Returning to the East Coast and moving to Connecticut

Our relatives (my Grandma Blanche Gramatky, Aunt Mimi Ott Gunner, and my maternal grandparents, Charles Prentice Cooke and Gertrude Edgerly Cooke) had a wonderful time with their "East Coast family" close by, but in May, 1945, we drove back to New York City and the apartment at 188 East End Avenue (just opposite the mayor's home) that had been sublet during the war. My father regretted one "missed opportunity" when General Dwight David Eisenhower returned from the war and came to meet with Mayor LaGuardia at Gracie Mansion. As "Ike" stood on the sidewalk in front of our brownstone, Hardie took his photograph. My father told me later that Ike had smiled his famous grin and waved right up at me, sitting on the windowsill. Imagine Dad’s dismay when the photo shop told him that that roll of slides had been lost!

In 1946, my parents bought a house in Westport, Connecticut, from the estate of Joe Chapin, known as the “dean of American art directors” who had worked at Scribner's. We arrived in a huge snowstorm on the day after Christmas after a four-hour delay driving out from New York City. The movers had already left, after depositing my father's supplies in my tiny bedroom and my bed in his large studio. Those arrangements were changed by the next day.