Red Cross and white ties

Among the colorful cast of characters Laurence Leamer profiles in his immensely entertaining book Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach is Simon Fireman. Fireman -- a plastic pool toys magnate -- came to Palm Beach as a convicted felon having spent six months under house arrest for illegal campaign contributions to Sen. Robert Dole. This (along with his Jewish faith) meant he would never be granted access to the exclusive confines of the Bath & Tennis or Everglades Club. Instead Fireman decided to scale the social heights by way of well-timed gifts calculated to grab the maximum headlines and publicity in the Palm Beach Daily News a/k/a the Shiny Sheet. At the 2000 Cancer Ball, Leamer writes, "Fireman came bounding up to the podium to announce a surprise one-million-dollar gift." Fireman's stunt philanthropy eventually elevated him to chairman of the most prestigious white tie event of them all -- the International Red Cross Ball.

For almost fifty years the Red Cross Ball had been the exlusive domain of the old-money WASP elite, held in the Breakers Ballroom, and run for twenty of those years "like a private party" by Listerine heiress Sue Whitmore. Whitmore died in 1993 and Leamer chronicles the scheming and petty feuding that resulted in Fireman of all people finding himself chairman of the 2005 ball. But he had a problem. Leamer writes, "What set the Red Cross Ball apart from other charity events was not only the white tie-tiara ultraformality, but the slew of ambassadors Trump flew down in his private plane from Washington. However, Trump now said that he was not doing it any longer. He had his shrewd reason for the turndown: He had a brand-new ballroom at Mar-a-Lago. What could be better for business than to host the Red Cross Ball? His plane became available the moment the Red Cross moved the event to his new facility, in which everything except the waiters was gilded gold."

A major theme in the book is the loathing old Palm Beach has for Donald Trump. He's the symbol of everything they dislike about the nouveau crowd. Trump is "the uncrowned king of the New Yorkers...and no one is both as emulated and as despised in Palm Beach." His gaudy Mar-a-Lago is a daily affront to the members of the relatively shabby B&T next door. In 2006 the Red Cross Ball was held at the Donald's club for the second year and Simon Fireman once again chaired. Leamer and his wife were guests that evening and witnessed the sadly comic end to Fireman's social climbing. After the ambassadors had trundled in -- "so weighted down with medals that they looked as if they might keel over" -- after dinner was eaten, Frankie Avalon had finished singing, and guests had begun to leave -- Fireman got up to direct the Michael Rose Orchestra in a final number. Tired and a bit tipsy he fell and hit his head on the marble floor. Leamer writes:

I jumped up and, along with Trump and a few others, stood over the crumpled body of Fireman lying with his head in a small pool of blood. There were many Red Cross employees in the ballroom, and during the evening, speakers had gone on endlessly about the healing hands of the organization. I thought there must be somebody to come forward to take care of the poor man, but for a while nobody did. The crowd did not seem terribly interested either, filing out to the valet parkers, paying no attention to the distressed chairman. Finally, several waiters lifted Fireman up and half carried him to an ambulance, which took him to Good Samaritan Hospital, where he was treated for a nose broken in three places.

For Shannon [Shannon Donnelly - the influential society editor of the Palm Beach Daily News], it was a wondrous opportunity to ridicule Fireman. "There's a lesson in timing here," the society editor wrote after describing the accident. "Had this been the Animal Rescue League Ball, those first responders might well have been two beagles and a golden retriever." Then she went on to pick apart the entire evening.

In 2007 a new chairman took over and Donnelly slyly noted Fireman's demise by writing that this year's ball marked a "return to dignity and elegance." As Leamer has noted elsewhere, in Palm Beach, social climbing is the only sport which if you get caught playing it you lose. A few nights ago Trump hosted the 52nd rendition of the event that's an opportunity for the attendees to celebrate "not so much the Red Cross but themselves." Here are some sights and sounds.