Page Two of Four Improbable Goddesses

On one of their visits to California, I introduced the Arcels to Ora and she prepared a lovely lunch for us.  Ray told us stories of the days before the Civil Rights era when he was trainer for Ezzard Charles, World Heavyweight Champion, and he couldn't get him a room at a downtown hotel in Salt Lake City. Ray was expressing to us his outrage and his grief over the stupidity of human behavior. After all those years, still sensitive to the injustice.  That's the kind of man he was.

Our husbands died a few years later, Eddie at 79 and Ray at 94. Steve and I, (both of us considerably younger than our husbands), were now widows.
We took a trip to Provence together and bonded even more closely.  On her visits to me in Walnut Creek,  she fell right in with me and my family.  My sons are her sons, their wives, their children, all now part of Steve's life as they are part of Ora's.

Her rapid fire intelligence never ceases to amaze me and I have come to rely on her judgment and innate wisdom.   She is a continual source of inspiration and provides me with sound reasoning when I tend to go overboard.

Steve continues to live in the heart of Manhattan, den mother to a select group of friends who need her as much as I do.  In addition, she  works for Project Pride, created by the Ray Arcel Memorial Scholarship Fund in a
program to provide academic help, after-school recreation and college scholarships for the children of  Newark, N. J.    l5,000 children annually benefit from these free programs.

Steve loves to travel and keep abreast of things and has no difficulty to relating to anyone anywhere.  These past few years, in addition to visiting me in Walnut Creek,  she's traveled to France, India, Turkey, Russia, Panama, and soon we're off to Spain to meet the other member of our foursome.

I have no idea how old Steve is. She doesn't tell and I don't ask. She quotes Oscar Wilde who said something witty on the subject I no longer recall.  She also quotes Ray who said age doesn't mean a thing.  It's only a number.

That's Steve.


Elke Stolzenberg
Elke is the baby of our foursome. Born in Berlin in l939, she never knew her father who was in the German army, somewhere in Russia.  After the war he never returned to his wife and baby daughter Elke and  was presumed dead.

Elke, an only child, raised by her mother, attended  the University in Stuttgart, studied photography, and came to San Francisco in l959 to live with an aunt and uncle.    Almost immediately, she landed a job at the San Francisco Examiner as a freelance photographer.

One of her first assignments was to photograph and interview the new singer at the Hungry I, a girl named Barbra Streisand.  So Elke got to photograph most of the celebrities who came through San Francisco in those days, and her photos are memorable for what she caught in their expressions and their bodies.

It was at this time Elke and I first met and we've been friends ever since.

Elke's looks still stop traffic.  She was gorgeous when she was younger, and age has not affected her beauty .... only sharpened it.  Statuesque, with big blonde hair, everyone else fades into the background when she's around.  No one minds, because she's dear and kind and sweet and doesn't take herself seriously.

When she worked for the Examiner all those years ago, she was sent on assignment to photograph a Flamenco dancer named Ciro who had his own troupe and danced at the Old Spaghetti Factory.  Elke fell in love.  Not only with Ciro but with Flamenco.  When Ciro decided to return to Madrid, Elke moved to Madrid.  She was determined to become a Flamenco dancer herself and prepared to devote herself to whatever it took to bring it about.  And she did, as well as mastering Spanish.

Elke La Rubia she's called professionally, and was sensational on stage with her height, her blondness and fiery passionate performance. She traveled the world performing and taking photos.  Life with Ciro didn't pan out (although they 're still friends) but she remained in Madrid, doing photography, taking class, teaching class and performing.

And Spain in the years when Franco was alive, was not easy for a young woman alone, particularly one who looked like Elke and wore mini skirts. But she endured.  She never married, recognizing in herself, her own deep independence and desire to dedicate herself wholeheartedly to her work, her
photography and her dancing.

A word about her photography: Elke uses light the way a painter uses light.

Her work, mostly in black and white, is a study in mood.   Elke's camera is always with her and over the past twenty five years, she has photographed all the great Flamenco artists — singers, dancers, guitarists.  Two distinguished books of her work have been published in Spanish and in German, and she has exhibited in the finest galleries and photography museums.

When we first met, she photographed my parents when they came to visit,  and my sons when they were younger.  Now she's into her fourth generation of my family, taking pictures of my grandchildren. Elke is a fantasy of an older sister for my sons, and now she is an honorary Tante to the grandkids, like sister Ora and friend Steve.

When Stephanie and Ray Arcel went on a trip to Spain some years ago, I gave them Elke's  phone number.  As I suspected, they hit it off, and Steve has maintained contact with Elke all these years.  Last year Elke had her photography exhibited at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque for their l0th annual Flamenco festival.  Steve flew in from New York and met me there and then we all returned to Walnut Creek together.

And the following day had lunch at the Claremont Hotel.  With Ora. Last year when Elke came for her annual visit, we were in the kitchen watching the evening news.  I was cutting vegetables when I realized Elke was crying. The news concerned the 55th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and showed pictures of the camp and the atrocities committed there.  Elke was sobbing.  I dried my hands, put my arms around her and tried to comfort her.  I thought of the irony of life-that I, whose maternal family died at the hands of the Nazis, was comforting this girl born in Berlin during Hitler's heyday.

But it wasn't Elke.  I love Elke.

Jean Harris
When thinking about these special women,  I tried to consider the qualities we have in common and what draws us to one another.

We are all passionate women, alive to the world around us, with a great curiosity about other cultures and other peoples and an ability to relate to strangers.  We are committed to helping others — each in her own way — and we share our optimistic natures with all who come into our orbit.

It takes a certain spirit to step outside the circle of conformity.  It takes imagination to see outside the group.  Each of these women has something of that same spirit so obviously it has nothing to do with race, religion or nationality. It has to do with love.

All you need is love.

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