Wildorf M. Yousseff (A Better Life)

Wildorf M. Yousseff, the hardly respectable member of a highly respectable immigrant family. While his name might immediately make you think of the golden sand and the bubbling wells of the Middle East, the land of his ancestry, his life is a bit less foreboding. Some 73 years ago, Wildorf’s grandparents migrated from Karachi, Pakistan to the United States. After struggling to find work in New York City, due to the massive influx of Irish and Scottish immigrants to the region, his grandparents ventured north to Canada where they found work and a home in what was then and remains to this day the city Quebec, Ontario. They raised an only child and they named him Yousseff Yousseff. Oddly enough the practice of repeating the first and last name for clarification is quite common in Arab culture. Nonetheless, Yousseff was the first generation in his family’s lineage to be presented with freedom and opportunity straight from the womb of his mother. He did not take this opportunity lightly. From an early age, he worked along side his father (Wildorf’s grandfather) in a bustling garment factory making mostly canvas duffel bags for the Canadian Military. He learned the business and later grew it into a textile mini-empire whereby he furnished most all forms of compartments and luggage used in military life in Canada.

Years later, he and his wife give birth to a son, Wildorf. Wildorf M. Yousseff was optimistically named for William Waldorf, the great business from New York, who Yousseff greatly admired and who today has a luxury hotel that still bears his name, the prized Waldorf Astoria (currently owned by Hilton Hotels). While Waldorf was the intended name of his son, the administrators in the local hospital misspelled the name at birth and it would have been more trouble than it was worth to correct their child’s name. Yousseff grew up in a very well to do household as you can imagine from the description of Yousseff and his business saavy in the textile industry. Like many in this generation, however, what is easily given is not always respected. The charity and opportunity bestowed him by his family was not treated as special but more appropriately as a birth rite. This entitlement mentality carried through to his later years as his father did what he could to coach young Wildorf along in business in hopes that one day he could leave his mature and successful empire to his son.

Wildorf, being the ungreatful offspring that he was set out on his own path, determined to outdo his father with little effort. Remember, Wildorf is part of a generation who believes in working less but obtaining more. Self-sacrifice had miraculously escaped his DNA. He began selling narcotics and was very successful until he was busted in the summer of 2002. It was then that Wildorf was stripped of his Canadian citizenry and exiled to his former country of Pakistan, a place until now he had never once ventured, although the language had been spoken in his household in Canada so he was not totally helpless. After weeks appealing his case and talks with his father, he was allowed back into The States where he was enlisted as a New York City cab driver. He remains in this job today.

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