YOU should always listen to Grandma – especially if her name is Leona Helmsley.
The cantankerous hotel monarch cut two grandkids from her will “for reasons that are known to them” – and the reason is that they neglected to visit their father’s grave to her liking.
Sources said the “Queen of Mean” was none too happy with the respect, or lack thereof, shown her dead son, Jay Panzirer, by two of his children, Craig Panzirer and Meegan Wesolko.
While excluding those grandchildren, the billionaire hotel magnate did bequeath $10 million each to her two other grandkids, David and Walter Panzirer – half of which is contingent on them making yearly pilgrimages to their dad’s grave in Westchester County.
Jay Panzirer, Helmsley’s son by her first marriage and only child, died of heart failure at age 42 in 1982. She blubbered to me years later that he had been a drug abuser.
But that doesn’t mean she didn’t want his kids to show some deference. In her will, she warned that David and Walter could kiss half of their inheritance goodbye unless they put in the annual graveside visits to Dad.
Leona could be a bear in business and social functions, but she was a pussycat when it came to those nearest and dearest to her.
Helmsley became ticked off at Craig Panzirer and Meegan Wesolko because of “their failure to visit their father’s grave,” one source told me.
“I think that’s what it was,” the source said.
The source didn’t remember any relative ever having “an out-and-out fight” with the demanding matron, “but there was a lot of rolling of eyes.”
The grandchildren either declined comment or did not return calls.
Helmsley’s beloved Maltese, Trouble, was the only other mammal who could bring her to tears, and she doted on him like a baby.
She made good on that love by dropping a remarkable $12 million bequest in the pooch’s kibble bowl.
Helmsley’s brother, Alvin Rosenthal, was ordered to care for Trouble but has decided to let her lounge in the lap of luxury – away from him – at Helmsley’s Connecticut estate instead.
“I doubt that she sat down with Alvin and said, ‘Will you take the dog?’ ” the source said. “She wasn’t like that.”
When the little bitch kicks the bucket, she’s to be buried in the Helmsley mausoleum in Sleepy Hollow, Westchester County, where Leona, her beloved hubby, Harry Helmsley, and Jay Panzirer are already laid to rest, according to the will.
But for once in her life, she may not get her way.
Officials at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery have said they can’t honor her wish to someday have Trouble buried at her side because dogs aren’t allowed to be buried in human graveyards in New York.
Additional reporting by Cathy Burke and Neil Reisner