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© St. Petersburg Times, published October 5, 2001
It was five years ago on a ballooning holiday in Normandy that Robert Higdon, director of the Prince of Wales Foundation in Washington, met Jim and Suzanne MacDougald.
They became friends, and the MacDougalds, who live in St. Petersburg, later became patrons of the foundation.
To thank the patrons, for the past four years the prince has given parties in June during Royal Ascot week. The MacDougalds have attended all four years.
This year, it was a four-day weekend organized by Higdon, including a royal box at Ascot, dinner at Highgrove (the prince's country estate) and a polo match in which Prince Harry played on his father's team. And, of course, the Prince of Wales' formal dinner party, which was given at Buckingham Palace.
When the MacDougalds were given their seating assignments for the palace, Mrs. MacDougald learned that she would be sitting to Prince Charles' left. Lily Safra, widow of Edmond Safra, the billionaire international banker who died in a fire, was seated to the prince's right. When Mr. MacDougald arrived at his seat, he was opposite his wife and at Camilla Parker Bowles' right.
The couple found the prince and Parker Bowles "easy to talk to. . . . She loves to talk about your children; he's more interested in things like architecture," says Mr. MacDougald.
The festivities are featured in the October issue of Vanity Fair.
The foundation was originally called the Prince of Wales Foundation for Architecture, but five years ago its agenda was broadened to include education, health care, urban and rural renewal, community development, youth services and the environment.
It gives grants in the United States, Britain and other countries.
Among recent recipients in the United States are Phoenix House, the New York Academy of Art and the Harvard AIDS Institute.
Neiman Marcus' Christmas catalog is out, and the big ticket item for 2001 is the Limited Edition 430 Helicopter from Bell. The copter, which accommodates seven people, including two in the cockpit, has a 300-mile range before refueling. The price is a mere $6.7-million.
A little more within reach is the Silver Belle, Neiman Marcus' Limited Edition Lexus SC430. It is priced at $70,000.
For the kids, there is the opportunity for boys to play with the New York Knicks and for girls to dance with the Rockettes. Only eight of each experience will be sold.
New York's lavish Cartier jewelry store had planned a big reopening party for its newly refurbished building on Sept. 25. It was one of the many Manhattan galas that were canceled after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
The building has a Tampa Bay connection. Eighty-four years ago, it was the home of railroad heir Morton Plant and his wife, Maisie.
It seems Mrs. Plant persuaded her husband to trade their house to Pierre Cartier for $100 and a strand of perfectly matched, rare natural pearls.
A mansion for a long string of pearls seemed like a good deal. Besides, in those days the neighborhood on Fifth in the 50s was beginning to be too commercial for the upper crust. The Plants spent a lot of time in Clearwater, where they had a winter home.
Morton Plant was the son of Henry B. Plant, who brought the railroad to the west coast of Florida and was one of the area's biggest promoters and developers. While his dad built such lasting showplaces as the Tampa Bay Hotel, modeled after the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, Morton Plant was into more philanthropic gestures. Construction on Morton F. Plant Hospital was begun in 1914 after Plant offered to endow it with $100,000 if an additional $20,000 was raised by Clearwater residents. It was raised quickly, and the hospital was completed in 1915.
After Morton Plant died, his widow married Col. William Hayward, a World War I hero. After his death, she married again, this time to her butler, a Russian named Rovensky, with whom she shared a mansion in Newport, R.I. The estate was used in the MGM musical of Cole Porter's High Society. The next owners were Sunny and Claus von Bulow.
As for Mrs. Plant's pearls, the folks at Cartier have no idea what became of them. "We would certainly love to know, because they are such a large part of Cartier's history," says a spokesperson.