My boss Gene Gilbert introduced me to John, the attorney who was taking Gene's company public.

 

Actually, we weren't introduced, but rather Gene and I did a fake radio interview, breaking every SEC rule in the book. Gene sent it to John and Arthur, a major investor, and they went bananas until they found out it was a scam on them. It was my Academy Award performance.

 

Gene practically kidnapped a Dominican impressionist artist from under the nose of the dictator of the country. Since my Spanish was passable, I became Eligio Pichardo's PR person and learned a little about art. Gene was also promoting a nightclub singer, nice lady, but his promotion might have had some personal overtones. Anyhow, I got to know the lyrics to all her songs.

 

John hired me as a paralegal for his Wall Street investment banking legal firm. We're still friends to this day. He had his buddy, William Safire, tell me that I couldn't do financial PR because I was a woman. That was the first time that I wanted to burn my bra on the spot. Nixon deserved Safire, although I grudgingly admire his writing style.

 

John lent me out to a client to do fundraising. My first account was Margaret Sanger's Planned Parenthood, but the second was more interesting. It was for the English-speaking Union, and to this day I still don't understand what they do exactly. However, I had the honor of getting Sir Julian Huxley for a small dinner for very rich contributors. I was so shy with him that I never told him that one of my favorite authors was his brother, Aldous Huxley.

 

Had lots of fun. Irene Lewis, the housekeeper, was from St. Kitts and prepared red snapper for me every day for lunch. She must have had 365 recipes.

 

Lived out of the town the first year, but moved to the Savannah in Port-of-Spain, a great hangout for Carnival. Elysa and Chris learned how to swim in the pool down the street, and we had weekly picnics at Maracas beach, another swimming hole.

 

If you haven't done so before, go visit the islands. Carnival is garish, crowded, and wonderful. The food is delicious. The people are delightful.

 

We had orchids growing on calabash stumps in the living room, and during the rainy season, we took them out on the balcony at exactly 12:20 PM to be watered.

 

Since we had race horses, I sewed the jockeys' silks in red, white, and blue, and it was just across the street to feed our horses their carrots. We raced in Tobago twice a year in addition to the regular season in Trinidad. That was a kick. Our pilot for Tobago (four passenger plane) was an East Indian. He used to take off in the path of a jet, put the plane on automatic pilot, and then pray until landing on Tobago. Sugar cane brandy soothes the passengers' nerves.

 

In 1966 we went back to New York, the kids and I. John gave me a job the next day, and we found Isolyn from Jamaica to look after us. At this point I worked three jobs, so she had a lot of looking after to do.

 

These years were great fun, and now I can't figure out how I crammed so much into so little time.

 

My special friend was Bob, who made everything magic. Hope all you ladies found the like in your lives.

 

Since we had little family in the vicinity, we opened our home to folks from the International Club, and how great was that. The kids learned about different countries, and everyone had a good time.