Empty Mansions

staff that she
loved
Wanda, a word she didn’t use with many people.
    Chris Sattler suggested that Huguette invite Wanda to the hospital, but she said she didn’t want Wanda to see her that way or that she couldn’t entertain properly there.
    In fact, though they talked often on the phone, Wanda said she never knew Huguette was in a hospital. She had figured out, however, that Huguette was no longer at 907 Fifth Avenue. After her mother died in September 2003,Wanda tried to call Huguette at the BUtterfield 8 numbers at the apartments. When she didn’t get an answer, she called Madame Pierre, asking her to tell Huguette of her mother’s death. Huguette returned the call to offer her condolences.
    Then Huguette called again, with urgent advice for Wanda. Huguette insisted that Wanda not live alone. With her mother gone, Huguette told Wanda that she wasn’t safe by herself in her retreat in the woods. She insisted that Wanda send her a map of the property showing the proximity of neighbors.
    Wanda never found out where Huguette was living. Madame Pierre told Wanda that she could reveal Huguette’s location, but at the same time she said she was afraid to tell, because Huguette might not like it. Wanda later said that she had replied, “Well, then don’t.” She said she didn’t need to know. “My godmother was very private, and I always respected that.”
    Wanda traveled to Manhattan from time to time and would tell Huguette all about her trips, but she didn’t press for an invitation to visit. She said she just didn’t want to impose on Huguette.
    Wanda said she must have seen Huguette for the last time at her father’s studio just after he died in 1954. Huguette was forty-eight, and Wanda was eleven. Wanda still kept in touch with her godmother for more than half a century. “If there ever was anybody in the world who ever loved Mrs. Clark just for her love,” Chris Sattler said, “it was that lady.”
IT JUST SNOWBALLED

 
    H UGUETTE ’ S GIFTS to her nurse Hadassah began almost immediately after she moved into Doctors Hospital.
    The first large one came in September 1993, after there was a flood in the basement of the Peris’ building. Hadassah mentioned to Huguette that all three of her children had asthma. The next day, Hadassah recalled, Huguette suggested they move. The Peris found a house nearby, on Shore Boulevard, and bought it, with Huguette giving Hadassah $450,000. They kept the previous apartment, too.
    That year, her accountant, Irving Kamsler, expressed concern to her attorney Don Wallace that Huguette was “vulnerable to the influence of people around her evidenced by herextraordinary gifts to her nurses and their families.” Any sob story would have her reaching for her checkbook.
    Huguette started giving the Peris gifts at Christmas, $40,000 for Hadassah and $40,000 for her husband. Hadassah said she would say, “Madame, you have given us so much.” Huguette was generous to other employees as well, but the gifts to Hadassah accelerated. She paid for twenty years of schooling for the three Peri children, from preschool through high school at the Yeshivah of Flatbush, then through college and graduate school. She paid for their medical bills, piano lessons, violin lessons, and Hebrew lessons, their basketball and summer camps in upstate New York. When the Peris had some trouble with back taxes, she paid for that.
    Huguette wrote more than three hundred checks to Hadassah over the twenty years she was in the hospital. Some of these checks, Hadassah said, were not for her but for other staff members. Huguette would make the gifts through Hadassah to protect her privacy. For instance, Huguette gave $25,000 to Ruth Gray, the hospital kitchen worker who brought her meals. Sometimes she’d give Hadassah two checks a day—$45,000 in the morning, $10,000 in the afternoon.
    “Sometimes I would say, you gave me a check already today. Shewould say, ‘You have a lot of expense, you can use it.’ I accepted the check because we have a lot of bills. Madame is very generous, and we don’t force her to give us—we don’t ask for it. That’s how she is, very generous, not only me, thousands of people, a lot of people.”
    HUGUETTE’S CHARITY

 
    Following areHuguette’s gifts for the year 1991, as listed on her federal gift tax return.
EXPENSE
TOTAL
Ninta Sandré, nursing home care
$223,510
Dr. Jules Pierre and Madame Suzanne Pierre
$114,000
Mr. and Mrs. Sautereau (friends in