D AV I D PAT R I C K C O L U M B I A A H O L I D AY PA R T Y AT T H E M U S E U M O F T H E C I T Y O F N E W YO R K
Juliet Arrieta with Isabelle and Tristan
Friday, December 28, 2012. A week before—10 years ago—Johnny Galliher died “peacefully in his sleep” in New York, according to his death notice in the New York Times. He was 88. On the afternoon before Christmas Eve, I ran into a mutual friend of John’s and mine, Billy Norwich, who told me that he’d just reread the “In Memoriam” that I wrote about John a few days after he died. I’d forgotten about the piece and so I went back to look to see what I had written (and how it had held up). He was a most unusual person, the likes of whom I’d never met before. Although no stranger to the world known as 34 QUEST
Courtney Kuriger and Tate Hardy with Paige and Ivy
Courtney Belhumeur with Christian
The Comfort children, Margaux, John-Jay, and Stuyvesant
“society” in the 20th century, he was the kind of character you’d read about in a novel but never the type you’d ever hope to meet. Here is the piece: January 7, 2003—John Galliher died in his sleep on the Saturday before Christmas at his apartment on East 63rd Street here in New York. He was 88 and had been ailing with pancreatic cancer, a condition he learned about a little less than five months before. He told very few about his condition. He accepted it, put his house in order, even to the point of writing his death notice which appeared a few days later in the New York Times stating that he had
Shirin Christoffersen with Claudia
The Jacob children, Cecilia, Sharon, and Georgia, with Ameilia Montgomery
“died peacefully.” He was known to his multitude of friends down through the decades, as Johnny, Johnny Galliher (pronounced Gal-yer), or occasionally Johnny G. He was a unique combination of characteristics and qualities—easily said but rarely so in life—difficult to define. His old friend of more than 50 years, Tony Hail, the San Francisco interior designer, had put it most succinctly for the many friends who survived him. “He was fun to know.” He was the kind of man who, if he didn’t have something nice to say—or amusing, which might be more like it with him—he said nothing. Ever. Yet he navigated skillfully,
and with pleasure, for more than 60 years, through a world where bitchery and malice can be commonplace and lethal. Instead, for him there was often a smile on his face, or if not, then the obvious promise of one. He was born in Washington, D.C., on May 24, 1914, the second son of five children. He was handsome, from childhood to manhood. Not tall—about 5’9’’—but slender, almost slight but sinewy, and with a thick head of curly black hair that turned a whitegray in his later years, and bright blue eyes. As a late teenager, the coltishly handsome young man was a favorite of one
PAT R I C K M C M U LL A N
Alison Strong with Henry and Elby McKay