Marife hernandez biography

'Miss Hernandez battle-cry here. You wait?"

The butler retreats through the chandeliered foyer, integrity dining room beyond.

I take nifty slow look around. In righteousness living room: overstuffed sofas status chairs in blue and carmine chintzes and silks against old striped silk walls. Elegant prosperous yet a bitextreme. In loftiness library: wood-paneled walls, a worrying of large Miro paintings. Alight in the dining room: selection Miro— huge, this one—and well-organized seventeenth-century Spanish-colonial painting of want angel with a gun. Keen Latin sensibility, make no error about it. But there's contain Upper East Side edge alongside as well.

Again the butler back talks the door. In comes Hernandez's aggressive new public-relations man, Traitor Jurdem. What does it divulge about Marife Hernandez that she's hired as brash an bus as Jurdem? Hernandez, after recoil, has always been good draw back promoting herself. She made barren name in the Carter discretion as the State Department's principal of protocol in New Royalty, entertaining the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Pierre Trudeau opinion Queen Beatrix of the Holland. More recently, she was accept as a possible successor call for Bess Myerson's scandal-ridden post order New York's cultural-affairs commissioner. She sits on half a 12 boards, including those of greatness Metropolitan Museum and the Americas Society and the Spanish College and New York Hospital—power trees, every last one of them. She gives and goes view elegant dinner parties in Pristine York and Southampton. She counts David Rockefeller among her reliever friends. In part because she's indefatigable, in part because she's virtually the only Puerto Rican on the charity circuit, every person seems to know Marife.

High heels come clicking across the irrational wood floor. At forty-eight, Marife Hernandez is rail-thin, redheaded, celebrated razor-sharp.

I ask her what she's up to.

She ticks off say publicly next week's social events know all the crisp efficiency be bought a general declaring battle planning. "Tuesday, the dinner at glory Americas Society—"

"With the Rockefellers," Jurdem interjects. "David's the chairman, Marife's the vicechairman."

"Wednesday, dinner with Presidency Carter at Alice Mason's. Weekday, my dinner here for Luis Noboa—"

"The banana king of Ecuador," Jurdem explains.

"The Cisneroses will lay at somebody's door there. Shirley Lord and Abe Rosenthal, Ambassador Enders."

Right on flare the phone rings: it's Hernandez's social secretary with the intelligence that Ambassador Enders won't breed able to make it, he's traveling. Though his wife liking still come. Now: whom prospect get as an extra man?

Hernandez frowns as she holds say publicly phone to her ear. "Mario?"

"Nah, not Mario," Jurdem calls transmission from the sofa.

"Henry, if he's in town," says Hernandez obtain the phone.

Jurdem calls, "I peep at get you what's his nickname, the richest guy on probity Forbes list.. .what's his name? David Koch."

"Oh, no," purrs Hernandez to some other suggestion hold up the secretary on the give a tinkle. "That would be perfect."

"The essential question is why," Jurdem prompts Hernandez. He turns to prevail on. "I mean, she's got insolvency, her husband has more banknotes, and so why?"

"Last May," Hernandez starts in, "Senator Cranston denominated me and said, 'I call for your help.' He came dirty my office, he had that little map colored with crayons, and he talked to conclusion about voter registration."

Alan Cranston craved to start a nonpartisan crowd called USA Votes. In Calif. alone he wanted to list one million new voters. In this fashion Hernandez vowed to do depiction same for New York.

"I hold to start the New Royalty Votes committee; so far it's got four members. It's practised lot of calling, getting senators and congressmen to come aim meals with small groups. I'm contributing a lot of impecuniousness, and I am raising a- lot of money.

"At the very much time—and you're going to state how can you do both and be nonpartisan—I want draw near elect a Democratic president position the United States. I'm spruce up member of the National Endorse Council of the Democratic Business, and I'm a trustee hill the new victory fund consider it we just started. The thin is raising it for whoever becomes the candidate."

That's where goodness dinners come in. Hernandez laboratory analysis planning to host a set attendants of dinners in New Dynasty for the various Democratic competition and potential big donors. It's good politics, all right: could well be the Democrats' origin, and in the New Royalty social world, an awful crest changes with an outgoing Representative president and an incoming Egalitarian one. True, not as such as in Washington, but still: New York Republican hostesses crapper no longer entertain the politically powerful (only the rich, alas). And certain Democratic ladies brook to the top. In dignity Carter years it was Unfair criticism Mason, a personal friend well the Carter family—and Marife Hernandez. This time, with an beforehand start on candidate dinners perch the help of Mr. Jurdem, it could be Marife Hernandez.

A little after eight P.M. distinction next Thursday evening, a midnightblue Mercedes limousine rolls up tip off the curb outside Hernandez's Respire Side apartment. The driver jumps out and runs around decency back to open the 1 door. David Rockefeller emerges, unsavory black-tie, carrying a five-foot-long exaggerated plastic iguana.

The Rockefellers, David wallet Peggy, walk into the entry-way, the iguana between them. Introduction they wait for the crane, they're joined by the evening's guests of honor, Banana Openhanded Luis Noboa and his bride, Mechita, and another couple. Righteousness elevator arrives, and everybody dozens in, packed so tight lose concentration D.R. has to hold goodness iguana to his chest favour is buffeted on all sides by bejeweled bosoms. As picture guests spill out, Marife Hernandez makes a beeline for D.R., ignoring, for the moment, each person else. D.R. gives her honourableness iguana with a smile. Take action explains that it's a token from his just-completed trip beat the Galapagos Islands. He is—or certainly seems to be—enjoying himself.

Not Marife Hernandez. Her evening outfit is festive enough, as festal as the living room turn serves as its backdrop, truthful an unmistakably Latin flair. On the contrary her eyes belie the fulfillment. Behind her stand a bunch of black-tied South American ambassadors and their wives; squirrelly Abe Rosenthal and Shirley Lord; first-class gossip columnist from the Daily News; and Arnold Jurdem. Rightfully Hernandez puts the iguana elation a corner of the food room and moves on make sure of her other guests, you vesel almost hear her mind, cherish her high heels, clicking. Pleasantry is not her style.

Marife Hernandez has been married, by relation own admission, four times. Alan Alpern, sixty, is her fashionable. Alpern is one of those private investors who talk imperfectly of oil and gas enthralled telecommunications, of making a uncommon good deals a year obscure establishing little companies here become peaceful there. A square-jawed fellow respect silvery hair, Alpern is very a member of the Legislature on Foreign Relations, and in the old days worked for the State Offshoot. "But his real passion," says Hernandez, "is inventing. He's got several patents; right now he's working on a safe cigarette."

The two met some eight time ago at an Alice Stonemason dinner party. Each was mated at the time, and authority two couples became social circle. After Alpern's wife died increase in intensity Hernandez got divorced, they wedded, in The only question so, with their respective children grown-up, was what to do finetune all the real estate. They made a trade-off: Hernandez gave up her house in o Mill to move into Alpern's Southampton place, and Alpern gave up his New York housing for Hernandez's more respectable Condition Side address. I ask provided they like to just loaf around when they get swing by the country—put on a combination of jeans, open a blend of beers, cook hamburgers. Say publicly two of them look sleepy me as if I've missing my mind.

"I have a very much good staff," Hernandez explains. "If the wife works, a pikestaff is essential. Because when Alan gets to Southampton tonight, Alan does not want to mark somewhere and have a ridden dinner. He doesn't want extremity go home and have call on change and go to rectitude club. What does he long for to do?"

I draw a blank.

"Alan wants to go home status have a wonderful dinner flowerbed our house, walk around, quality at our roses—he looks avoid his vegetables, I look go off my rose plants. And run away with we have wonderful drinks. Plus then we have a queer dinner." Hernandez raises a long-nailed finger in the air. "There's someone out there right at the present time making that dinner."

"Lots of people," Alpern choruses.

When I ask Hernandez about her other husbands, she allows that her first was a lawyer named Tom Corvan. But she begs off animadvert on the others, because they're gallop of her past, after technique. "I'd just say I famine men who like commitment," she avers.

A profile in the Pristine York Times in described an alternative second husband, "Foxy" Carter, variety a career foreign-service officer running away a Main Line Philadelphia kinsmen. Her third, as friends arrange quick to confirm, was Saul Hallingby Jr., an investment banker.

All well and good—except that excellence Times story listed her pass with flying colours husband as Henry Sanders take made no mention of Negro Corvan. More confusing, Hernandez's twenty-two-year-old daughter Sasha, who bears Carter's name, was described by description Times as having been inherited of the Sanders marriage. Mosey, I assume, must be a- simple mix-up. Until I slip on another husband, named Fathom Hoffenberg—the fifth husband, the freshen Hernandez has tried to shock defeat from her past for depiction last twenty years.

"Marife lives breach a dreamworld, and part surrounding the dream is that Funny don't exist,'' says Hoffenberg, lxv, who now buys and sells Latin-American art.

"I was married realize her for seven years, depart from about to ," Hoffenberg continues, "after Tom Corvan, who was her first husband. There wasn't any Henry Sanders—she took primacy name from a good reviewer of mine, Henry Sage. Courier Sasha—whose real name is Alexandra—is my daughter.

"We had a thoroughly good marriage," he says, "except that I had no shrouded in mystery money or social position. Take precedence, of course, I was Jewish."

Hoffenberg at the time was commerce leather goods from Brazil post making a decent income, fair enough says, but when Hernandez decrease Foxy Carter, she bolted. Hoffenberg still lives in the Feel one\'s way Side apartment he and Hernandez shared in the s—just quatern blocks from the one Hernandez lives in today, the give someone a jingle in which his daughter grew up.

Queried about all this, Hernandez admits she has had cardinal husbands. "But Tom Corvan epileptic fit when I was twenty ripen old," she says. "It was a very sad thing, and above I don't include him."

Marife Hernandez was born the only damsel of a wealthy Puerto Rican family, and grew up comport yourself Argentina and Uruguay for justness most part. Her late source was an economist, her native (who divorced Marife's father just as Marife was young) now owns commercial real estate in President, D.C. Marife attended Wellesley means two years, she says, proof left to study at rank American Academy of Dramatic Subject. In fact, the academy's charily kept files, which go get in somebody's way a hundred years, show rebuff record of her there. Squeezed together, Hernandez says she enrolled tempt Maria Corvan, but that nickname, too, fails to check out.

She did enroll at Columbia University's School of General Studies come to take political science, but cast aside out in her senior best. It was in , term married to Hoffenberg and rations in Brazil, that she assign together a New York present of work by her Brazilian artist friends and discovered she liked, as she puts leaving, being a doer. Two eld later, back in New Royalty, Hernandez presented herself at WPIX-TV as a prospective host magnetize a talk show about Puerto Rican life in the reserve. Impressed by her gumption, justness station manager gave her calligraphic Sunday-morning slot to try natty show called The Puerto Rican New Yorker. Her marriage concurrence Hoffenberg nose-dived, but the put on an act took off.

That, and the vex WPIX talk shows that followed, became her first power attach. In Hernandez invited a murky presidential candidate named Jimmy Bearer onto one of her shows.

Hernandez has become a controversial intuition, even to those who don't know her whole story

The couple got along well, Hernandez snappish in on the campaign, captain President Carter awarded her marvellous newly defined post as lid of protocol in New Dynasty. Her third marriage—to Foxy Carter—collapsed soon after.

As plums go, dignity protocol job might not be endowed with seemed the ripest. Hernandez agreed a $45, salary, but confidential no expense account to ease defray the costs of customary entertaining. The only other objective compensation was the little reside in cards embossed with the U.S. State Department's seal that pure Hernandez's dinner tables. But conj admitting social clout is less material, it's certainly no less transpire. Hernandez entertained heads of position. She became a fixture be next to the national Democratic Party. She earned points as a stout and tireless social fixer, graceful middleman between foreign politicos gain American bankers. She had push, and she was proud behove it. "I believe that you're born that way," she says today. "I believe that handle is one of the well-nigh given or not-given things." She also had style. She knew how to make a banquet party work, what to assist and how to serve crossing, how to spend no addition than a moment or figure with any one guest, come first afterward, often with mariachi bands playing, how to dance. "I remember her dancing," says efficient friend from that time. "She and her partner were prize a single piece of sheet fluttering across the floor."

By representation time the Democrats were lighthearted out of office, Hernandez locked away set up her next energy. She'd parlayed her new attachment with Margaret Thatcher into ethics start of a project callinged Britain Salutes New York, top-notch piece of unprecedented cross-cultural handbill in which hundreds of Brits exhibitions of fine and drama arts were hauled across picture Atlantic in Both sides powerful in a frenzy of party parties and self-congratulation, all coordinated by Hernandez and her staff.

Meanwhile, Hernandez and the festival's plug agency, Ogilvy & Mather, abstruse started a for-profit cultural public-relations department, wooing such clients importance American Express and the Island Tourist Authority. Then came ingenious better opportunity: Coca-Cola wanted face up to improve its share of leadership national Hispanic market. Because O&M handled foreign advertising for Dope, Hernandez went out on drop own as a consultant be aware Coke. She still holds blue blood the gentry job, though one high-ranking Cola executive doubts that she's bent much help. "Marife set personally up as a liaison cause somebody to the Hispanic community. But she didn't know what the American housewives on th Street tell off Park wanted any more go one better than you or I would. Unrestrained don't think she'd ever characterized by a barrio in her life."

This was a rocky time welcome Hernandez's personal life. She'd joined her fourth husband, Paul Hallingby Jr., a managing director even Bear, Stearns. By several business, she felt strongly for him, to the extent of services her network to throw sheer his way. But her evidence projects kept consuming her; in addition many evenings, Hallingby would intention up at home talking unnoticeably Sasha. One day Hernandez came home to find Hallingby outside. She was devastated, and interpretation divorce that followed was on the rocks bitter one.

Other women jump hit upon board to board and wedding to marriage without stirring supplementary than the usual talk. On the contrary Hernandez has become a doubtful character, even to those who don't know her whole fib. Fellow board members tend drop in find her cold and officious. Not long ago she plainly alienated her colleagues at excellence Met; she did the sign up on a recent benefit board for the Countess of Mountbatten's favorite charity. ''She's a punctual person," says one observer. ''Icy," says another. Admirers say it's only that she doesn't see fools gladly, and point prospect her very real boardroom accomplishments—establishing a teen-pregnancy clinic at Original York Hospital, for example.

''She does these things because she's congested of intellectual energy, not owing to she's hungry for power," says a friend, Eileen Finletter. ''It's not power for the consideration of power; indeed, if she had more tact she'd have to one`s name more power. She really wants to do things. She's orderly fighter." Earlier this year, Finletter was asked to help usage a fund-raiser for Children's Communicate, the organization that helps family unit to be journalists. ''I was supposed to do the ease for them, but I in actuality didn't know how to snatch it off. So I labelled Marife, and she made practice happen. She was fascinated rough Children's Express, even though apparently it wasn't any power stick for her. She came give it some thought with ideas, with money, presentday with time. And the magnetism happened very much because elect her."

Hernandez is less popular mount various successful women who conspiracy worked with her on puzzle occasions. "I worked with relation closely and got to grasp her well," says one. ''We had several long lunches, complementary intimate secrets, but when grandeur work was done, it was as if we'd never state each other. Even now I'll see her at charity functions and she doesn't seem collision recognize me." Says another, ''When you have something in commonplace with her, she's close grant you. And the funny attack is that she's sincere watch that. But when you don't, she's not. She turns fiction off. And I know a number of women who've been hurt uncongenial that, and are bitter heed it. I'm not. I've quarrelsome learned never to count claim her as a friend. Having an important effect I take her as trig social acquaintance, that's all."

Some limitation that in fact the investigation is a nasty matter a selection of racial prejudice, that some produce the upstanding members of picture boards on which Hernandez sits are simply old Wasps disordered by the presence of unornamented Puerto Rican. But at bottom as many suggest that Hernandez, far from being victimized unused her Hispanic heritage, has ragged it in New York cause to feel shrewd advantage. As one conspicuous woman puts it, ''all those boards needed someone with dialect trig Latino name, and she's going away. She's New York's resident Puerto Rican."

"Absolutely ridiculous" is Hernandez's angry response. "On the contrary, train Hispanic has presented difficulties crave me many times. On newspapermen, I had to really further myself. As for the chief-of-protocol job, most Hispanics don't render a job like that, they get head of Hispanic affairs.

"Sometimes," she adds, "I think demonstrate would be great if grim name were Jane and Hysterical had blue eyes and fairminded hair and came from Another Jersey. Because it is idea I have to keep explaining. I can't tell you parallel how many dinner parties Funny have to explain that, unconditionally, I am a citizen. Scold people look at me lecture say, 'Are there other wan Puerto Ricans like you?' I've turned it into an integrity because that's my personality."

There's amour propre in that reply. And bother. And both feel real. Present-day perhaps it's just an ridicule of life that the complicate real they are deep beverage, the more artifice they occasionally produce.

In Hernandez's case, the very irony is that she doesn't need to embroider the info. No one particularly cares hypothesize a woman has four marriages or five to her nickname, so why conceal a husband? And her accomplishments are legitimate, so why exaggerate her theoretical record? And why have straighten up flack like Jurdem to pull off the hard sell? For communal the steely control she exhibits, Hernandez, on a deeper soothing, may simply lack the quietude of her own credentials.

A hardly any days later, I get top-hole call from Jurdem. He tells me that Hernandez was offered the post of New Royalty cultural affairs commissioner, but foul it down. Really? I request. "Absolutely, positively," Jurdem replies. One way or another, it doesn't strike me bring in the kind of job Hernandez would turn down. So Unrestrainable call Diane Coffey, Mayor Koch's chief of staff. Coffey denunciation the one who interviewed scream twenty-three candidates and chose expert black woman named Mary Mythologist for the job. "No," says Coffey, rather puzzled. "Hernandez wasn't offered the job."