Born in Hamburg, Germany, the beloved and wildly accomplished Palm Beacher Hildegarde “Hillie” Mahoney’s early life was shaped by upheaval. As a child, she was stranded in Japan for seven years during World War II with her family, caught between nations in a world at war. That experience is the focus of her book, Journey Interrupted, which she discusses here with her son, Bob Merrill, the talented musician and iconic on-air radio host at Legends Radio WLML 100.3 FM in Palm Beach County, who spearheads the popular shows Legends After Dark and Sunday Legends Brunch.

Their conversation traces Mahoney’s wartime experience as well as the life she built afterward with her late husband, David Mahoney, a prominent business executive and neuroscience advocate, best known as CEO of the conglomerate Norton Simon, Inc., which owned Halston, among other prominent companies.

After the war, Mahoney raised a family in New York before settling in Palm Beach in 1980. Over the decades, she has remained deeply engaged in philanthropic and civic life. She is a co-founder and co-chair of the Harvard Mahoney Neuroscience Institute and a director of The Dana Foundation, a private philanthropic organization dedicated to exploring the relationship between the brain and society. She is also a life trustee of the Boys’ & Girls’ Clubs of America and serves on the board of the Palm Beach Island Hospice Foundation and the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach County.

Now a great grandmother of seven with another on the way, Mahoney continues to balance public involvement with family life. Her life and firsthand accounts of World War II are a powerful reminder of how easily intolerance, fear mongering, and the othering of entire communities can take hold, and why remembering this history and its consequences matters so much today.

Bob Merrill: Hillie, tell us about the memoir you wrote.

Hildegarde “Hillie” Mahoney: It’s not actually a life memoir. It focuses on the time our family spent stranded in Japan during World War II. My parents were German, my father had been sent to New York City by the Commerz Bank and we lived on Park Avenue. My brothers were born in New York and American citizens, we loved growing up in America. In 1941, with the Nazis in power, tensions increased and my father was recalled by the bank and we went home via the Pacific route because the U-boats were targeting ships crossing the Atlantic. After visiting Hawaii, we arrived in Japan, just as Hitler invaded Poland, and before we could continue to Germany via the Trans-Siberian railroad, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. So there we were, German parents with American children, in Japan. Our journey was “interrupted,” to say the least! For the next 6 years, we struggled to survive through some tough times until Hiroshima ended the war and we could finally make our way back to Germany, and eventually return to New York.

BM: You therefore named the book, Journey Interrupted?

HM: Exactly, because that is what it truly was! BM: A fitting title! Is it true that it might be made into a movie?

HM: Yes. Years ago, my husband David (Mahoney) and I were good friends with the producer David Brown (“Jaws”) and his wife Helen Gurley Brown (editor of “Cosmopolitan”) and he thought the story could make a good movie. “But you need to write it down first, Hillie,” he said. I struggled for years trying to write it. In 2007, you suggested I make a documentary, since your generation were all “screenagers”. So with the help of the documentarian Bob Frye (ABC News), I gathered my brothers together and we told stories for a couple of days, while he filmed. We added historical footage to put things into context, and you did the music. You’re such a talented musician and bandleader! The film was very well received, but essentially a private project, not distributed.

Hillie sitting in front of a painting by Ilya Glazinov of her late husband David Mahoney.

BM: Can you share with us how the book came about?

HM: I worked with an editor, a brilliant novelist named Paul Micou. He came to Palm Beach for a couple of months, took my many pages, polished them, and ordered it into 4 sections, and it all came together nicely. In 2016, Judith Regan at ReganArts took an interest in publishing it, and voilá! Next thing I know, we had a book party launch at the New York Historical Society. It’s been a big seller at the Classic Bookshop in Palm Beach and on my website, HillieMahoney.com.

Hillie with her hairdresser, Bob Potti

BM: And how did that lead to a feature film?

HM: A good friend shared my book with a producer out in Hollywood named Carl Colpaert of Cineville Films, who contacted me. He thought the story resonated today, and WWII films seem to always have appeal, there have been many big ones recently. He signed on Phedon Papamichael, a director/cinematographer who did the last “Indiana Jones” movie and “The Monuments Men” among others, like the recent Bob Dylan movie “A Complete Unknown.” He is of German/Greek extraction, and has a great vision for the film, seen through the eyes of a young girl. “A family without a country, in a world at war” is the theme. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, and many of my friends think it has great potential. Our family being stranded for years in Japanese lockdown has parallels to our recent Covid lockdown, and the general message is about survival by sticking together as a family.

BM: That is so exciting!

HM: Thank you. “Coming to a theater soon” as they say – or at least Netflix! Everyone seems to be streaming these days, they don’t seem to be going to movie theaters that much anymore.

From left: Charles and Rita Bronfman, Hillie Mahoney, Mila Mulroney, Cynthia Boardman