On April 9, 1924, Audrey Priest Hirst Rosenfield was born in New York City – ironically, right across the street from where her future husband, Herbert, was then living. Her parents were Ruth Beatrice Priest and Henry Hirst from Providence, Rhode Island and New York City, respectively. Her stepfather was Edward Allan Pollitz, Sr from New York City. Her brother, who predeceased her in the early 1980s, was Samuel Priest Hirst. Her maternal grandparents, Pearl (Raphael) and Samuel Priest, originally from Detroit, Michigan and Lithuania, respectively. They were civic, philanthropic, and business leaders in Providence, Rhode Island. Her paternal grandparents, Sigmund and Berte Hirschberg (they changed their name to Hirst following World War I) of New York and Brussels (originally from Paris, France and Hirschberg, Germany, respectively), were active in the diamond industry in the early 1900s as well as in New York City civic affairs.
Audrey’s parents moved to Providence, Rhode Island soon after her birth. She spent her childhood between Providence and her beloved “Wigwam” in Narragansett Pier. She was educated at Lincoln School for Girls. With her parents, she moved to Hartsdale, New York, the summer after her junior year in high school. She graduated from Scarsdale High School, class of 1941. She attended Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, graduating in 1945.
She was president of the Goucher Drama Society and her dormitory, Mary Fisher Hall. An English major, her senior honors thesis was a comprehensive comparison of myths across different societies, particularly emphasizing their commonalities. During her senior year, she won a fellowship to the Iowa Writers Workshop but for family reasons did not take it.
She was an award-winning swimmer and horseback rider. She was trying out for the US Olympic swimming team with her butterfly stroke when World War II was declared. During the War, she drove an ambulance for the Red Cross in the summertime. During the summers, she also worked as a photography assistant for several noted New York City photographers.
Upon graduation she returned to New York City, where she became Assistant Director of Advertising at Stern Brothers Department Store. Her copy for Jonathan Logan dresses often led to sellout sales. She loved the work, where she could use her writing and photography skills. She drew on that experience in her future volunteer, family, and work activities. In a life full of enthusiastic endeavors, her special passions were family, flower arranging, photography, writing, and graphology.
She was a noted graphologist. In the 1960s, she served as vice president, Northeast Chapter of the American Graphological Society. Her specialty was comparing handwritings: of great men such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln; of great lovers such as Henry VIII, Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton, among others; and criminal handwritings, where she showed how difficult it was to determine a criminal from his or her handwriting. She also lectured at NYU and was one of the first people in the United States to use graphology for personal placement.
Audrey was a resident of Gramercy Park for 46 years. She was an active member of the National Arts Club. For the Club each spring, she was one of the lead organizers of the Gramercy Park Flower Show where she was responsible for its publicity, resulting in articles about the show in The New York Times, for instance. At the flower show, she won many prizes including best of show, particularly for her work in Ikebana arrangements. She worked for years with the New York School for the Deaf, introducing many students to the art of flower arranging. She was also the informal photographer for the community periodical, Gramercy Graphic.
With her children at the nearby Friends Seminary, Audrey was an active volunteer throughout the school year. At the annual school fair, she founded and managed the always popular ‘Attic Treasures’ booth that took up the entire balcony over the gym. She was a dedicated member of the PTA and served regularly as class mother. In this setting, too, she served as an informal photographer for her children’s classes.
She also volunteered for the UN-NYC Hospitality Committee, welcoming diplomats’ wives to the city, hosting luncheons and informal gatherings for wives and their husbands at her apartment. She volunteered with the New York City branch of the Girl Scouts, helping to develop leadership programs. She was an avid alumna interviewer for Goucher College.
In the early 1950s she persuaded Herb to spend the summers at Atlantic Beach, Long Island, a reasonable daily commute for him to his downtown office. For more than forty years they spent the summers there, organizing regular activities for all the children in the neighborhood. Herb was responsible for coaching baseball games in a beach club’s parking lot and Audrey organized beach picnics for collecting shells and bayberries, monopoly and bridge games, ands bowling on rainy days. Together she and wrote and published the Atlantic Beach Coverall, a weekly newspaper with local stories and ads.
Together with Herbert as her partner, she was also active in the Tribeca community. They initiated, for example, the Chambers-Canal Civic Association, dedicated to preserving the mix of commercial and residential inhabitants in what was later called Tribeca. Audrey also supported Herbert and his involvement with the Borough of Manhattan Community College, the then-named New York Beekman Downtown Hospital, and the downtown Chinese community. In 1998, the New York City Hall Lions Club honored the leadership of Audrey and Herbert in building active connections between New York Downtown Hospital and the downtown civic organizations including those based in the Chinese community. In addition, from 1975 onwards until her death, she managed Coronado Trading Corporation, a cement machinery export company, drawing on her extensive ties in Asia.
Even with all these activities, she always found time to write, for example, poetry, children’s stories, and editorials. One of her op-eds was published in The New York Times.
She took great pride in the accomplishments of her husband, Herbert, and her children and grandchildren: her daughter, Patricia; her son, Thomas; her protégé-son Nelson; and their children, Victoria, Danielle, Jessica, Vanessa, Elaine, and Julie. Much too young, Audrey died from heart failure on January 9, 2001.
