CASEY, A WOMAN OF SECRETS

Sometimes, a blank piece of paper is the only way to begin, as it is today. I look out the window at blooming trees and a cupful of flowers rising from the ground. The sky is pale grey, and it is just fifty degrees.  May, my birthday month, reminds me of Casey, who threw the dice all her life. She gambled on her dreams.

Casey never told me much about herself.  She lived in the present moment and considered her past a private matter.  Once I learned of her struggles as a young woman and her chosen life, she became more real than when I’d known her.  During the years we were friends, she handed out selected stories, abruptly, with final endings. Being the inquisitive character, the shallowness of her stories bated me.  I had to pry the truth out from other people who had known her, and from government documents.

Casey’s first gamble was at sixteen years old. She sent in a photograph of herself for the Redbook Magazine modeling contest. If she’d won, the Powers Modeling Agency in New York City would grant her an audition as a model.  Casey lived with her mother and sister in East Orange, New Jersey. Her father had died suddenly, leaving the family without a financier.  Her mother was lost without her husband and unsuited to join the workplace.  Casey didn’t tell her mother about the contest until she received the letter of congratulations.

John Robert Powers met Casey in his office on East 56^th Street and signed her as a Powers Girl. She was stunning to look at, she was photographed like a movie star, and she was modest.  John Powers did not look for aggressive, pouty-lipped fearlessness.    The Powers Girls were captioned Long Stemmed American Beauties because they were wholesome, beautiful, tasteful, courteous, and virtuous. They were so far from today’s runway models that it is almost a reversal of style.  The models of the thirties were ordained to set the highest example of classic good breeding and education. John not only schooled them in fashion, and individual taste, he instructed them in moral integrity, independence, and patriotism for their country.  So Casey went to school at John Robert Powers and became one of the top ten models in the country.

She was a blue-black-haired Irish beauty with emerald green eyes and perfect teeth. She stood only 5’ 7”, but that was fairly standard in those days. When I knew her, she was still thin and beautiful, but she did not fuss about herself or spend much time at her vanity.  As a Powers model, Casey had a long line of gentlemen callers. Powers Girls were invited to all the nightclub and dinner show openings, sporting events, community galas, and fund-raisers.  Social engagements were part of her job. Casey was not a woman of idle chat, in fact a lot of people thought of her as restrained and unfriendly, maybe even snobbish. I think it was more secrecy.  People were always prying into her life because it looked glamorous.  But there was another side to that glamour she didn’t want to put a mirror to.

One evening, Casey had a dancing engagement at the Copacabana nightclub in New York City. She was on stage with other dancers when a gentleman noticed her.  The next chapter of Casey’s life began that night.  At twenty-two years old, she fell in love with a man thirteen years older, of the Jewish faith, and who lived in Hollywood.   Casey never told me that she fell in love with a gangster.    I do know once she felt love for this man, it could not be reversed. The consequences of her love forced her to change and adapt to a new kind of life and different people.

She did not bury or give back her love after she learned what he did for a living.  She asked him to reform his criminal activities, and he agreed if only she would marry him.  We all know at twenty-two, a woman believes she can change a man, and a man lets her think she can.  Without that dream, many lovers would not have found their mates.

Casey married her love and spent her life trying to keep her husband on track with honesty.  I met her husband just after he tried to reform and was beaten down by his past mistakes.   I called him Daddy.