Brooklyn Today for Feb. 9
Good morning. Today is the 40th day of the year. On Jan. 9, 1914, Julius Chambers, in his “Walks and Talks” column in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, lamented what he felt was the passing of the idle rich, especially women.
“The ranks of the idle rich are thinning. When one finds an immensely wealthy woman like Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, formerly Gertrude Vanderbilt, modeling a statue like that memorializing the Titanic disaster — a work accepted over many competitors and accorded a place in Potomac Park at Washington — it is time to recognize the revolution in progress in New York society,” he wrote. “No longer will the merely rich girl of the future trifle away her precious time.”
Well-known people who were born today include country singer Travis Tritt, author Alice Walker (“The Color Purple”), actress Mia Farrow (“Peyton Place,” “Rosemary’s Baby”), Brooklyn-born singer-songwriter Carole King (“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” “I Feel The Earth Move”), and TV journalist Roger Mudd.