Liaison

About the Book

“I have enjoyed the conversational arts, social functions, foundations, philanthropy, and the preservation of things dear to me. But of all the things I have undertaken to preserve, it is the people who are the most evanescent, for they cannot be preserved other than in memory. With this memoir I have tried to reproduce their stories so that they may be resurrected, if only for a brief time.”

~

Ernest Hillman, Jr., has lived a remarkable life in extraordinary times – much of the twentieth century – and has had many memorable encounters with some of the people who defined those times. Hillman – a businessman, bibliophile, patron of the arts, liaison officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and indefatigable world traveler – made a life’s work of collecting, as he phrases it in this charming memoir, “a host of characters.”

And what characters: Salvador Dalí, General Westmoreland, Queen Elizabeth, Marcella Sembrich, Helen Keller, and many others who are less well known but, in Hillman’s rendering, utterly captivating. Some are saints, as in the case of the great humanist Ségolène de Wendel and the brilliant art historian and preservationist John Davis Skilton, Jr. – and some are distinctly not saintly at all: On the eve of Germany’s invasion of Poland, aboard a Japanese freighter off the coast of South America, Hillman found himself keeping the company of a leering Nazi.  

Liaison is the story of one vastly interconnected American life, but it is also a testimony to the importance of a social existence – how the best that we may think and do happens best in company. It is a memoir that indeed renders “an instinctive way of life.”

~

Ernest Hillman, Jr., was born and raised in Pittsburgh and has resided for much of his adult life in Fairfield, Connecticut. He is a graduate of Yale and of Harvard Business School, served in the South Pacific during World War II, and has been active in the arts.  Mr. Hillman is an original member of the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie and has served as president of the Society for Peace in the Middle East.

About the Author

“I have enjoyed the conversational arts, social functions, foundations, philanthropy, and the preservation of things dear to me. But of all the things I have undertaken to preserve, it is the people who are the most evanescent, for they cannot be preserved other than in memory. With this memoir I have tried to reproduce their stories so that they may be resurrected, if only for a brief time.” ~ Ernest Hillman, Jr., has lived a remarkable life in extraordinary times – much of the twentieth century – and has had many memorable encounters with some of the people who defined those times. Hillman – a businessman, bibliophile, patron of the arts, liaison officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and indefatigable world traveler – made a life’s work of collecting, as he phrases it in this charming memoir, “a host of characters.” And what characters: Salvador Dalí, General Westmoreland, Queen Elizabeth, Marcella Sembrich, Helen Keller, and many others who are less well known but, in Hillman’s rendering, utterly captivating. Some are saints, as in the case of the great humanist Ségolène de Wendel and the brilliant art historian and preservationist John Davis Skilton, Jr. – and some are distinctly not saintly at all: On the eve of Germany’s invasion of Poland, aboard a Japanese freighter off the coast of South America, Hillman found himself keeping the company of a leering Nazi. Liaison is the story of one vastly interconnected American life, but it is also a testimony to the importance of a social existence – how the best that we may think and do happens best in company. It is a memoir that indeed renders “an instinctive way of life.” ~ Ernest Hillman, Jr., was born and raised in Pittsburgh and has resided for much of his adult life in Fairfield, Connecticut. He is a graduate of Yale and of Harvard Business School, served in the South Pacific during World War II, and has been active in the arts. Mr. Hillman is an original member of the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie and has served as president of the Society for Peace in the Middle East.