| Notes |
- THE PLAIN DEALER
January 16, 2000
By Evelyn Theiss; Plain Dealer Reporter
From her Bratenahl Place apartment with its view of brown-gray treetops and an even grayer Lake Erie, Louise "Ligi" Ireland recounts how, as a 19-year-old summering in the south of France, she had to fend off an amorous Harpo Marx.
"Someone introduced us and he was very nice and asked me to dinner," she said. "I thought we'd have a lovely talk about the movie world. But as soon as dinner was over, he pounced on me.
"I ran, but he ran after me - he gave me some exercise!"
She never did end up meeting his brothers.
Ireland, 94 - "I've never lied about my age, I'm proud of it" - has many such anecdotes about a life that took her from a childhood in Rome and Washington, D.C., to Paris and New York, where she crossed paths with some of the most prominentle of the century.
Her secretary, Suzanne Koporc, began hearing the lively tales in 1993 after she started working for the woman everyone calls "Ligi.” "We started writing them down," Koporc said. When Ireland's three children would come to visit from their of-state homes, Koporc would share the stories.
"So many times they'd say, 'I hadn't heard that!' she said. Soon, Koporc transferred Ireland's longhand notes to a computer.
Ireland and Koporc continued to work together and the result is a self-published book called "Ligi: A Life in the Twentieth Century.” It is available at Apple tree Books in Cleveland Heights for $28.
Names tell the story
"Ligi" is the acronym based nickname of Louise Ireland Grimes Ireland, who was born into the Ireland family in 1904 in Bar Harbor, Maine. Louise Ireland married Charles Grimes, a prominent lawyer who in the 1930s worked with special proser Thomas Dewey, the future Republican presidential nominee, to bust New York City's rackets. Ten years after Grimes' death in 1957, his widow renewed her acquaintance with her cousin R. Livingston "Liv" Ireland of Cleveland. The two enchanted each other and six months later, because Ohio did not allow marriages between first cousins, they married in Washington, D.C.
Liv died in 1981. By then, Ligi Ireland loved Cleveland and decided to stay.
That is a bare-bones synopsis of her life; her book fleshes out the details. Having outlived her peers, the polite yet earthy Ireland feels free to share her opinions about some of her famous acquaintances.
Such as Benjamin Spock, the famed baby doctor turned author and peace activist, whom Ireland met when he was a medical student in New York. Spock married Ireland's school chum, Jane Cheney.
"On Sundays, the medical students' only day off, he would invite us to his apartment and turn on the phonograph. He used to swing his partners around so fast we were practically thrown out the windows.” Ireland had an inkling that Spock wouecome an acclaimed physician. "He extended his studies more than other medical students," she said. "He was very interested in psychology, in what happened to the emotions, as well as in medicine."
Ireland's children were two of Spock's first pediatric patients.
Later, Ireland recalled, "He got famous and divorced his wife and married a woman half his age.” Spock, who in the 1960s taught at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, crossed paths with Ireland once in Cleveland. "By then hd become very stuck up," Ireland said.
Louise Ireland's childhood was unconventional, considering the privileged family into which she was born. Her ancestors include William Floyd, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and James Duane, New York City's first mayor.
Louise's mother, Arline, divorced her husband, Jack Ireland, while she was pregnant. Since divorce was considered shameful in New York's Victorian society, Arline took her infant daughter to Italy, where they lived in Rome. They spent sus in Maine.
They also traveled Europe. When Louise was about 10, Arline introduced her daughter to Paris fashion. "I remember the fashion showings in the salons of the famous couturiers - Channel, Worth and Lanvin. I'd sit with the other ladies andh the parade of beautiful clothes," Ireland said.
Arline bought outfits for herself and her daughter. "Then I'd wear three or four dresses on top of each other when we went through U.S. customs," Ireland said.
Returning to America
When World War I erupted, Arline sold her villa to Guglielmo Macroni, inventor of the wireless. Some of the fine Italian antiques she took with her are in Ireland's Bratenahl apartment today - gilt-edged mirrors, an ornately carved sideb. A life-size portrait of Arline and her sister Jessica, painted by a Florentine master in their villa's music room, hangs in the entry.
Mother and daughter moved to Washington, D.C., where one of Ireland's good friends was Felicia Patterson Gizycka, daughter of newspaper publisher Cissy Patterson and later, the wife of Washington columnist Drew Pearson.
Another good friend was Rosamond Pinchot, a "great beauty" who became a Hollywood actress.
Then there was the train ride from Paris to Nice that Ireland, then in her 20s, shared with companions Tallulah Bankhead - "a very naughty woman" - and three of her girlfriends. Ireland writes that she cut the trip short after another frienld her, "Wake up! You are staying with the most notorious group of lesbians in this part of the world."
Her life was not all parties and travel. While in her 20s, Ireland worked as a volunteer for birth control advocate Margaret Sanger. "I was very impressed with her, both as a person and as a pioneer for birth control and women's rights - cs I came to believe in and have supported all of my life," Ireland said.
In her 40s, Ireland - who had studied at the Sorbonne and at Barnard College and developed a keen interest in early childhood education - co-authored two books on child psychology and parenting. "Before Dr. Spock wrote his book," she notesh a smile.
If there was a common theme in Ligi Ireland's life, it was her taste for travel and adventure. "You were in your 60s when you learned to scuba dive," Koori reminds her.
Today, Ireland confines her travels to visits with her children; she stays current on world events, though, and tracks them at a map table in her living room.
Wearing a sea-blue sweater with red and yellow fish embroidered on it, Ireland reminisces about how she loved the sea, and sailing Liv's boat the "Pandora IV" down to the Bahamas.
Mention of the Bahamas triggers her memory of performing what she calls one of her "parlor tricks" - standing on her head, no matter the setting. "I remember I did that on a dock there," she said, after Liv dared her to show up a brawny sr who was flexing his muscles.
"Not very refined, I know, but I never thought about what other people would think," Ireland said. "My whole life, I just always wanted to have fun."
|
1905 - 2001 (95 years)
[2] 