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The Leona Chronicles |
| Published: August 21, 2007, 12:33 am |
| Tags: helmsley leona, times opinion, collins gail, times select |
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By GAIL COLLINS Published: August 21, 2007 The news that Leona Helmsley died yesterday at 87 reminded me of the time I interviewed her husband, Harry, the real-estate magnate who owned a vast empire of Manhattan hotels, office towers and apartment complexes in the 1980s. He was over 70, the first billionaire I had ever met, and I asked him whether he had ever thought about devoting the final segment of his career to good works, like helping the homeless. What the hell would I want to do that for? he said. This was an instance of decades colliding. It was around 1981, but I was stuck in the idealistic and irritating '70s, when it was considered perfectly normal to ask rich people how they were planning to use their wealth to help the downtrodden. Helmsley, on the other hand, was working off one of the great philosophical underpinnings of the '80s: that the point of making money was ... you made money. He had been a low-profile, behind-the-scenes kind of guy [ Full article ] |
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