Introduction
The Kirby-Jones Events Center was packed with a predominance of over-weight and under-exercised citizens eating and drinking excessively. There were exceptions of course - those skinny, thin-lipped people drinking mineral water whose smiles seemed not quite fulsome.
Clearly this was a gathering of fat cats, a cynic would say, glancing at the quality of personal presentation - the neck jewelry and spectacles frames and perhaps in almost contradiction noting an absence of spectacles among the 35-plus indicating contact lenses or corrective laser-vision surgery. Many females wore diamond-headed buttons on layered shirt fronts or in animated conversation waggled ear-rings costing more than what some poor families would list as their total assets.
The underweight principal guest, resplendently in ice blue to match personality, was herself an amazing contradiction for someone of largess of celebrity status. It would amaze guests to suspect bottom-enders of this world could ever attend such an illustrious event as this - and yet the very person being honored here tonight, publisher Lucille Lightfoot, came close five decades ago to being trapped in a lifetime of misery.
The thought of cold-hearted super rich Lucille Lightfoot almost slipping through the cracks of society would be dismissed with a chuckle as 'unbelievable' even by some associates close to her or influenced by her illustrious shadow. Success has a habit of dimming one's past.
Tonight Lucille was being acknowledged as 'Australian Publisher of the Decade' at the annual magazine awards. Some awards often raised eyebrows or are disputed in hot whispers, but not this one. At the age of 60, Lillian Grace Lightfoot reigned as the undisputed queen of women's media in her adopted country.
Surrounded by well-wishers who included a few long-time companions - the word 'friends' would be largely a misnomer - Lucille was dressed in glittering silver mesh overlaying a plain blue cotton dress that looked like an unadorned old-fashion slip. Which is was. That garment so typified her under-stated elegance - the matching ice blue elegant shoes and handbag of the same over-mesh glitter, a simple band of pearls and matching earrings and a black comb in the black of her natural pepper hair.
That comb was given to her almost forty years ago as a parting gift by Maria in New York. Maria, then a young woman had worn it in her hair on special occasions since girlhood. Tonight the aged Maria and husband Enzio were seated at Lucille's table; this was her way of saying thank you by giving them their journey of a lifetime.
The even more deserving person - Mrs Graham - unfortunately was deceased.
The room hushed as the presentation of media awards commenced to periodically erupt into applause and well-chosen words of acknowledgement flowed within groups.
The presentation ceremony allowed Lucille to muse on her past and a few brief revelations would come during her acceptance speech. There was much to think about but such thoughts traversed the brain with lightning speed. They came chronologically, Lucille being an orderly quite unemotional thinker. First came what she'd been told about her paternal grandparents and a mix of disclosure and shadowy memories of her parents.
Lucille's Journey from Despair
Aged great-aunt Zina related a death scene to young Lucille.
Aunt Zina described how the cancer-gripped body of Kismet, widow of posthumously decorated World War One hero John J. Lightfoot, lay in final rest as the lips of her seven-year-old son Talbot caressed her cold face.
Pastor Vickers, his white beard stained by tobacco, said to Talbot (who would become Lucille's father), "I'm sorry son, she's gone."
Lucille, then aged seven and listening to this part of family history, remembered Great-Aunt Zina scolding her, telling her not to cry or else she would stop describing to the young orphan about her family.
Talbot Weir was his mid-teens in an orphanage when, according to Zina, he swore he'd marry and have at least one child who would grow to know and respect his or her parents.
By God, Talbot told Zina - his father's sister who was crippled and could not care for him as she was alone and near destitute - he'd make that happen. No child deserved to be a misfit like he was and every child deserved to know his or her mother into maturity.
And so that promise began to take shape but was cruelly curtailed.
Truck driver Talbot Lightfoot married Lucille Tucker of no fixed abode and she had no family that she knew of. Both were thirty and they had a daughter they later called Tomboy.
Her real name was Lucille Lightfoot.
"You were such a dear child," Zina said. "Talbot waited to tell you of the pledge he'd made in the orphanage but he waited too long. He was killed on a county highway when you were five.
"His rig was inching across a bridge spanning a flooded river when the bridge collapsed. Your father was drowned as was your mother sitting beside him. It had been only a short journey to deliver bales of cotton locally and she'd insisted on riding with Talbot, not having seen her husband for ten days."
Aunt Zina died a pauper's death less than a year after telling Lucille the child's very brief family history.
Lucille could dimly remember the very old Pastor Vickers, his beard untidy and stained, coming to the tiny apartment where the family lived and telling her something like "I'm sorry, both of your parents have gone. Please don't cry Lucille as it won't do you any good."
Lucille's temporary fulltime babysitter fled screaming, never to return as after the funeral and being paid the money she was owed. But there was no money to pay her for caring for Lucille from that day.
Pastor Vickers had Lucille admitted to an orphanage. There she was bullied, screamed at by staff and had to learn to look after herself by fighting boys as well as girls.
She learned not to cry and discovered the real meaning of the word she'd later come to know as fortitude. They were grim days left in the past but stored in deep memory.
When turning fifteen, Lucille was hired as a maid by a couple with eight children living in a double apartment (two small apartments made into one) in Upper West Side.
The orphanage administrators gave Lucille a cardboard box containing two changes of clothes and $20, plus $100 added by Pastor Vickers now bed-ridden in a home for the aged and infirm.
Six months later Pastor Vickers died, leaving Lucille alone in the world and unhappy.
Working like a slave and saddened by the death of Pastor Vickers - she was denied time off to attend his funeral - she ran away that same night. She thought that was the best thing to do as she desperately wished to find happiness.
Only Lucille knew how she felt because it was easy - she felt nothing beyond despair. There she was a second generation orphan, nothing linking her to the past, no apparent future. Bleakness in her life seemed assured.
She remembered being a skinny kid with straggly black hair, a pinched face, deep-set eyes with probably hardness in them beyond her years - a kid that no-none kissed or cuddled or even had a kind word for.
Her isolation established a definition for the loneliness of a young teenager: she was 'adrift' in urban New York with her memories of an early life with her now dead parents and the loveless former life in an orphanage casting her existence as grey as a tombstone.
And this for a waif who'd only recently turned fifteen.
The runaway Lucille with $110 in her pocket walked for ten blocks before stopping, not knowing what to do next. She stood in the doorway of a boarded up building, due for demolition as we much of the homes on that street, rain falling and glistening on the wet pavement.
Alone and with her career choice in her hands Lucille faced a decision.
Should she try for a high life or remain gripped within low life?
She adopted the high life ladder, having no idea how she would attain it. She tramped about aimlessly hoping to find low-cost accommodation that was likely to come with fleas, cockroaches and rodents.
Just before 8 o'clock, unable to find anyone willing to give her advice other than saying something like 'Run-alone you little wretch' or 'If you have money where did you steal that money from?'
Lucille was in locked in a deep hole.
Then a woman wearing long skirts and a black shawl introduced herself as Maria; she asked the young disheveled teenager why she was walking the streets after dark. In her innocence Lucille explained why.
