Three years ago, I wrote a column on a big-hearted Sarasota lady with a dream. (“Graci McGillicuddy envisions kinder, gentler foster care”)   A former teacher, Graci was dismayed by child abuse cases occurring in Florida.  She dreamt of creating a better approach to foster care.  She and husband Dennis have made that dream come true with the All-Star Children’s Foundation. To see for myself, I visited the campus.  What Graci and Dennis have accomplished is remarkable.

According to its website, All-Star “provides children victimized by abuse with a very special place—a place designed to soothe, empower and inspire.”  All-Star lives up to its promise.   Children receive “trauma-informed” treatment in a 5-acre site ringed by bright and stylish residences (designed by Graci) and a club house.

The McGillicuddys found four dedicated professionals to oversee All-Star.  One is multi-talented Chief Development Officer Stephen Fancher.  Steve’s a pianist trained at Trinity College of Music, SUNY Purchase, with a masters in piano performance, and a conductor.   At All-Star, he also conducts fun and games.  During my visit, he taught residents aged 3-20 to play ukuleles and mesmerized them with piano refrains from Beethoven and the Beatles.

Two good friends, Jackie Blanchard and Phyllis Keyser, both former educators, joined me on my visit to All-Star.  Within five minutes of meeting Steve, Jackie murmured, “Little does he know he’s your next column.”  Right she was.

From central Connecticut, Steve graduated from the U. of Conn., attended renowned Trinity College of Music in London and earned a masters in piano performance from SUNY Purchase, NY. He became certified and taught music in elementary school.  His first daughter was born in 2010.  At the time, he was a full time conductor and music educator in the Tri-State area working in Stamford, CT, and  Chappaqua, NY.

Realizing his job had led to his missing the first 2 and ½ months of his daughter’s life, Steve decided to change directions.  He studied for and received a stockbroker’s license and started a financial services business with his brother-in-law.   In September, 2012, he moved to Sarasota.  He joined Merrill Lynch as a financial advisor—a position he held for 4½ years.

“I wasn’t satisfied by the financial services industry,” he says.  “I wasn’t committed at a deep level.”  He decided to combine his business and musical backgrounds and seek a position in arts administration.  A mutual friend (past Laurel Oak resident), Andrea Bilan, was then in development with JFCS.   The agency needed a major gifts officer.  Steve took the position.

18 months later he toured All-Star.  He decided, “this is where I want to be.”

Musical talent often runs in families.  My grandmother played the piano well.  My sister Anne inherited her ability and still takes lessons.  Plus she can sing.  Sadly, my destiny included neither strength.  After five childhood years of tortuous piano lessons, my repertoire consists of Chopsticks. And no one aside from yours truly appreciates my 5-note singing range.

Steve’s dad Richard, a sales rep for aeronautical engine company Pratt & Whitney, played the organ at  Christ Episcopal Church in Middle Haddam, Conn. and sang with the New England Chamber Choir. Steve’s brother, a supermarket manager, is a self-taught guitarist who plays with top local bands.

Steve says, “I didn’t realize not every family could sing Happy Birthday in 4-part harmony.  I had as much musical education as possible.  My brother can’t read music past a basic level but he can play anything.  That’s always annoyed me.

“Piano’s a big part of who I am.  I see myself as a teacher.  I love conducting and teaching singers and players how to make music together.”  Steve says he “tried” to take some time off from the piano when he was in financial services. “I couldn’t do it.”  He joined the Sarasota Key Chorale as a tenor. The Chorale is a chorus of about 100 musicians who sing with the orchestra.  Music director Joseph Caulkins is one of Steve’s best friends.

Steve’s loved piano ever since he can remember.  His mother has a photo of him sitting at a  piano at 3.  As a boy, when not playing baseball or soccer, Steve practiced piano.   He played Beethoven and Bach by age 10.  When he was “tall enough to reach the pedals,” he played the pipe organ in church. “ It was useful for making good side money.”

At 12 or 13 Steve recalls his brother’s earning $4.95 an hour working at a grocery store.  Steve made $22 an hour teaching high school students.  By the time he reached high school, Steve says, he “never had a real job.”

At SUNY Purchase, Steve studied with organ and music theorist Anthony Newman who’s collaborated with Leonard Bernstein, Itzhak Perlman and many more legends.  Steve says, “To be a good classic pianist requires a ton of practice.  From the time I was a teen through my mid- 20s I averaged 6-8 hours a day.  To play a Beethoven sonata requires hundreds of hours.  I never walk by a piano without playing it.   I’m very improvisational.  Give me a request—”Let It Be,” “Rocky Raccoon”—you name it, I’ll play it.  It’s a cool party trick.

“My mindset about a piano is: this is only alive when I’m playing it. Music is a combination of soul and artistry.”

Steve’s wife, Michelle, teaches third grade.  Their children, Piper, 10, and Sophie, 6, have taken music classes since they were babies and “understand music is a natural part of their lives.”

Steve, 44, has the same enthusiasm for his work at All-Star.  He deems the McGillicuddys “two of the most dedicated people on the planet.”  About their approach to developing trauma informed foster care, Steve says, “I feel as though we’re on the path to something transformative.  Graci and Dennis are aware this is more than the fulfillment of their dream. It will grow into something bigger than both of them.  The seeds have been planted.”

While in most foster families, biological siblings are separated, at All-Star they stay together.  The agency educates, supports and empowers the adults around a child to promote “safe, trusting relationships.”  Programs are implemented and researched with the aim of creating intervention models that can be replicated around the country.

“All-Star transforms the role of the clinician not only by relating to children but by working with foster parents, tracking outcomes and producing data to back up their approach.”

A Clinical Support Coordinator works with the child welfare system to “break down silos and collaborate” on occupational therapy.  All-Star doesn’t wait months for Medicaid approval.   The Clinical Support Coordinator works promptly and directly with school and court systems “to make sure kids get what they need.”

In playing the piano and in fundraising, Steve taps into both sides of his brain.  He enjoys working with many talented people who’ve made Sarasota their home.  “We’re lucky to have people who were CEOs and giants of industry now participating to make our community a better place.”

Thanks, Steve, for sharing your story.  And for making beautiful music—literally and figuratively—in Sarasota.

In 2004, Burton and I needed a break from my stage 4 cancer treeatment.  We flew to Florida for a doctor-approved getaway.  We happened to have season tickets to Sarasota’s Florida Studio Theater.  The regional theater was staging a production of  “Metamorphoses,” about the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.  Two years before, the play had won 3 Tony award nominations.

To recap: Orpheus, the mortal son of Apollo, adores and marries Eurydice.  She’s bitten by a snake and dies.   Orpheus, a musician, plays his lyre to express his grief.  He plays so beautifully the gods are moved to let him travel to the underworld to bring Eurydice back.  Hades, god of the underworld, agrees to let Eurydice follow Orpheus out.  One condition: Orpheus must trust that Eurydice is behind him.  If he  turns around, Eurydice will fall back and be lost to him forever.  Orpheus walks and walks, looking straight ahead.  At the last second—he’s out of the tunnel; she’s not—Orpheus turns around.  Eurydice tumbles back, gone forever.

In great art, we often see ourselves.  In recent months, I’d survived chemo and was still undergoing radiation.  I’d been trudging through a medical process with no certain outcome.  I related to the doubts that beset Orpheus.  As the lights turned on, I was drenched in tears.

Recalling that experience, I was thrilled when Anne and I got to see “Hadestown,” a musical version of the myth, on our sisters’ trip to NY in 2019.  I was blown away by the staging, the New Orleans jazz/blues-like music, and the talent of the Broadway cast.  Andre De Shields, in his 70s, killed it in the role of Hermes.  A showstopping actor, singer and dancer, De Shields previously starred in “The Wiz” and “Ain’t Misbehavin.”

I was as moved by the story that night as I’d been more than 15 years before at “Metamorphoses.”  I remembered  my response to the earlier show—how uncertain I’d been, how moved by the message.  I felt joy in recognizing how hard it had been to trust my doctors and believe in my chances.  Joy in knowing—despite the severity of my case—I’d made it out of that tunnel.  I’d been cancer free long enough to see our oldest son David teach his oldest son Hunter to fire a baseball, to witness the bris of our youngest grandchild, Beau.  Long enough to say a blessing at our youngest granddaughter Lindsay’s bat mitzvah.

Andre De Shields won the Tony award for Best Actor in a musical in 2019.  He was 73 at the time, just four years younger than I am now, which leaves both of us miles past the spring chicken freeway ramp.  De Shields had wowed me in “Hadestown,” and I’d rooted for him.  He  accepted the Antoinette Perry (Tony) medallion with remarks he’d had a lifetime to consider.  His thoughts are worth remembering.  I share them here with you in hopes you’ll appreciate his wisdom as much as I do:

“One, surround yourself with people whose eyes light up when they see you coming.  Two, slowly is the fastest way to get where you want to be.  And three, the top of one mountain is the bottom of the next.  So keep climbing.”

One of the joys of being involved in the arts is the people I meet.  Elana Eda Rubinfeld’s a recent Sarasota art friend who told me a story so entertaining I included it in my upcoming book and share it here with you.

In 2002, Elana collaborated with Vietnamese artist Trong Gia Nguyen on a project that was as clever as it was outrageous.  Trained as a painter, Elana often included subversive elements in her paintings, such as a soldier in full military gear wearing pink lipstick.  (That would have seemed considerably more outrageous in 2002.)

Elana and Trong came up with a subversive gambit, their Art Hijack project.  They recreated paintings  stolen from museums, private collections and even Saudi yachts in the past 40 years, claiming the paintings belonged to fictitious Hungarian collector Rick Haatj.  (The name’s an anagram of Art Hijack.) They deemed Haatj “the world’s most passionate collector.”  Elana says, “The paintings weren’t that well done, but all together they made a pretty convincing performance art piece.”

The duo convinced a once ritzy hotel in midtown Manhattan to loan them a penthouse suite decked out with draperies and a piano.  They sent invitations for the premiere of the Rick Haatj collection to friends, collectors and critics.  Having done P.R. for art galleries, Elana knew how to write a press release and where to send it.  The release claimed, “This is the world premiere of an important collection you need to know about.”

A new winery from Hungary donated wine; a pianist from Juilliard played the piano for free.  About 100 guests showed up, including stringers for the NYT and Artnews.  The event was “kinda cheesy but really funny,” Elana says.  “Everybody stayed for hours.  And said things like, ‘It’s cool that you’re showing a Picasso.’”

Elana and Trong met a man who was starting an art fair in LA in 2005.  He offered Art Hijack a booth for free to remount the Private Collection of Rick Haatj.  All the other booths at the fair had stark white walls.  Elana and Trong covered their walls with red velvet panels and hung them with fake works attributed to Picasso, Duchamp and Matisse.  They convinced an antiques dealer to loan them a desk and chairs.

“When people stopped by the booth, we’d say, ‘Of course you’ve heard of Rick Haatj.  It was a performance about what’s real, what’s hype, what’s passion, what’s connoisseurship.  All issues central to art collecting,” Elana, currently an art adviser, says.

A large man with a woman on each arm stopped by the booth.  “You’re telling me I’m buying an actual Picasso?” he demanded.

Elana tried to explain.

He yelled, “You’re a liar, and I think this is bull#!*t.”  He ended up buying two paintings.  Most of the others—fakes painted by real artists—sold as well for $5,000 apiece.

Elana and Trong tried some other projects, but none succeeded like the Rick Haatj Collection.  Eventually, Elana says, “I got a real job.”  She went to work at both P.S.1 and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Creating spoofs on the art world continues.  Maurizio Cattelan is famous for challenging social norms and hierarchies.  “America,” 2017, was a solid gold toilet installed in a restroom at The Guggenheim.  It traveled to Cattelan’s solo show at The Blenheim Palace where it was—Surprise!—stolen.   Last December the contemporary Italian artist presented “Comedian” at the Art Basel art fair in Miami.  Two editions of a banana duct taped to a wall were sold for $120,000 each.  A third was eaten by the performance artist David Datuna as part of his performance “Hungry Artist.”

While I’m an art aficionado, I sometimes shake my head in wonderment.  My grandmother observed, “Money doesn’t care where it goes.”   A contemporary response from the urban dictionary: true dat.

.

Some 400 years ago Shakespeare opined “What’s past is prologue.”  That quote from “The Tempest” is engraved on a statue in front of the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C.

Tim Jaeger buys into that sentiment.  Director and Chief Curator of Galleries and Exhibitions at the Ringling College of Art and Design, Tim works to involve the community in the visual arts.  Tim’s an artist, art historian and visual storyteller.  He reaches out to other artists and community members to assist him in creating historical murals.

In the 1950s, Overtown and Newtown, north of downtown Sarasota, FL, were almost exclusively black neighborhoods.  Many residents worked harvesting celery in the Celery Fields near Laurel Oak, the golf and tennis community where Burton and I spend much of winter.  In the 1920s, the Celery Fields were part of 300+ acre Fancee Farms.

In 1994, Sarasota County purchased the farmland to revert it to its original rainwater storage function.  Dirt was moved from one side of Palmer Road to the other side.  At the time, I considered the project an example of needless government spending.  Glad to admit I was wrong.  The dirt that was moved became a man-made hill—the highest point in Sarasota.  It’s now a popular spot for bird watching and hiking and the headquarters for The Sarasota Audubon Society.  And downstream flooding is no longer a problem.

But back to Overtown.  At the time, African-American residents longed to cool off on weekends at area beaches.  Due to Jim Crow laws, those so-called public county beaches were segregated.  Black children cooled off in neighborhood water holes after rainstorms.

In September, 1955, Sarasota NAACP President Neil Humphrey Sr. led a “wade-in.”  Dozens of Newtown residents piled into cars and drove to Lido Beach just off tony St. Armand’s Circle.  They jumped into the water or strolled the shores.  About 100 protesters showed up again the next month.  Sunday wade-ins and car caravans continued for several years.  Humphrey and his NAACP successor John Rivers and Overtown/Newtown residents continued demanding their rights to enjoy public beaches through wade-ins or drive-bys.  While the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination, the beaches still weren’t integrated for several more years.

Last year artist Tim Jaeger decided to honor that struggle.  Commissioned by the Arts & Cultural Alliance of Sarasota, he created two 7’x8’ murals at the pavilion on Lido Key.  From on-line photographs of the events, Tim designed five panels illustrating the wade-ins and car caravans.  Images feature residents of Sarasota’s African-American community, many unable to be identified.  To help conceive and paint images, Tim enlisted community groups including the Preservation of Overtown Committee and a diverse team of artists.

“I believe in the collective spirit and the power of art to preserve history and encourage conversation,” Tim says.  “The more ideas and dialogue that go into a project, the greater the appreciation that results.

“With the rapid development of Sarasota, a lot of history is being lost.  We need to know where we came from to know where we want to go.  I hope my work brings greater awareness and that greater awareness leads to better understanding.”

The Lido pavilion was part of the Lido Beach Casino, opened in 1940 as a Works Progress Administration project. Designed by Sarasota School architect Ralph Twitchell, it housed a ballroom, restaurants, shops and a pool with a high diving board.  Its modern white walls and glass block represented a break from the Mediterranean Revival style that dominated much of Sarasota’s earlier construction.  The casino was popular with locals and tourists alike.  On weekends, the USS Sarasota battleship dropped off troops for R&R.

My Ringling friend Anne Garlington introduced me to Tim at a quilt exhibition he mounted at Ringling in January.  “Ringgold + Robinson: Storytellers,” featuring African-American female artists Faith Ringgold and Aminah Robinson, was delightful.  It was prescient in referencing social issues that have lately overtaken the national dialogue.

Tim’s grandfather, G.M. Jaeger, was a draftsman.  Tim credits him for his artistic talent.  The Depression prevented G.M. from pursuing a career as an artist, but Tim’s proud to own his work.  Tim was one of five children.  His dad was an Episcopal priest.  “Our family didn’t have much money,” Tim says.  “My mother figured ways to keep us occupied.  Pencils and paper were cheap.”  One of Tim’s siblings became a graphic designer; another, a poet.

“I feel fortunate to have been fourth of five,” Tim says.  “I had to develop sharp elbows just to eat at our table.  It helped to make me competitive.  I also feel lucky to label myself as a pre-internet artist.  That propelled me further into using my hands.”

Tim’s wife, Cassia Kite-Jaeger, hails from Auburn, Nebraska, where her father’s a fifth-generation cattle farmer.  Cassia’s a fiber artist who teaches at IMG Academy.   The Jaegers have a son, Jett, 12, and a daughter, Nina, 7.  Both are artistic.

Tim first heard of Ringling from a trustee friend of his grandfather who brought a catalogue to church.  “I dissected it,” Tim says.  He entered a month-long, pre-college program at RCAD, loved it, received an award and then a full four-year scholarship.

“I was a goofy kid raised in Western Kentucky,” Tim says.  “I moved to south Florida for art school—one of the best decisions I ever made.”

Fellow Sarasota lovers are happy you made that decision as well, Tim.  Thanks for sharing your talents, and our history, with us.

Sarasota’s a town where many smart people choose to retire.  One of them is David Houle.  He bills himself as a “futurist, speaker, thinker” and writes a monthly column in the Herald Tribune.  I usually skim columns and try to absorb the gist.  Not so Houle’s latest.  I read it word for word, then sat back, took a deep breath and decided to share his insights.

Houle introduced a term we’ve experienced on a gut level this past year: cognitive dissonance.  Houle defines it as “the conflict between what one thinks reality is and what it actually is.”

Whew.  If that doesn’t describe what the world’s been going through.

Houle explains, “…The reality you expected for 2020 was not what actually happened.  Instead, you were in familiar surroundings at home with familiar people, but there was danger outside, your workplace was now at home.  Your vocabulary expanded to include ‘social distancing,’ ‘double-masking,’ ‘vaccines,’ ‘COVID-19,’ ‘quarantines’ and ‘shutdown.’  And, of course, you went out at odd hours to find toilet paper, paper towels and, if you were lucky, antibacterial wipes.  What is this reality?”

Collectively we’ve suffered staggering losses.  The loss of friends and family to an invisible enemy.  The loss of freedom to casually move about, to gather in a restaurant or go on date night to a movie.  The loss of the ability to simply board a plane and alight in L.A. or Paris or Rome.

In last week’s WSJ, Candace Taylor writes poignantly of losing the everyday companionship of a best friend and neighbor.  Due to the pandemic, her friend left Brooklyn for the safety of a summer cottage.  She decided to stay.  Taylor concludes, “The virus took all our plans and assumptions about the world and tossed them into the air like confetti.  It turned leavers into stayers and stayers into leavers.  But mostly, in ways life-shattering or simply just sad, Covid robbed us of our people.”

Burton’s and my personal losses predated the pandemic.  With my husband’s brain surgery in 2018 and resulting stroke and partial paralysis, our reality had already shifted.  Our big and social life of travel, fashion, restaurants and parties shrank overnight.  Talk about cognitive dissonance.  When quarantine became the norm, we’d already faced (“adjusted” would be too generous a word) our new reality.

One of the hardest moments for me predated the pandemic.  Granddaughter Camryn celebrated her bat mitzvah in Israel in 2019.  The rest of Andy and Amy’s family traveled there for the occasion. Burton and I witnessed the celebration on Zoom from our house in Franklin. MI.   Better than nothing.  Still, no comparison to being there in person with hugs and joyful tears, surrounded by the ancient limestone walls and worn pavers of Jerusalem.

But Covid has taught us new ways of coping.  We appreciate each other more than ever.  We treasure what get-togethers we can.  We find new ways to spend our time.

For me, two things have made our looooong quarantine more bearable.

At the start of the pandemic, I began work on a coffee table book about collecting art from Detroit’s first avant-garde art movement.  Recalling experiences I’d had and art friendships I’d made, especially with dealers Jackie Feigenson and Mary Preston, allowed me to travel back in my memory.  Detroit’s Cass Corridor & Beyond; Adventures of an Art Collector will be published this year by Read the Spirit, publishers of my second book, Godsigns, and of this column.  I hope you’ll enjoy it.

I also initiated a practice of meditation.  For 15 minutes each morning, I focus on my breathing.  Messy, uninvited thoughts bounce around my brain like kids in a puddle.  But I keep trying.  A meditation instructor said that when distracted, “Simply begin again.”  And so I do.  Over and over.  I’m convinced it’s helped to smooth the rough edges.

Psychologist Emma Seppala, Ph.D, recommends breathing as “the little known secret to peace of mind.”  She recommends a simple exercise she claims slows your heart rate and lowers blood pressure.  Inhale as normal then exhale through mostly closed lips twice as long.

16 years ago, in treatment for stage 4 cancer, I was freaking out over what I perceived as my imminent demise.  At the time, a wise psychologist asked how I was feeling that very minute.  “Okay,” I said.  “Try to stay in the moment,” she advised.  Meditation helps me do so.

On another happy note: in a few days, youngest granddaughter Lindsay will be bat mitzvahed in Glencoe, IL.  A lot closer than Jerusalem. The good Lord and United Airlines willing, I’ll be there.

The theory of cognitive dissonance is credited to social psychologist Leon Festinger.  In 1957 he proposed that inconsistency among beliefs or behaviors creates psychological tension.  Tension causes us to change inconsistent behaviors, reducing dissonance, or add behaviors to restore consonance.  Meditation helps improve consonance– a fancy word for peace of mind.

According to Houle, even before Nasty Nineteen reared its unwanted head, we were in for rough going.  In his new book, The 2020s: A Decade of Cognitive Dissonance, Houle cites the climate crisis, the future of artificial intelligence and global wealth inequality as other issues likely to create disruption.  That’s not counting humanitarian problems at our border, the political divide in this country, astronomical national debt and other unforseen issues.

Namaste, earthlings.  We’re still in for a bumpy ride.

Keep breathing.

Keep reaching out.

.

(NOTE: This is the second and final part of Barbara Loren-Snyder’s remarkable life story. If you missed Part 1, you can read that right here.)

.

When her first marriage ended, Barbara insisted she’d never marry again.  I laughed at her claim. She was young, beautiful and vivacious.

She discouraged a series of men.  Murray Snyder, a CPA, persisted.  “I hated dating but knew on our first date that Murray was a keeper.” On that date, in 1975, Barbara had laryngitis.  Murray thought her “sweet, demure and quiet.” They married five months later. Murray enjoyed telling friends that after Barbara recovered he “never got a word in edgewise.”

Barbara calls Murray “the love of my life.”

In 1975, Barbara received a call. The president of Detroit-based J.L. Hudson’s, one of the nation’s oldest and largest department store chains, suggested she start her own agency, offered their account.  Barbara figured such a step would require a million-dollar line of credit.  “Timing is everything,” she writes.  “…the best idea or best plan at the wrong time just doesn’t make it, and a woman asking for a $1 million line of credit meant she was nuts!”

Murray stepped in.  Loan granted. The Loren-Snyder agency was born.  “While the agency won many professional awards, it was Peggy and Nick, my teammates, who worked the magic…”  (Personal pat on  the back: I introduced her to my good friend Peggy Daitch.) The small agency created 350 radio and TV commercials a year. The effort was draining.  Barbara decided to sell or merge.  She reviewed offers from four major agencies, merged with Detroit-based D’arcy McManus.

Next Barbara accepted an offer from ABC-TV to start a retail marketing division.  “In those days,” she writes, “the media industry was profitable, young and dynamic.”  As for her colleagues at ABC, “I loved all of them and still do!”

Deciding to cut back on her work for ABC and become a consultant, she was hired by the president of Kmart to be on the President’s Kitchen Cabinet.  She recommended Kmart develop a private-label home department starring someone who’d be “Ralph Lauren for the masses.”

She heard about an east coast caterer who’d come out with a book, Entertaining.  Barbara called ten newspaper columnists around the country who covered food, fashion and style.  If none of them had heard of Martha, she’d scrap the idea.  The first eight hadn’t heard of her.  Nine and ten had.

I was #10.  I said, “Great idea.”  I never imagined just how great it would turn out to be.

Accustomed to a tonier crowd than Kmart, Matha refused to meet.  When Barbara said she was “going to make you a multi-millionaire,”  Martha changed her mind.  Barbara offered $50,000 plus royalties.  “Martha yelled, ‘What?  That’s nothing!’ and “began turning red from anger.”  Barbara asked what she expected.  At least $200,000 a year, she said.  Authorized to go to $250,000, Barbara replied, “I think we can work this out.”

“Martha wasn’t a very pleasant person to work with,” Barbara writes.  “She was very demanding, but she was brilliant when it came to developing a product.  The success of the Martha Stewart line at Kmart was breathtaking.”

Barbara’s  breakthroughs continued.  She came up with popular Christmas promotions including a gift guide for Hudson’s, one year starring actress Jennifer O’Neill, the next starring former Miss America and CBS journalist Phyllis George.

For Christmas 1988, Barbra developed a book, Kmart Celebrates Christmas in America.  It became the fifth highest selling Christmas book on the NYT bestseller list that year.  In 1989 she recruited Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton to help create an NBC -TV special.  “Most exciting for me was that the United States Armed Forces chose it for showing on Christmas Day on every base worldwide.”

In 1994, this creative whirlwind and the husband she called “the wind beneath my wings” bought a condo in Boca Raton, FL. Two years later, they moved there permanently.  Barbara’s first grandchild, Amanda, was born.  “I never had a grandmother,” Barbara says, “so being one was the greatest joy I could have.”  Barbara applied her talents and energy to non-profits including Hugs for Kids and JCC Family Services.  She joined the executive board of The Pap Corps for Cancer Research, named for Dr. Papanicolaou who invented the pap smear test.

Barbara ends her book at this point.  But we’ve stayed in touch.  I remain blown away by her spunk and determination. Her book doesn’t touch upon some of the personal challenges she’s faced, including a lump in one breast that led to a mastectomy in her 50s.

In recent years, Murray developed Alzheimers but remained brave, sociable and loving.  He died in 2019.  The couple was married for 44 years.

“We’ve all survived so much and are lucky to still be here.” Barbara says.  (Testify, sister!)

“Life is fascinating.  There’s such joy in being able to make lemonade out of lemons.”   I hear that, girlfriend.

Thanks for being a booster, friend and lemonade maker-in-chief.

The great ballet impressario  Sergei Diaghilev once said to poet and set designer Jean Cocteau, “Etonne moi!”  Dazzle me.  Thanks for sharing you story, Barbara Loren-Snyder.  You continue to dazzle me.

“Chance favors only the prepared mind.”
Louis Pasteur

“It took a lot of preparation to be so lucky.”
Barbara Loren-Snyder

 

Barbara Loren-Snyder has amazed me for 50+ years as an etiquette coach, businesswoman and survivor. In an era when most women were homemakers, schoolteachers or nurses, Barbara starred in a retail and advertising career. During the pandemic, now in her mid-80s, my good friend assembled a book, Lucky Me!

Learning about her upbringing, I’m even more amazed.

Her Russian grandparents came to the US in the late 1800s. At the time, poverty and persecution caused hundreds of thousands of Eastern European Jews to migrate. In 1919, after Barbara’s grandmother died, her grandfather dropped their children off at the Hebrew Orphanage Asylum of NYC.  Barbara writes, “none left the home unscarred.”

At the home, Barbara’s mother Shirley Levitsky, from Minsk, Russia, met NY-born Maxwell Lewis. They later married. Barbara was born In Brooklyn, in April, 1935. Shirley had to be rushed to the hospital. Barbara writes, “Nothing would stop me then, or as life has shown, nothing would stop me from navigating through life, largely on my own.”  

Trained as a draftsman, in the middle of the Great Depression, her father worked for the WPA in Washington, DC, on specifications for machinery and buildings. As housing was scarce, the Lewises dropped off their children, Barbara, 4, and Michael, 2, at a Virginia farm that fostered children of working parents. Barbara’s mother admonished her to “be good” and take care of her brother. Shirley promised to return in days. Days stretched into a year.

The family was reunited in 1940. Soon after, Maxwell was sent to Detroit to work on the B29 bomber. The family joined him. After the war, Maxwell became an architect. He worked for Detroit firm Charles Agree before establishing his own company, King and Lewis. The firm designed Detroit’s Pontchartrain Hotel and Dexter Chevrolet but eventually went bankrupt.

Barbara married at 20, gave birth to Robert at 22 and Randy at 24. She relished being a mom. Welcoming her sons’ friends into their home, “I was able to transform my lonely childhood.”

She wondered why her childhood was so different, but finding answers about her origins proved to be a challenge. The Hebrew Orphanage Asylum where Barbara’s parents met shuttered in 1986. Records went to Brandeis University. In the late 1980s, to learn about her history, Barbara gained approval to review her parents’ records. After three days at Brandeis studying and copying records, she returned home laden with documents. Those documents sat on her shelves for decades waiting until she found time “to review the obstacles my parents overcame so they could survive a difficult childhood.”

The pandemic provided that time. Barbara came to recognize the long-term effect abandonment had on her parents, who were orphaned in childhood. She gained “greater understanding of how my parents’ lack of ability to show affection and love, and putting up walls around their emotions, affected me. As a child I built my own walls for protection without understanding why.” She also realized the benefit of her spartan upbringing. “Having grown up with less gave greater value to everything I did or had.”

From age 14, Barbara worked as a salesperson. Attending Detroit’s Wayne State U., she worked full time at a fashion boutique. Reading every book she could on self-help and contemporary women achievers, she developed an idea.

In 1963, she phoned a manager of a local suburban Montgomery Ward with an idea she said  would increase his business and create a unique image for his store.

“I was scared to make the call, but by taking that step I was beginning a journey into uncharted waters. My self-confidence, which was always lacking, was getting a boost. ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained’ became my motto.”

Barbara recruited a neighbor; together they started a charm school. The program blossomed into Wendy Ward and was soon adopted by nine Montgomery Ward stores nationwide. In 1962 Barbara  appeared on TV’s To Tell the Truth.

Four years later, Barbara joined Detroit-based Federal’s Inc. She developed a junior department for 57 regional department stores. Among her creative promotions: a Teen Bash DJ’d by singer and teen idol Frankie Avalon, attended by 3,000.

At Federal’s, Barbara won recognition. She was invited to speak at events and earned enough money to take her sons on vacation. Grey Advertising hired her to run accounts for ABC-TV, Hudson’s and the Taubman company. Professional awards ensued. “Developing self-confidence and self-awareness… can’t be taught. You have to believe in yourself. …We all have gifts we didn’t know we had. Believing in yourself helps you find them.”

Next she took over the Detroit Shopping News. She changed the format and got friends to write columns. The president of GM presented her with the Detroit’s Ad Woman of the Year award.  “I knew then and I know now that nobody does anything alone.  I may be the orchestra leader but the musicians make the music.”

Here is the second and final part of this series.