Newspaper Article

The Trouble With Bess // How did a former Miss America get into this mess?

Alexander, Shana

1988

Overview

Bess Myerson was no bubblehead Miss America. She was smart, talented - a graduate of Hunter College, an accomplished pianist and flutist - and she was Jewish. She won her titles in 1945, first Miss New York, then Miss America - the same year that the shocking facts and sights of the Nazis' concentration camps and their extermination of 6-million Jews became known to the world. At that ghastly moment in human history, it seemed somehow redemptive that here in America a Jewish girl should be chosen fairest in all the land. People, especially Jewish people, took Myerson into their hearts in a very special way. In 1977 Myerson's good friend, Ed Koch, then a little-known unmarried New York congressman, decided to run for mayor. Throughout his campaign, New York's beloved Bess Myerson was ever by his side. Together they rode the subways and mounted the soapboxes. They hinted at wedding bells to come - after his election, of course. Some said that Myerson had made Koch a mayor by first making him a man. Certainly the constant presence on his arm of this vibrant woman did much to cancel out the hisses of the opposition: ``Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo.`` By fall, an item appeared in one of the city's tabloids questioning Myerson's employment of Sukhreet Gabel, given that her mother was the judge in the Capasso case. Then rumors began to surface that Myerson had induced Judge Gabel to cut the size of Capasso's temporary alimony and support payments from $1,850 to $680 a week, in return for giving Sukhreet Gabel a $19,000 city job as Myerson's personal assistant. When Koch asked Myerson for an explanation, she sent him a letter of formal assurance that Sukhreet Gabel had been hired according to normal employment guidelines. The next spring, Myerson forced Sukhreet Gabel to resign.

• Publisher: Times Publishing Company