This New York Times Magazine cover story from 1989 marked what the author, David Margolick, now calls the “last hurrah” of Barbara Piasecka Johnson, a Polish-born immigrant who married into the Johnson & Johnson fortune. Margolick, a former New York Times reporter, wrote about Johnson’s attempt to “become a heroine” in her native country by donating as much as $100 million to rescue the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, an effort coordinated by the labor activist Lech Walesa. After what Margolick calls her “marvelous P.R. stunt” failed, and sometime after his article was published, he told me, Johnson “fell off the face of the earth.” She died on Monday.
Here’s how Margolick described Johnson in his article: … Continue reading at nytimes.com
