Social Diary 10/1/03 - At Capitale for the Municipal Art Society's annual gala


	*Last night at Capitale for the Municipal Art Society's annual gala*

The scene during dinner last night at Capitale. 8:25 PM. Photo: JH.

The Municipal Art Society held its annual gala last night at Capitale, the new restaurant/club in the Bowery where they posthumously honored the late George Trescher with their Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Medal, and they filled the place with more than four hundred of George’s friends and acquaintances – and I use neither of those terms lightly.

The medal which was designed by Daniel Chester French, is given to an individual who, by his or her work and deeds, has made an outstanding contribution to the city of New York. The medal bears Mrs. Onassis’ name in recognition of her tireless efforts to preserve and protect New York’s great architecture.

George Trescher
1927 - 2003

It is the highest honor of this century-old organization, and it was fitting that the award ceremony for George was held in a building designed at the beginning of the last century by McKim, Mead and White, and one which he admired (and would have fought for preserving). Capitale was built as the Bowery Saving Bank back when the Bowery was a bustling commercial area of Manhattan (and which has now become a downtown chic area of residence).

George Trescher, who was written about on these pages at the time of his death at age 77 about six months ago, was for many years one of the most influential men and one of the moving forces of the community that is called New York. He was famous to the famous and powerful to the powerful. The public which in general did not know about him benefited from his efforts he exercised with that fame and power to preserve and protect his and their community.

He was a no nonsense planner and administrator in a business almost unique to this or any city – operating professionally as a public relations man/fundraiser, aligning himself with some of the great institutions of the city.

He came here from San Francisco right after the Second World War. He loved New York. He worked for many years for Henry Luce at Time, Inc. and later at Sports Illustrated where he did promotion for the magazine. He left SI in the late 1960s to plan an eighteen-month centennial celebration for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the process he created a new career for himself as an event planner/fundraiser for major philanthropies in the city such as the Municipal Art Society, the Met, the Ballet and The New York Public Library. He had impeccable taste, was a harsh taskmaster in seeing that it was executed perfectly, and in the words of his friend, the British actor Keith Baxter, had “a lively sense of future favors.”

He was a genius at fundraising and when it came to the big causes, the prominent members of the community turned to him. The late Mrs. Onassis so highly respected his expertise that she sought him out to plan and expedite her daughter Caroline’s wedding, including managing it with the media – no small task. Following their mother’s trust at the time of her death nine years ago, her children requested him to do the same for her with her funeral.

Liz Smith and Masa Seki

Peter Rogers and Casey Ribicoff

The honorary chairs of the evening were Brooke Astor and Caroline Kennedy. The chairmen were Dorothy and Lewis Cullman, Annette and Oscar de la Renta, Ashton Hawkins and Johnny Moore, Elizabeth and Felix Rohatyn, Liz Smith, and Nan and Stephen Swid. Co-chairs were Gillis MacGil Addison, Douglas Baxter, Frances and John Bowes, Susan and Francois deMenil, Sean Driscoll, Dominick Dunne, Louise and Henry Grunwald, Robert Isabell, Robert Littman and Sully Bonnelly, Tim Lovejoy, Peter Rogers, Arnold Scaasi and Parker Ladd and Masa Seki.

Ellen Liman and Richard Meier

The evening was called to order by Philip Howard, the Society’s chairman and one of the city’s most prominent lawyers and authors (The Death of Common Sense, The Collapse of the Common Good: How America’s Lawsuit Culture Undermines Our Freedom). He introduced Liz Smith, who very often took the podium at events at George’s urging, was the emcee of the evening. At the end of his life when emphysema was taking his strength, he sold his house and moved into an apartment across the hall from Liz’s to be nearer to her (and her caringness).

Liz opened her introduction with her typically wry irony, “Friends and enemies and those who have not yet decided ...” And talked about the Authority of George, of which all who knew him in that room were always cognizant. Reminding us that George had specifically requested (in his will) that there be no memorial, she admonished us that George tonight might just be like ‘Zeus throwing his thunderbolts when displeased at us mortals.”
She then reminisced with tender affection. She first met him at a restaurant one night in the 1960s when he introduced himself and told her he wanted her to write for Sports Illustrated. Surprised and flattered, she soon found herself the only woman on the SI staff.

Recalling those Time, Inc. days she recounted among other things the story about a member of the magazine’s staff who went to see Time Inc.’s legendary publisher Andrew Heiskell to suggest that George Trescher should not be working for the magazine “because he was a fairy.”

Heiskell who was a big man, tall and solemn, mindful of his power, and not one to be arbitrary, hemmed and hawed, as was his fashion, and then said, “I only wish there were a hundred George Treschers ... I’d hired ‘em all.”

George was a charming, exacting, occasionally, oft-times nettlesome personality. He had a strong sense of what was right and he saw to it that it was exercised when it came to the work. Integrity, integrity, integrity; administrative, logistical refinement and an army commander’s sense of strategy. He knew how to do it, whom to charm, whom to hit upon for results (and money), and how to make a profound impression on the public good. In the words of his friend and supporter Elizabeth Rohatyn, “George got it.” And by the time he was finished you got it too.

Robert A.M. Stern and Bunny Williams

Mrs. Rohatyn presented George’s award to his sister Sue Trescher who came in from California for the evening. She told us that of all his philanthropic associations, the Municipal Art Society meant the most to George. She reported that he was buried next to his parents in Santa Barbara and that she’d discovered that they could reproduce the medal on his grave marker (both sides) to honor his beliefs.

The room was full of warm reverie. He was told only days before his death that the Society which believed that it would not have survived its centennial if it not had been for George “to inspire, organize and bully us into one beautiful (and often beautifully profitable) event after another,” was giving him the Award, which he proudly accepted, well aware of his imminent demise.

Kent Barwick, the President of the Society said that George believed in “the myth that wherever a city is possible is a myth that requires maintenance – and that is what George did. He maintained the myth.” Barwick noted the irony that the Society which existed a century ago was distinguished by the (mythic) number 400, and tonight there were 400 guests at the dinner. He added about George that, “he lived in his own time but was thoughtful about the future.”

Duane Hampton and Jim Wildman

Keith Baxter recalled first meeting him when he’d come to New York from London to perform in a play on Broadway — at a dinner with mutual friends on a Sunday night. George, typically, was direct and critical of his new acquaintance, yet warm and friendly. There was an intimacy to that criticalness – if he liked you. That was a good part of his charm. Baxter and he became friends. A few years later when the actor hit “a rough spot” in his career, George offered him rooms in his town house (where his offices also were) until things improved. After that, whenever Baxter came to this country, he stayed with George.

Baxter spoke of his experience as a friend of George’s and recalled once delivering lines from Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline” at a funeral service George attended. Afterwards George told him that he wanted him to deliver those same lines at his funeral. And so he did, beginning with:

“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.
Golden lads and lasses all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.”

Baxter closed with the lines which characterized George for him:

“Do no harm,
Suffer no fools,
Keep it short.”

Elaine Stritch and Keith Baxter

Dinner was served, dessert was presented and then on the other side of the great room, on a platform with a piano, introduced by Liz Smith, Barbara Cook, accompanied by her longtime musical associate Wally Harper, stood before us and sang, beginning with the lines

“I’m as corny as Kansas in August,
High as the flag on the Fourth of July,
If you will note, there’s a lump in my throat,
I’m in love with a wonderful guy ..."

by Rodgers and Hammerstein. Then she sang “We’ll Be Together Again.” Cook was followed by another old and devoted Trescher friend, Bobby Short who played and sang Cole Porter’s “At Long Last Love” and “Just One Of Those Things.” George loved all music and all the songs of Broadway. Then another old friend, Elaine Stritch, now a legendary performer of the musical stage came up and talked about George and how he took her to dinner twice a month, came to see all her shows, and sometimes even on the road. She sang George and Ira Gershwin’s

“Of Thee I Sing I Sing Baby,
Summer, winter, autumn and Spring baby.

Adding her own lyrics at the end:

“You’re pure chic
You’re pure class,
You’re the master on or off the arm
Of Mrs. Astor,
Of Thee I sing ...”

And that was the show.

Big, impressive New York crowd, black tie. Grand night, great tribute, good living memorial.