Taylor was becoming increasingly frustrated. He could put no name to the property. He had turned to the program after it had started—but the familiarity of the lobby, the details of the columns and arches of the foyer, pulled him in—and then finally, fading to the commercial, the name was revealed. It was the Waldorf=Astoria Hotel in New York City—the venerable institution where he stayed at the end of the summer of 1937. Those were the few days he had spent in deep contemplation of his future as he returned from Europe, from meeting Sarah Berger, when he delayed venturing on to Chicago where Emily Kendall would be waiting. Could it really have been fifty years ago that he ate in that dining room and planned for a perfect future that did not materialize?
He was glued to the television set like a child returning from school, ignoring all other stimulus while nibbling on a snack. He was, in fact, just reaching for the bowl of mixed nuts and pretzels at the corner of his expansive desk when once again he was magnetized to the screen.
“And now we return to our special presentation focusing today on New York City’s Waldorf=Astoria Hotel, with host, Rachel Gold.”
He heard her name and his reaction made him spill half of the assortment on the floor. He moved closer to the set.
“Thank you,” Rachel was saying, “and welcome back to the glorious ballroom of this grand hotel. Imagine it is 1940 and you are a descendant of Mrs. Astor’s famous 400 list. How many events during any one year might you have attended here? The hotel itself has meticulously documented many of the society weddings. Picture the elegant bride entering this room filled with hundreds of roses—her train so long that it extended down the first five rows of seats. In one bridal party alone, two of the attendants fainted from standing straight and still during the extended procession and ceremony…”
At this point, Rachel turned to the escorting hotel manager. “We have with us Mr. Jay Montgomery, manager of the Waldorf for the past twenty years. Mr. Montgomery, you run quite an establishment here. Can you take our viewers on a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to keep this place ticking?”
“Thank you, Rachel.” He beamed into the camera, but then turned back to the hostess in a less self-conscious manner. “It is my pleasure to introduce you to the world of the Waldorf=Astoria.”
“May I ask one more question before you continue, as our audience may be intrigued by your unusual logo, as I was.”
“You mean the double hyphen, the equal sign between the words Waldorf and Astoria. It is no mistake. It is just one more thing that distinguishes us. It was meant as a symbol not only combining two origirial hotels, but combining the original established standards with the newly constructed edifice.”
Mr. Montgomery seemed to feel comfortable as a speaker and Rachel appeared impressed with his next segue. “Yes, if you are thinking the name is sounding familiar,” he said, again almost to the camera. “Your Waldorf salad at lunch is a creation of our very own maitre d’hotel, our most illustrious Oscar Tschirky. And credit him also with your veal Oscar at dinner.”
Continuing her walk through an ornate corridor of the hotel, she noted a gallery of photographs delineating the history of famous events and guests. “Here is a picture from 1933 of a gathering of chefs of the hotel, all in their tall white hats, led by the stripe-suited and robust Oscar. They are holding up champagne glasses of Dry Monopole, dated 1925, and toasting the end of Prohibition.
“Now we move to a picture of Crown Princess Ingrid of Denmark dining with Thomas J. Watson, president of IBM. It is May 1939.” The picture is not flattering for the princess who towers over her dinner companion. She is caught in a wide-mouthed speaking pose, her royal jewelry, from her necklace to her crown, overpowering his display of medals—her earrings competing with the hotel chandeliers.
“And in 1956, Prince Rainier III of Monaco and his fiancée, actress Grace Kelly, announced their engagement in the Waldorf’s Conrad Suite.” The camera closes in on this photograph, as well. As Miss Kelly sits in a glamorous evening gown with long gloves and a pearl choker, her handsome prince stands by her side, leaning on her chair. The rows of medals on his tuxedo are even with the top of her head, his trademark thin moustache adding to his distinguished European look.
Taylor was mesmerized by Rachel Gold. She was not hard to recognize; she looked as young and fresh as the day she entered his home, but perhaps more polished. She must be about thirty-seven years old, he was thinking. The same age his son Court would have been. She was beautiful and self-assured. “I know he is eighteen—he’ll be in college soon,” he actually said aloud to himself. He was thinking now of Rachel Gold’s son, his grandson, “Rusty,” who had been Jason Gold Stone for many years, and he tormented himself once again, wondering if he shouldn’t try to connect with him. But no, he thought, that would only be good for me and I want what is best for him.
Luckily at that point, as if on cue, his precious granddaughter, his ward, seventeen-year-old Sylvie, distracted him as she entered his study dressed elegantly in the prom dress she had just purchased, and she approached him as a young princess wanting the approval of the king. And then he was confident again he had made the right decision. As Sylvie maneuvered through adolescence and the woman she would become peeked out ever so slightly now and again, he would not risk reintroducing her father’s chaotic past and disturbing the stable environment he had created for her.
Taylor
Kenilworth, 2004
Even as he approached his ninetieth year, Taylor Woodmere was not a man of idle pursuits. While he enjoyed the serenity and seclusion of his study, with the comfort of his weathered leather chair and the cavernous walls of his volumes of books, even there, he was always at work. Though his father and grandfather before him would be credited with amassing the family fortune, Taylor had been responsible for maintaining the tremendous growth of the company during his tenure as president and chief executive officer. He had loved making money—and spending it. He was not immune to the lure of luxuries—automobiles, vacations, art, and the like, but he also loved that he employed a great number of people—that more families than his own depended on his business acumen. He was a pioneer in health benefits for company employees. Through the years, he had sat on government advisory boards for labor practices. He was a big businessman with a strong social conscience.
Years ago, he had prided himself on his beautiful handwriting, though he now considered it a lost art. Then, he would stay up late into the night and pen letters to friends, business associates, and government figures. And now with the onset of arthritis, he was proud to have transitioned to the keyboard touch of the computer, even e-mailing his newer associates, as, naturally, so many of the old colleagues were gone.
He especially enjoyed communicating by computer almost daily with Sylvie, the beloved granddaughter that he had raised. Often, Taylor would recall when Sylvie transitioned from being a weekend visitor at her grandparents’ home to a permanent resident in Kenilworth. As she matured into a bright, confident and capable woman, he had actually hoped that Sylvie might step into a position of authority in the company, since her father, Court, had never met that potential, and had died before the age of thirty-five. But Sylvie had chosen her own path in her efforts at self-discovery. She had become a respected psychologist, the author of several articles in professional magazines, which today were among his library collection.
They did, however, work together on one major project. Taylor was still often seen about his community and even downtown in Chicago, still active in the Woodmere Foundation. The foundation funded grants in many areas, from medical research to work internship programs for minority young adults, targeting both high school graduates in the trades and college graduates. The foundation had been his true baby. He had certainly received more pleasure from it than from his own child.
This failure with Court had been a deep pain that Taylor had carried through his life. Whether valid or not, he bore tremendous guilt for his son’s behavior and shortcomings. Why had he n
ot been more empathetic and nurturing as Court was growing up? Why had he not remembered his own struggles with adolescent insecurities, his own fears of disappointing his father? Initially, he had tried to place the blame on Emily’s poor influence, remembering the positive role that his own mother had played in bolstering his self-esteem. But eventually he blamed himself for not being at home enough as Court was growing up, for not recognizing that Court did not possess a constitution strong enough to shoulder the weight of the Woodmere legacy. Although Taylor, himself, was not so dissimilar from his father, Addison Woodmere, Jr., and his grandfather, “the senior Addison,” both men of great accomplishment, they did each expound that the son of the next generation, the continuation of the dynasty, was of primary importance. In this, Taylor had failed his family. His son, Courtland, had basically peaked in high school and had become an incredibly challenging young adult, even before he was asked to leave Northwestern University after his second year. How ironic, that this son had achieved the one milestone that none of the Woodmere patriarchs could. He was, unbeknownst to almost anyone including himself, the father of two children.
More and more lately, Taylor’s thoughts reverted back to that day in 1975, when a beautiful young woman, looking for Court, had entered his home with her little boy, and how he had followed the life of that little boy, Jason Gold, for over thirty years. No matter what, he knew that Court had come through in one respect— given him two wonderful grandchildren, one to be openly proud of—and one to clandestinely enjoy.
Taylor
Kenilworth, 2005
Taylor Woodmere, with his granddaughter, Sylvie, by his side, read the article that appeared in the newspaper that morning.
The Woodmere Foundation from Status to Scandal Chicago Tribune, February 17, 2005
The article surrounded their photograph at the previous day’s news conference, with the picture of Jeune Fille à la Plage interposed.
A scandal has emerged involving the well-known industrialist, philanthropist, and lifelong Francophile Taylor Woodmere, ninety, of suburban Kenilworth. Pieces of a puzzle have been coming together in an onerous way for Woodmere, who supposedly developed his lifelong attraction to France during a visit to Paris before continuing on to Berlin in 1937. It is alleged that Woodmere was in possession of and then eventually donated a painting to the Art Institute of Chicago, which has now been challenged as a Nazi theft from a Jewish family. The painting is Jeune Fille à la Plage, by French Impressionist Henri Lebasque.
According to eighty-two-year-old Gerta Rosen, the painting had been the property of her neighbors, the Emanuel Berger family in Berlin, just prior to World War II. Taylor Woodmere, accompanied by his granddaughter, Dr. Sylvie Woodmere Hunt, held a news conference yesterday explaining that the painting that has stirred this controversy as a Holocaust theft and that had hung in that Berlin home in the late 1930s was actually Taylor Woodmere’s property. It had been sent to him from the Berger residence prior to the war.
In truth, Taylor was not ready to reveal the full story of how he left the painting with his love, even if the story would have exonerated him.
When Woodmere was asked why he did not donate the painting sooner and in the Bergers’ name, he responded that he had spent years and resources trying to see if the family survived, but that he had always been the owner nevertheless.
The controversy brought Taylor back, once again, to his memories of the summer of 1937, when he had left the painting as a surprise for Sarah. In his first note to her when he arrived back in the States, he had written, “Someday it will hang in the home we will have together.” But he could not say this to the press while his wife, Emily, was still alive. Although Emily knew of his desperate search for Sarah Berger, and in her heart she must have known the truth that he had fallen in love with Sarah, he had always kept the charade that he was following a humanitarian effort of friendship in trying (desperately) to locate her. He had explained to her that he and his father had been business acquaintances of the Bergers. But Emily was no fool. She must have understood that Taylor did not reconnect with her, did not present her with a ring, until he had exhausted all efforts in locating Sarah, until he understood that she had fallen into Nazi hands when the St. Louis was rebuffed from an American landing.
Even after his eventual reunion with Emily and their subsequent marriage, a certain cloud of sadness and longing continued to envelope him. He never fully gave himself emotionally to his wife. And so, in a news conference so many decades later, Taylor Woodmere held to his brief account, although the full truth would have better cleared his name and truly turned a scandal into an intriguing human interest story. He owed that, at least, to Emily.
After generations of accolades attached to Woodmere Industries and the Woodmere family name, it is shocking that it should now be clouded with rumors and actually accusations of anti-Semitism. In the past, the only negative publicity associated with the name involved Taylor Woodmere’s son, Courtland (Court) Woodmere, who was charged with driving under the influence of drugs in the accidental death of his young wife, Lilly, in 1973. It is reported that Court spent many of the following years in drug rehabilitation facilities, never fully emotionally recovering from the tragedy, and that he died in 1985. Dr. Sylvie Woodmere Hunt, the daughter of Lilly and Court and the only surviving heir to the Woodmere fortune, was present with her grandfather at the news conference.
Solomon Garber, a spokesman for the Jewish community, expressed great surprise and skepticism at the charges. “Taylor Woodmere, although not Jewish, has been a strong supporter of the Jewish Federation and Israel Bonds for decades. My inclination is that there is more to this story and I would withhold further comment and continue my support for Mr. Woodmere until a time when these reports would be proven reliable.”
A spokesman for the family of Gerta Rosen, the Holocaust survivor who had originally recognized the painting in the Art Institute of Chicago and questioned how Woodmere was associated with its provenance, suggested that “perhaps his lifelong support of the Jewish community might be further acknowledgement of guilt feelings.”
Jason
Chicago, 2005
So many evenings throughout the early winter, the waves can have a thunderous effect along Chicago’s lakefront, as strong, cold winds set them pounding against concrete barriers. This sight and sound of the relentless presence of nature in its most glorious form always seemed to give Jason Stone a renewed energy. But by February, a thick coating of white ice will often blanket the waters, offering a quieter, though equally ominous view, and Jason would be drawn to the peace and tranquility of that scene. It helped him to put in perspective the demands of his own schedule. Depositions and documents, the essence of his day as a lawyer, seemed as ephemeral as the imprint of the cars also in his sight, dashing and disappearing along Lake Shore Drive in the rush hour. Within minutes it gave Jason the feeling of contentment that he sought, proud to live in this fascinating location on the city’s Gold Coast.
Inside the residence, Lara Stone had finally found a moment to glance at the paper, as she slowly stirred the fresh pasta marinade she was preparing on the stove. She actually set the Tribune so close to the burner that she had to wipe the spattering red sauce from the front page section. It was then that she saw it. It was the article on the Woodmere Foundation and the picture of Sylvie Hunt that caught her eye. Lara took a minute to process what she was reading. Then she called to her husband— “Jason,” she said once, and then louder a second time, so he could hear her across the rooms. When he was nearer, she began. “Remember the woman on the first day of school?—You’ve got to see this article.”
Jason looked over her shoulder, as she continued. “Remember, I told you about Sylvie Hunt—mother of Jessica Hunt—the mother who was a little too interested in Marcus, who offered some incomprehensible apology the next week.” She looked back at him and saw she had more than captured his attention. “Well, this is her—here. Dr. Sylvie Woodmere Hunt—there’s a whole
story about her family.”
Jason, responding immediately to the repetition of that familiar name, moved closer to his wife to better view the article, while she read it to him.
Again—the names—and now the painting itself in the paper—with controversy. He was done with niceties. He would digest all of this overnight, but tomorrow he would be determined—he needed to meet with his mother, and, if need be, he would confront her about this. Whatever memories they may stir for her—he needed to know what all this meant to him.
Jason’s assistant was surprised at his unusual late arrival, and later, when all things were revealed, would remember his uncharacteristic frenetic manner, request to get his mother on the line and then to arrange a lunch reservation for three people at a nearby restaurant. She overheard him almost demand that his mother meet him there and then witnessed a similar, but less hostile, call to his wife.
And in a booth, in a corner of La Fontaine Restaurant in Chicago’s Loop, Rachel finally told him her story (his story)—the whole story, with its love and disappointment and then its happy ending—her son, Jason. “Oh, sweetheart, your memories are valid,” she began. “I had no idea the strong specific images you held of that brief visit to the Woodmere Estate. You have to understand, that I had never been there myself until that day, and then I found it so unnerving and disappointing that I refused to think further about Court as your father and proceeded with marrying Richard and having him adopt you. You may remember that after that day, I never called you Rusty again; you were only Jason. Even I had no idea of the roots of your birth father until that day. And until you just showed me this article, I never knew the story of his decline.”
Pictures of the Past Page 26