S: Is for shinning stars who show the way

My friend Lee invited me to a 90th birthday party thrown by famed nightlife photographer Patrick McMullan at Guest House and Home for Zelda Kaplan last year. She requested of her guest, who were many that they not give gifts but instead donate to her favorite cause, Women in Africa. The party continued to Lotus, and then to Cain. I was so inspired after meeting this petite dynamo who gives of herself and lives life to the fullest I had to learn more. I have since run into Zelda several times as she is friends with designer Nicole Romano,club owner Amy Sacco and PR guru Laura Rubin all of whom are friends. Zelda and I met on several different occasions and have become admirers of each other her words not mine. For it is hard to compare ones self with someone this giving.


Zelda is my hero. She wakes up every day somewhere around 2 pm in her rent-controlled midtown apartment. She never leaves her abode without her trademark, a massive pair of shades. She doesn’t wait on lines. Instead, the doormen at all the top clubs lift her up over the velvet ropes. She is Manhattan’s oldest social fixture with a social conscience. Over twenty years ago, she started a one woman organization to raise awareness among African women on everything from their own right to inheritance to clitoridectomies. If you have to ask, look it up. When she’s not in Africa, she is making the New York social scene and always raising awareness. Last time I saw her she was raising money for a well. Kaplan is the subject of a documentary, Her Name Is Zelda, which was shown at HBO’s film festival a few years back. She’s been going out for more than 40 years, and wishes there were still places like Rubin’s on East 58th Street, where she’d eat prune pancakes at 3 a.m. and spy on Ginger Rogers. “I hope I’m that fabulous at her age,” says Bungalow’s Amy Sacco.“She’s an inspiration!” adds Tommy Tune, who dropped by to see Kaplan, before she took off to dance at Lotus.



Kaplan is a out spoken except for her two ex-husbands; one made her quit law school to go to Miami Beach, “a cultural desert.” After her second divorce, she taught ballroom dancing—before moving into African social work. While she’s traveling, her energy remains ceaseless. “My God, we were in these African villages, and she’d wake us up at 7 a.m. with hard-boiled eggs, and we’d be off!” says the documentary’s director, Nicole Sampogna.“I think one of the things that keeps me healthy is that I’m not introspective at all,” says Kaplan. “The secret is being interested in things outside of oneself.”In 2006 she was the Queens International Film Festival Humanitarian Award winner.

In a world that thinks more of itself than the next person it is a relief to know people like Zelda are here to show the way. Her example of living life to the fullest extreme while putting those you don't even know or haven't met yet on the front burner makes my thrilled to call Zelda a friend and introduce you to her and that is a honored F.A.C.T.