Юрист и филантроп Стэнли Коэн, собиравший вокруг себя писателей и художников, скончался в возрасте 92 лет

My wife and I were having dinner at Stanley Cohen and Carrie Chen’s home in Copake, N.Y., a few months ago when Stanley, an international lawyer and philanthropist, announced that he’d rented a house in Palm Beach for next winter. Besides feeling gratitude that he’d included us on the guest list, I wondered whether our host would live long enough to enjoy the Florida sun. Stanley had been in fragile health since a bout with COVID a couple of summers ago. Indeed, my concerns were justified. Stanley, 92, passed away peacefully at his art-filled home on July 27. But it came as no surprise that our friend had booked the place. Stanley had a passion for living and a gift for friendship. That, as much as anything, sustained him. As you get older, making new friends seems to get harder, not easier. Some of it is probably circumstantial. The places where you once effortlessly forged new friendships — such as school — are no longer available. The couple were among our newer friends. We met about a decade ago. But Stanley seemed to have no problem forming new relationships. After his funeral service at Cedar Park Cemetery in Hudson, we returned to his art-filled home where, in conversation, one of the guests observed that Stanley collected people. His dinners were often populated with writers, artists and musicians. I took gentle offense at that characterization. Collecting people smacks of calculation, of curation. What made Stanley extraordinary — as his provocatively titled memoir “I Never Made Love With James Baldwin” (Seagull Books), published days after his death, attests — is that his life, filled with celebrated friends and a few cads seemed to unroll almost at random. He grew up poor in the Bronx, gained a scholarship to Cornell and graduated from Harvard Law School. But a servant ultimately to his curiosity and intellect, he worked as a merchant seaman during college summers and took a sabbatical from Harvard to run a seaman’s club in Yokohama. “Do I now regret, in retrospect,” he asks in his memoir, “Harvard’s full scholarship that enticed me into a career that did not fit my mind?” He never seems to answer the question to his own satisfaction, perhaps because his work, however reluctantly embraced, afforded him such a rich life. At some point in his memoir, even he embraced the description of himself as a “Zelig,” character out of a movie or novel. I used to enjoy throwing out famous names — like tossing chum into shark-infested waters — to see whether Stanley bit and revealed whether his remarkable life had intersected with theirs. Often it had. That reference to James Baldwin in the memoir’s title referred to the time that “Jimmy” invited Stanley to his home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence on the French Riviera. The lawyer had given the expatriate writer free advice on American taxes and other professional matters. According to Stanley’s memoir, his host crawled into bed with him one evening to consummate their friendship. Stanley politely explained that his interest didn’t lean in that direction. The attorney moved to Paris in the late 1950s and opened a branch of the New York law firm Weil, Gotshal even though he had no clients. It was Stanley’s way of addressing his hesitancy about the legal profession without abandoning it completely. He got the job when he ran into future Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her husband Martin Ginsburg, a well-known tax attorney — both of whom he knew from Cornell — on the street in Manhattan and “Marty” recommended him to his firm. Until his business slowly evolved, Stanley happily spent his days hanging out at sidewalk cafes, wandering the Luxembourg Gardens, and befriending and becoming an adviser to artists such as Paul Strand, Helmut Newton and Alexander Calder. After Calder’s death in 1976, Stanley helped organize the artist’s estate; he was instrumental in founding the Atelier Calder, France’s first artist residency program located at Calder’s home and studio in Sache, where Stanley also owned a home, and served as an adviser to the Calder Foundation. His Scone Foundation, supporting achievement in the arts and sciences, awards an Archivist of the Year prize to a recipient whose work has contributed to the preservation of important historical events. Stanley’s life crossed paths with Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect, after Stanley bought the film rights to his 1969 bestseller “Inside the Third Reich”; various Rothchilds; and socialist political activist Michael Harrington. He also developed close friendships with “Catch 22” author Joseph Heller, feminist writer Betty Friedan, Lyndon Johnson biographer Robert Caro and Simon Winchester. Stanley moved to upstate New York in 2014 after he met Carrie at their children’s boarding school orientation. He was 80. She was 44. They married in 2019 — after RBG took Carrie aside and vouched for Stanley — and became active in local organizations such as the Mahawie Theater and Close Encounters with Music. Carrie, an entrepreneur and designer, also owned the boutique Barrington Hotel and the Carrie Chen gallery. In addition to his wife, Stanley is survived by his daughter Laura, son Paul and two grandchildren. If not a collector of people, I’ve tried to come up with a more apt description. Stanley was a great appreciator. I can understand why he was popular with artists and writers. He wasn’t without ego, but he was happy to let others shine. It’s possible he felt that, for all his brilliance, he never alighted on one talent and was attracted to those who lived their lives with single-minded purpose. But his greatest skill, as his memoir attests, was for living. In the end, that’s the most important gift of all.