Out & About
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Two thousand women in Manhattan yesterday spent the hours between noon and two at ladies’ lunches in support of nonprofits. One woman, the speaker of the city council, Christine Quinn, made it to two, one for Safe Horizon and one for Bottomless Closet. Both organizations gave her awards.
“And I still haven’t had lunch,” she said. It’s easy to see why she’s a coveted guest; of all the women donors in the city, Ms. Quinn perhaps has the biggest budget: the city’s $52.7 billion.
These days, ladies’ lunches are not just about a nice pastel suit and small talk. There’s some of that, but there are also large numbers of working women who are present because their own companies bought their ticket. Chalk it up to corporate responsibility, and the desire to nurture support networks for professional women.
For the women writing checks, the most compelling part of the lunch is hearing from the people who benefit. Betty Logan told guests how Bottomless Closet helped her find an apartment so she wouldn’t have to impose on her daughter. Morgan Ramses told of how she was able to graduate from college after landing in a Safe Horizon shelter.
None of the boys that participate in Project READ, the literacy program Jamee Gregory founded five years ago for the Boys Club, were on hand to speak at the lunch she organized with Fendi. There was a good reason: “We don’t encourage truancy,” Ms. Gregory said.
The New York Public Library spring luncheon celebrated literacy of another variety, the highbrow kind of the socialites and donors themselves. The main attraction was a panel on memoirs with Frank McCourt, Jeanette Walls, J.R. Moehringer, and Mary Karr.
“You don’t feel like you wasted the lunch with a lot of chit chat,” a board member of the library, Louise Grunwald, said. “You always leave with an insight.”
Ms. Gregory, who set the guest list for her event, invited all of her friends. The library event drew a wide variety of people connected by tpheir love of reading.
“Most of my friends aren’t here, which I guess means I don’t have too many intellectual friends,” Daisy Soros said.
