At a private fundraising reception last year, the President of the United States introduced himself as follows: “My name is Joe Biden. I’m a friend of Esther Coopersmith.”
Ms. Coopersmith’s name has been a calling card in Washington for seven decades. As one of the longest-serving hosts, best-connected diplomats and top fundraisers in the nation’s capital, she lubricated the machinery that helped keep the political, diplomatic and journalistic circles running; A seat at their dining tables, which seated 75 people (with room for many more elsewhere and outside), provided access to networks of money, influence and power across cultural and political boundaries.
Among her many meetings, she introduced Bill Clinton, then governor of Arkansas, to Boris Yeltsin on a trip to Moscow. She introduced Jehan Sadat, wife of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, to Aliza Begin, wife of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, before the Camp David peace accords. Anatoly F. Dobrynin, the longtime Soviet ambassador to the United States, celebrated his first Thanksgiving at their table.
“People need a place out of the public spotlight where they can meet and talk,” she told the New York Times in 1987.
Ms. Coopersmith, who was associated with the United Nations on several occasions but also enjoyed her role as a freelance citizen diplomat, died on Tuesday at her home in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington. She was 94.
The cause was cancer, said Janet Pitt, her longtime chief of staff. Instead of undergoing treatment that would have only delayed the inevitable and left her unhappy, Ms. Coopersmith wanted to “live her life,” Ms. Pitt said.
Ms. Coopersmith at a reception at her home in Washington with President Biden in October 2023.Credit…Janet Pitt
The last public event Ms. Coopersmith attended was the Gridiron dinner in mid-March. This annual political roast was one of her favorite outings, Ms. Pitt said, because she was able to bring dignitaries from other countries and show them “how we can make fun of our politicians and our government and then talk about it the next day.”
President Biden said in a statement after Ms. Coopersmith’s death that she was one of his “early supporters” when he was 29 and running for Senate in 1972. “Your belief in me,” he said, “meant the world.”
Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, said in a statement: “Throughout all my years in politics, I have been in awe of her.” In an obituary posted on Legacy.com, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called her “the indomitable doyenne of Washington”.
Mrs. Coopersmith grew up on a farm in Wisconsin and became infected with politics while listening to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats on the radio. She moved to Washington in the early 1950s, landed a job as a lobbyist and quickly put her skills – personal warmth, self-confidence, smart feel for people – to use in fundraising.
Ms. Coopersmith was fascinated by power and the alchemy that produced it. As she told the Times in 1987:
“I do this because I love the activity and the excitement, I love messing people up, I love sharing my home with others. If you have a lot of money in New York, you can buy anything. This is where power matters – what your position is or could be. It’s wonderful to observe how power affects people, how they deal with it, how they adapt to it.”
Although she pursued nonpartisan interests, she was a Democrat at heart and raised millions of dollars for the party’s candidates over the years. In 1958, she was on a par with the likes of former President Harry S. Truman, who scrawled on a photo of the two of them: “Warm greetings to an able and efficient Democrat from someone who knows!”
Such memorabilia accumulated and over time took up almost every square inch of space in Mrs. Coopersmith’s four-story brick house. They included signed photos of decades-long Washington players and international figures, as well as a telegram from Mr. Carter thanking her for introducing Ms. Sadat and Ms. Begin and helping launch the peace accords. She later introduced Ms. Sadat to Richard Berendzen, president of American University, who then hired Ms. Sadat as a teacher.
Ms. Coopersmith donated a portion of her treasure to the newly founded National Museum of American Diplomacy in Washington. To promote the museum, she held a discussion at her home last year with Debora Cahn, the creator and showrunner of the popular Netflix series “The Diplomat” starring Keri Russell, and Elizabeth Jones, a longtime foreign service officer and one of the two Characters on which Ms. Russell’s character was based.
During the discussion, Ms. Cahn acknowledged the importance of personal relationships in geopolitics: “In a crisis, you can pick up the phone and call someone you sat next to at Esther Coopersmith and who didn’t think that was a good place to sit.” At first, I did Choice, but for dessert it seemed like you had a lot in common.”
Mrs. Coopersmith took pride in the sometimes unconventional combinations at her dinner table. In 1990, she seated an Israeli diplomat next to an emissary from Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq; Shortly thereafter, Iraq invaded Kuwait and began the Gulf War.
“It’s my home and I can do whatever I want,” she told The Jerusalem Post in 1993. “They didn’t talk much, but for me it was a start.”
She was born Esther Lipsen on January 18, 1930 in Des Moines. Her family soon moved to the small town of Mazomanie, Wisconsin, located northwest of Madison in the southern part of the state and with a population of 891 at the time. Esther’s father Morris, who came from Belarus, was a cattle rancher. Her mother Pauline, who was born in Romania, ran the household with five children. They were the only Jewish family there.
At age 8, Esther was hooked on politics thanks to FDR. At age 12, she was raising money for the Red Cross.
She attended the University of Denver and later the University of Wisconsin. In 1952, she attended a rally for Senator Estes Kefauver, a Democrat from Tennessee who was running for president. She left college without a degree and helped Mr. Kefauver win the Wisconsin primary; After he lost the nomination to Adlai Stevenson, she helped organize for Mr. Stevenson.
Esther Coopersmith, center, with Bess and Harry S. Truman to her right in an undated photo.Credit…Estate of Esther Coopersmith
She decided that the real power lay in Washington and moved there at Mr. Kefauver’s suggestion. She refused to learn to type to avoid being stereotyped as a secretary, and eventually got a job as a lobbyist for the Federation for Railway Progress.
She married Jack Coopersmith, a real estate developer, in 1954, and they settled in Potomac, Maryland, where she began hosting dinners, buffets, book signings, and organizing events. A decade later, she hosted Texas-style benefit barbecues for President Lyndon B. Johnson across the country.
She soon turned to philanthropy, raising money for service organizations and helping save Washington’s Union Station from the wrecking ball. She hosted an intimate dinner for Barbra Streisand in 2015, the night before Ms. Streisand lobbied for the Women’s Heart Alliance on Capitol Hill.Mr. Coopersmith died in 1991 at the age of 80. Soon afterward, Ms. Coopersmith moved to Washington, where, with the help of a White House decorator, she renovated the Kalorama House near Embassy Row.
She is survived by three sons, Jonathan, Jeffrey and Ronald; a daughter, Connie Coopersmith; a sister, Rita Rabinowitz; and eight grandchildren.
Over the years, Ms. Coopersmith received several quasi-official positions, most of them related to the United Nations. From 1979 to 1980, she was a public member of the United States delegation to the United Nations under President Carter. The position, once held by Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Newman, involves representing the United States on committees, participating in debates in the General Assembly and appearing at member state receptions.
President Ronald Reagan sent Ms. Coopersmith to important UN conferences. In 1984 she received the UN Peace Prize. President Clinton appointed her as a U.S. observer at UNESCO. In 2009, UNESCO named her a Goodwill Ambassador.
The posts lent her diplomatic talents, but she particularly enjoyed practicing her own brand of soft diplomacy, defined by her own protocol, in Washington’s political kaleidoscope.
“I don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t play cards, and don’t belong to a country club,” she told The Times in 1978. “Politics is my vice.”
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2024-03-31 15:39:46
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