I Turned a Key and the Birds Began to Sing
I Turned a Key and the Birds Began to Sing is the memoir of Carol Rubin Meyer, a Manhattan socialite who was born into a prestigious family that established many of the city’s cultural and social welfare organizations, including the 92nd Street YMCA and the Society for the Advancement of Judaism. Her father was the co-chairman of the obstetrics/gynecology department at Mt. Sinai, and her mother was a Manhattan doyenne who ran their home with an iron fist.
Carol forged her own path — first studying opera after graduating from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, then becoming a suburban housewife and mother while teaching French in the local elementary school in Harrison, New York. Following the untimely death of her husband, Seymour, at the age of 52, Carol went back to college and became an expert in pre-Columbian art. She was a member of the Society of Women Geographers, volunteered as a researcher in the Metropolitan Museum’s Rockefeller Collection for five years, and traveled to over forty countries.
Reflecting on her life, she said, “I haven’t had a happy life, but I’ve had a fascinating one.”