SUFFOLK CLOSEUP
By Karl Grossman
This is a story about coat-snatching at the lofty Harvard Club—and how sweet it is to live in Suffolk.
I remember when I covered Suffolk cops-and-courts many years ago, attorney Nancy Carley, who had been from New York City, commenting that many of her women lawyer friends had achieved high positions in the city, became judges and so forth, but she was happy that she come out here because living in Suffolk was “sweet and easy.”
I, too, am from the city, but have lived in Suffolk since I was 19.
Going to New York for me always requires a bit of adjustment, but then, like a salmon returning home, I adjust to the sirens and horns and noise and overall static.
And so it was the other day when I journeyed into Manhattan with my friend and physician Dr. Allen Fein.
Allen, in an auction at the Artists-and-Writers Game, had won a lunch with journalist David Andelman. David, a Harvard alum, suggested lunch at the Harvard Club of New York City, in midtown off Fifth Avenue. Allen liked the idea of the lunch there because, originally from Canada, he graduated from McGill University, the “Harvard of Canada,” he mentioned.
He invited me, as also a journalist, to go along. And I happened to know Mr. Andelman. David had been a New York Times correspondent on Long Island nearly 50 years back. He had gone on at the Times to be a foreign correspondent and most recently was editor of World Policy Journal. He is the author of books including A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today. He is a contributor to USA Today and CNN and has been president of the Overseas Press Club.
The Harvard Club is like one of the elegant, wood-burnished clubs one associates with England. (I was at one once, where members of Parliament spend time, across from the Houses of Parliament. I had written a book on Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” plan—Weapons in Space—and was invited to give a presentation to members of Parliament and several later took me to the club.)
Entering the Harvard Club, I hung my old, trusty trench coat on the coat rack—having a slight, and unusual, premonition about whether I would see it again. But looking out at the fancy club, I figured I couldn’t bring the trench coat to the table.
David regaled Allen and me with stories including how he was first assigned to Long Island and questioned that, telling Times managing editor A.M. Rosenthal that he wanted to be a foreign correspondent. The editor responded that covering Long Island would be good training for covering a foreign country.
It was nice seeing David again. The lunch was fabulous as you would expect at such a club.
And then Dr. Fein and I said goodbye to David and went to that coat rack—and, as I had somehow feared, my been-through-a-lot trench coat wasn’t there.
I reported its disappearance to the folks at the Harvard Club’s main desk and they said they would keep a look-out for it. I checked with them several times in ensuing weeks, but no information on the trench coat.
Then they called to say they had identified a person who took the coat—and he said I had come to his place in Manhattan the same day I was in the city and that he handed the coat back to me.
That was ridiculous, just not true, I responded, relating the cold trench coat-less walk—it was a winter day—to catch transportation to come back home.
“We will turn this over to Harvard Club security,” I was told, firmly.
A week later another call came. The coat had just been brought back to the Harvard Club by the fellow who took it. Arrangements were made to return it to me. One of Dr. Fein’s patients with an office in Manhattan was kind enough to pick it up and bring it to Allen’s office.
So that’s how my trusty trench coat was lost and found and I had the sort of experience that, I daresay, one might have in the often chaotic city, a complex place where crazy things sometimes happen.
Ah, Suffolk, I’ve lived here for 57 years—and compared to the City of New York, as Nancy said, it’s “sweet and easy.”