Tuesday, December 2, 2025. Winter weather in the forecasts (or the “maybe’s) around New York. The weather man is forecasting snow in this general area that New York is part of. In the past twelve or fifteen years, we’ve had only a very few seasons where there were a couple of big snow storms. Although for most who have to “get around” (go to work), big storms are a menace. Although mainly temporary. And it’s the “temporary” that always touches our sentiments.
When I was a kid growing up in exurban Massachusetts countryside, the snows would often come frequently enough that the general land around us was white throughout midwinter. And then in Central Maine, when I was in college at Colby, the snows were frequent and so were the skiers throughout New England, and because of the cold remained two or three feet on the ground until late April.
There used to be some of it here in New York occasionally (very) when I first came here out of college. I recall that snow being so heavy that some residential avenues, like Park were closed to auto traffic because of the ice and snow. For the day. Then you’d even see a few skiers out taking advantage of the avenue’s hills and dales. They weren’t exactly The Alps, but they guaranteed ten or fifteen minutes out of the few hours moving around on skis.
We are now going into what is the busiest time of the year in New York. How it is busy varies invariably, and it is directly related to the two holidays; one ostensibly religious (Christmas), and the other The Official Turning The Page in one’s life. Both are good reason to celebrate and toast the future and maybe even a brighter day, depending on one’s day.
At this current age and time, I enjoy recollecting the First Important Time I came to New York (having been born here but a New England boy shortly thereafter). It was a moment that had an enormous effect on my entire future. Quite by accident of Fate of course. I’ve told the story before, so I’ll keep it short.
It was a Debutante Party at the Waldorf-Astoria on the 20th of December. A friend and neighbor of mine in Massachusetts, who went to college here in New York, told me that she’d been invited to a “Debutante Party” at the Waldorf on that day. This was, of course, to a New England kid’s ear, Very Important. New York, New York.
In the telling, my friend mentioned that she needed an escort. As it happened, I had a college roommate named Al Zehe who was very good-looking and especially desirable, in my friend’s view, for the chaperone department. She told me she wanted Al — a very nice guy who was handsome in an all-American, mid-American way — to be her escort. No doubt he would be remembered by her friends. However, she needed me to send the message to Al, which I did; and which he happily agreed to.
And so it was: because I’d solved my neighbor’s social needs, I was indeed invited also. It was during the Christmas vacation weeks. Al was from Erie, and I was from western Massachusetts. Fortunately his mother arranged hotel rooms for us at the Waldorf.
Indeed, it was very fancy, the Waldorf at Christmas time, and very active in terms of social and entertainment. The debutante party was a black tie evening, which was also a first.
Both Al and I arrived in New York in the mid-afternoon and checked in. There was a message waiting from Kathy directing us to 640 Park Avenue, where she would be with the “debutante,” a New York girl named Catherine Hohenlohe. I had never heard her name before, but I was very familiar with the name of Morton Downey, her stepfather, with whom she lived alongside her mother and brother.
That visit that afternoon, all these many years later, was the opening of the door to my life — not because of any individual specifically, although Catherine had a profound effect on little David.
But that night’s evening was held in one of the main rooms just inside the main entrance on Park Avenue. It was a very large, bright, yet glamorously dark-ish room that included a stage for the orchestra. Catherine’s mother and stepfather were hosting C.Z. Guest as well as President Kennedy’s mother.
All of it was like a wide-eyed tourist taking in New York but also in an aspect of city-life that was influential. As it happened when I got back to college, I was so impressed with Catherine Hohenlohe, that I wrote her a letter of “thanks” which wasn’t necessarily appropriate but I wanted to see her again.
It was a kind of love letter expressing my feelings as I imagined them, about meeting her; and attending the event in an atmosphere and environment which in no small way deeply influenced my choices in life to the moment of finishing this sentence. But that‘s a whole other story for another time.
