Travel Blog

Sam Graff was the husband of my first editor, Sally Lane, back in 1977 at the Trenton Times. Sam had worked at the paper before moving on to the Daily News in New York, commuting every day by train in suit and tie. In summer, he sometimes wore a white suit that went well with his thick mustache. He looked very good in hats.

To me, Sam was the ideal of the big city newspaper editor. He loved opera, spoke German, and was armed with a formidable store of knowledge on a vast array of subjects, which he would never flaunt, but reveal quietly when the occasion demanded it. He was worldly and yet a proud Trentonian, sophisticated and at the same time possessing a remarkable kindness and warmth. And he was very funny, able to see the humor in life, the countless absurdities of the modern world, and comment on them with wit.

When my first book, Unquiet Days, came out, Sam and Sally came to New York to hear me talk about it at the Kosciuszko Foundation. After the talk, we met with some other friends, one of whom asked me if I was working on a second book. Sam answered before I could: “Unquiet Nights.”

In her book Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, Jan Morris writes of a group of people who “form a Fourth World, or a diaspora of their own. They are the lordly ones! … They share with each other, across all the nations, common values of humour and understanding. When you are among them you know you will not be mocked or resented, because they will not care about your race, your faith, your sex or your nationality, and they suffer fools if not gladly, at least sympathetically. They laugh easily. They are easily grateful. They are never mean. They are not inhibited by fashion, public opinion or political correctness. They are exiles in their own communities, because they are always in a minority, but they form a mighty nation, if they only knew it.”

Farewell to one of the lordly ones.