It is a lonely feeling to lose anyone - lovers, friends, family and in any way, however you lose someone is a death. To lose a mentor tho, how does one begin to express what this feels like?

Were it not for Steven T. Florio I would not be in book publishing or publishing in any way. I always knew I would be a writer, but I never for a minute believed I could succeed as a publisher, as an editor, editorial director, acquisitions editor, etc - the myriad jobs I have held so far in my career - and I never thought that I would see to publish my work with some fair measure of success that could please Steven, for it was Steven who first got me interested, or rather, it was Steven who noticed my interest. 

Steven T Florio, was, at the time, Editor of G.Q. (Gentlemen's Quarterly) and had come from Esquire. He was still in his early thirties and worked his way up from research assistant to editor in a short span of approximately nine years. From The New York Times, as president and chief executive, Mr. Florio oversaw all 16 of the company’s magazines, which then included Glamour, Architectural Digest, Self, GQ, Gourmet, Bon Appétit, Condé Nast Traveler, Allure, Wired, Lucky and Teen Vogue, as well as Vogue, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. The magazines reach more than 70 million readers each month.

In short, Steven Florio took a small to medium sized publisher of magazines and made Conde Nast and the magazines that fell under its umbrella - such as Vogue, where I was placed - a force to be reckoned with in their respective industries. He was the whiz ad man, selling hundreds of pages of ads and thickening the magazines to more than twice their size at times. It was a gift - a gift of gab, for Steven was definitely a talker, but he was straight-forward and down-to-earth. He didn't screw around because he came not from Harvard Business School but from Jamaica, Queens (New York) where he was born in 1949.

I remember Steven asking me one day when I first came to the states if I would watch his children and not knowing (or particularly caring) who he was, I went to his house with my typewriter (which was a portable Olivetti in a black case) and my notes for my article for the local town newspaper.  It was Steven who noticed right away the clunky machine and asked, Are you a journalist, to which I said, in my youth and bravado, Yes... an unequivocal answer, straightforward and strong. Later that night, when driving me home, he told me a bit about what he did - which at the time still meant very little to me, as impressive as it was, I was still too young to fully comprehend the measure of his success and the weight of where he had pulled out from and pulled now into a whole new place.

Steven took that blue-collar barrier and smashed right through it, just as I was trying to do at the time. The first in my family to go to college, the first to hold a white-collar job, I hoped, the first the first the first and when you are that One, there is tremendous familial pressure on you as the front-runner, the horse on whom everybody bets their money, even if they don't understand what you are really doing.  That's the trouble with the being the first to cross that line: you become, by definition, a kind of black sheep, or dark horse in any event, and while the family is proud of you, in some weird way all that they have hoped for you your entire life, since you knew, just knew, when you were a little kid that you would be The One, suddenly what you do for a living becomes something they don't understand. That you write articles that discuss cultural comment or generational issues in my family anyway is seen as a waste of time when I could be, as my grandmother said to me one day, "bagging groceries at the market."  

Nothing wrong with that, but it's not what I spent so long studying for and it was not what Steven Florio - who fast became my mentor - wanted for me either. Steven was involved in my life in everything from strongly encouraging me to apply to Conde Nast, which I did and was certain I had failed and yet no... by some miracle I did get the job and at Vogue where I worked for Grace Mirabella, then for Anna Wintour as an assistant.  

Everyone says to me, Why didn't you write The Devil Wears Prada? It never would have occurred to me just as it does not occur to me now to speak any of the things that happened in that place, in those walls that curved and were white and beautifully clean lines of the Conde Nast building when it was still on Madison between 44th and 45th.  It was to me, and perhaps I was too much of a convert because I was just truly grateful for the opportunity, that I couldn't discuss those things.

What Lauren Weisberger wrote is true to a large extent, but Lauren Weisberger wouldn't have a name at all were it not for the fact that she worked for Anna Wintour, who I also worked for for a while when she took over after Grace Mirabella. This isn't to say that my loyalty is only toward Conde Nast or that I drank the Kool Aid and became a convert or "clacker" as the calls the other assistants and assistant editors and rovers there (Weisberger), but I did feel and still do feel that I owe a great deal in my life and my career rather, to my experiences at Conde Nast and specifically at Vogue.

Steven taught me many things through the years, advised me on which jobs to take, which internships would be worthwhile, and so on, but what he told me at the very beginning is what I will never forget and that was perhaps the most valuable piece of information anyone ever gave me. We were driving into Conde Nast one morning and I, only fifteen years old and totally overwhelmed being the youngest person the company had ever-hired I was told, felt that there was no way I could compete, especially in the sharky waters of the fashion industry. I was chum... bloody raw meat that just drew the sharks to me. And Yes, he said, You will be as long as you see yourself that way. So what do I do? What do I do if I am vulnerable and young and learning but that's not "allowed" at this place?

With his eye on the road Steven told me, You fake it.  Fake it??? Everybody's faking it, he said. Everybody. Nobody knows what they're really doing and everybody is just making believe that they do and that's what you do too - you fake it until you know it and then you have earned it and then you damn own it.  

I have yet to receive better advice in my life that can be applied to all manner of subjects, through my work in the present. He wasn't saying "be a fake" - not at all, for Steven was the farthest thing from a phoney and wouldn't want me to be one or learn as one. What he was essentialy saying was that everybody else is phoney, and with that knowledge, you can essentially move in these circles knowing that you are smarter, faster, harder working, and willing to put in ten times the effort and because of where he came from, because of where I came from, we were each of us perfectly balanced with a chip on both shoulders... No silver-spooned Westchester bitch was going to snatch my success out from under me and I can apply that to my life now as well. Nobody can take away from you what you have already earned. It's untouchable and unreachable and undeniable. A thing either is or is not, and what Steven taught me is the things that are mine are fully mine and not to be taken away by someone else because they feel some privilege etc.

How can I tell you then how it felt when I found out that Steven died at age 58 of a heart-attack - Words do not come easy, and I feel rather lost without a mentor. I myself am a mentor to my own students, for I am also teaching (as Steven also did - he at NYU for a while) and I am teaching at Emerson's Graduate School of Publishing and he would like that, but he's not here anymore and at age 58, that's awfully young to be taken away.

What I remember about Steven is his moustache and his olive skin. I remember how he was insistent that his name be spelled with a "V" and got really ticked off when it was misspelled with as "Stephen".  No doubt, he felt one more pretentious than the other. He never denied having a chip on his shoulder and moving up as high as he did, all the way to CEO of Advance and Conde Nast Publications - including CEO of The New Yorker - I think he had a bit of a laugh on that one. I can't tell you why because I'm not Steven, but perhaps I can relate. It's like storming the castle and somehow getting in and "passing"; it is a thing you both hate and love.

Crossing the blue-collar barrier is a love/hate thing and always will be. You want and treasure your roots and you have worked hard to cross a line into a group of people against whom you held perhaps some irrational grudge or had preconceived notions just as many of them likely held or hold preconceived notions of you... And what to make of the first person to break the blue-collar barrier? I can't say what goes on in other people's minds, only that outwardly anyway, IF i ever let it be known then it has only been a good thing in my experience. I think for Steven too he was respected because he didn't come from Harvard Business School like everybody else - that he did it on his own and at such an accelerated pace.

I'm not surprised Steven died of a heart attack - just this December his passed away and while I was shocked at how young, I was not surprised that it was his heart that finally gave in. You can't put in the time he did, which is like doing "hard time" and not have it catch up with you and I know too he had a heart condition just as I do (the kind you have to take antibiotics for before you head to the dreaded dentist, which in his case, after one root canal one time, left him in a coma for three months...) When I last spoke with him, he had just come out of a coma and was back on the job already. But that was Steven. He never wasted time in any way.

He might say what I am writing now is a waste of time, and perhaps it is, because since I found out about Steven I have been unable to put any feelings down on paper about his death and the loss of this colossus in my life. The only one, my only true mentor which leaves me hanging and alone and feeling reedy and nervous. He would probably admonish me and tell me instead I ought be working on my book right now. I don't know.

I can still see him there in one of his pin-striped suits, his suspenders, his white shirts (but never button-down oxfords, I never saw those). He was more of a cufflinks guy. He was dapper, from another era it seemed, when things mattered and the alliances we formed actually meant something and promises were kept. I can and do carry the flame forward and pray that to those I mentor, they likewise do the same...

It is the most I can hope for.

Thanks for listening,

sadi ranson-polizzotti  - salem, wednesday, 6:37 p.m.

images: steven t. florio (top), anna wintour (middle)