Victoria’s Secrets: Acts of kindness

My favorite Sunday Morning show on CBS had a segment on the “The Gilded Age” series that is starting a new season. 

They reported on the people who made enormous impacts on their worlds and found fabulous financial success during the late 1800s — from John D. Rockefeller, to Cornelius Vanderbilt, to Andrew Carnegie, to J.P. Morgan. They were innovators and brilliant and sometimes unscrupulous business leaders.

What I found fascinating was that they used their wealth to impact the communities they lived in. 

Carnegie created hundreds of public libraries, the Rockefellers are famous for their investment in art and health research and J.P. Morgan is still a name in the financial industry today — it goes on and on. They left behind legacies of giving back. 

The reporter raised this question: Do the current enormously successful people have a similar mindset? 

Being in Palm Beach, New York City and the Hamptons — which I dubbed the “Golden Triangle” — I see the generosity of many of our successful business leaders and the myriad of causes that they support. 

This past week, I had the pleasure of seeing a roomful of over 160 people at the Garden City Hotel supporting the Belmont Child Care Association. Its mission is to offer education and day care to children whose parents work at the racetracks in our region. In one afternoon, the luncheon raised almost $250,000, all going to the school. Remarkable!

My dear friend Jean Shafiroff was honored and spoke eloquently of her modest upbringing in Hicksville and her education beginning locally, then earning the privilege of getting undergraduate and graduate degrees from Columbia University. After working several years, she met and married her beloved Martin and brought up her two daughters.

She is using her wealth to support many causes in the communities where she lives. Jean is a role model for all of us who are grateful for our success and share time and money to many causes. She also wrote the book “Successful Philanthropy: How to Make a Life By What You Give,” encouraging people to give back.

Life’s WORC is my favorite cause that I founded 50 years ago to help my daughter Lara, who was brain-damaged at birth. 

Because of Lara, I met Geraldo Rivera, who was a cub reporter breaking the story about the abuses at Willowbrook after Governor Rockefeller slashed the budgets at the state-funded facility, where my daughter lived, endangering the lives of the 5,400 people living there. Life’s WORC members marched and picketed, but no one listened until Geraldo’s exposé. 

His coverage gave the family members of the residents an opportunity to sign onto the federal class action lawsuit my husband Murray Schneps and I initiated and ultimately won. Willowbrook was closed and funds went to open group homes and day programs so the people of Willowbrook could live lives of dignity.

Now, we are in a struggle to get pay equity for the direct care workers in our homes run by not-for-profit organizations. We are only funded for $18 per hour, but state-run union group homes pay $25 per hour. 

My goal is to alert Governor Hochul of the inequity and ask for pay parity and last week, I got to see the governor and speak to her about our needs.

My fear and nightmare is that after a 50-year battle, the people with developmental disabilities in group homes, who are our most vulnerable, innocent and helpless members of society, are not safe with staffing that doesn’t meet their needs.

I don’t want to see the beautiful homes that provide warm, loving care become “little Willowbrooks” with staffing below the needs of the profoundly handicapped people the homes serve. 

Stay tuned!

Saturday night was the opening of a touching and beautifully written and acted “Bob & Jean: A Love Story” by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan — a Sag Harbor resident — launching the season for Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theater.

The actors received a standing ovation from the sold-out audience. The play made me cry, laugh and care about the couple who wrote poignant letters to each other while they were separated by World War II and were brought together again, living together ‘til their dying days. 

You don’t want to miss this marvelous production! Buy your tickets now, as the show only runs until June 15. 

What a week it was!