He Loses Everything but Kitchen Sink--and a Shower

--The invitation read: “Come to a shower.” The gifts included a set of dishes, flatware, crystal glasses for 16 and an electric juicer--perfect presents for a bride. But the guest of honor was a man, and the party in Manhattan was a divorce shower. When Andy Hoffmann split with his wife 18 months ago after two years of marriage, he lost the china, the silverware, the pots and pans, the towels and sheets, the stereo, even the bed frame. Since then, the 28-year-old attorney has eaten a lot of take-out food directly from its cardboard containers. He’s borrowed towels from his health club. And his mattress and box spring lay on the floor in his one-bedroom apartment on East 27th Street. About 30 friends who heard that his cupboards were bare decided that he shouldn’t have to wait to get remarried to eat off real plates again. So they threw him a divorce shower to celebrate his new freedom and help him set up house as a bachelor. “I didn’t feel motivated to go out and refurnish my home by myself,” said Hoffmann, whose divorce became final this fall. “Now, with all my new gifts, it will be nice to have my life return to normal.”

--Personal advice columnist Ann Landers joined two Nobel prize winners and two cancer specialists in winning a prestigious medical science award. Landers, whose real name is Eppie Lederer, won a public service award from the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation “for her 30 years of tireless commitment to improve the physical and emotional health of the American people.” The foundation noted that her column had been called “the most effective (medical) referral service in the country.” Other Lasker awards for basic medical research went to Drs. Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein, who shared the 1985 Nobel prize for medicine for work on cholesterol metabolism and its link to atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease, Dr. Bernard Fisher for his studies on breast cancer, and Lane Adams, executive director of the American Cancer Society.

--Soviet authorities gave their highest civilian award to prima ballerina assoluta Maya Plisetskaya, and the grande dame of Russian ballet premiered her newest role at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater on her 60th birthday. Plisetskaya was named a “Hero of Socialist Labor,” which includes the order of Lenin and a gold star medal. She danced in Anton Chekov’s short story, “Lady With a Dog.”