Remembering Charlotte Sheffield: Beauty Queen, Hollywood Starlet, Mother

It sounded like a mysterious and obscure disease, anachronistic in the age of modern medicine. Yet last year in my adopted hometown of New York, we heard press reports of Legionnaires’ disease taking the lives of more than a dozen people clustered in the Bronx, the largest outbreak in the city’s history.Legionnaires is no obscure illness; this strain of pneumonia hospitalizes thousands and kills hundreds of people each year, victims contaminated by air conditioners, hot tubs and other seemingly benign appliances. Last year’s tragedy unfolded in my city, the East Coast urban haven I now call home. As I followed the news coverage, I never dreamed that nearly a continent away, Legionnaires would also claim the life of a beloved family member in the deserts of Utah.She was a golden beauty rivaling Grace Kelly: statuesquely tall, blonde locks and piercing blue eyes. And like Kelly, a Hollywood starlet during its Golden Age, elegance embodied. Her powerful voice was velvet steel, alternatively soothing and commanding. Crowned Miss USA at the tender age of 20, Charlotte Sheffield, my gorgeous aunt, was thrust into the spotlight, conquering the hearts of elite and everyday people around the globe.She starred in various film, television and radio productions,…
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