Author name: Roger Baker

Paul Newman Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, race car driver, and entrepreneur. He was the recipient of numerous awards including the Cecil B DeMille Award, three Golden Globes, a BAFTA Award and an Academy Award.Born in Shaker Heights, an upscale suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, Newman attended the Yale School of Drama before studying at the Actors Studio in Manhattan under Lee Strasberg.His major film roles included The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Harper (1966), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), The Sting (1973), The Towering Inferno (1974), Slap Shot (1977), and The Verdict (1982). A ten-time Oscar nominee, Newman was finally awarded an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in The Color of Money (1986). In 1958, he married his second wife, Joanne Woodward, also a celebrated movie star, who was awarded an Academy Award two months after their wedding for her role in Three Face of Eve. They were married for 50 years and shared three children before Paul died in 2008 at the age of 83. His body was cremated and his remains given to family and friends. I met Paul Newman in the early 1990s. By then, he was an internationally recognized A-List movie star, but one who abhorred the celebrity lifestyle of Beverley Hills. He preferred to live a quiet life away from the limelight in a converted farmhouse in the coastal village of Westport, Connecticut, where he would politely return his neighbors greetings if he was spotted running an errand in town, but would hide his most famous features to avoid detection. I was asked to drive up to his Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Ashford, Connecticut and deliver a generous corporate donation into his hands. The camp, founded by the movie star in 1988, is a charitable organization established as a summer camp for children aged 7-15 suffering with cancer and other serious ailments. It’s intended to be a place where they can enjoy all the pleasures of summer camp and, in the words of the actor, “raise a little hell,” in what may be for some of them the last few months of their lives. The Hole in the Wall Gang was a real-life gang in the 1880s American Wild West, which took its name from the Hole-in-the-Wall Pass in Johnson County, Wyoming, where several notorious outlaw gangs, whose crimes covered horse and cattle theft, stagecoach and highway robbery, store and bank robbery, had their hideouts. The 1969 movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which starred Robert Redford, Katherine Ross, and Paul Newman, features the hideout that the two bandits escape from to avoid arrest by a posse of federal authorities in dogged pursuit. The American Film Institute ranked the movie among the greatest westerns of all time. Of course, I knew the name Paul Newman and was familiar with some of his movies when I drove up to rural northwest Connecticut that day, but, typically, I knew little more about the man I was about to meet. I pulled up at a central cluster of wooden buildings that looked like a movie set from a forgotten western. Someone pointed to a building where I would most likely find the star and suggested I go there and wait outside. A short while later, a screen door swung open and a little scruffy guy stepped out to greet me. I thought he was the janitor. But he stuck out his hand saying, “Hi! I’m Paul Newman.” I stepped back in surprise. I don’t know if I expected James Bond in a tux or what, but this person was totally unexpected. He was shorter and thinner than I had imagined, was wearing grubby sweats, a Yankees baseball hat that had seen better days, and aviator sunglasses hiding his eyes. A few polite exchanges later, he said, “Come on, let’s go to lunch.” We ambled across the compound toward what turned out to be the camp’s dining hall, already crowded with dozens of noisy children and camp counsellors. We walked in without fanfare and sat down where we could at one of the less crowded trestle tables. As we did so, he removed his hat and glasses revealing his instantly recognizable features: close-cropped silver-gray hair and ice-blue eyes. Turning them toward me, he stood up smiling and murmured quietly in an off-hand way, “Excuse me for a minute, the children expect me to say hello.” He paced confidently toward a space in the center of the room as if he were going on stage at the Old Vic. His audience, immediately recognizing him, grew quieter with each step he took. Soon the din had quietened to a respectful silence. When he had their full attention, he looked around the hall and boomed in his distinctive drawl, “Are you all having a good time?” The response was raucous. They cheered, clapped, banged on the tables, and roared “YES!” He spoke a few more words, promising he would come to watch them play and would meet every one of them soon. With a wave, he walked back to his seat to another resounding roar of approval. The children’s love and admiration for him was palpable. Sitting back down beside me, he took a moment to describe the camp’s mission. “It’s all about helping them reach beyond the barrier of their illness,” he began. “Their illness makes them retreat behind that barrier. They’re quiet and reserved and feel unable to do very much at all. Our job is to get them pass that, and we almost always succeed.” Not surprisingly perhaps, given their success rate, the demand to attend the camp is high. Newman gave me the statistics. “We take in a new batch of kids for a one-week session several times each summer,” he said. “In total, about 20,000 children every year, many of them inner-city kids. When they get

THE WILL OF THE WOLVES A call came into Naples Shy Wolf Sanctuary from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. They’d found two wolf dogs up in Gainesville suffering from severe abuse and neglect. Would the Sanctuary take them in?Veteran sanctuary personnel Nancy Smith and Deanna Deppen, experienced in animal rescue and rehabilitation, had had such calls before. Ready to move into action immediately, they prepared for the worse. When they arrived, they were not surprised to find the two animals broken physically and mentally. One’s spirit was so crushed it cringed at any human contact. The other was so afraid it had to be tranquilized. But then they discovered a third wolf. This one was in such terrible condition even they were shocked. She was a female named Timka found lying on her side almost hidden under a shallow step. She was old, ragged and starved, and appeared to have been left to die. Life barely glimmered in her glazed-over eyes. Very gently they tried to slide her out from under the step but almost immediately had to stop. She was so agonizingly thin the women felt she was too weak to be taken. They had to leave her. During the long drive home Timka’s desperate image haunted them. They thought about turning back. But their over-used old truck had barely made it up to Gainesville and was badly over-heating. They knew it would never make such a long trip again. Frustrated and angry, they cried for miles believing Timka would soon die. But fate had other plans for the lone wolf. Andrew Bruce at Shelton Land Rover was so moved by her story he volunteered to take time off work and drive up to Gainesville himself, provided Deanna could persuade the owner to give up custody of Timka. Well, she did and a week after her first visit Deanna returned with Andrew. They found Timka even weaker, but still alive and clinging to life. Back in Naples, after weeks of tender loving care, Timka began to recover but progress was slow, until there was another twist of fate. Two wolf pups similarly rescued from neglect and abuse were put in a run with her. Miraculously, Timka quickly became stronger. Struggling to overcome her own long battle with abuse, her natural instincts to mother, protect and nurture the two pups took over. But she was too old and too long abused. Once the pups were old enough to fend for themselves, she finally let go. Her job done, she passed peacefully away. Timka’s story is just one of many told by Nancy and Deanna and the rest of the staff at the Shy Wolf Sanctuary in East Naples. There are many others, like the wolf whose collar had been kept so tight it was near choking for months. When it was rescued, its neck, denuded of fur, was an open festering wound. There are almost 30 wolves at the sanctuary today, and each has its story. But there are also coyotes, prairie dogs, cougars, ferrets, foxes, sugar gliders, gopher tortoises and leopards. In fact, it was not a wolf, but a black Asian leopard named Moondance that began it all. Back in 1993, she was the first animal to be taken in by sanctuary founders Nancy and Ken Smith because her owners no longer wanted her. She had had an accident that left her with only three legs. After that rescue, word traveled fast throughout Florida and far beyond. Unwilling to turn away any animal in sore distress, Nancy and Ken’s backyard now bristles with as many multiple enclosures as a small zoo. Today, they are licensed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the US Department of Agriculture and are a registered charitable organization. In addition to giving shelter to so many tortured animals and nursing them back to health, the sanctuary is also an education and experience center where young schoolchildren can interact with the animals and learn mutual respect, feel the wet nose of a waist-high wolf nuzzle their hand or listen to a sleek cougar’s purr. But now Nancy and Ken are struggling as those in their care once did. Now it’s their fight for survival every month. Their phone keeps ringing and those distressing calls keep coming in. They need to acquire more land. They need funds to build more enclosures, for vet’s bills and food. And they need more volunteers. There are many ways to help. All it takes is a call to (239) 455-1698 to find out how.Each call could mean a little longer on earth for a silent, abused creature that cannot plead for itself.

KATHARINE HEPBURN Katharine Houghton Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut on May 12, 1907. She was a leading lady in Hollywood for more than six decades, known for her fierce independence and spirited personality. During her career, she won four Oscars and 12 Academy Award nominations in four categories, the second-most of all time. (Meryl Streep currently has 21 nominations.) In 1999, she was named by the American Film Institute as the greatest film star of the Classic Hollywood era. It was October 21, 1991. I was about to meet Katharine Hepburn, a Hollywood icon, a woman who had been a world-class movie star since before I was born. And furthermore, I was to meet her in her New York home. I was a voluntary member of the board of New England’s Silvermine School of Art. With me, were Bill Alley Chairman and CEO of American Brands, Inc., who at that time was Chairman of a Silvermine Capital Campaign, and Joe Benincasa, General Manager of the Actor’s Fund of America. We had been invited to the star’s home to discuss what we hoped would be her participation in a black-tie gala to benefit both Silvermine and the Actor’s Fund. She lived on a quiet, tree-lined street on Manhattan’s posh east side in a narrow, three-story brownstone on 49th Street. We learned from her later that it had been her New York residence since 1937 when she bought it for just $27,500, using most of her movie earnings at that time. A black wrought-iron fence fringed the front of the house. The number was painted in white numerals above the door. No name. No bell. Two black cords protruded from the wall where a coach light might have hung. We were early, so we sat outside in the limo, chatted for a few minutes then called the house. Phyllis, her principal secretary (she had three) answered, then handed the phone to her employer. “ We wondered,” Joe Benincasa asked politely, “if it would be convenient if we arrived a little earlier than planned.”“Well, if you’re already outside,” Ms. Hepburn replied, “you’d better come in. If you’re here, you’re here.” We were greeted by the housekeeper, a jovial-looking woman aged in her early 60’s, who was standing in the small hallway. Just two strides behind her I saw a table and bench against the wall. Propped up on the bench was the proof of a full-page ad for the star’s recently published autobiography “Me, Stories of My Life” proclaiming it as “ A New York Times #1 bestseller”. To the right, a steep flight of stairs rose to the first-floor. I was holding a ribboned box of expensive long-stemmed red roses, which Phyllis took from me saying she’d put them in water. I hesitated to give them up as the intended recipient hadn’t even seen them yet, but they were whisked away before I could comment. She invited us to go on upstairs. As we climbed, I noted the worn stair carpet and wondered how many visitors had made the same pilgrimage, and who they might have been; perhaps, her most famous co-star for one. No one could fail to notice a huge pen-and-ink cartoon of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy that hung on the staircase wall. At the top of the stairs, we entered a bright and spacious living room with two tall, vertical windows overlooking a mostly paved courtyard. It was a mild and sunny afternoon in early fall. Amidst a mass of still-green foliage I glimpsed a huge oak tree, lots of ivy and a partially hidden stone statue. Inside, the room was unexpectedly plain and simple, even a little tired and faded. The walls were cracked and the ceiling stained. These were not Beverly Hills surroundings. No photos capturing times spent with the rich and famous. No movie posters. No stack of screenplays or playbills. No Oscars. The room was furnished with a comfy-looking sofa draped with a thin white fabric; two armchairs similarly covered and a wooden chaise-longue that looked very much like a deck chair from the Titanic. A rainbow-colored rug like those found in Peru lay on the floor. There were old books in heaps, fresh flowers in vases and a fierce-looking African mask on a table against one wall. A life-size wooden goose in flight hung from chains in the ceiling. Another preened itself on the mantle-piece above the fireplace. There were several oil paintings in gilt frames on the walls. When Phyllis arrived with the flowers in a cut-glass vase, we each introduced ourselves to her more formally. Tall, frail and white-haired, speaking with an English accent, she indicated where Ms. Hepburn would sit, pointed Joe to the sofa and dispatched Bill and me to each of the fireside armchairs. Then bent to light the logs in the fireplace. Although it was nearly 70 degrees outside, she explained Ms. Hepburn always felt a little chill in her bones. “That garden outside,” she said conversationally, “runs the whole block to 48th Street. We’re very fortunate that there’s a little path between the streets through the yard.”“Very handy for secret comings and goings,” I suggested mischievously.“Oh yes! Very!” She agreed with a merry giggle. Then she announced with obvious pleasure, “Ah! Here she is!”Suddenly, all else was forgotten. Katharine Hepburn was in the room, every feature, and every gesture instantly recognizable from thousands of remembered images.“Oh, my Lord!” She exclaimed in that unmistakable, aristocratic Yankee drawl, “Look how many of you!” She clasped her hands to the sides of her face in mock horror, and we were instantly courtiers enthralled by a beloved queen. She was aged 84 at the time. Her gray-white hair was swept up in a loose bun with random strands cascading in whispers around her face. She was smaller than expected and thick waisted. She was wearing a plain red cardigan with a hole at the left elbow, buttoned to her neck beneath another open brown one. She wore baggy

LEAP OF FAITH Written for Gastronome, the national publication of the U.S. Chaîne des Rôtisseurs On October 12, 2012 Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner completed a record-breaking freefall 24 miles above the earth reaching speeds of more than 830 mph. That’s faster than the speed of sound. Mentoring him through years of training and throughout the jump from Mission Control in Orlando, Florida was retired USAF Colonel Joe Kittinger. Kittinger is the only other man on earth who knows exactly how it feels to make such a death-defying leap. He knows because he’s done it. He too has faced the terrifying thrill of hurtling through space, falling farther and faster than any other human has ever dared. Back in 1960, Joe Kittinger, then a young US Air Force Captain assigned to space-related aviation research, made his own leap of faith to quite literally ‘go where no man has gone before’. He was aged 32. He stepped from a gondola capsule dangling below a large helium balloon 19 miles above earth, and careened downward at over 600 mph for four minutes 38 seconds setting world records that held for over 50 years. The opening pages of his autobiography Come up and Get Me admirably describe how he felt at the time. “I’m surrounded by an invisible near-vacuum that would kill me in seconds were it not for the constricting protection of my pressure suit. It’s murderously cold. “My ground crew wants me to say something for posterity. I find it surprisingly hard to do. ‘Hostile’ is the only word I can find at first. Space is neither a comfortable nor a comforting place. It’s infinite and harsh. I can offer no poetry. I have only one thought: the mission, my survival. “I pull myself up and grab the edges of the doorway. I can feel my heart hammering like a machine. I activate the cameras. I release the antenna. I say a prayer: Lord take care of me now. I jump from space. Kittinger’s capsule and the suit he wore that cold morning are on display at the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. An additional exhibit depicting his epic jump opened at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. in 2008. That jump only added to the Joe Kittinger legend. Before it, he’d been a highly decorated test pilot. Following it, he served three combat tours of duty during the Vietnam War flying a total of 485 missions and winning a chest-full of medals that include two Silver Stars, five Distinguished Flying Crosses and two Purple Hearts. In 1972, near the end of his voluntary third tour, Lieutenant Colonel Kittinger was leading a flight of Phantoms in a dogfight with enemy MIG21 fighters, when an air-to-air missile shot him down. He was captured and imprisoned in the Hanoi Hilton. The short, stocky man with reddish hair and freckles was older than most of the POWs and was known as ‘the Red Baron’ to some and ‘Grandpa’ to the younger inmates. It was reported that: he buoyed the spirits, boosted morale and was one of the best officers in the camp. He had confidence and courage; his outlook was positive. He knew that captivity was not forever. On his 307th day as a POW he was released. Retiring from the USAF as a full Colonel in 1978, he soon began to set new records, among them becoming the first man to cross the Atlantic solo in a balloon. For outstanding achievements in aeronautics he received the Harmon Trophy from President Eisenhower. Among many other distinctions, he has been awarded a Lifetime Achievement in Aviation trophy from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and has been enshrined with highest honors in the National Aviation Hall of Fame. He became an advisor to the Baumgartner jump team in 2008. Four years later, aged 84, he was the CAPCOM (capsule communicator) for the young skydiver. Baumgartner must have felt very reassured. He couldn’t have found a more steady, experienced veteran to be his sole link with earth. Joe’s last words to him before the jump were, ”Start the cameras. Our guardian angel will take care of you.” Kittinger is a member of a small, elite pantheon of men whose pioneering achievements high above the earth have moved science forward at the risk of their own lives. That day, the group was joined by one more, and Kittinger couldn’t be happier. “No, it doesn’t bother me my record is broken,” he told me smiling. It’s stood unchallenged for way too long. Each time a limit is passed it’s an advance for mankind, another paragraph in our book of knowledge. Felix and his entire ground crew deserve their phenomenal success. They worked hard to achieve it, and I was thrilled to have had the privilege to have been a part of it.” Asked to describe how it feels to tumble through space, he said,“There’s no way you can visualize the speed. You can’t see anything that tells you how fast you’re going. You have no depth perception. You don’t see any signposts. You know you’re going fast, but you don’t feel it. You don’t feel wind blowing past your face. All I could hear was my breathing in my helmet.” In Baumgartner’s case it was a little more. He could also hear Kittinger’s soothing voice of experience and perhaps that of the guardian angel they share. Note: I met Joe Kittinger by accident, seated next to him at a dinner in Orlando. Chatting with him throughout the evening, I had no idea the modest, white-haired octogenarian sitting next to me was a super-hero, a man whose many achievements of endurance and courage stretched back decades, until he mentioned he’d written a book titled Come Up and Get Me. A few days later, he sent me a dedicated copy. It was fascinating. I called him, and he agreed to this story.

A VERY BRITISH MISS WORLD In 1964, I was a young reporter on the London Financial Times when I was given what most warm-blooded young men in Britain would have thought was a dream assignment: to interview the newly crowned Miss World.The Miss World contest is the oldest-running international beauty pageant in the world. It was created in the UK in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain celebrations and was almost immediately dubbed the Miss World Contest by the media. It was originally created as a promotion of the bikini, which had only just been introduced, so perhaps it was not surprising the competition attracted huge audiences around the world.I guess my news editor assigned the interview to me because I suspect he thought the story too trivial to assign to any of my more seasoned city-slick peers. Plus, it was destined to be a minor piece in a publication catering to an audience more interested in the global movements of the world’s money markets than those of a young woman. So, the job was given to me, a young cub reporter with no choice. He handed me her phone number and told me to arrange an interview immediately. I had only recently escaped from a long stretch of being shut up in an all-male Roman Catholic college deep in rural Hertfordshire. My experience in the world was very limited and my social skills with the opposite sex had been barely tested. So, I was a little nervous, to say the least, to be reaching out to someone just named one of the most beautiful women in the world. Her name was Ann Sidney, a 20-year old apprentice hairdresser from Poole a small seaside town in England’s West Country. She was the reigning Miss United Kingdom, just crowned Miss World in front of a TV audience of a staggering 27 million in Britain alone. Only the second English Rose to win the coveted title, she immediately became a sensation.When I called, her win was just a few days old. She told me she was about to go on an overseas tour starting in Japan, so I’d better hurry over. She lived in a small rented apartment in Earl’s Court, an area of tall, once-fashionable Georgian mansions facing garden squares edged with fancy wrought-iron fencing. A century ago nannies would have a key to the gates of those green havens where they could take their young charges to play and take the air. Now, the mansions are sub-divided into multiple flats or studio apartments that the locals call bedsitters. Very popular with the city’s many students from home and abroad, the area bustles with a lively night life that lasts till dawn. A far cry from its sedate past. Ann was living in such a bedsitter.  When she opened the door, my first impression was of a profusion of clothes scattered across the few bits of furniture and hanging stuffed onto a large rolling rack occupying most of the available floor of the small sitting room behind her. She was lovely, bright-eyed and vivacious, relaxed and very natural, when she greeted me in shapeless casual clothes, with her long hair pinned up, wearing no makeup.  We were both young, inexperienced, and new to our roles.  Recognizing that, we were at ease in each other’s company almost immediately and slipped into a comfortable dialogue. I began to think maybe my news editor was more astute in assigning me than I gave him credit.  We had chemistry. She cleared a space for me to sit while she raced against the clock to finish her packing before a limo arrived to take her to Heathrow airport.  She busily selected and folded clothes apologizing for being behind with her packing, but she said she’d been worrying about what to pack for hours.  Up until now, she laughed, if she’d needed a change of clothing, she’d take it with her on a hanger or in an overnight bag. We talked about her first few hours as Miss World, which had passed in a daze.  Before the age of professional handlers and chaperones, she was almost totally unprepared for what lay ahead.  She’d been led through an immediate whirlwind of media interviews, photo sessions, briefings, guest appearances, and a blizzard of opportunities offered by sponsors.  She was naïve with few around to guide her, overwhelmed and unaware of her commercial value.  However, her open, wide-eyed innocence, unpretentious airs and easy conversation only added to her natural charm. I asked what exactly she had earned by winning the title.  She sounded a little disappointed with her haul.  Apparently, she’d received a set of luggage, clothes, sponsors’ products, travel opportunities and a year’s salary.  She couldn’t tell me how much, that was against tournament rules, she said, but it was undoubtedly more than the 30 shillings a week she’d been earning as a hairdresser, and considerably less than the 1.5 million dollars beauty queens can earn today.  That wasn’t really the point though, she added.  It was the exposure.  Most contestants hope even reaching the final three will launch careers as models, on television or in film, and she was no different. She was very excited about the prospect of going abroad.  Until then, she admitted, her experience with overseas travel was limited to taking her bicycle on the ferry over to the Isle of Wight, a small island off the southern coast of England not far from her hometown.  An Area of Natural Beauty, it was once a popular retreat for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.  In the mid- 1800s they ordered the construction of a royal residence there to entertain guests between breaks watching sleek wooden-keeled sailboats race the notorious winds and unpredictable currents of the coastal waters. Our interview was going so well, she invited me to join her in the limo where we could continue to chat on the way to the airport.  She disappeared to change, reappearing only a few minutes

THE ITALIAN FASHION DESIGNER, EMILIO PUCCI Don Emilio Marchese di Barsento was born in 1914 into one of the oldest noble families of Florence. An Italian fashion designer and politician, he lived and worked for much of his life in the Pucci Palace in Florence. His fashion house became synonymous with distinctive, geometric, brightly colored fabrics in a kaleidoscope of colors.Pucci began to achieve international recognition in the early 1950s. In the 1960s, Marilyn Monroe became a fan and was famously photographed in a number of Pucci items. After her death in 1962, she was interned wearing a Pucci dress. As the decade progressed Pucci designs were worn by everyone from Sophia Loren to Jackie Kennedy, Madonna to the Australian megastar Kylie Minogue. Pucci was a keen sportsman who swam, skied, fenced, played tennis and raced cars. An avid equestrian, he died in 1992 following a riding accident, aged 78. In the 1970s, I was working in New York for IBM’s General Business Group/International division when it was decided to host a three-day conference in the Loews Monte Carlo (now a Fairmont hotel) for the company’s most important customers in Europe, a list of Fortune 100 household names. Attendees were the most senior executives of these blue-chip companies and their wives.My assignment was to coordinate the program’s business elements that took place each morning and the entertainment during each evening’s banquet. The morning’s speeches given almost exclusively by IBM’s top international executives were routine for me, but the evening’s entertainment was anything but. One evening’s highlight was a Dionne Warwick concert in the Salle des Etoiles in the Monte Carlo Sporting Club. This celebrated venue on Princess Grace Avenue, which overlooks a harbor packed with multi-millionaires’ yachts, has a huge retractable roof that can be slid back to reveal a night sky of the glimmering stars of a warm Provencal summer. The other evening featured a fashion show – the upcoming Fall collection of the internationally renowned designer Emilio Pucci who was then at the height of his celebrity. One workday morning, I was given the designer’s home address and was asked to fly over to Florence to meet him to discuss his part in our conference, of course, but more importantly, I was to check the latest fashions he planned to show to ensure none offended IBM’s ultra-conservative standards. A day later, I arrived at what was then Amerigo Vespucci airport in Florence, knowing very little about the man I was about to meet. I had never heard of him before being given the assignment and had no idea what to expect. All I had was an address: 1, via Pucci, Firenze. Looking back, I should have done some research, but the fashion show was just one component of a packed three-day program. I had plenty of other more serious issues on my mind. A fashion show was lightweight entertainment and the least of my concerns, or so I thought. Pucci’s home address was virtually within the shadow of Santa Maria del Fiore, the magnificent Renaissance cathedral in the center of the city. It’s famously capped by the largest masonry dome in the world that dominates the city skyline and gives the edifice it’s colloquial name Il Duomo. The airport cab dropped me off in a narrow street fringed down one side by an imposingly high, red-brick wall. I couldn’t see any house beyond it, only an ancient wooden door embedded in it. Next to it, dangled a rusted bellpull. I yanked it and heard a far-off sound like a monastery bell tolling at a funeral. A few minutes later, a short, gray-haired woman swathed entirely in black swung the door open to reveal a wide stone-flagged courtyard and in the distance a flight of open-sided stone steps pinned to one side of an impressive structure that featured the kind of decorative columns, arches and bared windows seen on Venetian palaces along the Grand Canal. I followed the old woman as she shuffled slowly across the courtyard, up the steps and through another ancient door into an opulent entrance hall. She waved a hand toward a bench where I was to sit and wait, then left me alone. I was at one end of the longest corridor I had ever seen, lit by tall windows on one side, and hung with landscape oil paintings and portraits on the other. A distant door opened at its far end. A beautiful young woman emerged and sashayed toward me like the runway model she probably was. When she arrived, she reached out to shake my hand beaming a wide smile and saying, “The Marquese will see you now. Would you come with me, please?” As we walked, she told me the designer preferred to be addressed as Marquese (mar-kay-zee), explaining that this was a title dating from the Middle Ages, roughly equivalent to a Duke, that he had inherited along with this palace. At the end of the corridor, she ushered me into what looked like a Victorian library straight out of an Edgar Allan Poe novel. It had subdued lighting, dark wood paneling, dark antique furniture, somber paintings, and shelves groaning with ancient volumes. Pucci stood up behind a massive desk, looking every inch the suave, middle-aged, aristocrat he was, wearing pale gray slacks, and an obviously tailored, double-breasted navy-blue blazar with a white shirt and tie. His gray-blue eyes twinkled kindly as he reached out to shake my hand and indicated where I should sit. When he leaned and bent forward to sit down again, I noticed his thinning dark hair was swept straight back across his head with gel. Once settled, I said, “I have to tell you Marchese, I’m very impressed that you’re such a well-known fashion designer, they named the street after you.” “My dear boy,” he replied, “they did that several hundred years ago.” He waved a hand toward a window that offered a glimpse of the 13th century cathedral next door. “Il Duomo is

A MOMENT OF DANGER DURING A VISIT FROM THE QUEEN My brief encounter with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II occurred on December 6, 1974. Of course, I remember it well. I was a young Englishman, born and raised into an extensive family of Royalists. For me, this was a very proud moment. A rush of patriotic emotions swept over me. I was about to meet the living personification of a thousand years of British history. A monarch who had ruled over half the world when she came to the throne. This was an intoxicating and intensely impressionable moment. Yet, at the same time, this diminutive, little lady seemed as comfortably familiar to me, as a member of my own family. After all, I had known her all my life. I had arrived at this moment after thousands of hours of planning, involving dozens of people on both sides of the Atlantic during a time of great danger, especially to members of the Royal Family. The 70s were tense times in Britain. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) was waging an armed paramilitary campaign aimed at ending British rule in Northern Ireland that reached an ugly high in 1974. There were multiple IRA bombings, shootings, and acts of sabotage all over England that year. In October, just two months before Her Majesty’s visit, three bombs exploded, including one in a pub injuring 65 and killing five. In November, even closer to the visit, there were six more attacks, including another explosion in a pub, which this time injured 182 and killed 21. And it continued. Just two weeks after the Queen’s visit, a massive bomb filled with 100 pounds of explosives was detonated at Selfridges department store on London’s busy Oxford Street crowded with Christmas shoppers. Two days after that, a vicious firebomb exploded in Harrod’s, the world-famous luxury department store in the upscale district of Knightsbridge. Both caused millions in damages and multiple injuries.I had joined the headquarters communications staff of IBM UK in London six years earlier in August of 1968. I was aged 24. Four years later, I was made responsible for the communications function at IBM’s sprawling manufacturing site 65 miles south of London near the seaside village of Havant on the southern coast of England. It was the company’s largest manufacturing facility in Europe, but I saw it as a step down.Earlier, I had managed to get a job on the London Financial Times as a cub reporter, hoping one day to travel the world and become a famous journalist. I soon realized I was a very long way from that, if ever, when a friend suggested I apply for job he knew was vacant at IBM. The idea of joining a major multinational corporation offering opportunities all over the world held promise. So, I applied.But now, four years later, as I saw it I was about to leave the center of action at the UK headquarters, and for the first time leave the nation’s capital, my home, to head for a life of obscurity in the rural south. I wasn’t thrilled with the move but was persuaded I needed the experience, and it would be good for my career development.More than 2,000 people were employed at the IBM Havant facility assembling complex, room-size computer systems. Before being shipped, these behemoths were tested in an air-conditioned, glass-enclosed, dust-free environment sitting on a heavily reinforced platform above a snake-pit of cables as thick as a man’s wrist. These monster processors were destined to control vast hotel and airline reservation systems, and transportation and banking networks across Europe. These multi-million-dollar machines were so valuable and being shipped so frequently, collectively they had a significant impact on Britain’s annual balance of trade. So much so, had IBM been a British-owned corporation like Rolls-Royce or Boeing, it would have been awarded the Queen’s Award to Industry, Britain’s prestigious recognition for the country’s most exceptional corporations that allows a distinctive logo to be displayed on corporate stationery, advertising and products. Unfortunately, as an American-owned corporation, IBM UK didn’t qualify for such an honor. Instead, those who judge such things decided the Chairman and CEO of the British subsidiary would be awarded a knighthood, and Her Majesty would tour the manufacturing site later the following year.When the news broke, my move to the country didn’t seem so bad after all. Suddenly, I found myself in the very center of things. I was given a larger office, taken from my regular duties and put on special assignment to coordinate all the arrangements for the royal occasion, reporting to a small cadre of senior executives I’d never met before.I quickly realized why we had been given such advance notice and so much time to prepare. There were literally hundreds of questions to answer and decisions to be made, many of them centered around protocol.I remember one prolonged discussion concerned the flagpole standing prominently atop a grass knoll outside the front entrance. Did we have the right to hoist the Royal Standard when she arrived? Wow! Wouldn’t that be an honor! For centuries a version of this magnificent technicolor flag has indicated the presence of the monarch. Initially, the custom began on Britain’s battlefields to inform the troops where their fighting monarch stood in the mêlée and to inspire them. The crown and the royal banner were to be protected at all costs, even to the death. Today, the flag flies above Buckingham Palace when the Queen is in residence, but not when she isn’t, and appears on trains, planes and automobiles whenever she is in transit.I remember one prolonged discussion concerned the flagpole standing prominently atop a grass knoll outside the front entrance. Did we have the right to hoist the Royal Standard when she arrived? Wow! Wouldn’t that be an honor! For centuries a version of this magnificent technicolor flag has indicated the presence of the monarch. Initially, the custom began on Britain’s battlefields to inform the troops where their fighting monarch