Word: manila
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Born Theodore Lieweraenowski in New York City, Lewin was a man who had had several brushes with the law but no convictions when he set out in 1939 to promote wrestling matches and open a cabaret in Manila. When the Japanese attacked the Philippines, Lewin, no man to duck a fight, enlisted and was captured on Bataan. At the Cabanatuan prison camp he proved his organizing ability by setting up a food delivery from outside that kept the P.W.s from starvation and the Japanese guards in pin money...
...Back in Manila, proudly wearing MacArthur's Medal of Freedom, Lewin opened a cabaret and became the city's leading sports promoter (including the world's bantamweight boxing championship match in 1947). But he hit the really big money with a gambling joint called the Key Club off Manila's Dewey Boulevard. He was also a generous spender who won friends by donating $15,000 to a polio clinic and giving freely to orphans, lepers, war refugees...
...powerful. In 1949 the daughter of Vice President Fernando Lopez divorced her American husband, who got custody of their two-year-old son. Lewin helped her kidnap the boy in New Mexico, make it to San Francisco after a breakneck car-and-plane chase, and eventually reach safety in Manila...
Lewin, away from the Philippines when the order was issued, turned up briefly in other spots-gambling joints in Tokyo, in Guatemala City-but was determined to get back to Manila by hook or crook. One day a small Panama-flag freighter named Maria Ines sailed into Manila harbor, ostensibly to pick up a cargo of fruit for Australia. But Magsaysay's alert FBI-style National Bureau of Investigation had been tipped off that Lewin owned the ship, had signed on its crew and was aboard himself. They found him listed as second mate and refused...
...Vice President Fernando Lopez-moved into Malacanan Palace, and things began going better for Lewin. On the ground that the Philippine government wanted him for $68,450 in back taxes, President Garcia allowed Lewin to get a temporary visa. Eagerly Lewin moved back into business, opened a fancy new Manila nightclub. Each time his temporary visa expired, Lewin managed to get it renewed-first by the President's Cabinet, then by the President's executive secretary, then by the Foreign Office, the fourth time by the President personally. When his time ran out early this year, Judge...