By Janel Bladow
Dreyfus, left, being arrested in Times Square last year with other “grannies” protesting the war in Iraq.
Diane Dreyfus closes the door to her apartment on Elizabeth St. one last time with the excitement of new adventures ahead and the sadness of leaving so many memories and friends behind.
She’s looking forward to a great journey, she says, sipping a glass of white wine in her neighborhood pub as she reminisces about her life in Lower Manhattan.
“I’ve had 36 years in New York City, a great life, a great story,” she said with a bit of melancholy but no remorse. “Now let someone else have a great time. It’s time for me to go on a trek.”
No more fights with landlords, no more little strays as she liked to call the young people who came to know her as mom and crashed on her blue living room couch.
But her political activism charges on. Her first trek kicks off in Times Square on Saturday, June 24 and takes her to Washington, D.C. to protest the war in Iraq with her friends in the Granny Peace Brigade.
“The grannies are aged 91 and down to me,” she said with bravado. “I’m the baby ‘granny’ at 59 and 7/8ths.”
Despite a lifetime of fighting injustice, Dreyfus was only arrested once — in Times Square last October with the Grannies. Becoming a Granny sums up her life journey — her years as a feminist and political activist, a generous New Yorker who opened her door to strangers and a believer in the future.
“We must think in terms of the kids,” she said emphatically. “It’s as plain as day. We have to give them our wisdom and lives, because we are leaving the world for the kids as we must. Give peace a chance.”
Dreyfus, who grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, went to college in California then moved to New York in 1970, landing in a walk-up on St. Mark’s Place. “It was the place to be,” she said.
Then, as she quaintly puts it, she “hit it big” with a boyfriend and a 5,000-square-foot loft at 285 West Broadway in 1978.
“I call those the Tribeca days,” she laughs. “Soho was already gone. A distressed seller was getting rid of his loft so I paid for the lease with key money. The building was beautiful, like an industrial French chateau, with garland scrolling the front.”
To keep herself busy, she opened the Dreyfus Gallery and had a successful run introducing her artist friends to the world.
But the salad days of Tribeca ran their course by 1981, the gallery closed and Dreyfus sold the loft and moved on. She took temporary jobs, became proficient with computers and was hired by Merrill Lynch. While working at the World Financial Center, she met her husband, William G. Clifton.
“I remember thinking the week before 9/11, looking that the World Trade Center towers that long after Billy and I are dead, those towers will still be there,” she said. “Sad.”
Technically speaking, she is not a grandmother but she does consider many of the young protestors she has taken in her children. In the 1980s, she and her husband settled into a 500-square-foot apartment at 253 Elizabeth St. until they separated.
“Little Italy then was like a frontier village, urban frontier,” she recalled. “Rents were low and the buildings weren’t kept up. We had access to the roof in those days and we’d go up and watch fireworks on Fourth of July, New Year’s Eve.”
That rooftop and 9/11 play a pivotal role in the next chapter of her life. One of the strays who made her way to Dreyfus’s famous blue couch was a young woman from Holland named Meike.
“Meike came with her friend Norbert, stayed on and off for 10 years,” says Dreyfus. “She was on the roof with me on 9/11. She was three months pregnant and stayed on the roof taking pictures as the cloud of dust wafted over. I told her to get off, that the air was not good to breathe. But she was adamant that this needed to be documented.”
Meike gave birth to a stillborn baby three months later. “It was like smoking 40 packs of cigarettes in one day,” Dreyfus says the doctors said.
“No one is talking about the increase in autism in Chinatown or the 9/11 cough which is being listed as new onset asthma,” she said. “I have to be outspoken for the children.”
Dreyfus joined up with the Granny Brigade and made peace and children her mission.
At the same time, her landlord, Ben Shaoul of Magnum Management, applied for demolition of the building but began construction around her and the three other remaining tenants. Tenant advocates classify Shaoul’s action as a “phony demolition,” but the residents negotiated buyouts.
Now with some cash in hand and nowhere to live, Dreyfus packed up three station wagons of her stuff and left it with friends.
She plans to return to New York City after the march to Washington until July 9 when she heads to Europe.
Dreyfus’s first stop is Holland to visit Meike, who is pregnant again. Then off to Germany to visit another of her “kids,” Maria, a young filmmaker.
“I’ve got everything going on now,” she says. “I’ve got kids, got grandkids. I’m on an adventure.”
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