Island Life: Pioneering female sports journalist now focused on memoir, Palm Beach life

As Kay Iselin Gilman devotes time to writing a memoir, it’s safe to make an assumption: She’ll finish it.

After all, the Palm Beacher has written books before — successful published tomes — including co-authoring a how-to-achieve-success primer for women and a book about the New York Jets pro football team.

Writing is one of her first loves, which decades ago spurred her career as a pioneering sports columnist for The New York Daily News.

“At the time, I had no idea I was the first woman sports columnist for the paper,” Gilman told the Palm Beach Daily News. “There I was, married with two kids, and yet I had access to some of world’s best athletes (from quarterback Joe Namath to pro tennis star Chris Evert).”

For the past decade, Gilman, who has visited Palm Beach for many years, has lived in Palm Beach Towers.

Read more: Island Life: Profiles of folks who celebrate Palm Beach living

Her waterfront apartment is accented by fresh flowers and bright colors — from coral to green — amid an interior that reflects a woman “who knows and is comfortable with what she likes” and appreciates an “overall sense of well-being,” Gilman said.

Travel and family — she has three sons and four grandchildren — periodically take Gilman away from Palm Beach, but otherwise she’s here, enjoying friends, fitness classes, cultural events, dining, entertaining and writing.

Her late father, Philip Iselin, was president/co-owner of the NFL’s New York Jets and president of the Monmouth Park racetrack in New Jersey, so Gilman, raised in Oceanport, New Jersey, “grew up around” athletes and celebrities in the heady worlds of pro sports and thoroughbred racing.

It was after freelancing as a features reporter at The Asbury Park Press that she landed the sports columnist post at The New York Daily News — a five-year-stint in the 1970s in which a dizzyingly fast spin in a race car, say, was never out of bounds if it meant getting the story right.

“At the time, I didn’t think twice about doing such things,” she remembered.

A graduate of Choate Rosemary Hall and Sarah Lawrence College, Gilman went on to become a longtime partner of Hemming+Gilman, a special-events firm in Manhattan with a coterie of corporate clients. The firm produced such once-in-a-lifetime affairs as the Brooklyn Bridge Centennial and a fête headlined by Frank Sinatra at Egypt’s Pyramids of Giza.

“We brought an entire orchestra to Egypt,” Gilman recalled.

In 1997, Gilman co-authored “The Savvy Woman’s Success Bible: How to Find the Right Job, the Right Man and the Right Life” with high-profile New York businesswoman Tina Santi Flaherty.

The subject matter couldn’t be more different than Gilman’s first book, published in 1974: “Inside the Pressure Cooker: A Season in the Life of the New York Jets. And her third book? Yet to come.

The Daily News caught up further with Gilman:

What three things should people know about you?

I love flowers and always have fresh plants and flowers in my apartment — they bring it alive. My father used to say that “a house is dead without flowers” and I have to agree with him. I take an exercise class here in the Palm Beach Towers five times a week, which leads to my third compulsion — chocolate and desserts. I feel less guilty when I have exercised, and all-around healthier.

One of your big goals at this time in your life is to finish writing your memoir. To whom will you dedicate this book and why?

I will dedicate my memoir to my three sons, Emmett, Nicky and Mark. They have lived a big portion of this life with me, so I feel in many ways it has been a joint effort.

After bringing up three sons, I finally became fortunate enough to have three granddaughters, plus one grandson. All teenagers now, our favorite activity when they are in town is, unsurprisingly, shopping. Three of our favorites are C. Orrico, Aristokids and Stoney Clover Lane.

It has been some 25 years since the book you co-authored — ”The Savvy Woman’s Success Bible: How to Find the Right Job, the Right Man and the Right Life”— was published. What’s one facet of this book that still resonates today; what’s one that doesn’t?

I have been re-reading “The Savvy Woman’s Success Bible”… I am proud and somewhat shocked to say the chapter called “The Ten Commandments of Business Success” holds up just as strongly today as it did all those years ago. In fact, the entire book makes a lot of sense — with the caveat that you would probably ask for more than $25,000 to $30,000 as a starting salary. That’s called inflation.

What’s your favorite place in Palm Beach and why?

My favorite place in Palm Beach to get away and read a good book is in the garden of the Society of the Four Arts in a cozy little space with benches covered by heightened foliage to create shade. I am also entranced by the interior of the store Kirna Zabete in the Royal Poinciana Plaza. It combines highly glossed pink walls and ceiling with a stunning floral mural and lush furniture; one feels suddenly transported into a fairy tale.

Best restaurant meal you’ve enjoyed in the past year?

I feel lucky to be living in the Palm Beach Towers for many reasons: its central location and its wonderful staff and services. Perhaps one of the best reasons to live in the Towers is Restaurant 44, which is on the ground floor and contains a beautiful eat-in garden as well as a stunning interior restaurant and bar. The restaurant was completely renovated and a delicious new menu added about five years ago. I was delighted to be involved in that project … My favorite dish is served for Sunday brunch: Crepes Mornay, which contain jumbo lump crabmeat bathed in Mornay sauce wrapped in a paper-thin crepe.

The best meal I have had not located at Restaurant 44 is at Oceano Kitchen in Lantana. It’s a tiny place and is owned by a husband-and-wife chef-pastry chef duo: Jeremy and Cindy Bearman. They take no reservations; it is cash and wine only and they change the small menu weekly. They are famous for wildly inventive salads, incredible pizzas, delicious steaks and a spectacular dessert of the day conjured up by Cindy. Get there early because when they run out, that’s it.

Having been, among other things, a pioneering woman sports columnist for the New York Daily News; a partner and president of Hemming+Gilman; and a board member of various organizations, you have achieved much in your career. What’s not on your résumé you wish had a place there?

I must confess that being a sportswriter and avid sports fan did not include endowing me with talent in any of the genres I covered, although I learned a lot by being exposed to some of the world’s greatest athletes. In my fantasies, I envisioned being an incredibly graceful skater like Dorothy Hamill or a tennis ace like Chris Evert. I interviewed both of these women. I watched Dorothy practice on the ice at Madison Square Garden and Chris hit balls for an hour with her sister Jeanne. I quickly realized that both of these women had been blessed with extraordinary talent and worked with intense focus on honing that talent every day. So, my life lesson came down to learning that the great ones have the magical ability to make the near-impossible look easy — through hard work every day.

What does Palm Beach need more of and what does Palm Beach need less of?

I am immensely grateful that when I moved to Palm Beach, I met so many bright and talented people from all over the world who have enhanced my life in a myriad of ways. My somewhat selfish wish is that Palm Beach had a really great candy store and an excellent movie theater.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Island Life: Former NY Daily News sports journalist loves Palm Beach