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Last
night in front of the GM Building plaza and FAO Schwarz. 8:30
PM. Photo: JH.
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Another
beautiful September day in New York. Showers
predicted, but no show. Only sunshine and high flying clouds.
Tonight there was a very important event, the New Yorkers for
Children 2003 Fall Gala at which Senator Hillary Clinton was
presented, by Mayor Bloomberg, the Nicholas
Scoppetta Award for Service to Children. This was
at Cipriani 42nd Street.
It was a very high profile event with co-chairs Amy Astley,
Oscar de la Renta and Hugh Jackman, and
vice-chairs Mona Ackerman, Susan Burden, Debbie Bancroft,
Beth Rudin DeWoody, Susan Fales-Hill, Dayssi Olarte de Kanavos, Peggy
Penn, Renee Rockefeller, Tim Schifter, Oma Shulman, Kelly Behun Sugarman and Anna
Wintour.
This was a fund-raiser and I don’t have the final figures but
I’ll bet they did well with this crowd of chairs and co-chairs
who really know how to go out there and bring in the cash. Tables
started at $50,000 per and Cipriani 42nd is a big hall. After dinner
there was dancing with music provided by DJ Tom Finn.
New Yorkers for Children was started as an organization to assist
foster children in the city. It was the brainchild of Nicholas Scoppetta,
the New York City Commissioner who was himself a foster child. This
was created just a few years ago but with a core group of movers
and shakers, led by Mr. Scoppetta, along with Mr. de la Renta, Mrs.
DeWoody, Mrs. Burden and a few other civic/community minded individuals,
they turned it into a must-do major charity benefit. |
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Outside
The Sherry-Netherland. 8:20 PM.
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I
was farther up the avenue at the Sherry-Netherland
at Doubles where Chris Meigher, publisher
of Quest, of which I am editor-in-chief, and Jan-Patrick
Schmitz of Mont Blanc were holding a small private
dinner honoring seven such like-minded “New Yorkers Who
Make A Difference.” They were: Blaine Trump,
Nancy Stahl, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, Liz Smith, Cynthia Lufkin,
Louis Auchincloss and Dominick Dunne.
It was an intimate dinner – at least compared to the goings-on
down at Cipriani 42nd Street. Six of the honorees were present (Princess
Yasmin was out of town.) There were four tables of ten – mainly
the honorees, friends and partners, wives, husbands, etc. The group
are also part of the Mont Blanc advertising campaign in the magazine.
It is a noble concept as well as a Warholian method for drawing attention
to people, for all of the aforementioned have made major contributions
to this enormous community called New York.
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Portrait
of PYAK drawn with a Mont Blanc pen by Julia Sverchuk
for the Mont Blanc advertising campaign in Quest magazine.
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Nancy
Stahl has for years been head of the Boy’s Club
whose charter is to help the kids. Blaine Trump has been steering
the great God’s Love We Deliver organization started at the
outset of the AIDS crisis for feeding the needy and the infirm.
It has grown into a major organization, delivering daily meals
to thousands of New Yorkers.
Yasmin Khan started the Rita Hayworth Gala (in honor of her mother,
the great movie musical star) for the Alzheimer’s Association
which has raised almost $30 million for research into the dread affliction.
Cynthia Lufkin as a volunteer for Safe Horizon, has raised the public
consciousness about this great organization which assists the hundreds
of thousands of victims (mainly women and children) of domestic abuse
and other crimes in the City.
The great Liz Smith, syndicated columnist without peer, major contributor
of indefatigable energy and influence to so many many civic causes – Literacy
Partners is most prominent among them, was only one of three writers
honored, the other two being Louis Auchincloss and Dominick Dunne.
Chris Meigher, my remarkably silver-tongued publisher (I’m
always tongue twisted to the point of uncharacteristic silence at
these affairs; as I was tonight), paid tribute to each thoroughly.
Listening, I could only think of how amazing it is in this great
big town with all its push and shove and relentless ambition and
drive, that there are these people who participate Big Time in the
Process and also give so much in a wide variety of ways to the community
itself. |
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Inside
Doubles for dinner
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I
was also thinking, as I often do, about myself
in the process, sitting here sharing these tables and these
moments with such distinguished people, especially those writers,
all of whom I have long admired. This is never a small matter
for me.
Years ago when I lived in Los Angeles, an editor friend of mine, Larry
Ashmead (who just retired two months ago after more than
forty years at HarperCollins); Larry used to send me copies of Quest magazine.
It was a tiny little slip of a magazine, with almost exclusively
high end real estate ads. It was known to many as “a real estate
magazine.” However, founded by the inimitable Heather
Cohane, a diminutive Englishwoman with a highly refined
imagination as well as a strong taste for American Can-do, the editorial
content of Quest was mainly social history – something
that was always up my alley. I was therefore always intrigued and
many times would read through an issue thinking, indeed saying aloud
to myself: “I can do this.”
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Dominick
Dunne
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Well can’t
we all?
I was still in the process of making a professional career and most
of my experience was in my imagination. Cut to: fifteen or ten years
later, now the editor of that magazine, now the property of Mr. Meigher, Quest has
grown into a solid publishing entity in New York. The first eighteen
pages of edit each month includes eighteen accompanying pages of
national advertising – always an achievement in the magazine
business.
So there I was sitting there in the posh Doubles Club on this night,
in this distinguished company – all the aforementioned – and
I was thinking about myself. About how I would never have dared imagine
all those years ago that dreams and pathways would have actualized
this.
I was also thinking, as it often passes through my thoughts under
such circumstances, how the city draws amongst its infinite characters
and personalities, those people we’ve known all our lives,
no matter where we come from; those people who are always thinking
about and looking after the rest of us, like those among us tonight
including the great numbers down at Cipriani 42nd Street. God bless
us all.
Meanwhile, PS and all that, even farther up the avenue, earlier in
the evening was a book party toasting Ann Richards and Dr.
Richard Levine and their book (already covered here in NSYD) I’m
Not Slowing Down. Two more remarkable people and New Yorkers
(no matter where she’s come from). It was at the Levines’ house.
Mrs. Levine, Ellen, is the editor-in-chief of Good Housekeeping and
a very visible and prominent member of the publishing community in
New York. Mrs. Richards is, as practically everybody knows, the former
Governor of Texas and the woman NO ONE WOULD MIND being President.
Although she said she’ll never never .. ever ... run for any
office again. So New York’s got her. All this and heaven too. |
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Louis
Auchincloss
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Liz
Smith and Jamee Gregory
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Nancy
Stahl and Cynthia Lufkin
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Robert
Trump, Emilia Fanjul, Blaine Trump, and Mai and Ridgely
Harrison
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Dan
Lufkin and Jan-Patrick Schmitz
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