My parents initially subscribed because my mother, Mary, was from New York City. She was familiar with the magazine. But that's not why my parents maintained a subscription.
Within the pages of The New Yorker, Fabian and Mary found intellectual refreshment and renewal, perhaps also satisfaction of some fantasies. New Yorker advertising emphasized luxury. A weary trapper or his wife might enjoy reading about room service at the St. Regis.
I still have copies of The New Yorker that were in our cabin. As I paged through one recently, I noticed the name of someone I met as a boy, the mystery writer Lawrence Treat. One of his books had been reviewed.
My mother was a friend of Larry's wife, Rose. They were in nursing before World War II. My mother, sister and I visited Rose and Larry near New York City in the Fifties.
Everybody is on the Web today, including the dead, and it was easy to find references to Larry, who died in 1998 at age 95. Rose was harder and I assumed she would be dead too. Not so. She is 102 years old and lives on Martha's Vineyard, where she and Larry settled after leaving New York.
Rose became an accomplished artist. Her medium was seaweed -- manipulating strands and clumps into compelling shapes and forms. Her work has appeared in galleries.
I was stunned to discover someone alive who could remember my mother before she came to Alaska in 1940.
I thought about contacting Rose but wondered if by 102 you want to be left alone. My sister encouraged me to write and I did -- re-introducing myself as Mary's son and sending a copy of an engaging four-page letter Rose sent my mother and my mother saved. The young woman who took up her pen in 1943 was educated, articulate and blissfully happy. On the personalized stationery of Mrs. Lawrence Treat, she told Mary she had just married the most wonderful man in the world.
-- Michael Carey
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