Dear Diary...I Want to be Famous

Three years ago, late for work at The New York Times, I stepped out of my Upper West Side apartment building to encounter a dumpster filled with old steamer trunks plastered with vintage travel labels. Unhesitatingly, I climbed up and into what felt like my own movie.

Among the treasures were old photographs, a collection of handbags, a flapper dress, and a stunning tangerine bouclé coat with an iridescent lining and single Bakelite button. Amid the chaos, a crumbling red leather diary was found, kept by a young woman in New York, from 1929 to 1934, between the ages of 14 and 19. "This book belongs to," read the frontispiece, "Florence Wolfson." A brittle scrap of newsprint floated out of the pages. On it was Florence's picture. Besides her waved blonde hair, she appeared completely contemporary. Eerily, we looked alike.

I read her entries as if they were personal letters to me. Florence and I shared so much in common, the same longing for love, someone to understand us, the desire to carve out our own path. At the time, I was reporting for The Times celebrity column, traipsing nightly from red carpet movie premiere to party to after-party interviewing hundreds of boldfaced names. The diary was a portal away from the ephemeral world of celebrity to the seemingly enduring world of a young 1930s woman in search of herself.

I could already see the headlines in my mind, "Celebrity reporter finds a discarded 75-year-old diary, in it, the biggest story of her career." But I couldn't help asking myself, because for once I genuinely cared about my story, who was Florence Wolfson? Her eyes wouldn't let go.

Over the next three years, I carved out my own beat, searching out the hidden characters of a New York, which I felt was fast disappearing as everything became more Starbuckified (we need words like this). After a Times story I wrote on Manhattan's last typewriter repairman ran (Florence wrote short stories and plays on a lavender Remington typewriter), I received a curious voicemail from a New York lawyer, Charles Eric Gordon, who works like a private eye. A lover of old New York, he said, "You brought a tear to my eye."

Over lunch at Keens Steakhouse, I shared the diary with Charlie. After weeks of investigation, he located a Florence Wolfson born to a pair of Russian immigrants who came to New York in the early twentieth century. One Sunday morning, eager but a bit nervous, I called up Florence at her Pompano Beach, Flordia home.

"Hell-o?" answered a voice with the presence of an old stage actress. "Florence?" I explained to her the miraculous chain of events that had led me to her. "Oh, yes, the diary is mine," she said. "I want to meet you."

An ageless phenom, full of spunk, wearing Dior glasses and a dab of red lipstick, Florence hugged me the first time we met and ventured back to the girl she once was. "What made you do this, Lily?" Florence asked. I knew from the diary's pages she had wanted to be a writer. "If I had remained true to myself, would I have ended up living this ordinary life?" she asked. "You brought back my life," she confessed.

Recently, I took a trip home to Chicago, where I mined my old diaries, which my mother, an artist, keeps in a trunk she painted with the moon and stars. I flipped through dozens of diaries, dream journals, and notebooks filled with ideas for stories, novels, and film scripts, not nearly as complete as Florence's, who never skipped an entry in the red leather diary's five years.

On June 14, 1996, at 4:45 in the morning, when I was 16, I wrote, "I write this diary as if someone will discover--read--publish?--it someday. Fame. Recognition. The truth is that all I want to be in happy in life w/ myself."

There is something so hopeful about a diary, a journal, a new notebook, which Joan Didion and Virginia Woolf both wrote about. A blog. Perhaps we all are waiting for someone to discover us. "Find me, find me," Florence seemed to be saying.

From being hidden inside a diary with a tiny key, Florence is going to be revealed in a book. How does Florence feel about that? She writes about it in the forward to the book, as well as the death of her husband of 67 years last spring. Their first kiss, when Florence was 13, was also recorded in her diary.

This weekend, on the phone, Florence and I were gabbing like teenagers about the book party, where the red carpet will be rolled out for Florence and the sleuth that helped me track her down. She admitted, "My friends have to take me seriously now. I'm no longer an invisible older woman."

Florence was a feminist even before she knew the word. She hopes she will inspire teenagers and young women, those in perpetual teenager-dom who as my mom calls, "the H&M set," to reflect on their lives and fill themselves with more permanent things, like, ideas. Sixteen-year-old Florence wrote, on June 28, 1932, "Stuffed myself with Mozart and Beethoven--feel like a ripe apricot--am dizzy with the exotic."

What a journey! From diary to dumpster, to newspaper to book -- to blog. Florence and I will be appearing on The Today Show on April 17. On April 10, 1932, Florence wrote: "Wrote all day -- and my story is still incomplete."

Lily Koppel, Florence Wolfson, and the Red Leather Diary

Check out The Red Leather Diary trailer below.

For more information on Lily Koppel and her book, The Red Leather Diary, please visit her website: RedLeatherDiary.com.

Comments

[QueenCeleste]

This story gave me goosebumps. Fascinating! I can't help wondering: can the coat, dress, and other items still be worn? I am a collector of vintage clothing and they just sound exquisite.

[synergie]

You've inspired me to dig out my journal, which I still pack with me wherever I go, despite the fact that it has been 5 years since I wrote a word in it.

Wonderful story!

[jeskiley]

Wow, that's fantastic!!

[jennylens]

I cried as I read this. My first solo photo book will be out this month (from Rizzoli/Universe: "Punk Pioneers.") It's very much a book written by, about and for women, although men absolutely love my POV and attitude (my supporters/fans are equally women and men of all ages). Although most rock photo books are full of photos of performers, I crammed as much text and off-stage photos as I could. Surprisingly, for someone known for her photos, most people want me to write my life story. There's been interest in a documentary, with the emphasis on me, not the famous people I shot per se.

I love the comment about her journals full of images which told the story as well as if pure text. So many thought the rise of computers would mean the end of reading and writing. Just the opposite. However, I doubt if I'll engage in another print book. I am far more excited about eBooks, the control, the ability to reach so many, plus of course blogs. Now to dry my tears.

What a lovely lovely story. We need more stories like this in huffingtonpost to inspire us and not let politics get us down!

[rucognizant]

I have visited the Red Diary Site, and realize, how valuable a find this is. Young people today just don't know what they are missing out on!
As a friend of mine once said of her daughter, "She can't miss what she's never known".
My Mother is 2 years older than FLorance, and she resisted the 'country club mentality" with a slight degree of scorn all her life, rebel that she was! Which made my Father sad!.
I hope the richness of this story will make an impression on young girls, and make them understand
the value of life in the slow lane pre-technology!
I believe we need that understanding to balance things!

[rucognizant]

What an upbeat story!
SO nice to read about something besides scraping candidates for a change.
Definitely a karmic, meant to be, meeting!
And you DO look alike! Grandmother Grandaughter!

[cinemaven]

I had to come back to say that I just read the exerpt on the RedLeatherDiary.com site... Reading Florence's words brought me to tears. The book is out of stock at amazon.ca but I have it on my wish list and the'll notify when it's available. I can't imagine anyone reading that exerpt and not buying the book. It's extremely compelling.

[cinemaven]

Kismet... It sounds like you've both added so much to the others life and outlook. I look forward to seeing you on the Today show and to reading the book.

[JoDeeVa]

What a heart-warming story, Lilly. As your friend, the sleuth said, "You brought a tear to my eye." My journals tend to be flotsam from my life, treasures I have made drawings, sketches or cryptic notes about. I've never been able to just sit down and write in a diary, so to speak. Recently, while organizing, I was astounded by the number and contents of my journals. They told the stories of my life as lucidly as if I had actually used words all along. Although I have found myself writing more in recent years, I like the old storybooks, with pictures, news clippings, mementos, etc. They leave a trail to follow should they ever find their way into a dumpster to be found by a stranger seeking answers about the story they tell.

I never pass a dumpster, such as you describe, without jumping into the mystery of it's contents. I have found entire photo albums, chronicling lives. I couldn't believe people would knowlingly dispose of such memories. I managed to track one family's relatives down by writing to a newspaper in a town, mentioned in the album. They didn't even know the photos existed, had never seen or known these people, from whom they were descendants. I can't describe the joy all of us felt at finding that which had been lost somewhere along it's path in history.

[JoDeeVa]

(con't)
I look forward to reading "The Red Leather Diary." Thank-you, Lilly and Florence for reminding all of us that there are treasures to be found in all of our lives and even though sometimes we are lost to each other, they are still there, waiting to be discovered. Carl Jung called it synchronicity when they find each other. Maybe, but whatever you call it..it touches our spirits and brings all of "us strangers" closer to each other!

[JamieFrevele]

Excellent find, and a great story! I'll definitely have to read the book and the blog! I'd love to see what Florence, an aspiring writer, would think of the dissemination of her story online, thinking back to being a starry-eyed 16-year old in the 1930s.

[DMSmith]

What a wonderful story! Thank you for it.