Thornton met Hannabel Phillips six months after he got back from Europe and was released by the army. Hannabel was a beautiful, lively girl from Virginia. Thornton was mad for her. His father had left him a small amount of money. It wasn’t a great deal, but it was a start. They married in 1945. She was working in an exclusive dress shop uptown in New York and had a style of her own. She had the same passion for fashion and high-quality merchandise that Thornton did. She was a year younger than Thorny, as his friends called him. She hadn’t been to college, but she was a bright girl. Neither of them was afraid to disagree with the other. Thornton loved a good argument, even with his wife, and she was a worthy opponent. He had strong opinions, and he never lost sight of his dreams.
Their son, Tucker, was born on their first anniversary. There had been complications during the birth, and the doctors told them afterwards that Hannabel wouldn’t be able to have other children, but she and Thornton were happy with their only son. Tucker was a strapping baby boy.
He didn’t have his parents’ fiery, outgoing nature, but he had an aptitude for math even as a child, and a passion for finance. He talked about being a banker or an accountant when he grew up. He learned to add and subtract before he learned to read. He had his ancestors’ bankers’ blood in his veins and none of the entrepreneurial “retail blood” of his grandfather Jeremiah or his father.
Tucker was a quiet child. He and his father had little in common, and Tucker barely saw him. Thorny was working two jobs during the week, and a third on the weekends. Hannabel stayed home to take care of their son, and she was clever at helping Thorny save his money. She made their clothes, upholstered their furniture, and made their curtains. Four years after Thorny had come home from the war, he had enough money to go to a bank, looking respectable and sufficiently financially sound to borrow the rest of what he needed to open a store. Twenty-one years after his father had had to close the most exclusive department store in the city, Thorny opened his own small, very elegant shop, far downtown from where his father’s much larger store had been. He was thirty years old and full of great ideas. He had an instinct for men’s clothing and Hannabel taught him what he needed to know about women’s apparel.
The store was an instant success and turned into a goldmine. Ten years later, in 1960, he bought a large old building near his small exclusive shop in the same poor neighborhood and turned the inside into a thing of beauty. It was like a secret treasure in a place where you’d least expect it. Brooke’s was an institution by then, famous for its luxurious, elegant clothes for men and women. The staff brought over the latest fashions from Europe and worked closely with high-end American designers, often influencing what they produced. Brooke’s had one-of-a-kind pieces. The store was a gem, although the outside of the building itself was ugly. It was on the fringes of a marginal neighborhood, so Thorny had bought the building cheap, but no one seemed to care about the location, as he had guessed they wouldn’t. Inside, the store was elegant and luxurious, and smelled of fine leather and expensive perfume. The décor was avant-garde and up-to-date. The most elegant society women in New York came from uptown to shop at Brooke’s. They knew they would always find something special there, something that no one else would be wearing, handmade knits from Italy, and evening gowns from Paris. They special-ordered dresses from Brooke’s own designers and bought alligator handbags in every color.
Thornton reveled in the sheer pleasure of what he did and what he sold. The merchandise in the store was known for its high quality and stylishness. He brought samples home to Hannabel sometimes to ask her advice, and she came into the store to give him her opinion on displays and merchandise. They were a team, in the most modern way, although Hannabel didn’t work at the store. She didn’t need to. She had an unfailing eye where fashion was concerned. Like Thornton, she knew their merchandise by heart, and she knew even better what women would want to wear next season or next year. With Hannabel’s instincts and his own, Thornton built Brooke and Son into a booming business. He fully expected his son, Tucker, to come into the business with him when he graduated from Princeton. Thorny had taken Tucker with him to Princeton as a child when he went to annual reunions. He had no trouble convincing Tucker to attend Princeton, but it was nearly impossible to get him interested in the store. Another offshoot of their gene pool ran through his veins. As he got older, the only thing that held Tucker’s attention was finance. He had no choice but to comply with his father’s demands. Thornton made it clear to his son at an early age that he expected him to work at the store. Tucker felt as though a life sentence in prison awaited him when he graduated. He begged to go to business school, just to postpone going to work at the store. Thornton granted him that wish, deciding that having a master’s degree in business might be useful for them.