Anna Moffo Sarnoff (left) with
Rita Rosen, recipient of the
Lizette H. Sarnoff Award for
Volunteer Service. | 
Former Texas Governor
Ann Richards (left) and
Trisha Meili | 
Tovah Feldshuh (from left),
Susan Lucci and Patricia Field | ALBERT EINSTEIN COLLEGE OF MEDICINE
Tried And True Trouper
Always There To Help By Tim Boxer  NNA MOFFO SARNOFF was at the Waldorf recently to present an award to Luciana Pavarotti. Anna fell on stage, got up, made her speech and left to see the doctor.
Two weeks later the brave gal was back at the hotel. She wouldn’t miss the annual luncheon of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s National Women’s Division. After all, she was presenting an award to Rita Rosen that was named in memory of her mother-in-law, Lizette Sarnoff (whose husband David was president of NBC). More than 400 guests celebrated the 50th anniversary of the annual luncheon. Chaired by Lois Zelman and Carol Roaman, the historic event raised $250,000 in support of Einstein's new Michael F. Price Center for Genetic and Translational Medicine. Rita Rosen, an Einstein Overseer and honorary president of the National Women’s Division, said she’d always wanted to be an actress – and win an Oscar. But as fate would have it, in 1946 she fell in love with a returning naval officer, raised three wonderful children, and over the years used her drama training in her volunteer work for the women’s division. As she accepted her volunteer award from Sarnoff, Rosen exclaimed, “I think I just got me Academy Award!” Joan Lunden, host of A&E’s Behind Closed Doors, emceed a program that honored Golda’s Balcony star Tovah Feldshuh, Sex and the City costume designer Patricia Field, Susan Lucci of All My Children, Trisha Meili, the Central Park jogger who was raped and left for dead, and former Texas Governor Ann Richards with Spirit of Achievement Awards. On opening night of Feldshuh’s Broadway show her mother told her, “Tovah, my dear, I rate your parts by how you look. Golda Meir is a zero.” Lucci, who plays Erika Kane on ABC’s long running soap, said she haunted for years by a remark her daughter Liza made when she was four years old: “Grandma is a nurse, Uncle David is a doctor, daddy is a doctor, and you, mommy, are an actress. What good are you?” She told this to a doctor friend adding, “Doctors deserve to be on the highest end of the pay scale.” “No,” her doctor friend said, “entertainers and sports people should be. Why do you think patients want to get well? They want to go to the theater, see movies, go to ball games and above all – they want to go home.” | 
