Summer 2007 - The Annie Tinker Association for Women

Annie Tinker Association
summer 2007
N EWS
Dear Friends,
Kitty Carlisle Hart was the first Great Lady of The Annie
Tinker Association for Women. When Kitty passed away, she
left a devoted band of Tinker National Advisory Council
members, trustees and beneficiaries. One of Kitty’s special characteristics was her ability to make
each associate and beneficiary feel
that she really cared about each
individual. Also, Tinker leaders
were inspired by Kitty’s dynamic
optimism. At 96 years of age, Kitty
was performing for a full house at Feinstein’s at the Regency.
Sadly, Tinker’s second Great Lady, Phyllis Wagner, died a
few months before Kitty expired. As one of Kitty’s best friends,
Phyllis’s energy and creativity made her a second very strong
pillar of the New York City community.
While I feel that a piece of me was torn away when Kitty
and Phyllis went to their rest, I am able to “soldier on”
through my recognition that their dynamic spirits permeate
our lives. As long as we remember these two Great Ladies’
creativity, kindness and energy, Tinker volunteers, administrators, beneficiaries and friends will gain additional strength to
expand our crucial mission.
With every good wish to my fellow travelers,
R. Dyke Benjamin Chairman, President and CEO
(More about Kitty Carlisle Hart on page 2)
Board news
hree energetic young people have been elected to the Tinker Association for Women’s National Advisory Council by
the Board of Trustees.
T
E V E R E T T P O I S S O N , who lives in
Boston, is associate director for external relations with Harvard Business School. In
that role he serves as a liaison between
alumni and the school, seeking to build relationships that continue beyond graduate
school years. Before joining Harvard,
Everett was director of business development for Boston’s
well-known public broadcasting station, WGBH.
R I S H I N I GA M is Vice President of Global Strategic and Business Planning for
Group RCI in Parsippany, N.J., where he is
responsible for charting the long term
strategy for the vacation rental and exchange division of Wyndham Worldwide.
Rishi was introduced to Tinker by Honorary Trustee Phyllis Ross Schless while he preformed strate-
Official Newsletter of the
Annie Tinker Association for Women
gic and valuation analysis for Ross Financial Services. Rishi is
best-known to Tinker associates for dragging us all kicking
and screaming into the computer age. It is thanks to Rishi and
advisory council member Alexandra Valdes-Fauli that the initial cadre of Tinker members entered the Internet world.
C H R I S F O ST E R is a senior vice president
at Lazard Asset Management. His 15-plus
years of investment experience include
stints at Putnam Investments in Boston,
where he was a fixed-income analyst focused on government, agency and corporate high-grade credit, and at Credit Suisse
First Boston, where he worked with both institutional and private clients. Chris’s MBA is from Babson business college. He
has also worked with private and corporate clients at Schroder
& Co as well as Hambrecht & Quist, focused on restricted
stock sales, derivative transactions and liquidity events.
Everett puts his reasons for joining Tinker this way: “The
mission of the Association resonates with me – the thought of
being homeless and not being able to continue to be involved
in one’s community is powerful and tragic. I also admire and
am motivated by the tremendous team that leads the Association in its important work.”
Chris and Everett have been immediately tasked by Chairman Dyke Benjamin with spearheading fund-raising among
young people. Everett is pursuing establishing a web site for
Tinker, and Chris is keeping a watchful eye on the Tinker
portfolio of exchange-traded funds.
One of Our Great Women
hyllis Fraser Cerf Wagner, honored by the Annie Tinker Association for Women with our “Great Lady” award, died at
the age of 90.
In many ways, Ms. Wagner, with her interests in the arts,
epitomized what Tinker members are all about. She was an
actor, a writer of radio plays and a well-known hostess. But
she apparently wanted most to be recognized for her collaboration with Dr. Seuss on a number of his most-well-known
children’s books.
Ms. Wagner was a cousin of Ginger Rogers, and was supposedly responsible for Ms. Rogers’ nickname, since as a child
she could not pronounce “Virginia.” When she was a teenager,
Rogers persuaded her to move from Oklahoma to Hollywood,
and helped her land small roles in films. But with her career
basically going nowhere, she moved to New York in 1939 and
got a job at an advertising agency. It was there that she shared
a desk with an illustrator named Theodore Geisel.
Twenty years later, after Geisel was established as Dr. Seuss,
Ms. Wagner suggested that they work together on books for
beginning readers. The collaboration produced classics like
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Summer 2007 1
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Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.
In the meantime, Phyllis Fraser had married Bennett Cerf,
the co-founder of Random House (they were reportedly introduced by the legendary New Yorker editor Harold Ross.). During their 31-year marriage, she wrote a column for Newsweek
and for Good Housekeeping, shot photos of leading authors
for Random House book jackets, and entertained a combination of theater people and book people, bringing together the
likes of William Faulkner, Truman Capote and Frank Sinatra.
Her husband is remembered for serving as a panelist on
“What’s My Line?” and Phyllis Cerf occasionally stepped in as
a substitute panelist.
Four years after her husband died, in 1971, Ms. Cerf married
former New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner. Her duties as a
hostess continued over their 16 years together, though the
group shifted, from book people to political people, from
movie stars to moguls. In 1980, Ms. Wagner was a co-founder
of the Central Park Conservancy's Women's Committee, which
raised much of the money that has revived Central Park.
(From information published in The New York Times)
The Remarkable Ms. Hart
or all New Yorkers, Kitty Carlisle Hart was officially a “living
landmark” so declared by the Landmarks Conservancy. To
members of the Tinker Association for Women, the person
they called “Kitty” was considerably warmer than that.
As a member of Tinker’s National Advisory Council, Kitty
occasionally attended Tinker events the luncheons, the teas,
the performances. But after 9/11, she attended with great regularity. After she had showed up for about the third straight
time, I asked her why a person as busy as she was so devoted
to Tinker events.
“I’m told it means something to the ladies to have me
here,” she said..
As she became more frail in the last year, I worried about
her as she circulated among the tables. And, seeing her stumble slightly, I went over and put a hand under her elbow and
started to walk around with her.
“Oh, my dear,” she said, “you don’t have to introduce me.”
I remember being at Alice Tully Hall one night three years
ago when Ms. Hart came in and sat two rows behind me. A
trio of men in the row between us could talk of nothing else
all night. She was 93, and to them, she was 39. They never
looked at the stage again.
So much was written about Kitty after she died that we
don’t have to repeat her biography here. But I did quarrel with
one strand of her biography as written. She was a wonderful
singer, as we old-movie
buffs remember from her
rendition of “Alone” in A
Night at the Opera But it was
said that she never made it
as an opera singer (although
her operetta recordings including “Desert Song” have
been recently re-released.). I
always thought, however,
that one of her most inter-
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Annie Tinker Association News
esting accomplishments was appearing in the American premiere run of Benjamin Britten’s opera “The Rape of Lucretia.”
We all of course remember Kitty as a panelist on What’s My
Line? and To Tell the Truth. To me, she and Bennett Cerf were the
epitome of sophistication and wit (to everyone else too, I’m sure).
The Kitty Carlisle I watched as a teenager on those TV programs seemed so much the same person I met decades later at
Tinker teas. She didn’t sugarcoat things. A couple of years ago,
Kitty, Dyke Benjamin and I were sitting in a small room at the
Cosmopolitan Club between our board meeting and the tea.
“Kitty,” I said, “No matter how much I try, I will never be able
to carry off your air of elegance.
“Look,” I said. “I’ve already got a run in my stocking.”
“Yes, my dear,” she said. “And your slip is showing.”
I sa b e l S p e n c e r
How Did She Do It?
by M o l ly B l ay n e y
ho would argue that the unique Annie Tinker luncheons
and teas are very often the highlight of any season? Visiting the Cosmopolitan Club, with its stately 19th century architecture, its grand historic rooms can be genuinely mood-altering.
Then, there’s the thoughtfully planned agenda by Dyke, Isabel and Michele — enabling us to share bright conversations
with Tinker Board members, special guests and, of course, one
another. These events offer scores of cheerful memories.
Among the most memorable were those that included Kitty Carlisle Hart. Each time she entered the room she became
the spark that ignited our conversation. She was dazzling; she
enchanted.
Sometimes we would whisper, “How does she do it?” quietly hoping to access some special secret. But there was no secret: Ms. Hart was remarkably expressive about her approach
to remaining fit and spirited.
Keeping fit, she told 60 Minutes, was a strict and disciplined
routine: “I can do things a woman a fifth my age can’t do....I
do 40 leg lifts without stopping, and then I take my legs, I put
them over my head, and I touch the floor behind me with my
toes, and then very slowly I let myself down, touching every
vertebra as I go.”
Yes but, speaking from a vantage point of lethargy, one
would probably want to begin doing an exercise of this nature at a very early age. Like, say, four?
Still, Kitty’s friends reported having witnessed more feasible methods. A stationary bike was positioned proudly in her
library, for example. Even at the age of 95, the tenacious Ms.
Hart used that bike; she also swam and continued those floor
exercises. This regimen, in itself, would offer a body enormous
fortitude.
Beyond this, like many people in the arts, Ms. Hart appreciated the mix of mind, body and spirit. A newspaper article
stated: “By her own account she was slightly eccentric, a trait
she treasured because she believed it gave her a lot of leeway.”
A good example of this “leeway” and how it translated into
her daily life was a practice she had in common with Jack
Canfield, co-creator of the #1 NY Times best-selling series,
W
Chicken Soup for the Soul. Indeed, it was Barbara Walters who
shared the special ritual with her audience on The View: “Every
night before Kitty went to bed, rather than dwell on the
things she did wrong that day, she would look in the mirror
and say ‘Kitty I forgive you.’”
In the light of her own good spirits, it would seem that
there would be little to forgive. Take, for instance, the advice
she gave to her producer, Joe Spotts, when he asked how he
might coach his teenage niece on charm. “Kitty looked at me
and smiled and said, “It’s simple. When someone enters a
room, you say — what is it that would make them comfortable? What would they like to have? What would they like to
hear? And that’s it.”
That was it. The last time we saw Kitty Carlisle Hart at a
Tinker tea she came over to me and said exactly what I wanted to hear. Her words were so touching, I wrote them in my
gratitude journal that night. And I’ll bet that each of you has a
special “Kitty” story, too.
She was funny, intuitive and she was a messenger. We will
miss the spark that was Kitty Carlisle Hart.
Searching for Annie Tinker
by I sa b e l S p e n c e r
andon Fuhrman, intrepid member of the Annie Tinker Association’s National Advisory Council, and I set off one
damp April day with a simple objective: to find Annie Tinker’s
grave.
We wanted to learn a) for sure when she was born and b)
whether she was buried with her family members.
Our search took us to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn,
where records from Annie’s lawyer tell us she was buried on
March 10, 1924, after a funeral at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal
Church on Park Avenue.
Annie had died in London of complications from a tonsillectomy. During those years, she lived in Europe, especially in
Paris, perhaps to get away from friends and family members
who disapproved of her lifestyle and were after her to stop
smoking and drinking.
The day after her death, a friends wrote of “the weary burden of her body struggling with the great ideas of her soul.”
Annie’s body was sent back to New York aboard the S.S.
Paris, a ship she apparently had sailed on while alive. While
the ship was at sea, a dispute was played out between a friend
who had been charged in Annie’s will with making arrangements for a home for “ladies who have worked for a living”
and family members who had expected to inherit.
The property was finally divided in half, but the questions
remained: whether to turn a rambling family “cottage” in Setauket, L.I., into a home for older women and how the memorial should be named.
Annie’s friend believed that Annie wanted the home
named for her beloved father, Henry C. Tinker, and her attorney believed Annie never wanted to part with the place. But
in the end, the idea of a home had to be abandoned as too
expensive, and it was decided the charity should be named
for Annie, with the money to be given in the name of her father, the “Henry C. Tinker Bequest.”
L
When Landon and I got to the gatehouse, her first move
was to look up the locations of Annie and her family members’
graves. We found, unsurprisingly, that Annie and her father
were buried in the same plot, near the path called Petunia.
But at Green-Wood, nothing is that simple. There is too
much to see, the fabulous view of New York Harbor and the
Statue of Liberty, the graves of New York’s notables. We managed to pass up most notables (Lola Montez, where are you)
but I could not resist spending a quiet moment at the simple
headstone of Leonard Bernstein.
What really slowed us down was examining all the fabulous monuments and mausoleums (“Wonder how the men felt
about being placed in a little granite house with pink stained
glass?”). One favorite was two small stone lions recumbent
under a huge white pine. Who? Why?
As a light
drizzle began
to fall, we arrived at the
huge Tinker
obelisk. In
front of it,
small rounded headstones, each
with a first name in raised letters. (Annie R. For our founder).
Annie got one whole side of the obelisk:
An n i e Re n s s e lae r Ti n ke r
B orn O ct. 28 th 1884
D i e d F e b. 21 st 1 924
And the altogether wonderful inscription:
“Rarely such courage in a man and never in a woman”
Tough Talk
by I sa b e l S p e n c e r
hey are perhaps the toughest subjects we face – growing
old, handling money and dying.
This spring, as part of the Tinker Association’s ongoing efforts to network with other organizations, I attended workshops that dealt with all three of those subjects. I found that
some of the time I was taking notes on your behalf, and most
of the time I was taking notes for me.
Let me stop right now and recommend two books I haven’t
even read yet: How We Die and The Art of Aging, both by Sherwin B. Nuland, M.D. Dr. Nuland, who is with the Yale University Medical School, was the keynoter at the 12th annual colloquium organized by Jarvie Commonweal Services. Some of
his observations: “Age is not a disease. It’s a risk factor.” And in
line with that, “Physical frailty is not a disease.”
Between the ages of 29-59 we lose one-third of our
strength, he pointed out. We should also realize that our attention span decreases, which is one reason we don’t remember things as well. But reassuringly, he noted, short-term
memory loss is not usually any indication of a larger problem.
“Aging,” Dr. Nuland said, “is a condition of life. Death is part
of that contract.”
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A workshop I attended, offered by Oscar Strauss III of Volunteers in Legal Services, gave practical
advice about putting
one’s affairs in order.
He talked about the
importance of estabFriends from Tuttle and Jarvie
lishing a health-care
proxy and a power of attorney. And he noted that there are
ways of in effect making your bank account your will, simply
by adding a person to your account , “in trust for.” Ask your
bank about ITF, he said. They won’t like it, but they’ll do it.
The Tinker Association participates in a loose confederation
of organizations like us, of which Jarvie Commonweal is one
(the DeKay Foundation, Isaac Tuttle Fund and St. George Society are others). Yvette Boisnier from DeKay arranged for a
speaker, Evelyn Correa of the city’s Human Resources Administration, who told us bluntly, “The largest form of elder abuse
is financial exploitation.”
This is one of the reasons that DeKay and others have been
advocating that all of us who work with older friends or
clients ask hard questions about money.
At a symposium called “Money & Elders: Practical Implications of Financial Management for Older Adults,” sponsored
by DeKay and organized by Lenox Hill House, we were urged
to urge all of our older friends to protect their bank accounts.
One of the things we all fear as we grow older is loss of
control, and we don’t want people helping us to manage our
money. But if we are to manage it ourselves, there are things
we must do. Probably one of them is to get put on a do not
call list, so that we are not troubled by telephone solicitors.
Another is to make a hard and fast rule that we n e v e r go to
the bank with someone we do not know. (I was standing at an
outdoor ATM recently next to a very elderly woman who was
having trouble and I offered to help. She virtually r a n away
into the bank. Well-trained, I thought.)
One amazingly helpful document distributed at a symposium is called “Five Wishes.” It offers the proper form to write
our wishes for the end of life. It’s incredibly simple and would
be very helpful for friends and relatives trying to do what we
would want. I have ordered copies, so just call and ask for one.
FIVE WISHES
My Wish For:
The Person I Want to Make Care Decisions for Me When I Can’t
The Kind of Medical Treatment I Want or Don’t Want
How Comfortable I Want to Be
How I Want People to Treat Me
What I Want My Loved Ones to Know
To obtain a copy call the Tinker Office at 212-260-5580
The Annie Tinker Association for Women, Inc.
P.O. Box 1405 / Lenox Hill Station / New York, N.Y. 10021
b oa r d o f t r u s t e e s
R. Dyke Benjamin, Chairman
President and CEO
Claire Whittaker
Vice President
Frederic K. Howard
Treasurer
Carolyn Smith
Secretary
Suzannah Chandler
Leeds Hackett
h o n o r a ry t r u s t e e s
Phyllis R. Schless
Mary Hartwell Rogers
Isabel Spencer
Beneficiaries Manager
Michèle Randall
Business Manager
n at i o n a l a dv i s o ry c o u n c i l
Meg Dooley
Christopher Foster
Landon Fuhrman
Colin Greer
Rishi Nigam
Everett Poisson
Sharif Shafi
Phoebe R. Stanton
Szilvia Szmuk-Tannenbaum
Alexandra Valdes-Fauli
Amy Vecchione
Leigh Anne Yoo