by Meryl Gordon
In Manhattan, where being on the right list is a constant source of status anxiety, an invitation to Mrs. Astor's funeral was perceived as an important validation. Liz Smith mentioned in her syndicated column that she had been among the anointed. "Our side didn't leak that list—it was convenient for the other side to create a misimpression," complained Daniel Billy, Jr. "This was always intended to be open to the public." He added that the publicity was painful for the Marshalls. "He's an eighty-three-year-old man and his mother just died. They are really stressed out."
Annette and Oscar de la Renta hosted a lunch at their Park Avenue apartment hours before the Friday, August 17, funeral. The guests represented a cross-section of those who had been Mrs. Astor's most vigilant defenders in final years: David Rockefeller and his executive assistant, Alice Victor; Henry and Nancy Kissinger; Philip, Nan, Winslow, and Sophie Marshall; Chris Ely; Minnette Christie and Pearline Noble; and Dr. Strongwater and Dr. Pritchett and their wives. (Alec, given his role as a neutral party, was not invited.) Annette told her guests, "Brooke would love to look around this table, because it represented her life." The menu was soup and a cheese soufflé, salad and peaches and cream, with Annette reassuring Sophie, a vegetarian, that she could eat everything. "It was a roomful of people who felt that they had done the right thing but didn't feel self-righteous about it," says Henry Kissinger. "It wasn't a combative lunch—it was not a discussion of the dispute or Tony. It was sort of a reflective lunch."
Their fight to help Brooke had imbued their lives with a sense of purpose. During the past year, this group had been in control of all arrangements involving Brooke Astor, but on this day they were powerless. The funeral, the guest list, the speakers—Tony was in charge of it all.
David Rockefeller had been worrying for months that he would not be allowed to say a few words at his dear friend's funeral. He feared that Tony would punish him by shutting him out. But several days earlier Tony had called him in Maine, inviting him to the funeral and then asking him to speak. "I was pretty much planning to do it," Rockefeller told me later, "and Tony called. I was glad that he did. It was a very nice for him to ask. Under the circumstances, it would have been wrong for me not to speak."
The two men had a cordial conversation, and Rockefeller felt relieved. But then Tony's lawyer, Ken Warner, had the temerity to call Rockefeller's office to ask that he refrain from mentioning Annette in his funeral remarks. Rockefeller planned to simply ignore the plea, as "Annette was the person closest to Brooke."
Shortly after 2 P.M., the luncheon group filed downstairs, where town cars were waiting to take them to the funeral. Crowds clogged the sidewalk in front of St. Thomas Church, although the ceremony wasn't scheduled to start until 2:30. Police had erected metal barricades on either side of the Fifth Avenue entrance to hold back photographers, cameramen, reporters, and gawkers. As street vendors sold hot dogs, crepes, and sodas, it was easy to forget there was a funeral.
The famous friends, the courtiers, the hangers-on, and the true-blue pals were turning up and clustering together in front of the church. Sean Driscoll, the owner of Glorious Food, who had catered many of Mrs. Astor's dinners, and Albert Hadley, who had designed her red library, were the first to arrive. Howard Rubenstein, the image-maker who has handled decades of damage control for George Steinbrenner and Leona Helmsley, was working the event. Hired the day before by the Marshalls, he had spent several hours with the embattled couple. (Three days later he resigned from the account, citing a conflict with another client, the New York Public Library. Even the battle-hardened Rubenstein probably concluded that no amount of cash would compensate for alienating every major cultural institution in New York.) The New York Post columnist Cindy Adams wrote that the Marshalls were shopping for a PR man and cattily commented, "I suggest maybe Osama bin Laden's spokes-terrorist."
Tony and Charlene arrived inconspicuously at the church and entered through the side door on Fifty-third Street. Reverend John Andrew had married the Marshalls back in 1992, and although he was now rector emeritus at the church, he was to conduct the service, at Mrs. Astor's request. For the Marshalls, he was a familiar and consoling presence.
Alec arrived at St. Thomas along with his fiancée, his daughter, Hilary Brooke, and her mother, his first wife, Susie Secondo, and was directed upstairs to the family room, where he promptly encountered Tony and Charlene. Alec thought they could at least grieve for Brooke together. "My father walked over to the other side of the room to get away from me," Alec recalls. He thought it best to leave the room.
When the large wooden doors of St. Thomas opened, all the guests rushed up the stairs to enter, stepping into the marble entry with its welcoming phrase, "Peace on Earth to Men of Good Will." Despite the predictions, many seats remained empty. Press reports later estimated that 900 people attended the service in this church, which seats 1,400. Many of the VIPs mentioned in the Times (Nancy Reagan, the Bushes) did not attend. It was a Friday in August, a time when New York is left to the tourists, and many of Brooke's close friends, such as Vartan Gregorian, were out of the country. In the more accessible Hamptons, several of Brooke's friends not so quietly let it be known that they were boycotting because Tony was in charge. But that may simply have been an excuse to avoid missing a day at the beach. Mrs. Astor no longer needed to be courted.
Philip and his family were escorted to their seats by Daniel Billy, Jr. He had seen the Marshalls in agony because of Philip's actions, but this was not the moment for confrontation. With a poker face, he politely introduced himself and walked Philip and his family to their seats. Philip got a warm welcome from those nearby, including the producer John Hart, who murmured, "I couldn't be more honored to be seated near you." Philip's expression changed as he caught sight of his father. "It was hard for Philip," recalls Hart. "He was looking at his father, but not wanting to."
The service began. Eight Marines carried the heavy wood coffin to the altar. After "Rock of Ages"—and the sight of Whoopi Goldberg running in ten minutes late to join Tony and Charlene—Mayor Michael Bloomberg rose to speak. He quoted a poem by Brooke that had been published in The New Yorker in March 1996: "Love is an apple, round and firm/without a blemish or a worm/Bite into it and you will find/you've found your heart and lost your mind." He added that the poem "was full of the tart insight that was Brooke's hallmark." He remarked on her love affair with the Big Apple. Then the mayor conveyed exactly where he stood in the family fight. "Thanks to Annette de la Renta," he began, "I had lunch once with Brooke in her apartment." The mere mention of Annette enraged Tony's friends. The mayor closed his remarks by mentioning Brooke's well-known sartorial splendor: "There's a Yiddish saying that our mitzvahs, our good deeds, are the clothing of our soul. In more ways than one, Brooke Astor was always the best-dressed woman in the room."
David Rockefeller, the next eulogist, looked every bit his ninety-two years as he walked slowly to the podium. His speech was brief and heartfelt. He described Brooke as a "close and loving friend for five magical decades." "The most wonderful thing about Brooke, besides the fact she was great fun, was that she treated each and every person she met with warmth and respect," he said. "For those of us who were fortunate to know her well, it was always a warm kiss, especially for the men. How lucky we felt!" And then he added the sentence that Tony had dreaded: "Even in her final peaceful days, when I visited Holly Hill with her dear and loyal friend Annette, Brooke would still look at us with that amazing twinkle in her eye, which she always had and never gave up."
Next it was Tony Marshall's turn to speak, not only to face his critics but to claim his mother for himself. "My mother was an only child and so was I," he began. "This gave us a closer understanding of each other. We shared a love of nature. And we particularly loved the times when Charlene and I were alone with my mother, either in New York or on trips we took together here and abroad ... We also shared a sense of humor," he continued. "Three years ago, on my eightieth birthday, Mother informed me with a twinkle in her eye
, 'You are only halfway there.'" These words were greeted with warm laughter.
Then Tony read aloud a "declaration of faith" that Brooke had written many years before to be read at her funeral. Wonderfully narcissistic and poetic, this was vintage Brooke. "When I go from here, I want to leave behind me the world richer for the experience of me," she had written. For Brooke Astor, who loved to hike and hug trees, nature was much on her mind. "I want to leave the trees rustling with my thoughts," she wrote, adding that she hoped that the "tears that I shed for love" would return to the earth as dew. With the wisdom and joie de vivre of a woman who relished her 105 years, her farewell message was to tell her fellow man that "death is nothing and life is everything."
After he fini shed, Tony paused, a deliberately theatrical moment. "Yes, New York and her many friends have lost a wonderful person," he said. Then his voice choked up, as he added in a tone of almost childish disbelief, "But I've lost my mother." It was a cry of anguish, particularly moving because on some level he may have felt that all the world had gotten more of her than he had.
At the close of the service, Reverend Andrew Mead, the current rector of St. Thomas Church, made a point of announcing that Brooke Astor had chosen all the prayers. It seemed like an unnecessary comment, but his rationale for making it became clear once he read the next prayer.
"Lord, make us instruments of thy peace," he read. "Where there is hatred, let us so love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is discord, union. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console. To be understood as to understand. To be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen." People looked around with raised eyebrows. As one woman said later, "It was if Brooke were talking from the grave."
A bagpiper played "Amazing Grace" as the Marines carried the coffin down the aisle and the congregation followed them out. Tony and Charlene clutched each other's arms for support. Philip was fighting back tears; his wife reached into her purse and handed him a tissue. The doors to the church opened to reveal an astonishing scene: hundreds of people lining Fifth Avenue, waiting for a glimpse of Brooke Astor's coffin, while traffic was halted by the police. The scene of the crowd, just for a moment, resembled Brooke Astor's painting Flags, Fifth Avenue, with New Yorkers of all social strata stopping to bear witness. It began raining just as the pallbearers walked down the stairs and the church bells rang. People applauded, as an impromptu thank-you. As the men loaded the coffin into the hearse, the rain stopped.
A small card in the program left on the seats in the church invited all the guests to a reception given by Tony and Charlene at the Colony Club. But Philip and Alec and their familial entourages opted instead to go to Starbucks in Rockefeller Center, where they watched the CNN coverage of the funeral.
At the Colony Club, waiters served salmon rolls and chicken brochettes and passed around trays of white wine to 120 people who came to pay condolences. Alice Astor's two daughters, Emily Harding and her half-sister, Ramona McEwan, who had flown over from London for the funeral, stopped by to honor Mrs. Astor. "It was perfectly pleasant, but what was clear was that a great many people did not come," says Harding. "They were clearly making a statement, the Annette de la Renta camp. I didn't want to be in any camp. John Richardson and Kenneth Jay Lane, people whom I've known for years, did not go to the Colony Club."
The guests at the reception sponsored by Tony included the Metropolitan Museum trustee Carl Spielvogel and his wife, Barbaralee Diamonstein; the president of the Museum of National History, Ellen Futter; Barbara Goldsmith; Elihu Rose; Marshall Rose; Randy Bourscheidt; and Whoopi Goldberg. Out of earshot of the Marshalls, some quietly murmured about the feud. As one woman speculated, "It's as if Tony and Annette are fighting over whose mother Brooke was."
There was a fierce thunderstorm that afternoon, but the next day was sunny and clear. Tony and Charlene had decided to bury Brooke privately at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, her chosen spot, without informing the rest of the family or Brooke's friends. The New York Post assigned a reporter and a photographer to stake out the cemetery, and the team caught a shot of the couple praying over the flower-strewn coffin, accompanied by Father Andrew. The Marshalls left before the grave was filled. An hour after they had gone, Alec arrived with Sue Ritchie and was startled to discover that the burial was still in progress. "We just stopped by to pay our last respects," he told the Post. "I didn't even know [the burial] was today." To his surprise, Alec recognized the worker tending the plot: Ramon Acosta, who had been the head gardener at Holly Hill for eight years, until Tony Marshall had cut back on staff. Acosta paused to reminisce about how much Mrs. Astor had loved her daffodils and her flower garden, saying, "I never thought I'd be burying your grandmother." Alec lingered on at the cemetery, to watch as the last shovels of dirt were placed on Brooke Astor's grave.
14. Family Plot
ON THE MORNING of September 5, 2007, Philip Marshall stood outside the Westchester County Surrogate's Courthouse, fiddling with the Buddhist prayer beads wrapped around his left wrist, dreading the next few hours. He had driven from Massachusetts the night before to go out for sushi with Chris Ely. The butler was acting as caretaker at Holly Hill, but family members were no longer allowed on the premises in the aftermath of Brooke's death. Philip had spent the night at Alec's apartment in Ossining and had asked his twin to keep him company in court today, but the conflict-averse Alec had declined.
Today marked the first time that all the antagonists would be in the same room since Brooke Astor's funeral. Oral arguments were scheduled before Supreme Court Judge Anthony Scarpino, Jr., over the question of choosing the temporary administrators for Brooke Astor's will. While Annette and Chase Bank had jointly proposed themselves, Philip had filed legal papers asking to be considered for the responsibility if Annette was not chosen. Tony's lawyer Ken Warner had instead suggested tapping the service of a neutral party, a retired seventy-five-year-old judge, Howard Levine, and a new bank, Fiduciary Trust.
A black large car pulled up in front of the courthouse, and Tony and Charlene stepped out. Philip hung back about 100 yards away; he was not ready to face them yet. Once the couple had headed into the building, Philip walked over to the car to greet his father's longtime driver, Luis Vasquez. They were joking and laughing together as Susan Robbins arrived.
For Robbins, this hearing marked her return to the Astor affair after nearly a year on the sidelines. She and Philip had developed a strong bond during the guardianship battle. "We connected straight up," Philip says, "and we've been in touch ever since." Her specialty was guardianship law, not trusts and estates. But facing a will battle, Philip hired an attorney whom he trusted—Robbins. She felt that this was her second chance to restore Mrs. Astor's wishes. "I feel a bit like I betrayed her, that I didn't fight hard enough for her," says Robbins. "So this would allow me to feel better."
In the sunny, wood-paneled, high-ceilinged eighteenth-floor courtroom, Annette de la Renta had already taken an unobtrusive seat in the fourth row on the left, flanked by her lawyer, Paul Saunders, and two associates. With her hair pulled severely back and wearing a black sheath dress with a flared hem, a black sweater, and stilettos, she looked as if she were attending a funeral. Charlene and Tony Marshall were at the front of the courtroom on the right side. Charlene, whose white hair was held back by a girlish headband, wore a black skirted suit and a white blouse and kept craning her neck to see who was coming in and then whispering to Tony.
At 9:30 A.M., Judge Scarpino, a middle-aged man with a mustache, wire-rim glasses, and a dry sense of humor, strode into the room. When the clerk called the Astor case, a phalanx of fifteen lawyers marched to the front, representing beneficiaries from the Metropolitan Museum and the New York Public Library to the Animal Medical Center. Like grownups caught in a polite game of musical chairs, the lawyers mill
ed around, since there were not enough places to sit. Eager to make a good impression, Philip grabbed a chair from the back of the courtroom and carried it on his shoulders up front and then joined Annette as his father looked on impassively. "This is a nightmare of a case," the judge began, pausing for effect—everyone in the room nodded knowingly—and then he delivered the punch line: "for the court reporter."
Ken Warner, Tony's lawyer, led off with a forty-five-minute monologue in which he attempted to refight the guardianship lawsuit. He insisted that "Mrs. de la Renta and Chase bring enormous bias and hostility to the case." Annette closed her eyes, as if imagining she were somewhere else, letting the words roll over her. Warner complained that the bank was trying to hurt Tony by getting him into trouble with the IRS. Chase had filed 1099 forms with the federal authorities, claiming that Tony should pay additional taxes on the transfer of Cove End and the $5 million to Charlene, which he had claimed as gifts from his mother rather than taxable income.