This New York Times Magazine cover story from 1989 marked what the author, David Margolick, now calls the "last hurrah" of Barbara Piasecka Johnson, a Polish-born immigrant who married into the Johnson & Johnson fortune. Margolick, a former New York Times reporter, wrote about Johnson's attempt to "become a heroine" in her native country by donating as much as $100 million to rescue the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, an effort coordinated by the labor activist Lech Walesa. After what Margolick calls her "marvelous P.R. stunt" failed, and sometime after his article was published, he told me, Johnson "fell off the face of the earth." She died on Monday.
Here's how Margolick described Johnson in his article:
The very notion of an American woman, with little experience in boats aside from her late husband's pleasure crafts, going behind the Iron Curtain to become a shipbuilding magnate reveals much of what Barbara Piasecka Johnson, who is called Basia, is: impulsive, emotional, dramatic, patriotic, restless, romantic, even messianic.
It's a characterization that probably would have been endorsed by J. Seward Johnson Sr.'s six children: his will excluded all but one of them and left nearly all his holdings to Basia instead. The acrimonious legal battle over the inheritance lasted for three years after Johnson's death.
Margolick, whose book "Undue Influence" is about the fight for the Johnson & Johnson fortune, told me that Basia Johnson — who came to the United States with very little — felt that "America had treated her badly." In her mind, he said, Americans were "cretins" and "uncultured," and "she wanted to go back to Europe where people like her were more appreciated."
Essentially there are two halves to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, according to Margolick. One is behind the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which finances programs to improve healthcare in the United States. The other half, Margolick said, "is off in Poland somewhere."
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
The 6th Floor Blog: End of the Adventure for an Enigmatic Heiress
Dengan url
http://koraninternetonline.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-6th-floor-blog-end-of-adventure-for.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
The 6th Floor Blog: End of the Adventure for an Enigmatic Heiress
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
The 6th Floor Blog: End of the Adventure for an Enigmatic Heiress
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar