In her sparkling double height penthouse, surrounded by a Manhattan waterfront skyline and modern art, Andy Stark welcomed her group to a High Tea to benefit the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation Collaborating for a Cure. She did it partly for girlfriend Pamela Morgan, the Food and Lifestyle expert whose Flirting with Flavors flair fueled the affair, and partly for the ailing friend in many of the ladies’ prayers.
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Sharon Bush and Joan Jedell. (Photo: Rob Rich/SocietyAllure.com) |
From the St John’s resort wear fashion show to the Morgan Library and Museum Catering X Restaurant Associates exquisite bites, Fruit Fruzen Ice and Edible Encores, Pamela set a new standard for entertaining. Miriam Novalle showcased her T Salon teas, telling us her pop-up store in Sag Harbor will return this year. Also contributing, Bella Beauty co-founder Amy D’Agostino, Bosne Associates, LLC, with their healthy chocolate truffles, cookies and protein bars, Chic to Chic, Palm Bay, Chris Arlotta, Maria Elena English-Christiansen, Maribel Lieberman’s of MarieBelle NY Chocolates, and Tadashi Shoji.
Designers Sarah Pope Littlejohn and Lauren Phelps, who lost a mother and sister to brain cancer, spoke about their September fundraiser for Waxman’s brain cancer research team. Board Members Nicole Dicocco, Jane Pontarelli, Sharon Bush and Lauren Lawrence were on hand.
Waxman’s foundation began early in his career thanks to a grateful father. Today, it funds and oversees research in 50 centers throughout the United States, China, Israel and Canada. Its mission, Waxman told Hamptons.com, “is to identify abnormal gene function that is causative of cancer, understand what it does to make the cell cancerous and correct that.”
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Nicole DiCocco, Lucia Hwong Gordon, Missy Lubliner, and Jane Pontarelli. (Photo: Rob Rich/SocietyAllure.com) |
He’s “crazy passionate” about the research he is doing now on breast cancer. “If all goes well, we’ll be able to take one of the most difficult forms of breast cancer to cure, called the triple negative breast cancer, which happens in about 15 to 20% of women, and reverse the abnormal gene function that causes that, so that the cancer becomes responsive to treatments that they weren’t responsive to before.”
He said the Foundation recently completed a scientific review of the research they fund. “We made remarkable progress in identifying some new mutations that are important in causing leukemia.” He also cited “remarkable new work” in lung and pancreatic cancers.
Cancer increases as we get older, Waxman said. “At age 50 it starts to go up much more than any other disease. By the time age 75 comes along, it’s a higher mortality rate than heart disease and stroke.”
Almost ten years ago, Jean Shafiroff turned to Waxman, who cured her aging father with a moderate approach applicable to older patients. “My father literally would come into New York, go to Sam’s office for the chemo, come back to my apartment, stay with me for a few hours, go home to Long Island and take a 9 a.m. ballroom dance class the next morning.”
“Collaborating for a Cure High Tea” will be followed by the “Hamptons Happening” on Saturday, July 11th, on the grounds of the Bridgehampton home of Maria and Ken Fishel, and a “Golf Outing” on Thursday, July 16th at The Creek in Locust Valley.
For more information, visit www.waxmancancer.org.
