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 The Bel of the Ball
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| In front of the Metrpolitan Museum of Art. 1:50 PM. Photo: JH. |
Wednesday, May 11. 2011. Yesterday was yet another beautiful sunny day in New York.
I lunched at Michael’s with Anne Ford who has now written three books on the matter of Learning Disabilities and parenting children with Learning Disabilities.
Anne’s experience (and now authority) with the subject is personal. Her daughter Allegra was born with LD and when it was discovered and diagnosed, the mother was told that the child should probably be institutionalized. The mother said no and set to work dealing with the matter head on. That was quite some time ago. Allegra is now 30 and engaged to be married this coming autumn. |
| Looking north along Fifth Avenue and 16th Street. |
| Union Square Farmer's Market. |
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This is another story of one person, a woman, addressing a problem and finding innovative solutions while opening up the matter to the world. A half century ago, the problem a young mother faced was the one first presented to Anne: put the child away. That “solution” has now been removed from the equation thanks to Anne and her friends at NCLD.
Learning Disabilities are quite common among us. Anne’s 3 books (on which she collaborated with John-Richard Thompson) talk about them frankly and openly. They are – “Laughing Allegra,” “On Their Own: Creating an Independent Future for Your Adult Child with Learning Disabilities and ADHD” and “A Special Mother; Getting Through the Early Days of a Child’s Diagnosis of Learning Disabilities and Related Disorders.”
Meanwhile, Michael’s was jumping. At table one, the dynamic ladies’ lunch. This group meets regularly although not quite as frequently as the Della Femina/ Imber/Greenfield/ Bergman/Kramer boys: Ellen Futter, Anna Quindlen, Faye Wattleton, Linda Fairstein, Jurate Kazickas, Esther Newberg among others.
At the table next to them, Mike Ovitz with guest. Across from him: Alexandra Trower, EVP of Global Communication of the Lauder Companies with Geraldine Fabrikant. Around the room: Stan Shuman and guest, Jimmy Finkelstein with Jason Binn; Alice Mayhew with David Gergen; Herb Siegel with Frank Gifford. Ghislaine Maxwell with guest; Joe Armstrong with Chris Meigher; Jonathan Capehart, Joe Versace, and many more just like ‘em.
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| The Roosevelt House where the Bel Kaufman birthday was celebrated. The house, now a historical landmark, and now used for Hunter functions, was constructed with two separate dwellings, by Sara Delano Roosevelt for herself and for her son and only child Franklin and his wife Eleanor. |
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| Bel Kaufman and Jennifer Raab. |
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Yesterday was the 100th birthday of Bel Kaufman, author, teacher and professor. Jennifer Raab, the president of Hunter College – Kaufman’s alma mater – hosted a birthday party for her at the college’s Roosevelt House which was built at 47/49 East 65th Street between Madison and Park.
Bella “Bel” Kaufman was a 1934 graduate of Hunter College. She comes from a family of writers including her mother Lili Kaufman, who was a Yiddish writer, and her grandfather Sholem Aleichem, a leading Yiddish writer and playwright of the late 19th, early 20th century whose stories about Tevye the Milkman was adapted into a musical “Fiddler On the Roof.”
In 1965 after a thirty year career teaching public high school (as well as an active part-time career as a writer), she published a novel based on her experiences called Up the Down Staircase. It made her famous.
The book was a New York Times bestseller for 64 weeks and eventually sold 6 million copies, and was made into a play and then a film directed by Alan Pakula, starring Sandy Dennis. The play continues to be popular, frequently performed by high school drama groups.
Jennifer Raab opened the evening with some background about the centenarian author who sat next to the podium quietly listening with an occasional smile to acknowledge her hostesses' words.
She was born in Berlin but came to this country in 1923 when she was twelve, knowing not a word of English, speaking only Russian (the family was originally from Odessa). Although her early English was spoken naturally with a Russian accent, she remedied that on the suggestion of someone who told her she’d never get a good job with that accent.
Then the birthday girl got up to speak. Aside from the handy use of a cane, her presence is still unhindered by what we’d think of as age. What was different from many of us younger folk, was her manner of speaking, i.e. her presentation. She spoke slowly and carefully – not denoting age or frailty but instead, authority and empathy. You heard what she was saying; it registered. She touched you with her words, not to mention her natural personal courage. |
| The birthday girl at the podium reflecting on her experience at Hunter and the world she started out in and how "liberated" she feels right now. Engaging, amusing, informative and edifying; the mark of a true teacher, was her speech. Oh, and charming. |
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She reminded me very much of another woman of her generation whom I’ve written about briefly here before – Lillian Burns Sidney, the acting coach from MGM who hired me to write Debbie Reynolds's memoir. Considering the two women, both cultivated and deliberate, and knowing Lillian (who was born three years before Bel) as well as I did, I had a sharp picture of the intelligent young women of that generation. They were eager to learn, to know, and to take the riches that “education” and culture had to offer new American families.
She recalled her early days at Hunter College which was then a small red brick building, all women. There were only two men in the whole building – one who ran the elevator and one other staff member. She said the girls sometimes complained about the no boys but in reflected in retrospect it was probably good they weren’t there.
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She said turning 100 had “liberated” her, that she’d worked all her life and now she didn’t feel she had to. She said now she is clear about how precious her time is and how she wants to use it to enjoy herself -- which might mean “curling up on the sofa with a kitten in (her) lap and a good book to read." The pursuit and joy of learning is the key to this woman, and it has sustained her.
She spoke with a portrait of a young Eleanor Roosevelt behind her, and Eleanor’s mother-in-law Sara Delano directly across the room facing her. And now it was Bel Kaufman’s room, adding to the glory of it all.
“It was a different planet then,” she stated referring to the world in her youth – the first quarter of the 20th century. “We were very poor. We didn’t know how rich we were.” She likened the differences between then and now to how she had to prepare a term paper or thesis back then – with multi-colored inks and cut-and-paste; and how today it is all done instantly by pressing a single key on the computer. “That was BC ... before computer.” |
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| Bel blows out her candles. |
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Yesterday was also the birth anniversary of one of the greatest performers of Bel Kaufman’s century: Fred Astaire who was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1899.
Today, not so incidentally is the birth anniversary of another great and amazing American, also a friend of Fred Astaire – Irving Berlin – who, like Bel Kaufman, was born in Russia (in 1888) and came to New York at age 5.
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| Irving Berlin's official portrait later in life. |
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| With wife Ellin, circa 1920s. |
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In 1911 (same year as Bel Kaufman’s birth) at age 23, Irving Berlin had his first hit song, "Alexander’s Ragtime Band." Over a career that spanned more than half a century of active composing, Irving Berlin wrote more than 1500 songs and was REVERED in both his business and in his community and in the world.
George Gershwin acknowledged him as ”the greatest songwriter who ever lived.” Jerome Kern was quoted as saying Irving Berlin “has no place in American music, he is American music.” Composer Douglas Moore categorizes Berlin as up there with Stephen Foster, Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg as a poet of the American century and its people.
By the mid-50s when I was a kid growing up in Massachusetts, everyone, even the young, had heard of Irving Berlin. The story of the little Russian immigrant boy who came to America, made a great success and married the daughter of a millionaire (Ellin Mackay) was almost local lore. Among his prolific output, he had written “God Bless America” assigning its copywright royalties to the Girl Scouts, earning millions for the organization. He wrote for Broadway, for the Movies. “White Christmas,” “There’s No Business Like Show Business." All the great American performers of the century sang his songs countless times. At the end of his life he lived in a Georgian style townhouse on Beekman Place and the East River. He died on September 22, 1989 at 101.
Today, here in New York, among many other things, is the annual City Harvest luncheon at the Metropolitan Club with authoress Jill Kargman speaking.
And tonight in the Palm Court of the Plaza, this writer, as well as my NYSD partner and co-founder Jeff Hirsch, and the Plaza’s General Manager Shane Krige are hosting a booksigning for Carol Joynt and her memoir, Innocent Spouse, published today by Simon & Schuster.
I met Carol over the internet one very late night several years ago when I received an email from her at about 2 a.m. asking me if I would be interested in doing an interview with her at her restaurant (Nathan’s) in Georgetown. Since I am still working at my desk at that hour, I answered her immediately -- which surprised her as much as hers surprised me.
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| Carol Joynt interviewing DPC in 2006 for her Q&A Cafe. |
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A couple of months later JH and I went down to DC for the day and the interview. Carol conducted the most interesting interview I’ve ever given. She does her homework and thinks creatively about her questions. Most interesting to me, at least. She covered all bases and fished around for those extra nuggets that complete a story or add that flash or fire.
JH and I returned to New York thinking wouldn’t it be great if she wrote a Washington Social Diary for us. A few months later she was up in New York when we had lunch and proposed it. She’s a very thorough reporter and very good at conveying the atmosphere and attitude of the nation’s capital. All one person’s opinion of course.
So it came as a surprise to me to learn, quite a long time after we’d met that Carol was writing a book about her marriage to her late husband Howard Joynt, who had died a few years earlier. Howard was theretofore Carol’s swain. Her Mr. Cool. Who swept her off her feet, wined her, dined her, and showered her with affection, attention and the baubles of a fabulous marriage.
It was only after Howard died suddenly that she learned that the man she thought she was married to was not the man she was married to. Not a new story, that one. But also, she learned that she was now personally millions of dollars in debt to Uncle Sam and his tax man. “Innocent Spouse” but not for long.
As it turns out, hers is not a new story but one that serves as an eternal warning. Women often fail to learn about the financials in their (married) lives until it is too late, and with consequences often dire.
Anyway, it’s written, done, over and out (and receiving some very good reviews) as of today. Today from 6 – 8, the not-so-innocent scribe of DC social life, will be signing her book for one and all. |
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