Category Archives: Memorials

Art and Architecture, Community, Friendship, Memorials

Remembering Gudmund Vigtel of the High Museum of Art

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The High Museum of Art, August 1985.

My friend and former boss Gudmund Vigtel died last month at the age of 87.  For nearly thirty years, Vig, as he was generally known, was the face and guiding force  of Atlanta’s High Museum of Art.  He became the museum’s director in 1963, when it was a fledgling institution in a provincial backwater, housed in a nondescript building adjacent to its first home, the Peachtree Street mansion of the High family.

Vig led the High through two pivotal periods of extraordinary growth.  In June of 1962, 106 of Atlanta’s most prominent arts patrons, returning from a museum-sponsored trip to Europe, were killed when their plane crashed on take-off at Orly Airport in Paris.  Since Atlanta’s founding in 1836 as Terminus, the end point of a railway hub, its citizens have tended to value business over culture.  But they are a resilient lot, determined not to be bested.  The Orly tragedy, like General Sherman’s burning of the city during the Civil War, inspired a deeply felt resolve to regroup and rebuild, bigger and better.  Gudmund Vigtel, then assistant director at the Corcoran Gallery in D.C., was hired to head up the new, expanded arts facility to be known as the Atlanta Memorial Arts Center.

Vig must have stood out as a cosmopolitan, dashing European figure in the Atlanta of the early 60s.   Born in Jerusalem to Lutheran missionaries from Norway, he had lived in Vienna and Oslo before his family fled (on skis, as I’ve always heard) from Nazi-occupied Norway into Sweden.  But Vig had Georgia ties as well.  Having studied art in Sweden, he received a Rotary Scholarship that first took him to a small college in north Georgia.  It was not a good fit.  He recounted how he spent lonely afternoons sitting on a big rock, asking himself, Why am I here? Before long, he managed to transfer to the Atlanta College of Art, where the more urban environment suited him better.

I met Vig during the second pivotal period of his  tenure at the High.  During the 1970s he became increasingly convinced that his museum was still too small. When, in 1977, the blockbuster King Tut show bypassed Atlanta for New Orleans because the High lacked sufficient exhibition space, it was clear that Vig was right.  He launched an impassioned campaign for a considerably larger and more striking building.  Despite the board’s initial preference for a local architect, he managed to persuade them to choose the as yet unproven Richard Meier of New York.  Meier would go on to to design the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and to win the Pritzker Prize for architecture.

I had the  good fortune to work for Vig as Secretary to the Director during the High’s first two years in the new Meier facility.  (There are, of course no secretaries at the museum now, or perhaps anywhere; they have been promoted to other titles, if not in salary.) Thanks to my dentist, a family friend, avid art collector and museum patron, I learned about the job opening.  It was the summer of 1983, and I had just graduated from UGA with a degree in Art History.  I was coming to terms with the realization that this was, as I had  suspected, hardly a golden key to a lucrative or, perhaps, any career.  Luckily, I could type.  I applied at the High.  I wasn’t hired; there was a better, faster typist.  About three weeks later, I got a call from the museum.  The other applicant hadn’t worked out, for various reasons. When Vig had referred, for example, to the artist Botticelli in his dictated letters, this secretary had repeatedly transcribed Buddy Chelly.  Was I still interested?

The postmodern Meier building, its undulating facade clad in white enamel tile, was due to open that October when I began work in July. The offices had just moved into the new quarters, but the galleries and atrium remained unfinished.  Heavy plastic sheeting kept some of the dust out but did nothing to diminish the loudness of the construction noise. The pace of construction was quick and constant, and it only added to the excitement of working at the museum.  I loved my front-row seat in the living theatre that was staging the airy new building’s completion.  And I soon became fond of my boss and the rest of the museum staff.

Many of us spend our lives knowing and regretting that we have not yet hit upon the perfect career fit.  Vig found his, it would certainly seem.  He had a broad knowledge and true devotion to art of various genres and styles.  But he lacked any trace of pretense or conceit; he bore no resemblance to the stereotypical artsy intellectual.  Not a single aspect of the life of the museum was beneath him, and he was apparently tireless.  What’s more, Vig had a real  gift for the human connection; he was thoughtful, warm, empathetic, funny and charming.  He inspired the best in every staff member, and we held him in high regard.

As Vig’s dramatic vision for the new building was nearing completion, it was a heady time to be part of the HMA team. The museum opened on schedule in October, with a dizzying flurry of celebratory events  held in the soaring central atrium.  Vig treated his staff with the same respect and courtesy as the most generous or sought-after patrons.  HMA parties were equal-opportunity events.  Security guards danced with curators; art handlers and secretaries rubbed elbows with Atlanta’s civic leaders and the occasional celebrity.  Vig was always there at the heart of the party, like a joyful father of the bride, surrounded, in his elegant home, by those he loved best.

Vig’s oddly spelled Norwegian name confounded most homegrown Southerners.  Yet its pronounciation was straightforward:  Good mund Vig tel, with the accent on each first syllable.  I was amazed by the vast volume of unsolicited letters (many of them very strange, to say the least) that the museum received.  The majority of these erred comically in the spelling of Vig’s name. They variously addressed him as Gudmund Viglet, Gudmund Vigtoe, Goodmood Vigel, Goodood Wigtel and even, somehow, Tubmund Eigtel.  Vig never took himself too seriously, and he found these permutations as amusing as I did.  He also laughed and reassured me when I realized, too late, that one of the letters I typed had gone out to Ms. Roberta Goizueta instead of Mr. Roberto Goizueta, then the Chairman of Coca-Cola.

Vig’s impact on the arts of Atlanta was profound.  Like so many others whose lives he touched, I will think of him often, and with affection.  In my mind I see him now, and it’s 1985.  He’s coming back from checking a new painting in the  galleries, crossing the wide atrium.  He’s walking his characteristically jaunty walk, grey curls bouncing a bit, suit slightly rumpled.   As he approaches, I hear him speak my name in the Norwegian accent he never lost, and I see the customary twinkle in his eye.  Gudmund Vigtel will be greatly missed, but lovingly and gladly remembered.

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On this T-shirt, made c. 1985 by the HMA staff to celebrate Vig’s birthday, he is surrounded by some of the more egregiously erroneous misspellings of his name, collected from letters. Vig’s uncharacteristically gruff expression was intended for comic purposes.  I wish I hadn’t worn the shirt for painting; the splotch on Vig’s jacket is a later, accidental addition.

Community, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friendship, Memorials

Out of the Blue: A Prayer for 9/11

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The weather is beautiful today here in northern Virginia.  The sky is clear and blue, the sun is bright, and the crisp, fresh promise of fall is in the air.  Eleven years ago, September 11 began just as gloriously.  We had no idea what was coming.

This morning, as I typically do on every September 11 since 2002, I find myself keeping an eye on the clock as 8:46 approaches.  Anything I might say about my memory of that day runs the risk of sounding trite or self-important, so I won’t attempt it.  All I can do is offer my prayer, in hopes that its power will be magnified as it joins and rises with the great cloud of kindred prayers around it.

On this September 11, I ask for God’s blessings on all those whose lives were irrevocably and tragically altered on that terrible day.  For the thousands who died, and for the many more loved ones who grieve for them.  For the children who grew up without a parent, for the spouses whose partners never returned, for the grandparents who became parents to their lost children’s children.  For those whose pain still pierces, and for those who suffer guilt because some healing has taken place, because cherished memories have dimmed.

I give thanks for the many heroes who sacrificed their lives or endangered their health on that day to save strangers.  For the firefighters, police and rescue workers who bravely answered the call to duty.  For unlikely individuals, like the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93, who rose to the daunting challenge.

I give thanks for the unity we feel as a nation each year on September 11.  I pray that it might outlast this one day.  In the poisonous political atmosphere of this election year, may it inspire us to set aside our bitterness, for a while, at least, so that we might work together.

And, most of all, I thank God for the good that always comes from bad, even if, in our sorrow and anger, we may not see it until months or years later.

May we be especially receptive to the vitality of God’s blessings on this September 11.  I pray that we will feel God’s mercy and love descending on us all, from out of the blue.

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The lower Manhattan skyline seen from Liberty State Park, NJ on August 19, 1991.
Family, Memorials, World War II

My Uncle Bill: WWII Frogman and Grandfatherly Uncle

My mother’s older brother Bill  was very much like my grandfather in physical appearance, temperament and attitude.  If our family life is a play, Uncle Bill was the understudy who took over when my grandfather was no longer available.  At least that’s the way it seemed to me.  My uncle provided a tangible, very real link to Grandaddy. 

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Uncle Bill, Mama and me at my grandparents’ house in the mid-60s.

By all accounts, my uncle was so like my grandfather that they were often at loggerheads during Bill’s boyhood and teen years.  Each was painfully honest in every situation, and this may have proved more of a stumbling block than a stepping stone in their relationship.  Bill had little interest in farming.  Fortunately for him, his older brother Leland had followed in Grandaddy’s footsteps and taken over the land up by the river.  When World War II began, Bill saw it as an opportunity to get off the farm and put a stop to conflict with his father.  He enlisted at seventeen, just before Christmas of 1943.  We have most of the letters he sent home during his military service.  Never overly sentimental, never self-pitying, his early letters border on heartbreaking.  They are the writings of a young man who acted too hastily and immediately regretted his decision.

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A sad and serious Uncle Bill, age 17, in his first Army photo.

These first letters, sent from Fort Thomas, Kentucky, tell of receiving vaccinations, shoveling snow in blizzard-like conditions, and hoping to join the Air Corps but being eight pounds underweight.  Bill  lists the various articles of clothing he has been issued, remarking with wonder that it’s more than he’s ever seen before.  He asks his family to send some shoe polish, because his boots have stiffened uncomfortably from daily wear in the snow and slush.  He also asks for a pencil and a few wire coat hangers.   The talk in the barracks, morning and night, was that of homesick young men pining for their loved ones and the lives they had left behind.  Most, like Uncle Bill, were from rural areas.  They had realized, too late, the simple glory of farm life.  In Bill’s words, he “never realized how swell home was, but he sure would like to see it now.”  His father, he admits, knew more about the Army than he did.  His letters are always signed “Love, Billy.” 

He was soon transferred to Fort Gordon-Johnston in Florida for basic training to enter an amphibious brigade. At the end of January 1944, he reports getting $39.55 for his first month of duty.  Nearly every letter begins with an apology for not writing sooner, but he seems to have written every few days.  He often asks about my mother’s asthma, the progress of the tobacco stripping, and he offers hopes that the crop will bring a good price. A high point about army life, he notes, is access to new movies.  He mentions seeing Jack London, Swing Fever and later, Double Indemnity.  In one letter he writes that he was “feeling fine, and at times, almost happy, but not quite.”

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Bill, a year or so later, looking a bit more upbeat.

As the months ticked by, Bill wrote from increasingly exotic places, although his exact location could not be divulged.  From Florida, he went to New Guinea, the Dutch East Indies, many small islands in the Phillipines, and then on to Hawaii for training in Underwater Demolition.  After his return, he talked of being dropped in the ocean, no land in sight, and no special equipment but a pair of flippers.  He and his fellow Frogmen were expected to tread water for six to eight hours as they awaited the ship’s return.  The Frogmen were the precursors to the Navy SEALs, and I can only imagine the intensity of other training exercises and actual duties.  Bill didn’t talk much about any of that.

The tone of homesick regret is gradually replaced by a sense of wonder at the strange beauty of places he could never have imagined.  In the Philippines, he buys a handmade mattress from a local woman, tours a ruined city in a horse-drawn buggy-taxi, attends Saturday night dances on base where the “fine-looking” Spanish and Filippino girls “can jitterbug to put the girls back home to shame.”  He discovers an injured cockatoo in the jungle and nurses it back to health. He revels in the abundance of tropical fruit and notes that there is no cigarette shortage in the army, unlike in the States.  He is surprised by his ability to work all day, on a ship in the equatorial zone, in temperatures up to 115 degrees, with hardly any ill effects.  The miserable poverty of some of the native villages affects him deeply. Hospitalized for a while with “yellow jaundice,” he enjoys the rest, as well as the fluffy pillows.  When a fellow patient has a break-down and runs screaming in the halls, he remarks that the jungles will do that to you, after two or three years.  He laments not being able to write about the most interesting parts of his days, because such information would be censored.  Despite his discretion, in several of his letters a line or two has been neatly cut away.

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Some of Uncle Bill’s letters home during his time in the Army.
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Bill’s Army knife, useful for cutting jungle foliage.

                                                 
In Bill’s letter of August 16, 1945, news has just broken of  Japan’s surrender.  The war is officially over.  He begins to believe he will return home soon, to the farm he so wanted to leave.  After several months in the U.S. occupational forces in Japan, he arrived stateside in the winter of 1946.  Like his fellow soldiers lucky enough to return, he was older and wiser, and had a new appreciation for home.

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Uncle Bill in the mid-60s with his beagle Ginger, the first of his dogs that I remember.

Bill went to the University of Kentucky on the G. I. bill.  His dark hair turned completely silver when he was still in his late 20s, giving him an air of elegant sophistication.  My father, seeing Mama with her brother on campus, assumed she was with a handsome professor.  Bill was in his 30s when he married a divorced woman with two sons.  Margaret was the sister of one of my mother’s childhood friends.  Bill never had any biological children, but he was a supportive and caring stepfather.

Mama and Bill were close, and they were alike in many ways.  As long as I can remember, Uncle Bill was a big part of my life.  He often traveled to Atlanta on business.  When it was still a rather grand  hotel and hadn’t slipped into seediness, he stayed downtown at the old Henry Grady Hotel.  He often had a free evening, and he’d treat my parents and me to a festive dinner, somewhere we wouldn’t ordinarily go.  I always looked forward to Uncle Bill’s visits.  I loved his dry wit, which was sarcastic and sometimes biting, but never mean-spirited.  As a connoisseur of life’s ironic absurdities, he was highly amusing company.

Uncle Bill was empathetic and attuned to the plight of the down-trodden.  He was especially soft-hearted when it came to animals.  Bill always had a dog, or he cared for someone else’s dog, typically one that would prefer to be Bill’s. When a neighbor’s three-legged lab mix made it clear that he would much rather live with my uncle, his owners passed him on.  With Bill, Colonel got several walks each day, plus a long car ride.  Colonel loved a ride, so Bill made it part of their routine.   During a visit after Colonel’s death and not long before Bill’s own, I went with him on his nightly duty to walk a neighbor’s dog.  Bill had noticed that the dog’s owner worked long hours, and he offered to provide an afternoon walk.  Before long, this had turned into three daily walks.  Bill was retired and dogless at the time, so he was happy to oblige.  On the night I went with him, he put his raincoat over his pajamas and we walked down the street to the neighbor’s home.  He let us in with his own key, and the woman rose to greet us warmly, from what appeared to be a late-night dinner party.  No doubt her guests thought it odd that her dog-walker was a dashing silver-haired seventy-year old in PJs.  No doubt they also thought she had lucked into a great deal.  Bill never cared if people considered him somewhat eccentric.

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Uncle Bill and me at Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire in the 80s.

Bill’s time in the service may have fostered his love of travel.  He and Margaret were always setting off for some legendary spot.  During my year in England  they popped in on several occasions.  They were my first visitors when I lived in Cambridge.  We ate at the city’s best restaurants and took day-trips to Eton and Windsor Castle.  Later in the year, we rented a car and drove up to York over the course of nearly a week.  Bill and Margaret went on to Scotland and I returned to London by train.  And when I was in England for a month the next year, they came back, too.  I can still see the look on Bill’s face when I showed him my tiny, cell-like room in the London House Annex, a dormitory for visiting students.  

Uncle Bill died much too soon, at 71.  I guess because he was so like my grandfather, I thought we’d have him around for a few more years.   He was there for my wedding, but he never got the chance to see my beautiful baby girl.  It’s a great consolation, however, to reflect on the many lives that he touched, with his kindness, generosity and humor.  And I know that now, he and Grandaddy, two kindred spirits, are enjoying peaceful yet lively good fellowship.

Community, Family, Friendship, Memorials

Remembering Doug

Two weeks ago today, my friend Doug passed away. Doug had a zest for life that never flagged, despite the direness of the situation. He was a character. He was great company. He will be sorely missed.

Doug was known for his sharp memory, keen sense of humor, and flair for observing the odd detail, qualities that made him a compelling storyteller. He had copious amounts of material to draw on, including high school days in his native Seattle, where one of his classmates was Jimi Hendrix.

Doug had an exceptional ability to talk to anyone about anything. What’s more, he could make the exchange interesting. Early in his career he worked for the CDC in the effort to combat the spread of syphilis. He coached interviewers on effective methods for talking with syphilis patients about those to whom they may have spread the disease. If anyone could make a conversation about VD less uncomfortable, perhaps even verging on enjoyable, it was Doug. Not simply a skilled talker, Doug was a thoughtful listener and an engaging conversationalist. He delighted in the give and take of a spirited conversation. He would have been in his element with Samuel Johnson in the clubs and coffeehouses of eighteenth-century London, or with the circle of the recently deceased Christopher Hitchens.

Doug found his true calling in his career with the Fulton County Public Defender. His outlook made him uniquely suited to the position. He had a profound respect for all people. He empathized especially with underdogs and with those who had been dealt life’s poor hand. Doug took pleasure in getting to know his clients. He could see their admirable qualities despite the shadows of their terrible decisions and ill-advised deeds.

Doug was a dapper dresser with a discerning eye. For years, he and my father made an outing of the annual sale at Muse’s, the old Atlanta menswear store. Doug recognized style wherever it appeared. I remember his remarking on the classic élan of one of his clients who happened to be a transvestite. He was so impressed with her smartly tailored dress and lovely jewelry that, with a thought to his wife’s upcoming birthday, he asked for shopping references.

For the past two decades, Doug had suffered from syringomyelia, a rare degenerative neuromuscular disease. It began with a disturbing loss of balance first noticed during his neighborhood jogs. Over the years, it progressed at varying rates, leading toward a nearly complete loss of physical mobility and bringing with it a host of related issues. As the disease accelerated, Doug never lost his dignity or his ability to laugh. When he could no longer work, his computer and the Internet served as lifelines to keep him mentally active and in touch with his many friends and acquaintances. He continued to be a force in the legal community, appearing remotely on several occasions as a commentator on Court TV.

During our visits to Atlanta, my daughter and I liked to stop in to see Doug on our walks to the park. He and I discussed recent events and swapped memories of former neighbors. Doug was a great resource for entertainment trivia, and he never forgot names. He knew, for example, that Rashida Jones, who had just begun appearing on The Office, was the daughter of Quincy Jones and Peggy Lipton. Doug and I liked similarly offbeat movies and TV shows. I regret that I never got the chance to ask him if he watched Justified. Its dark, ironic humor would have appealed to him, I think. And in its colorful, flawed characters, he may have seen glimpses of his former clients.

When my daughter was very young, her primary motivation for stopping by Doug’s house (other than to marvel at his futuristic wheelchair) was the chance to see the elusive and fabulously fluffy Elvis the cat. Elvis is shy and typically avoids children. If we stayed long enough, though, he would usually appear from beneath the sofa, or slink in furtively from another room. After staring intently for a while, he sometimes allowed my daughter to pet him. Doug told D it was because she behaved in a calm and grown-up manner that Elvis was willing to trust her. But he didn’t condescend to children, and D came to enjoy talking with him as much as I did. She appreciated his addressing her as a full-fledged person, even when she was a preschooler. Doug asked interesting questions, and he heard her responses. He avoided the painful clichés children must often endure from well-meaning adults.

Doug’s devoted family was his greatest treasure. He never bragged, but he adored sharing amusing anecdotes about his beautiful wife and daughter, his handsome son. He chose Christmas and birthday gifts for his wife with the utmost care. To preserve the surprise, he had her presents sent to my parents’ house, where my mother would wrap them. Sometimes, however, his gifts needed no festive paper. As his illness increasingly confined him, he treated his wife to unusual thrills with an emphasis on motion: a flight in a hot air balloon, a ride in a speeding racecar. Doug was a NASCAR devotee. Anyone who thinks all NASCAR fans are cut from the same cloth never met Doug. His elegant wife is an even less likely fan, but under the influence of his enthusiasm, she became a convert.

After so much of his life spent in hospitals, subjected to a dizzying array of treatments and procedures, Doug took his last breath at home, asleep in his own bed. I like to think that where he is now, the opportunities for fascinating conversation are even more abundant. And he has no need, anymore, for that cool wheelchair.