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Judith Giuliani is creating a rose garden at the Hamptons summer home she shares with her husband, Rudy Giuliani. And while there are many people on both sides of the aisle who hope this foreshadows a bid for the White House, Judith will say only: “I just love digging in the dirt; I am obsessed with gardening.” Of course it requires uninterrupted downtime, something that has become a rarity for the woman whose role has developed into one half of a power couple on the move. In the past four years, the pair has traveled to over 20 countries. This spring his emphasis shifted to domestic pit stops where he stumped Judith Giuliani was not overtly political when she met her future husband. “I remember one of our first conversations. I was explaining that I am a nurse, that I had been working with Bristol-Myers Squibb, and that my arena was in infectious diseases,” she reflects. “We both had our passions; we each brought something unique to the table.” Their partnership has drawn Rudy closer to the medical charities with which Judith aligns herself, and last week the American Heart Association honored the Giulianis at its annual Heart of the Hamptons benefit in Water Mill. “The real champion of the night was Dr. Valentine Fuster,” injects Judith. “He is known around the world as the father of cardiology.” Judith chose to focus her attention on the topic of heart disease, particularly in women, because she says, “heart disease is the number one killer of women in America.” Seven times more women die from heart disease than from breast cancer, she added, and women's symptoms are different. “Whereas men will get the classic symptoms, women may get those, or other flu-like symptoms such as general malaise or nausea. Because many women are such multi-taskers they often just attribute this to fatigue and may not seek treatment.” An inveterate multi-tasker herself, Judith is also working on developing a Level One trauma center for Saint Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan. It will serve as a response center for potential nuclear, biological, and chemical attacks: “N.B.C., that's become the buzzword in medical circles,” she adds. “The center will mean a physician from every different medical specialty will be on call 24 hours a day.” Judith also raises money for Cabrini High School for Girls in the Bronx, a template for educating at-risk women that has since been copied in states across the nation. And in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Judith rallied the Giulianis' friends to address the crisis in New Orleans. “When Katrina hit, I wanted to do a fund-raiser for inoculations and hospital supplies. I called Donald Trump and we put together a golf tournament. Donald was wonderful. We raised well over $1 million.” The couple has made a point of golfing on many of their international trips. “I will tell you how fanatical we are. We flew to an event in Singapore and arrived early in the morning. We left the plane in golf clothes, played the course, then showered at the club and changed into black tie for the event we were attending. After that we headed back to the plane.”
When the couple is in residence at their new home, Rudy also uses the respite to read and unwind with a cigar; his humidor is never far afield. As Judith remarks, “One of my favorite pictures of Rudy is of him reading with a cigar on the porch out here. My husband is so brilliant; he can read two books at once. One will be the biography of a political figure, and the other will be something lighter: for him that might be a history of Russia.” More recently, Rudy has been alternating between Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography of Lincoln and Cobra II, the harrowing account of the Iraqi invasion, written by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor. But for a moment, in the late afternoon sun, the man known as “America's Mayor” has a moment to think of lighter things. First of all, there's baseball. The Yankees are up. And then, there's his lovely wife. Of Judith, his multilingual, philanthropic spouse, he says simply, “She gets me to unwind from all of the pressures and just relax. I love her.” |
for Republican candidates in Iowa, Georgia and Michigan. Judith's weekend reading has recently included The Emancipator's Wife, a biography of Mary Todd Lincoln she borrowed from Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton. But, in reply to the question on everybody's mind: “Will Rudy be on the ballot in 2008?” the discreet Mrs. Giuliani will say only, “My parents were married for more than 50 years. All I've ever wanted is a happy marriage and Rudy and I have one. My mother used to tell me the trick was in knowing when to say, ‘whatever makes you happy.' Well, if it makes him happy, I will support him every step of the way.”
Rudy Giuliani discovered golf as a young boy sneaking onto the Garden City Country Club at night with friends to hit balls, later buying his first set of clubs as a law student at NYU. Now the man associated with cleaning up the urban jungles of New York finds a retreat from the public eye on the bucolic green links. On a recent Saturday afternoon, he joins Judith on her HamptonStyle photo shoot, fresh from a day spent on the course and full of anecdotes from the game. For the mayor Americans see as an indelible New York institution, the transition from his native Brooklyn to the South Fork has been natural. He spent his first full summer in the Hamptons just a few years ago when he was writing his memoir and serving his last year as mayor. “The spirit of Long Island is an extension of New York City for me. When I was about 16 and learning how to drive, I can remember winding down North Fork roads; the farmland, the beaches...it's a unique part of this country.”
