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Tag: debutante

From Catastrophe to Success!

From Catastrophe to Success!

On the night of my debutante ball, Richard Nixon, who was Vice President, and his wife, Pat, came over early with their two adolescent daughters, Julie and Tricia. They wanted to see the tent and the decorations before the extraordinary debutante party my parents gave for me at Underoak, our beautiful estate. Walter Sharon, the florist, was there, too, working on the flowers. Ridgewells Caterers were setting up for the breakfast to be served later. The “A 1 Tent Company”…

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It All Seemed Perfectly Normal to Me.

It All Seemed Perfectly Normal to Me.

To please my father as well as myself, I became a debutante at several balls in 1960. Glamor and mystique attend the idea of making a debut into society. In fact, my father told me that when I was old enough, he would make sure I was presented at court to the Queen in London. Sadly for him, if not for me, the debutante balls of the court were canceled after the 1958 season.By the 1950s, life was changing in…

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Tragic Story, Happy Ending!

Tragic Story, Happy Ending!

On the night before my debut, in June of 1960, my mother went out into the night down the driveway to the street after dark. The florist, Walter Sharon, who helped decorate the tents wanted her to see how they looked lighted at night. The tents were pink, dramatically illuminated by glittering small lights. They were hung with birdcages filled with flowers and each had a fake bird or two, adding to the glamor. It was “other-worldly,” the way the…

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