Mollie Wilmot

Mollie Wilmot (born Mollie Netcher (died September 17, 2002), Chicago, Illinois) was a philanthropist and socialite. Wilmot spent her formative years in Europe where she studied art and achieved fluency in French. She graduated from the rigorous Foxcroft School. Her grandmother, Mollie Netcher Newbury, launched her career at the Boston Store as a clerk and underwear buyer and was dubbed the 'merchant princess' in her position as owner of the Chicago department store. Wilmot divided her time between an apartment at The Pierre in Manhattan, Palm Beach, FL and Saratoga Springs, NY, boasting to The Times Union in 1998 that she had been born at the Ritz Hotel in Paris "feet first, six weeks early and with all my eyelashes."

Wilmot soared to prominence in 1984 the day after Thanksgiving when a 197-foot freighter, MV Mercedes I, carrying ten Venezuelan sailors crashed into the seawall of her oceanfront Palm Beach mansion. She served the sailors sandwiches and freshly brewed coffee in her gazebo, offered martinis to journalists and photographers, and granted the stranded Venezuelans access to her pool cabana. The incident received national and international coverage.

In her role as society hostess, Wilmot hosted an annual Sotheby's cocktail party to benefit equine research at Cornell University.

Wilmot bequeathed a generous portion of her estate to such health facilities as the Palm Healthcare Pavilion, providing funding for the Mollie Wilmot Children's Center located in West Palm Beach, FL and the Mollie Wilmot Radiation Oncology Center based in Saratoga Springs, NY. She also contributed to the New York City Ballet, The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame and the National Museum of Dance and equine research at the Veterinary College of Cornell University.