MEETING HELENE HANFF

Having written to Helene in November 1994 to tell her I was coming to New York, and asking if I could possibly meet her and ask her to sign my copies of her books, I was delighted when she invited me to meet her in the lobby of her apartment building at 305 East 72nd Street... (see Correspondence Page for details of this)

I arrived in New York on Sunday 13th November, and visited Helene's apartment building the following day. The building's doorman buzzed her apartment and she came down to the lobby, where we talked about my trip to New York from England for about 35 to 40 minutes, and Helene most graciously offered me a list of places off-the-beaten-track in New York that I might like to see... including the church-and-neighbouring mall housed at the foot of a skyscraper just off Lexington Avenue.

Whilst we were talking, I gave Helene some small presents that I'd brought with me from England - a copy of "Poets Corner - an Anthology" (a collection of works by the various writers commemorated in Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey), a small book about the history of Exeter (my home town), and some photos which I'd taken that summer in and around Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral - including pictures of some of the plaques in Poets Corner, and one of John Donne's shroud. Helene seemed very pleased to be given these - and later referred to the Anthology in a postcard to me (see my Personal Correspondence page!)

During our brief meeting, two of Helene's neighbours walked past - and Helene introduced me them - both feature in her book 'Letter from New York' - Nina (who used to own Duke, the German Shepherd - Helene's "true love" as she called him in one of her books) and Richard (who owned Chester the Sheepdog, and later Bentley, another sheepdog). It was wonderful to meet these two people, who up until that point had been characters in a book, and were now suddenly (to me) real-life people!!!

Nina took this photo of Helene and I...

After she had taken the photo, she stayed to chat for a couple of minutes - and posed for a photo herself:

During my chat with Nina, about her German Shepherd, Duke, Helene dashed upstairs in the elevator to bring down a treasured photo of him... which I'm holding in this next picture (with Nina going to the elevator in the background).

Finally, on saying a heartfelt "goodbye and thank you" to Helene, I left the apartment building - posing for one more photo by its entrance, proudly holding up one of my signed books (Letter From New York) - and not realising that Nina and Richard were just in view in the background!

Ken Anderson in another HH fan who was fortunate enough to meet Helene -and he emailed me the following:

"Scanned some pictures of me and Helene in her apt. building. These pictures were taken in November of 1995. I just saw them for the first time today!!!! A friend took these pictures, and never had that roll of film developed. Tomorrow (Thursday, April 23) is my birthday, and he met me for lunch today and gave them to me as a gift. (HE BETTER!!!!!!! I have bugged him to death, especially since I found out that Helene had passed away)." In a second email, Ken said "unfortunately those are the only pictures i have with HH. We were having a ball. She was a delightful person, always witty and very funny. Angela can vouch for that" - and, YES, I can!! :-)

Thanks, Ken!