Considering the Importance of Awarding

Looking southwest along the Hudson River towards the Staute of Liberty and Ellis Island. Photo: JH.

Every year since 2001, Montblanc North America and Quest Magazine have held a small private annual dinner titled New Yorkers Who Make A Difference honoring a group of prominent New Yorkers who have contributed measurably to the good of the community. The idea was borne out of the tragedy of 9/11 in as a symbolic celebration of the brighter, life-giving side of humanity.

This past Monday night at a private club here in New York Chris Meigher, publisher and owner of Quest Media, and Jan-Patrick Schmitz, President and CEO of Montblanc North America, co-hosted the eighth annual New Yorkers Who Make A Difference dinner honoring Frederike Biggs, Georgette Mosbacher, Nancy Paduano, Marlene Hess, and Hilary Geary Ross.

Unlike many of the philanthropic galas, celebrations, etc., this one is always a very intimate dinner. In a wood-paneled dining room with a fire crackling in the fireplace, there were eight tables of ten. Many of the guests know each other, or are acquainted through a variety of social activities around town, including mutual philanthropic interests. Frederike Biggs, who is also a very busy interior designer, is active in the New York Botanical Garden and the Boys Club of New York. Georgette Mosbacher is active in the New York School for Children. Nancy Paduano served last year as the President of the Central Park Conservancy. Marlene Hess has multiple interests in the community, including Lenox Hill Hospital, The Museum of Modern Art, and Tuesday night’s gala, The International Women’s Health Coalition. Hilary Geary Ross who writes a column from Palm Beach and Southampton for both Quest and NYSD also has multiple philanthropic interests in those communities and in New York.

Jan-Patrick Schmitz, Liz Smith, and Nathalie Schmitz

Cynthia Lufkin, Somers Farkas, and Grace Meigher

Previous honorees have included Blaine Trump, Cynthia Lufkin, Louis Auchincloss, Nancy Stahl, Liz Smith, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, Susan Fales-Hill, Dominick Dunne, Joseph Califano, Anne Ford, Evelyn Lauder, Laurie Carson, John Rosenwald, Pauline Pitt, Tom Quick, Karen LeFrak, Muffie Potter Aston, Jamee Gregory, Emilia Saint-Amand Krimendahl, Emilia Fanjul, Lorna Graev, Lyn Nicholas, Dr. Mitch Rosenthal, Christine Schwarzman, John and Marianne Castle, and Marian Sulzberger Heiskell.

All are names, people you’ll see and meet on many of the committees and boards that dominate the philanthropic and social world of New York. Others, such as Dominick Dune, Yasmin Aga Khan and Mitch Rosenthal have had profound influence on the causes that care about and are dedicated to.

Unlike a lot of these evenings, this one always seems like a personal dinner party, Manhattan-style. There cocktails in the club’s reception room, giving everyone a chance to meet and/or catch-up, followed by dinner in the club’s dining room.

Among those attending were some of the past honorees such as Cynthia Lufkin and her husband Dan, Jamee and Peter Gregory, Lorna and Larry Graev, Liz Smith, Dominick Dunne, Mitch Rosenthal, Muffie Potter Aston.


	Mario Buatta, Hilary Geary Ross, and Dominick Dunne

Also attending, besides the honorees and their spouses such as Wilbur Ross, Dan Paduano, Jim Zirin and Jeremy Biggs; Jan-Patrick and Nathalie Schmitz, were Michael and Tara Rockefeller, Peggy Meija, Mario Buatta, Wendy Carduner, Tom Fallon, Chris and Mary Beth Daley, Grief Clark, Mark Gilbertson, Kipton Cronkite, Karl and Deborah Wellner, Charlie and Ritchie Scribner, Andrew and Jill Roosevelt (Mrs. Roosevelt is expecting their first child – a boy – May 1st), Wendy Vanderbilt, Kipton Cronkite, the beautiful Grace Meigher, portraitist Louise Masano (who does the official portraits of the honorees for Montblanc’s Quest advertisements), Chris Daley and Lisa Howlett, Michael and Sandy Meehan, Pamela Kapsimilis and George Parcells (Mr. and Mrs.) and Somers and Jonathan Farkas.

The highlight of these evenings always takes place after the main course (Rack of lamb this year) when Mr. Meigher gets up to pay tribute to the honorees and certain guests. Mr. Meigher is without question the unheralded (albeit well known) toastmaster general of the social set, man never at loss for the right silver-like words and golden phrases of praise to reward the honorees or the prominent guest. His encomiums are concise, trenchant and so intoxicating that when he was finished New York’s First Ambassador of Good Will, Liz Smith was immediately moved to stand up and toast him as one of the most “wonderful guys in New York.” The room was unanimous in sharing her enthusiasm.

The moment reminded me a panel discussion that we attended at the Festival of Thinkers last October in Abu Dhabi (see NYSD 10.24.08 [1]) where the subject being discussed was far headier than our little convocation on Monday night, although nevertheless apt. The subject of the panel discussion was “Moving Beyond Conflict” – in other words, how can we find peace on this planet of ours. Among the panelists which included Ted Sorenson and Fidel Castro Jr. was a much older man who was a physicist and Nobel prize winner who had several ideas that were helpful considerations for all of us. Among them, he said, was the importance of “awarding” people, recognizing individuals for their good works and valiant efforts. This, he pointed out, not only served as a way of recognizing the brighter aspects of humanity but also in served as a cohesive in uniting us as a society.

There was a little bit of that going on Monday night at the dinner for New Yorkers Who Make A Difference, and by the end of the evening, everyone in the room was, however briefly, in the comfort zone, because of it and because of them, ready to go back out into the world and the cold and damp streets of Manhattan.