In 2002, Lily Koppel spent her days as a New York Times news clerk. At night she was a celebrity reporter. In her spare time, the 22-year-old Barnard College graduate was tantalized by the trash being cleared from a basement storage area at Manhattan's 98 Riverside Drive. A dumpster was filled with mesmerizing items -- "time in a bottle," Koppel said.

But nothing -- not the flapper dress, the kimono or the silk glove -- was as intriguing as small red diary. Its worn leather cover, gold-edged pages and open latch touched Koppel's heart. As she read the entries -- which began in 1929, on Florence Wolfson's 14th birthday, and continued, a few lines at a time, until she turned 19 -- Koppel was hooked. "Immediately I related her life to mine," she said. Florence had been "a smart and headstrong New York teenager," leaping with youthful abandon into music, literature and art. She drank tea at Schrafft's, spent nights at the Copacabana and rode horses in Central Park. She loved an Italian count, was infatuated with Eva La Gallienne, and sailed to Europe alone.

The diary transported Koppel back in time, to Depression-era America. Yet this was a slice of history unknown to most Americans, because Florence -- the only child of

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a doctor and a couture shop owner -- lived a very comfortable life.

Koppel's reportorial instincts tugged strongly, drawing her back to the 21st century. In 2006, a lawyer who heard of the diary pored through voter registration records and vintage telephone books. He discovered Florence Wolfson's married name -- Howitt -- and learned she had two homes. One was in Pompano Beach, Fla. The other was in Westport, where she had lived since 1960. Koppel called and told Howitt -- by then 90 years old -- that she had "Florence Wolfson's" diary. Koppel described her own story, as a journalist. "Did you know I was a writer?" Howitt responded.

The two agreed to meet. "I planned to return her diary and that would be that," Koppel recalled. "But I had so many questions. I knew who Florence was, but what had she become? Had I violated her privacy? How would she greet me?"

Howitt greeted Koppel with open arms. They sat in the older woman's Saugatuck Shores home -- filled with artwork she had created and collected -- and talked for hours.

"It was like I gave her the Fountain of Youth," Koppel marveled. "As she read the diary, memories flooded back. She started telling me her story."

They visited every Sunday for months. "We sat in that room filled with light," said Koppel. "It was like we traveled through time together. She recreated her life in the '30s for me. She was 90 and I was 26, but I got to know her when she was a teenager. Our relationship developed -- not just across generations, but almost like we were girlfriends."

As girlfriends often do, they shared intimacies. One of the most fascinating aspects of Howitt's diary was her frank descriptions of sexual exploration -- with both genders. One entry read "Slept with Pearl tonight -- it was beautiful. There is nothing so gratifying as physical intimacy with one you like."

"As a teenager Florence placed no limits on her artistic, intellectual and sexual exploration of who she was," Koppel said. "She was the same at 90. That's just her personality. We talked about everything. The more I learned about her generation, the more fascinated I was."

Koppel knew from the diary that the young Florence wanted to be an artist or writer. ("What adolescent doesn't work on a novel?" she had written.) But she married a man who became an oral surgeon. They had two daughters. In 1950 she got into the stock market and did well. The Howitts bought a house in the suburbs, near the water. Howitt loves Westport -- "It's a small town with big-city values," she said -- but in their Sunday chats she wondered, "How did I end up living this ordinary life?"

But though "the younger part of herself got obscured, it was never lost," Koppel said. "The diary helped her reconnect with that young self, a girl who believed everything was possible."

Howitt told Koppel, "You brought back my life!"

Koppel repaid the compliment. Their talks led Koppel to write a book, The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal. Published last month, it chronicles Florence's teenage passions, as well as the deep friendship between the two women.

"Florence gave me a chance to write my first book," Koppel said. "She also gave me a glimpse into what could have been my future self. I saw the compromises she made that, in retrospect, she may feel a little regretful about. I know now that I will have a literary career. She inspired me to live my life authentically."

Howitt said that when Koppel first called, "I had forgotten all about the diary. When she told me about it, I didn't think it would be very important. But it turned out to be life-changing."

It was, Howitt said, "a wonderful gift at the end of my life. What 92-year-old lady gets a chance to be on The Today Show? My children and grandchildren think it's amazing. I used to be the token old person and now people look at me with wonderment. It's like the heavens opened up for me."

"Her diary was a birthday gift to a 14-year-old," Koppel said. "When I was 22, it was a gift that landed in my hands. Four years later, at 90, she gave another gift to me. Now this book is a new gift to everyone who reads it. This process is organic. It speaks to the significance of each of our lives. That's such a great contrast to the ephemeral world of celebrity I was working in."

Ironically, Koppel said, of the other members of a literary salon Florence hosted as a 19-year-old Columbia University graduate student, one became addicted to alcohol and amphetamines. A Pulitzer Prize winner committed suicide. The only other woman in the salon got divorced and died in a tenement. Howitt, Koppel noted, "ended up sitting in a beautiful Westport home, secure, loved, surrounded by family. When she was younger, she wanted desperately to make an impact on the world. Now, through this conversation through time, she has."

Westporter and author Dan Woog can be contacted at dwoog@optonline.net