolyn, now a pharmacist with the CVS drug store chain. Their marriage has produced two children, Mia, who will be 7 in April, and R.J., short for Robert John. The 5-year-old is named after Cassar's beloved uncle.
"My uncle, as a father figure, has meant everything to me," Cassar said. "I regularly seek his advice. Always have and always will."
Now, in the tradition of his uncle, Cassar is in a position to give back. He and his sisters began first by helping their mother, a debt of gratitude they gladly repaid for all of her sacrifices on their behalf.
"She led us down the right path and we will be forever grateful," Cassar said. "She will never have another financial need as long as my sisters and I are around. Whatever we have belongs to her first."
With his own family now secure, he reached out to Don Bosco Hall last year, joining its board of directors. The nonprofit agency, founded in 1954 and named for St. John Bosco, a Roman Catholic priest canonized in 1934, is known throughout Metropolitan Detroit for its work benefitting at-risk youth and their families.
"I wanted to become involved with an organization that supports youth programs," Cassar said. "I know, firsthand, the importance of having a support system that gives you a chance in life. I wouldn't be here without it. Hopefully I will be able to help them expand their presence in the community in order to reach more kids in need."
Published: Wed, Mar 3, 2010
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