by Meryl Gordon
The more he learned, the angrier he became. The paper trail appeared to show that his father and Charlene had excised virtually everyone and everything that gave Brooke Astor pleasure. Their actions were more than aggressive cost-cutting; it felt to Philip like a vendetta. The Marshalls were using Brooke's money to buy everything they had ever wanted. The juxtaposition of their actions and his grandmother's straitened circumstances fueled Philip's rage. Unwilling to face his father's culpability, he blamed Charlene.
As Philip pondered his options, he conferred with Boston lawyers recommended by Nan's family and then was handed off gracefully to the venerable New York law firm of Milbank Tweed, which, not coincidentally, represented David Rockefeller. The Milbank lawyers told Philip that he might indeed have a case in challenging Tony Marshall's care of Brooke Astor. But they cautioned that the cost would be astronomical, far out of the reach of a college professor. As a last resort, Philip contacted David Rockefeller, since the retired banker had been the one who had convinced Tony to open Holly Hill for Brooke the previous summer. On March 6, 2006, Philip wrote:
Dear Mr. Rockefeller,
I am sending you the enclosed material in light of our shared concern for Brooke and given what I have found out about her circumstances. I am extremely concerned about and frustrated about Brooke's situation. I am looking for your advice.
My father does not seem in control of his fiduciary obligations to Brooke—or his own affairs. Control of Tony's affairs, and those of Brooke, appear to be in large part decided by Charlene. These circumstances, with their profound, negative effect on Brooke, are the major factors in my decision to pursue options...
In short, while I would like to be able to have someone (other than Tony) appointed as Brooke's guardian, and to take measures to begin to right these wrongs, there are no ready options that would not find us bogged down in costly litigation, a process that might further compromise Brooke and her health—our immediate concern.
The letter was sent overnight by FedEx but prompted no immediate reply. The ninety-year-old Rockefeller was in Paris, promoting the French edition of his autobiography. While Philip waited for a response, he kept waking up in the middle of the night, going to his computer, and writing letters to his father—letters he never sent.
Finally a Rockefeller staffer contacted Philip and arranged a meeting for May 19—two long months later. Rockefeller insists that he was pleased to hear from Philip, "delighted" to try to help, and that he asked Annette de la Renta to join in the cause. "I talked to Annette about it," Rockefeller says. "We were the people who had the best chance of being able to do something."
Philip Marshall was so eager to be punctual for the May 19 meeting in Rockefeller's office that he arrived in midtown Manhattan way too early, so the Episcopalian-turned-Buddhist stepped inside St. Patrick's Cathedral and meditated in the hushed church with its vaulted ceiling and stained glass windows. Then, walking the two blocks to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, he passed the 1930s sculptures of Atlas and Prometheus and melodramatically wondered for just a moment whether he was overreaching, like Icarus.
Seated at the same white marble table where his father had defended his care of Brooke, Philip painted a grim picture of her life and finances. "I was amazed at how much information Philip had," recalls Annette. Fifteen minutes into the discussion, Rockefeller summoned James Sligar of Milbank Tweed, and the lawyer arrived so quickly that it seemed he had been standing, briefcase in hand, by the elevator. After ninety minutes, a plan of sorts evolved for the rescue of Brooke Astor. Sligar recommended that Philip and Annette speak to Ira Salzman, an attorney with expertise in elder law. Rockefeller volunteered to fly to Northeast Harbor to meet face-to-face with Tony and Charlene, but the others insisted on gathering more information before confronting the couple.
Tony Marshall's eighty-second birthday was just eleven days later, on May 30. But this year the family tradition was broken: Philip did not call his father. "I wasn't going to fake it at that point," he says. Puzzled by the omission, Tony later mentioned it to his lawyers as a warning sign that he had missed.
About this time, the Marshalls were extricating themselves from their theatrical production company. The late 2005 London production of I Am My Own Wife had been a money-losing disaster, and Delphi investors were restive. "I never made any money," says one Broadway angel who wrote a check to the company. Richenthal (who would later be a vocal public defender of the Marshalls) moved his belongings out of the fifteenth-floor office in Brooke's apartment, but the parting was amicable. As the producer later said, "I have known Tony and Charlene socially for many years. They have very fine cultural and aesthetic tastes."
While Philip moved inexorably toward challenging his father in court, he was meeting resistance at home. Nan, now pursuing a master's degree in mediation, believed that Philip should try to resolve this problem without resorting to lawyers. "I guess it was a fantasy of mine that this could be mediated in some way," she said later. "Tony was not approachable. I had to question myself about the old WASP thing—at all costs don't hang your laundry out. I didn't want to believe what I kept hearing, how bad it was." Philip told his mother about his plans, and she too tried to talk him out of it. "She's a mom—she didn't want me to be beat up," he says. His brother, Alec, wanted no part of this fight either. While Alec agreed that Brooke would be happier at Holly Hill, he was not convinced that a lawsuit was the way to resolve any problems surrounding his grandmother's care.
Without family support, Philip turned to his friends. "No one wanted him to do it," says Tenzing Chadotsang. Philip agonized over lunch at the aptly named Feast or Famine restaurant in Rhode Island with his friend Sam Adams. "Philip is mild-mannered," says Adams. "I've never seen him express animosity towards his father. But he saw something wrong. He felt he couldn't shirk from it." As Philip explained later, "People ask me, 'How could you do this to your father?' I just kept thinking, 'How could he do this to his own mother?'"
During this period, Philip's visits to his grandmother created an uneasiness in the household. Marta Grabowska, the weekend cook, ran into Philip at 778 Park Avenue. "He spent a long time with his grandmother, and when he was leaving, he said to me, 'Please don't tell my father I was here,'" she says. Grabowska, a Polish immigrant who had been working for Mrs. Astor for only one year, felt uneasy: "That was complicated for me."
Stopping by to see Brooke in early June, Philip was alarmed to discover stacks of boxes of paperwork, photographs, and records piled up in preparation for shredding. Invoices from CodeShred of Island Park, Long Island, later documented that fifteen boxes were picked up at 778 Park Avenue on June 8, 2006, for a charge of $276, and on June 28, 2006, the company carried away eighty boxes from Holly Hill, at a cost of $1,449. Unable to understand why his father was suddenly clearing out documents and memorabilia, Philip rummaged through some of the boxes in Brooke's apartment and plucked out a few papers that looked intriguing.
"If you consider a scrap of paper with the name of a physiotherapist in Baden-Baden from 1954 to be memorabilia, then yes, we got rid of memorabilia," says Daniel Billy, who spent months going through the papers with Tony. "There were a hundred and fifty train schedules to Ossining, there were birthday cards from people she didn't know, there were boxes that had been in the closets for decades." Billy stressed later that there had been nothing sinister in the decision to send this material to the scrap heap. "'Shredding' had an ominous sound," he says, "but we didn't want these scraps of paper floating around when they came to pick up the garbage on Park Avenue."
Annette and Philip, joined by several lawyers, met with David Rockefeller for the second time at the fifty-sixth-floor office on the afternoon of June 19. In recent weeks, Rockefeller's protective staff had repeatedly tried to talk him out of getting involved in this family donnybrook, but he was adamant—he had to act. Philip and Annette were relying on him; they would not have gone ahead without his blessing. And he could not, in good conscience, ignore his mounting concerns
about Brooke's well-being. Their legal plans were to file a petition for guardianship, but they had not decided whom to recommend. Since Philip lived in Massachusetts and David Rockefeller was ninety-one, by the process of elimination Annette seemed to be the obvious choice.
But Annette had her own burdens, though no one else in the room knew about them. Just before Memorial Day, her seventy-two-year-old husband had visited his doctor for a routine checkup and had been diagnosed with lymphoma. Oscar's days were now defined by a grueling treatment regimen of radiation and chemotherapy. "It was very traumatic," says Oscar, whose cancer eighteen months later was in remission. "My wife was helping me and helping Mrs. Astor. Annette wouldn't even let me go to the hospital to get a blood test alone. But at the same time, she loved Brooke and felt she was not having the life in her old age that she deserved." In the meeting with David and Philip, Annette acknowledged her situation in a backhanded way, mentioning that she would be in Manhattan this summer anyhow because of Oscar's cancer treatments and so would be available to take on the responsibility of being Brooke's guardian. Her friends believe that the timing of the lawsuit was fortuitous. "In a way it was a good thing that the two things happened together, because it took Annette's mind a bit off Oscar's cancer," says John Richardson. "Otherwise, Annette would have been consumed."
In retrospect, Annette admits that she did not realize just how much she was taking on by agreeing to become her friend's guardian. "I thought I was doing the right thing by her. I didn't know it was going to be Armageddon," she says. "I thought I was defending her, with David and Philip. Get her back to Holly Hill, get her with Chris and the dogs, be warm and cozy."
David Rockefeller kept clinging to the hope that Brooke's final months could be spent in peace and comfort without the need for a divisive and debilitating court fight. Once again he offered to fly up to Maine and sit down with Tony and Charlene. He had negotiated with presidents and princes; surely he could work things out with the Marshalls. But he bowed to the others' fears that they could not risk alerting the Marshalls of their plans. "We knew the trickiest part was that if my father got wind of this, he would fire the nurses," Philip says. "My grandmother trusted the nurses. So many people had been fired." Boxes of paperwork had been shredded, creating a concern that potential legal evidence might be destroyed. At the end of the meeting, as a sign of his resolution, David Rockefeller announced that he was heading immediately to 778 Park Avenue, saying, "I want to visit Brooke now."
Once everyone had agreed to proceed, Nan Starr says, her husband stopped agonizing. "Philip was the most stressed out in the year beforehand, because he didn't know what he could do, if anything," she recalls. "The minute the ball got rolling, he never looked back."
Although Henry Kissinger did not attend these sessions, he served as a behind-the-scenes adviser. A friend to both Annette de la Renta and David Rockefeller, the former secretary of state admits he was startled to hear that they were convinced that Tony Marshall was treating his mother callously. "I had to believe what I was told," he says. "But would I have predicted it five years earlier? I would have said no."
With the clock ticking toward filing the lawsuit, Philip panicked when Alec announced that he and his fiancée, Sue Ritchie, were about to visit Tony and Charlene in Maine. "I was freaking," Philip recalls. "I told him if you go, you may be up there when the petition arrives." But Alec was adamant: he wanted to see his father, and he had nothing to do with the lawsuit. Alec and Sue arrived at Cove End on July 7 and spent four sun-dappled days sailing on the General Russell, hiking in the mountains nearby and enjoying the large guest cottage right by the water. Loyal to Philip and praying that a lawsuit might be averted at the last minute, Alec did not offer a syllable of warning to his father. Tony would find this omission unforgivable.
And what of Brooke Astor, who was unaware of her role at the center of what would soon become a searing family drama? Conditions at 778 Park Avenue that summer had further deteriorated, with tasks left undone as the staff sulked. The nurses and housekeepers were arguing over who did this and who should have done that, defending themselves and blaming others. "I said, 'Let's call a meeting with Mr. Marshall to tell him all the things we thought his mother should have,' but I couldn't get anywhere," insists Beverly Thomson. Marta Grabowska says that she tried to tempt her employer with freshly prepared mashed potatoes, flan, stewed prunes, vegetables, and meats, all pureed in deference to the weakness of Mrs. Astor's teeth. But she complained that the weekday cook was barely making an effort. "I saw two big plastic containers, red and green, in the refrigerator," she continues. "They were constantly giving her a bowl from one or the other. It upset me—I thought she should have more variety."
Sandra Foschi, the physical therapist who had been treating Mrs. Astor for two years, noticed with concern that her normally motivated client was emotionally retreating from life. "It was hot and stuffy in the apartment. She slept a lot more," Foschi recalls. "She was having a hard time."
The legal papers that Ira Salzman would draw up, with the active assistance of Philip Marshall, needed to build a strong case that Tony was mismanaging his mother's care and her household. The best witnesses to persuade a judge to rescind Tony's power of attorney were members of Mrs. Astor's staff. Chris Ely gave Salzman an affidavit on July 3, and a few days later the lawyer took statements from Pearline Noble, Minnette Christie, and Beverly Thomson. "Make no mistake, this was a staff revolt," says Salzman, a partner in the firm Goldfarb, Abrandt, Salzman & Kutzin. Based on these statements, the lawsuit would charge, for instance, that Mrs. Astor's nursing staff had been reduced from two aides at all times to one, that a $1,000-a-month prescription for Procrit to treat anemia had been halted for no medical reason, and that Charlene had ordered the nurses to stop using a $60 enzyme supplement and replaced it with a less expensive diluted version that she had found on the Internet. The everything-but-the-kitchen-sink legal petition even threw in the couch. Since the staff had complained in passing that the sofa in the blue room had become fetid, the off putting image of a dog-urine-stained couch went into the lawsuit too.
Unable to visit Park Avenue or to interview Dr. Pritchett for fear that the physician would alert Tony, Salzman relied on the statements provided by Mrs. Astor's staff and Philip, Annette, and David. Ultimately, some of the concerns turned out to be justified (inadequate housekeeping, poor meals, staff cutbacks), but others would be prove to be based on misunderstandings. Dr. Pritchett later stated that he alone had discontinued the Procrit prescription. In the nurses' eyes, the memo from Tony Marshall's secretary telling them not to call 911—a piece of paper they had not saved—implied that the Marshalls wanted to let Mrs. Astor die. But Pritchett later insisted that he had independently told the nurses to call 911 only if there were treatable medical problems, in keeping with Mrs. Astor's living will.
In presenting his case, Salzman included not just the gravest charges but myriad small details. An aide said that Tony had complained upon seeing Brooke wearing a scarf: "Mr. Marshall was concerned about the $16.00 dry cleaning bill." The petition quoted Philip chiding his father for reducing Brooke's usual elaborate flower arrangements and substituting bouquets from Korean greengrocers. But that charge wilted on closer scrutiny. At 104, Mrs. Astor was no longer entertaining and did not require an apartment full of blooms. Sam Karalis, the owner of Windsor Florist, which had supplied Mrs. Astor with flowers for two decades, later told me, "When she was feeling well, she had the whole house filled with flowers. Toward the end, she was in bed all the time—she didn't use so many flowers. One bouquet a week for the bedroom, roses and lilies."
The guardianship lawsuit was never meant to be about money or property, but the entangling of Brooke's and Tony's finances was thrown in like a garnish on a Wedgwood plate. Philip had provided Salzman with financial documents including details about the sale of Brooke's Childe Hassam painting and his father's 2005 tax return. Tony later admitted that he had given himself a huge raise and a bonus—the W
-2 showed that he had received $2.38 million that year for managing Brooke's money, five times his usual annual salary, $450,000. "All the money stuff was thrown into the lawsuit for leverage," Salzman recalls. "We didn't care about the money."
Caught up in the Oedipal implications of what he was about to do, Philip unburdened himself to Salzman, describing his pent-up frustrations and suspicions over the behavior of his father and Charlene. In constructing Philip's affidavit and his own cover letter, Salzman reflected that intensity of feeling. But these legal arguments were never designed for public consumption (let alone tabloid headlines) but were crafted to convince a judge in private of the dire nature of Brooke Astor's problems.
"Her diet is inadequate, endangering the life and safety of this slight and sickly 104-year-old woman," read Philip's affidavit. "Her Park Avenue duplex is in such a dirty and dilapidated state that she's been forced to live among peeling and falling paint and dusty and crumbling carpets. Her bedroom is so cold in the winter that my grandmother is forced to sleep in the TV room in torn nightgowns on a filthy couch that smells, probably from dog urine ... Why should my grandmother, who was accustomed to dining with world leaders and frequented 21 and the Knickerbocker Club, be forced to eat oatmeal and pureed carrots, pureed peas and pureed liver every day, Monday through Friday months on end?"