Budding cherry blossoms cast a late afternoon shadow. 4:40 PM. Photo: JH.
Cool and sunny early April day in New York. Michael’s was crowded. The decibal level had been spiked by something. Someone said it was the first day back at school after the vacation. Was that it?
A lot of women lunching – not that Michael’s doesn’t always have a lot of women regulars. Evelyn Lauder -- at what looked like a working lunch with five other women. Closeby Laurie Tisch was lunching with two woman and a man. Peter Duchin was being entertained (clearly) by three women who looked to be old friends. I was lunching with Silda Wall Spitzer, the new First Lady of the State of New York and her friends Marcia Vickers (from Fortune Magazine) and Maggie Jones who is the Executive Director of Mrs. Spitzer’s non-profit: Children for Children.
This is the second or third time we’ve lunched together, having been introduced by Marcia Vickers who went to college with Silda. All three women at the table were Southern girls by upbringing. Southern girls do have a different social presence than Northern girls. It’s a kind of graciousness that is very polite and warm. Even when it isn’t. This is not to say Northern girls aren’t gracious too. Or polite. It’s just different. It’s a mode of behavior. Oh, you know what I’m talking about.
Maggie Jones, Silda Wall Spitzer, DPC, and Marcia Vickers (photo: Steve MIllington).
We talked about that. Silda had just finished reading “War and Peace.” For the first time. (How many of us can even say that?) It had been sitting there and sitting there and one day she decided to jump in. It was very interesting, she reported; really good, all those characters and their modes of behavior.
This eventually led to the discussion of children and the very pressing problems of education of children in America. It’s not news to anybody that we are in a very great educational crisis in many ways.
Both Silda and Marcia have young children. Silda started Children for Children with some friends and associates to promote the idea of volunteering among youth, as well as her own young daughters, to promote hands-on participation in the community. Community is a very strong and very neglected word in today’s world. Young children today are growing up often without it. At least without the kind of communities we all grew up in not all that long ago.
So she started Children for Children to promote the idea of children helping each other. It almost sounds like too much, doesn’t it? And she wanted especially to get kids into the under-served schools to help each other. It almost sounds like Pollyana, no? Well, they’re doing it. They have young volunteers from all over the country participating in their programs.
These are the people who are going to save our world. Or let it go. To give is to invest in our own futures.
Evelyn Lauder stopped by the table on her way out. Evelyn has raised more than $160 million for her Breast Cancer Research Foundation. If you’re around her while she’s at it, you can see why. She’s raised an additional tens of millions for other charities. With her standing there talking to the women, you couldn’t help being reminded that these things, these ambitious, even pie-in-the-sky objectives can be met. Think Children for Children.
In two weeks, on April 24th, they’re holding their 7th annual benefit, “The Art of Giving” at Christie’s on 20 Rockefeller Plaza. They’re celebrating their 11th year of “helping kids Grow Involved.” The money they raise supports its youth service programs. Did you know that “youth service” was a much used term in education these days? They also use the funds to buy essential educational resources for New York City schools struggling to provide quality education to some of the city’s most under-resourced communities.
As hard to believe as it is, during Depression the public schools in the city were academically some of the best in the country. Under-resourced was commonplace in the home maybe, but not in the schools; and “youth service” was what was expected of you. At home.
To donate, auction, or raffle items or to become a part of the 2007 Children For Children benefit committee, call 212.850.4170 or email sara@childrenforchildren.org.
There was a book party for A. Alfred Taubman and his business memoir “Threshold Resistance; The Extraordinary Life of A Luxury Retailing Pioneer” (HarperCollins) at the Four Seasons Restaurant last night, hosted by his friend Dixon Boardman. Mr. Taubman and his beautiful wife Judy are longtime establishment members of the New York/Palm Beach/Southampton social axis and the room was chock full of their peers, neighbors, friends and acquaintances. I took quite a few pictures but of only a handful. I also saw Dominick Dunne, Gloria Schiff, Louise Grunwald, Mica Ertegun, Kenny Lane, Kristie Witker, Jacques Leviant, Carole and George McFadden, Donald and Catie Marron, Oscar and Annette de la Renta, Tory Burch, Pamela Gross, Pepe Fanjul, David Metcalfe, John Radziwill, Billy Rudin, Estelle Greer, James Reginato, Bob Colacello, Christopher Mason, Richard Meier, Kevin Krier, Jamie Niven, Kathy and Bill Rayner, Don Miller, David Koch, Emma Snowden Jones, Woody Johnson and on and on into the night. It was one of those New York parties where a lot of people know a lot of people, at least from other parties they’ve been to. And a lot of people are rich. And powerful. And everybody knows it.
Freddie Melhado, Al Taubman, and Henry Kissinger
Later on in his life, fortune made and mammoth, he invested in the Sotheby’s auction house which was then on the decline. He transformed Sotheby’s and the auction business into the mega-business it is today. He was present and prepared at the powerful impact the auction house had on the art and antiques world. The majority stock in Sotheby’s also enhanced this Midwestern tycoons status in the always-measuring/keeping score world of the New York power corridor. His acquiring a beautiful wife, Judy, an Israeli born divorcee, was also as a brilliant a move, for together they established themselves in these same power corridors, for good.
Then came the grave misfortune. The government lawsuit, the trials, the conviction and the term in prison. Many had the idea that Al Taubman was unfazed by his stay in jail. Many others believed he would be shunned by his social peers when he emerged. Neither matter turned out to be true. Mr. Taubman, as his book so clearly reveals, was proud of his achievements, as well he should have been. A prison sentence, especially for a man with a glorious career behind him, was painful. In “Threshold Resistance” he reiterates his innocence and if you read it, you will too.
Following the book reception (about 400 guests), there were three different dinner parties. Tiffany Dubin, Mr. Taubman’s stepdaughter, entertained a large group at Lever House, while the Taubmans were present at a dinner hosted by Dixon and Arianna Boardman at the Four Seasons, and the Taubman sons and their wives entertained at San Pietro.
Patty and Matt Raynes
Peggy Siegal and Lisa Dennison
Judy Taubman
Dorothy Zinberg
Margo Langenberg and friend
Nina Griscom and Leonel Piraino
Bettina Zilkha
Katherine Bryan
Elizabeth Fondaras
Tiffany Dubin
Judy Ney and Henry Kissinger
George Kennedy, Linda Janklow, and Eleanora Kennedy
Alexandra Trullols and Dixon Boardman
Jose Maria and Alexandra Trullols
Mark Gilbertson and Doug Steinbrecht
Carl Wellner and Deborah Norville
Rachel Hovnanian's bangle bracelet
Rachel Hovnanian and Ellen Niven
Hilary Geary and Christopher Mason
Felicia Taylor and Nancy Silverman
Freddie Melhado with Judy and Ed Ney
Melania and Donald Trump
Alexia Ryan
Candy Hamm and Alexia Ryan
Jane Friedman
Mercedes and Sid Bass who both celebrated birthdays yesterday and the day before, with Judy Taubman
Yanna Avis, Kathleen Hearst, and Pat Kerr
Charles Stevenson and Debbie Bancroft
David Ober and Barbara Cates
Judy Taubman
Kay Meehan and David Beer
Gigi Mortimer and Charlie Ayres
Dr. Richard Bockman and Gale Hayman
Warren and Olivia Hoge
Terry Allen Kramer and Nick Simunek
Annette Tapert and Jane Holzer
Muffie Potter Aston and Dr. Sherrell Aston
Judy Taubman
Pat Patterson
Me, I went with Emma Snowden-Jones and Felicia Taylor up to the new Tom Ford store on Madison Avenue and 70th Street where they were having their opening. It’s a beautiful store. To these American eyes, a kind of chic and hip Paris boutique. Very contemporary, very elegant. There is a bronze d’ore Claude Lalanne desk and chair at the entry way behind a modern painting. Probably a million dollars right there before you. The rooms’s walls are a grey and/or a chocolate brown velvet and polished wood. And steel and glass. It is so damned chic you can’t help thinking “this is really beautiful.”
Mr. Ford was standing just inside one of his showrooms. I wanted to get a picture. I’d never seen him in the flesh before. He’s handsomer than his pictures, smaller (although not small) than I had imagined, trim, beautifully turned out in suit and tie, and when I asked if I could take his picture, he first greeted me, shook my hand and then said “certainly.” I never talked to him after that but left with a very good impression of a very friendly man from Texas who went to Paris and got a tiger by the tail. A chic tail. Tale. There were two black Bentleys, one a coupe and one a sedan, all shiny and new looking just outside the store. Someone said the big one was Tom Ford’s. I started walking up Madison Avenue with its luscious storefronts (the whole next block is Ralph Lauren). For a minute there it seemed like everyone in the world was rich. For a minute there. I hailed a cab and headed home.
