I first met Larry Hull 37 years ago, at a State Association of County Retirement Systems conference in Bakersfield, Calif. I was only 33 and working as a regional vice president for Equitec Institutional Realty Advisers, which was at that time an emerging real estate investment management concern.

After earnestly trying to sit through a rather tiring presentation by one of the 1937 Act county pension funds’ actuaries, we decided to play hooky and go to dinner together at a local Basque restaurant.

Suffice it to say, Larry and I hit it off immediately, and he almost instantly became a mentor for me. (Just three short years prior, I had lost both of my parents to cancer, and Larry and his wife, Connie, stepped in to fill that void in my life.)

A few years later, after I left Equitec and was casting around to try to find a new direction in my life, Larry was there to provide me with encouragement and direction. When I finally decided I was going to start a publis