Social Diary 11/16/04 - Lunch with the Judge

New Yorkers Keep on Truckin'

A giant crane stretches its legs. 9:00 PM. Photo: JH.

Fair and mild mid-November day in New York. I went to lunch at Michael’s with retired State Supreme Court Judge Leslie Crocker Snyder and her son Doug.

Judge Snyder, who was an Assistant DA under Frank Hogan and then Robert Morgenthau, was the first woman to try both felony and homicide cases in the New York County District Attorney’s office.

Judge Leslie Crocker Snyder and son Doug

During her nine years in that office, she founded and led the Sex Crimes Prosecution Bureau, the first in this country and thereafter a model throughout the U.S. She is also co-author of legislation including New York’s Rape Shield Law, limiting cross-examination of victims of sex crimes, the repeal of corroboration requirements in sex crimes cases as well as legislation concerning aggravated sexual abuse and other Penal Law sex crimes reforms.

She was first appointed Judge to the Criminal Court of New York City in 1983 and subsequently to the State Supreme Court and the Court of Claims.

She presided primarily over the highest level “A-1” multiple defendant narcotics felonies, drug gang/homicide cases, organized crime cases and “white collar” cases.

She presided over the trials of the city’s most violent drug gangs – the “Gheri Curls,” the “Wild Cowboys,” the “Young Talented Children,” and the “Natural Born Killers,” among others.

She also presided over the “Carting” or “Garbage” case which led to the reform of the private sanitation industry. She was also married to Dr. Snyder a Manhattan pediatrician, mother of two boys, now grown and out on their own, has appeared on numerous television news and documentary programs and has been profiled on “60 Minutes.”

She’s been busy, as you can see, and besides now being in private practice, she plans to run next year for the office of District Attorney of New York against the solidly entrenched Robert Morgenthau who, at age 86, will be marking his 30th year in the office come 2005.

Judge Snyder who, as her picture attests, looks about twenty years younger than her sixty-three years. She’s a shining example of her generation of women who have an enormous capacity for work and responsibility, ain’t ascared a nobody (she actually had guards and so did her children when they were school-age because of the cases she provided over) and has a lot of ideas of what needs to be done to improve the safety and quality of life for citizens of New York.

Her ambition is fueled by the knowledge that the D.A.’s office needs a fresh and pro-active person at the helm. Although Mr. Morgenthau will be 86 next year, he is definitely not in agreement. So, in the meantime, the Snyder family is getting behind wife and mother.

Doug Snyder, a former investment banker with Goldman Sachs, and one of the founding partners of the hedge fund Longbow Capital, is actively staging fundraisers amongst his contemporaries as the Judge explores the possibilities. The next one is tomorrow night (11/17) at 8 pm at a cocktail reception at Marquee on Tenth Avenue (between 26th and 27th Street). He’s gathered together an amazing array for his Committee of Young New Yorkers for Leslie Crocker Snyder including Nick Acquavella, Allison and Jay Aston, Chris Barish, Meredith and Denis Coleman, Stephanie Ercklentz, Kristin Fisher, Moira Forbes, Josiah Hornblower, Harry LeFrak, Peter Lehrman, Sasha Leviant, Elizabeth Meigher, Whitney Miller, Tinsley and Topper Mortimer, Ogden Phipps, Elizabeth Pyne, Teddy Schwarzman, Charlie Schilling, Laura Doyle and Zayd Hammam, Pam Wasserstein, Theodore Roosevelt V, Alejandro Santo Domingo, Donna Simonelli, Tom Trowbridge, Donald Trump Jr., Maartje Oldenburg and lots more. You can find out more by going to: www.snyderfornewyork.org

There are some older kids also getting on the bandwagon. On Thursday, December 2nd, real estate broker Patricia Burnham is giving a cocktail party for Judge Snyder from 6:30 – 7:30 at the Harvard Club.

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There were all kinds of things going on in New York last night. Over at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, there was the Concert for the Bravest with Dr. Ronan Tynan. Back on the east side of town, interior designer Joanne de Guardiola and her husband Roberto held a launch party at their fabulous townhouse for the new book American Designers’ Houses.

Barbara Goldsmith holding Obsessive Genius

Around the corner and a couple of blocks up, Oscar de la Renta opened his first Oscar de la Renta store devoted entirely to Oscar products. Meanwhile down on Fifth and 56th at Harry Winston there was a book party for the publication of Shinde Jewels. Farther downtown Noam Chomsky gave a talk at the Kimmel Center for University Life at NYU.

Me, I went over to the New York Public Library to the Celeste Bartos Forum where they were holding a book party for Barbara Goldsmith and her latest book Obsessive Genius; The Inner World of Marie Curie. Mrs. Goldsmith, who happens to be one of the most active philanthropists of The New York Public Library as well as the literary world (especially through her work with PEN), is a prolific author of best-sellers (Little Gloria … Happy At Last, The Straw Man, Johnson Vs. Johnson, and Other Powers: the Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull, which is now also being developed for the screen by producer Kathleen Kennedy and screenwriter Naomi Foner Gyllenhall). Her biography is an actualization of a lifelong interest in the world’s most famous woman scientist.

There were lots of authors present, as it always is at a Goldsmith gathering and I did my best to catch some of them with the Digital.

Brucie Boalt

Hannah Pakula and Joel Connaroe

Kathy Sloane

Iris Love and Barbara Cates

Brian Hunt and Donald Sultan

Ward Landrigan and John Dobkin

Lionel Tiger, Wendy Vanderbilt, Ed Barber, and Jeff Madrick

Ron Mallory with Jean Claude and Christo

Mettina Madrick and Kim Baker

After leaving the library I hopped a cab uptown to the apartment of Ron Ferri who was giving a dinner for his friends Loulou de la Falaise and Arielle Dombasle who are here from Paris. Dombasle, who was born in Norwich, Connecticut, some Americans might not know, is a very big star in France — both actress and recording star and married to one of its most distinguished author/philosophers, Bernard-Henri Levy.

Loulou, who was for years the muse of Saint Laurent, has her own collection which she sells out of her own shop in Paris and here at Bergdorf’s. Loulou is one of those very sophisticated women who fascinate with their natural style. Style runs in her veins; daughter of designer Maxime de la Falaise, niece of restaurateur and clubman Mark Birley, granddaughter of Oswald Birley, one of the greatest portraitists of the early 20th century, and daughter-in-law of the late artist Balthus. Since leaving Saint Laurent, she has transported her creativity to her own collection which has been doing big business at Bergdorf’s.

Ron Ferri's salon

Ron Ferri and his partner Jean Pierre Borg occupy a spacious apartment in a mansion built by Lilly Bliss in the early 20th century. Mrs. Bliss was a major patron of the arts and one of the co-founders of MoMA. Her music room is now the salon and studio for Mr. Ferri. And on this night there was a large and delicious buffet set out for the guests who came from all over adding an energetic international flavor to the atmosphere of the artiste, completely relaxed and laid-back, unlike other so-called international situations one can run into here in New York. Among the crowd, the beautiful Carmen, John and Sonya Morgan, Yanna Avis, the famed makeup artist of French couture Stephan Marais, Asher Edelman, international opera impresario Elisa Wagner, restaurateur (Bilboquet) Philippe Delgrange and his wife Isabelle and daughter Charlotte.

As I was leaving about eleven, more guests were streaming in, some in long dresses and black tie, others from the theatre. The candles were bound to be burning well into the dawn; it was a lovely party.