The Devil Certainly is in the Details : Boston November 2006

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If there’s one lesson I’ve learned from managing The AIF events, it’s that the devil is certainly in the details. The first year I was asked by Olive, the secretary to Sir Anthony O’Reilly, my boss and chairman of The Ireland Funds to “please rent a tux for Mr. O’Reilly and to leave it in a closet at the Ritz.” Around 7 p.m. he appeared at the event in a very nice blue blazer and grey slacks and came over to me and asked, “Where’s my tux?” I had to say, “It’s in the closet.” He said that it was not. I sent over an assistant and lo’ and behold, the tux was in the closet, but it was the second closet in his suite, not the first. My assistant brought it over to the party and Mr. O’Reilly said, “Well, I guess I’ll go change in the loo.” And that was just the first year!

At one of the early dinners, four men were invited to the dinner by their boss. When they got there, they saw Ira Stephanian, Chad Gifford, Bob Kraft, Judge David Nelson, and Avram Goldberg. They walked out, went down to the lobby asked the concierge, “Where’s the Irish Dinner?” The concierge said, “Yes, that’s it; it’s upstairs.” So back up they went, still shocked to find that the Irish Dinner wasn’t just for the Irish!

Next was the year Jack Connors was the Chair. He wanted the program to be “in the round” with cordless mikes and no podium. I checked with Olive, Tony’s longtime assistant several times (given my last adventure with him and the “tuxedo,” I did not want to screw up again) to let Mr. O’Reilly know and she said, “No problem.” Five minutes before it was time to go on, Mr. O’Reilly asks, “Where’s my podium? I can’t speak without a podium.” The miracle workers at the Marriott got a podium, set it up in five minutes flat and no one in the audience even knew there was a problem.

Another year Peter Duchin had to hold me back from hitting the fire marshal! We had a Phantom of the Opera theme and had candles in candelabra on every table. The staff had lit all the candles and just as we were opening the doors to let people in, the fire marshal started going around blowing them all out. I wanted to strangle him and almost did. A year later at another event in the hotel, the same fire marshal asked the hotel staff if “The lady in the red dress” would be there… it appears he had remebered me and was not looking forward to seeing me again!

Govenor Michael Dukakis attended several years. But there is one year I will always remember. I went to escort him in and found a man curled up in the doorway with a paper bag next to him; he was sound asleep. I woke him up, but he just didn’t want to move. Finally, I picked up the paper bag which had an empty bottle in it and said “If you follow me I will fill this up for you.” That worked! Several years ago we ordered these magnificant taffeta chair covers to match the tables covers. The boxes arrived on the day of the dinner and when we opened them we discovered they had instead sent us mylar ones that looked like deflated balloons! So that year our theme became “mylar.”

The day after one very large dinner, 1200 people or so, I was sitting in my office, feet on the desk, congratulating myself on the fact that the dinner had gone off without one glitch or mini disaster. The phone rang and a woman on the line was calling me to complain about last night’s dinner (so much for self congratulation.) Her complaint was that she thought her food was too “hot.” I learned then that there was no such thing as a perfectly run event…