Roosevelt Zanders

Roosevelt Smith Zanders (1912–1995) was the owner of

Zanders had established his limousine service and was gaining prominence with his concept of personal service by the mid-1950s and was noted to go beyond expectation to provide what amounted to a concierge service to his clients.[8]

His fleet of vehicles consisted entirely of Cadillacs until December 14, 1958, when Zanders' custom-built Rolls-Royce arrived from the factory. Only he drove it. "His helpers drive the Cadillacs", said

According to Talese, anyone who could pay Zanders 150 dollars a day in 1959 was eligible for an entire day of his services. Zanders served as chauffeur to Fidel Castro during his April 15–26, 1959 visit to the United States. Castro insisted upon staying in a Harlem hotel and blamed the neighborhood's poverty on American capitalism.

Roosevelt Zanders drove

Besides limousine services, Zanders provided a variety of personal services to his clients. He made hotel and restaurant reservations, arranged for babysitters, picked up dry cleaning, completed banking and obtained theater tickets for his clients.[1] Other services he performed ranged from sending 100 pounds of shrimp to John Wayne while he was in Paris^[1] to a $200,000 cash delivery for Aristotle Onassis,^[14] to sending two tiger cubs to the President of Panama.^[1] He once produced a pair of elephants to appear at a political rally for an anonymous client.^[10]

Later years

Zanders retired and sold his business in 1985.^[1] According to Zanders' widow and daughter, he penned an autobiography a few years before suffering a debilitating stroke in 1993. They claimed the manuscript, which contained anecdotes from driving Nixon and other clients, was stolen from their Harlem home before any publisher could read it. Zanders also was survived by a brother, Ralph, who worked in the Zanders company.

When Zanders died in 1995, his New York Newsday obituary was bylined Gay Talese.^{[citation needed]}

References