I only knew Foxy Gwynne since 1995; by the time we met, she’d already lived a full and exciting life. A resident of Bedford for 50 years, she spent most of it on Hook Road, and before that, Harris. “Always on the same river, the Stone Hill River, which flows into Beaver Dam,” she told me, years ago, reclining on a day bed in the kitchen of the cedar sided house she once shared with her 5 children and her former husband, the actor, Fred Gwynne. Several years ago, when it was clear the house was too much, she moved to Ridgefield, close to her daughter. She came to Katonah often to lunch with her friends. Last weekend I received word she’d passed over the rainbow ridge.
Foxy was a writer, a painter, a poet, an equestrian, a tennis player, a skier, a surfer, a lover of wildlife. She was beautiful and witty. When she and Fred were married, their social life was documented by celebrity photographer Slim Aarons in his celebrated volume, “Once Upon a Time.” “Slim Aarons was so funny,” she recalled to me. “He would come to all the parties and eat up all the hors d’oeuvres.” She said Aarons admired one of Fred’s paintings so much that he stole it. “He used to pester me to be his model. When I turned him down, he told me I walked like a horse.”
Some people think Foxy and I connected through horses, and in a way that is correct, especially as one summer, for one week, my pony Buttons lived on her property. But Foxy and I had met years before when she interviewed my husband RJ about a book he’d written, “Up Late With Joe Franklin.” After that, we were invited to all her fetes and parties, of which there were dozens.
Foxy’s roster of bold face named friends and connections was spectacular. Her grandfather, William J. Gaynor, after all, had been a mayor of New York City. She easily counted among her friends Dom Deluise, Truman Capote, Cass Canfield, Peter Mathiessen, Francine Du Plessix -Gray, and George Plimpton. She could, if she wanted to, drop names like nobody’s business.
Much of her time in Bedford was spent on horseback. “Horses have always been a part of my life,” she said. “Nobody kept horses in a stable. They kept them at home in their barns.” One of her favorite mounts was a Trakehner/Arab cross called Woozle. “He was my daughter’s horse but I loved riding him,” she said. Her regular riding partners were Spencer McClain, who lived across the street, San Moss on Guard Hill, and Grace Huffman, Felicity’s mom. “The roads weren’t paved so we went everywhere,” she said. “You could bring your dogs.” When I asked who looked after the kids, Foxy looked surprised. “The kids were on their own. Besides, they had their own horses.”
I have many personal stories about Foxy, far too many to share here. One thing I’ll never forget was how she left her all her doors and windows open in mild weather. Once when we were chatting in the living room, a doe entered through the front door. In the foyer was a round table with a fruit bowl sitting on it.
“Foxy, there’s a doe in the foyer,” I said. She was unperturbed.
“It comes in every day and takes a piece,” she said.
I’ll never forget being in the car with her, headed to a work-related Christmas luncheon. She was still writing her eclectic and engaging column for this newspaper called “Something Foxy,” and I had this column. For some reason, I was nattering on about ghosts, one of my favorite topics. I asked her if Fred (who was dead) had ever tried to connect with her.
“He better not!” she said darkly.
For the past few years, Foxy and I communicated mostly by letter. I saved them all not just because they are so entertaining, but also because she drew all over them. She wrote often about her most recent dog, a Japanese Chin. I could read between the lines that her world had gotten smaller. To her dismay, she was no longer up to globe trotting. In one of her last letters before she entered the assisted living facility which put an end to our correspondence save for a Christmas card, she thanked God she still had a her driver’s license and joked her old Honda was being held together by rope. She said she “couldn’t remember anything” which disturbed her, and advised me to never grow old. “Only you will probably find some way of outwitting it,” she said, suggesting I find a way to clone myself and my favorite dog. She ended the letter with a book recommendation.
“’Euphoria’ by Lily King,” she wrote. “It’s a good read.”