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Running Mates

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When Berry was a UH sophomore, Andrew Monzon, the leader of a small liberal-left campus group called the Progressive Student Network, put together a slate of candidates for the Student Association election, more as a lark than anything else. Their main point was protesting U.S. involvement in the first Gulf War, hardly an issue the Student Association could do much about.

Berry, a candidate for president, offered him a deal: Monzon should run for senator, and then Berry would make him speaker of the association. Monzon says he knew that wouldn't happen because Monzon was relatively unknown. So he insisted that if Berry wanted his support, then Monzon would have to be on the ticket as vice president. After some hesitation, Berry agreed.

Monzon remembers that even then, Berry had an aversion to political labels. The very title of their slate, Coalition for Immediate Action, defies specificity. Monzon recalls that Berry's most significant action in office was a proposal to cut the Student Association budget, a painless move because the cuts wouldn't go into effect until the following year. During the year Berry also successfully pushed for the creation of a student regent position.

"Michael stood out as a person who always went to class and tried to chum up to the professors, sat in the front row, that kind of person," says Monzon. "He's intelligent -- I'll never slight him for that -- but he's always been slick, and you just take everything he says with a grain of salt."

Monzon says the only problem he had with Berry came when several people started questioning overtime payments to Nandy, who by then had a job in the Student Association office. After Monzon raised the issue, he was targeted with a student senate proposal to eliminate his position as vice president. It didn't pass, but he doesn't think the timing was coincidental.

He also jokes that at the time he had a reliable way to determine when Berry was telling the truth.

"He had a horrible facial tic and you could easily tell when he was lying," chuckles Monzon. "It was a blinking and twitching of the right eye. I don't know if he ever noticed or anyone pointed it out to him, but it became a bit of a joke with us. Like, 'Uh-oh, look at Michael's face.' "

Monzon also recalls Berry's fascination with Lyndon Johnson, right down to amateurish attempts at imitating the classic political maneuvers of the old master, including humiliating staffers by forcing them to continue business in awkward places.

"He couldn't do the Johnson treatment because he was never intimidating," explains Monzon. "But there was one time where he was talking to me at UH, and he expected to continue the conversation in the restroom. I was like, 'Nah, I'm not going in there.' "

Monzon, now an HISD magnet school coordinator, recalls encountering his old running mate at a Heights cafe, when Berry was campaigning for City Council. According to Monzon, Berry greeted him effusively and offered his phone number, but Monzon told him, "You know you're never going to answer my calls." The two shared a good-natured laugh and Berry offered a bumper sticker. Monzon took two.

"There was a real nice one with a magnet, so I was able to scrape the 'Berry' off and put something else on," chuckles Monzon. "That's a good kind of bumper sticker."

During Berry's term as student president he became close to several of the school's executives. He and Nandy were regulars at parties hosted by then-chancellor Alex Schilt.

"That was back when UH was blowin' and goin' and really wastefully spending your public dollars," recalls Berry. Since the couple didn't drink, Berry says, they'd grab water glasses for toasts. "It was heady stuff." Berry says he has never used illegal drugs and was something of an anomaly on the student party scene.

"Some people look forward to 'I'm gonna go and lose myself.' Well, I don't like to lose myself. I'm much happier having four friends over for dinner, have a good conversation till late in the night, hustle them off and go to bed," he says. "That's my idea of a good time."

Berry's good time at UH ended when he graduated with honors and a political science degree, then headed to law school at the University of Texas, with some study for a year at the University of Nottingham in England.

When he returned, the couple landed jobs at downtown law firms. Nandy -- she'd gone to UH law school -- went with Haynes and Boone, while Michael signed with Jenkens & Gilchrist. He says he had no sense of accomplishment handling cases that were already under way, and felt trapped by the heavy workload. "I was working a lot of hours, more than any of the associates, and yet by the record I was working just as many, and I didn't see that changing."

After less than a year, he quit.

"I've always believed you should live life like you don't know if there will be a tomorrow. People say, 'Stick it out for a couple of years and see.' I say, 'I don't like it, I'm not going to like it, and life's too short.' "

Berry says he began searching for a new pursuit, "one that wouldn't be too intellectually draining, and that would enable me for a period of years to decide what I'm interested in."

He hit on the idea of real estate. He set up shop in his living room, got a sales license and some referrals from former associates at his old law firm.

"I would sit and look at the phone and hope it would ring. Nandy would call me four or six times a day and make up reasons she was calling, just to get me through. I had to 'eat what I killed' and get people to trust this fair-haired boy, who looks 12 years old, to sell their million- dollar house. It's not easy."

Berry claims that "within a year I knew as much about real estate inside the Loop as anybody." He tells of running the numbers on spreadsheets and compiling more information than veteran realtors.

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