My mother, Gloria Gettinger Meyer, died this morning at her apartment in New York. She had a fabulous life, and is probably the only single person to have known all of the following: John Lennon and Yoko Ono (who used to eat lunch at the same restaurant she did every day for several years, where he would recite the specials for her and hold out her chair and tell her jokes - she was only vaguely aware of who he was, thought he might have been with the Rolling Beatles, or something, but hes SO charming), Roy Cohn (who briefly handled her divorce from my father, and whom she knew socially), Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Birch Bayh, Gale McGee, Nat King Cole, Harry Belafonte, Jackie Susann, Dick Shawn, Harold Robbins (whose yacht she visited in the south of France), Saul Bellow (about whom she once asked, If hes such a great writer, how come he doesnt have a yacht, like Harold Robbins?), Adlai Stevenson (whose name escaped her, but He was very nebbish; you would know who he was. Had a hole in his shoe. Ran for President!), Ed Sullivan (who invited me to meet the Beatles, but it was a school night so my mom said of course I couldnt go), Edmond and Lily Safra, John Kluge, Eddie Fisher, Ed Brooke, George Raft (with whom she went to the track in Los Angeles), Carmine De Sapio, Abe Beame, Admiral Halsey (to whom she distractedly handed her packages one day - he lived in our building and was in a formal Navy uniform waiting for a car - thinking he was the doorman), Walter Winchell (who wrote in his column that she was blinding people with her new diamond ring at the Stork Club), Robert Sylvester (who wrote in the Daily News about how she delivered newspapers in her Rolls on my Long Island paper route when I was sick), Abe Sonnabend (who owned the Plaza Hotel), countless restaurant owners including Glenn Bernbaum (of Mortimers), Sirio Maccioni (of Le Cirque, but before that, the Colony - where I was the only child allowed to sit at the bar), and god knows who else. She had dinner next door to Sharon Tates house that night in 1969 (she was living in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel that year) - returning in the morning to leave a gift for her hosts, she saw them carting out the bodies next door. She decided then that she would never have a house in LA, or anywhere else, only apartments, and soon moved to a full-floor apartment on Wilshire (which I never saw), which she kept for only a year or two. She became a jet-setter after divorcing my father, and went to Iran as well as all sorts of other places. She lived in London for a few years, in an apartment on Hyde Park (which I also never saw). She always travelled in grand style. And unlike her son, she was never a name-dropper - she would want me to tell you that I just mentioned all those people to give a kaleidoscopic glimpse into my mothers life. She was one of a kind. I will miss her always..
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 20:53:53 +0000
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