Friends, employees remember Helmsley

NEW YORK, Aug. 23 (UPI) -- Family members, nursing staff and real estate colleagues bade farewell to Leona Helmsley with stories of her softer side during a private funeral in New York.

"She was a special lady," said Frank LaRuffa, a construction consultant who worked with Helmsley for more than 35 years. The invitation-only service Wednesday "was very quiet, very elegant," he told the New York Post.

Helmsley died Monday of heart failure at 87 at her summer home in Greenwich, Conn. With her husband, Harry, she ran a $5 billion real estate empire that at one time included the Empire State Building, the New York Palace Hotel, the Park Lane Hotel and the Harley Hotel chain.

LaRuffa remembered the hospitality magnate as "very tough, however, very fair. When she got angry, she was usually right," the Post reported Thursday.

Longtime adviser John Codey spoke of an incident in which he tried to get a fired worker rehired in disguise. Helmsley hired the person, but later confronted Codey, calling him a "rattlesnake."

"She knew all along what I was doing," he said, adding, "I'll remember her as a friend."