Galen Koch: [00:00:00] I’ll start recording now. If you could just introduce yourself, first and last name, where you live, a little bit about –

 

Alfred Merritt: [00:00:09] My name is Al Merritt. I’m the son of Francis Merritt, who was the founding director of Haystack School. I currently live in Philadelphia. We have lived for a number of years in Florida, and we come to Maine every summer now and have strong connections here.

 

GK: [00:00:35] Great.

 

AM: [00:00:36] That’s it? Okay.

 

GK: [00:00:37] That’s perfect. Can you tell me just a little bit about your first experiences with the Montville Campus, your memories of moving there, and what that was like?

 

AM: [00:00:54] We went to Montville in the summer of 1951. I was fourteen. Mary Bishop, who had been on the board of directors at Flint Institute of Arts, where Dad was the director, had approached him with respect to possibly coming to direct this program that had been put together by Mary’s funding and the energy and interest of a local group of craftspeople. My understanding was, in fact, they had identified a couple in Canada to direct it, but for some reason, they couldn’t do it, so Mary came to Dad and asked if he would be interested in this. This would require Dad’s taking an extra month’s vacation from his job at Flint Institute of Arts, which usually had the month of August off, but this was going to be July and August. He said, “Yeah, I’d be really interested and excited about doing this.” We loaded up the car, a 1948 Chevy station wagon, with stuff and drove east. But of course, they were familiar with the East because Mother and Dad both had been born and grew up in Massachusetts, and we’d lived in New Hampshire, where Dad was teaching prior to the war. It was sort of like a trek back home in many ways, and yet Maine was something special that none of us really had a lot of experience with. I remember going by Lake St. George as we approached. We went to look at the facilities. They were being built by Ed Sewell, who was one of the movers behind the school, and he was, among other things, a good carpenter. He actually had designed and was building these. Well, not all of the buildings were finished yet. Primarily, it was the main building. Essentially, what they had at that time was a main building that included the kitchen and the dining area, then a large fireplace, a two-sided fireplace, and a sort of sitting area on the other side. The chimney wasn’t totally done on the building, and then there were a number of cabins. Five, six – I can’t remember exactly. There was a print shop and a pottery shop because other movers behind this were Stell Shevis and Bill Shevis, who went by just “Shevis,” who were printmakers, and Beth Crawford, who was a potter. Beth lived close to the Sewells, and the Sewells were very much involved in this as well. Ed was going to also teach woodworking in his shop, which was a short walk away from the main campus. And then there was a central bathhouse because there were no cabins with private facilities; everybody had to share – men’s and women’s side, of course. This was a new thing, all right. Do you know where the campus is? The old campus?

 

GK: [00:05:30] Three, yeah.

 

AM: [00:05:31] You go by it on Route 3. And down the hill from that, in what they call the Kingdom, where the Sewells lived in the millhouse, and Beth Crawford also lived, there was another house that Mary Bishop had purchased, a stand-alone house of good size, which served as our living quarters. You’d essentially go across a stream and up a dirt road to the Haystack campus. And where that dirt road goes, some of it now was taken over by the bypass that they built around Liberty – Route 3 – that goes up very, very close to the campus. The highway never went that close to the original campus. Route 3 went down through Liberty and up that way, so that was all dirt road back then.

 

GK: [00:06:36] Was it walking distance?

 

AM: [00:06:38] Yeah, it could have been walking distance; it was maybe a quarter of a mile up the hill or something like that. It wasn’t very far at all. We all came and got settled in. It was interesting. My brother Steve, who’s six years younger than I am – they found a camp for him not too far away. I was hanging around more than anything else, I think, being fourteen. I did become friends with Dick Sewell, who was the son of Ed and Marnie Sewell. He was a couple of years older than I was, and I hung out with him some. Also, there was the daughter of the first cook, who was a German lady who had quite strict ways of doing things. She had a very nice daughter. We all palled around together. That summer, they weren’t sure how many people would be applying, and I think the first summer it was fourteen people, and then it sort of took off from there.

 

GK: [00:08:12] When you were on the campus that first year, were you mostly just left to your own devices, or did you have things that you were supposed to be doing?

 

AM: [00:08:23] I was pretty much left to my own devices. One of the things that was – I walked in the woods a lot. As I said, I palled around with these people. Marnie Sewell was a wonderful lady, and she had a Model A Ford Roadster that she taught me to drive. I drove that around a bit. Dick Sewell was interested in theater and that sort of thing, and he would think up things we should dramatize and actually did some filming of it and all. Then, upstream from the mill house was this wonderful pool – it was part of the stream – with a waterfall that came into it. Of course, we spent a lot of time up there swimming and hanging around in the waterfall. Also, that summer, yes, just before we came from Michigan to Maine, I had come down with a cold of some sort, and that persisted to the point that I ended up with viral pneumonia and was hospitalized for a short time. Mrs. Bishop, being herself, paid for the whole thing that wasn’t part of the deal she signed, I’m sure. Anyhow, I was well taken care of in the Waldo County Hospital in Belfast, which is not the same Waldo County Hospital that there is now. It was a much smaller outfit.

 

GK: [00:10:25] Were you delayed in leaving Maine because you were sick?

 

AM: [00:10:29] No, no. They had to get back by the end of August. And that’s another interesting story. Maybe you heard it all already, I don’t know. But, yeah, we packed the whole car up and headed back to Michigan. When we got back there – during the summer, the board of directors had changed quite a bit for the Flint Institute of Arts, and there was a new president and so on. Dad got back to find out he no longer had a job. In fact, I think he learned about that – I take it back. I think maybe he learned about that before we got back. That’s the new story that I’ve heard. We did have to go back to get our stuff. Mrs. Bishop said, “Well, Fran, I want you to direct that school. I want you to run that school.” So, we went back. That year, actually, I didn’t come back with them because I had, prior to going to Maine, I had received a scholarship from the Cranbrook Boys School. Cranbrook is a big organization, with the arts school being the major focus of it. But there was a private boys’ school – very plush – and a private girls’ school and also actually a grammar school. That goes back to the whole story about how Dad got out there. Anyway, I proceeded to go to Cranbrook, and they got me established there, and then they moved to Belfast. They found a rental house in Belfast, Maine, a very nice house, actually. The first time I saw it was at Christmas break when I took the train from Detroit to Boston, and Dad came down and picked me up. Then we drove up to Belfast. Then, I obviously got back, and I think in spring break I didn’t come home at all. I didn’t come home again until the end of that year. Then, they sat me down and said, “Even if you’re getting a scholarship, we can’t really afford to keep you going there.” I really didn’t mind. It was okay. I ended up then going to and finishing high school in Belfast, Maine. Yeah. I’m glad I did. It was a lot of good friends. It was just great. I could walk to school, even though it was about a mile away, until, of course, I got my driver’s license at fifteen. [laughter]

 

GK: [00:14:04] Early back then.

 

AM: [00:14:12] Of course, during the winter, a lot of what Dad could do – and he was pretty much by himself on this thing. He had no clerical assistance at that time of any sort. He put together the first few of the catalogs, Haystack catalogs, and stuff like that. A lot of that could be done where we were living instead of going out to the campus, obviously. We stayed in that house a year, and then they bought a house on Searsmont, Maine, and we moved out there, which was a bit closer to Liberty but a bit further away from my high school. Just another excuse to get a car.

 

GK: [00:15:07] Did you go to the campus those consecutive years? I mean, did you go around a lot?

 

AM: [00:15:16] No. That’s a good question. The next year, the next summer – during the winter, Dad also was doing some portrait work. He was a very good portraitist. He did portraits of the children of a family, quite a wealthy family in Belfast. They lived in the largest house in town. Their son was my age, or I think he was maybe a year younger. I can’t remember exactly. In exchange for that, they paid for me to go with their son to Camp Medomak, which was in Washington, Maine, not too far down the road from Liberty. I spent that summer in camp for the most part. It was a six-week, or maybe it was eight weeks. It was quite a long time, so I wasn’t really involved very much. Truthfully, I was in and out. Then, the next year, that would have been summer of ’53. Yeah, ’53. That year, I was at the camp as a worker. I actually got a job there working in the kitchen. So, again, I wasn’t that close to what was going on all the time. And then the summer of ’54, and a few summers from then on, I actually worked in a camp in Massachusetts, and that was because the director of that camp was also the principal of a grammar school in Belfast, and he boarded with us out in Searsmont for a while. Yeah. Starting after my junior year in high school, I worked there. Then, after I got into college, for the first few summers, again, I worked at this camp in Massachusetts. Then, when I applied to vet school at Cornell, one of the requirements was still then – it’s not anymore – that you had to have farm experience. So, I actually worked on a dairy farm for two summers up in Thorndike, and I found that because in my freshman year at Bowdoin, at Christmas break, my mother said, “I’d like you to maybe meet the veterinarian who takes care of our animals. He’s actually looking for somebody to help.”  Because they were brothers, and the younger brother had just graduated from vet school at Cornell. They needed some brawn and no brains to hold cows in various ways because they had to do some special, what we call TB [tuberculosis] and Brucella testing, collecting blood samples, and so on. That’s how I essentially got introduced to veterinary medicine. Then I’d come in from that and help fill in at the small animal hospital. I about fainted when I saw my first spay. But from there on, it was all right. [laughter] Anyway, that’s how I got started in the profession. It was fun in those two summers that I was working on the farm in Thorndike. We were up at three or four in the morning and worked hard all day, but I had an occasional night off, so I’d drive down to Haystack. I got palling around with a guy named Byron Temple, who was there and with some others. I got to know a number of the young students there, and we’d drink beer, obviously. We’d sit, talk about this and that and mess around. Then, I also got to know a girl. [laughter]

 

GK: [00:20:57] So, you went back a little more often.

 

AM: [00:20:59] I went back a little more often, and my boss, the farmer – it was a nice family, wonderful family, but there were really hard-shell Baptists. He couldn’t quite understand how, occasionally, out in the morning in the barn, I was a little bit ill to my stomach. [laughter]

 

GK: [00:21:25] No idea.

 

AM: [00:21:26] No idea. He couldn’t figure that one out. [laughter] That was probably as close as I came to the – oh, and there were a lot of good people there at that time I got to know better. Stan Vanderbeek was an exceptionally brilliant guy who, among other things, did a lot of experimental film work. And Toshiko Takaezu. You may know that name. Wonderful potter. She’s now passed away, but she was there [inaudible]. And Jack Lenor Larsen. I got to know Jack, of course, but he showed up somewhat earlier.

 

GK: [00:22:25] What was the culture like? What did it feel like when you were there?

 

AM: [00:22:32] Well, there’s a lot of energy; just seems to be the case here as well. It was a much smaller operation, obviously. Mother and Dad were both very much involved.

 

GK: [00:22:53] Yeah, I would love to hear how your mom got involved.

 

AM: [00:22:55] In the early days, the first couple of years we were there, she taught weaving in the main building because there was no studio and then they finally built a fabric studio, and then that’s when Larson started coming. Then, things moved on from there. And then, of course, she was the cook for a few years as well. She worked very, very hard, and she and Dad really worked hand-in-glove in this whole idea. Bill Brown then started to show up because Dad had known him in Flint, Michigan. Did you know about Bill Brown at all? The name Bill Brown? Bill Brown had a wonderful comic timing. He was always coming up with quips and everything else. I’ll tell you another story about that later. Anyway, he started coming, and then Dad actually made him the assistant director, and he was also assistant director up here when they moved up in ’61. He also arranged – he was teaching in the art field at the University of Delaware, and he arranged where students could come – Delaware students could come to Haystack and get credit for summer studies. That was really the first accreditation program I think they had going. And Bill, I mean, I’d known Bill, too, from back in Flint. He was just really always positive, always with the quips. In fact, one of the students that he arranged to come from Delaware he ended up marrying. And then, eventually, he went on to become the director at Penland from all the connections up here. There was a lot of energy, but good times, as well, like kite contests on Haystack Mountain.

 

GK: [00:26:04] Was it kite day or something?

 

AM: [00:26:05] Yeah, they had a kite day sort of thing. Bill Brown may have actually been the one who initiated that. He was the energy behind that. Lots of personalities, obviously, of various types coming and going in the staff as well as the students from what I remember, and the occasional bitching [laughter] about this or that or the other thing. Of course, Mary Bishop came for some sessions, and her sister Margaret Swart also came and was eventually on the board of directors and was interested in ceramics. I actually have a piece of hers that was in Mother and Dad’s collection, which I don’t know what to do with. They came from time to time, at least once a year. I’m trying to think.

 

GK: [00:27:33] You’re trying to recall names?

 

AM: [00:27:35] No, I’m trying to think of all the things I remember about the general tenor of the whole thing.

 

GK: [00:27:43] Was it fairly rustic?

 

AM: [00:27:48] Yeah. The cabins were very, very basic kind of things. As I said, it was a shared wash facility. I can’t remember exactly when the so-called scholarship program got started because in the early days, Mrs. Bishop was funding a lot of it, and it took a number of years for it to become financially on its own foot. And it sort of did. And then there was the move up here, which then required again a considerable amount of funding from her and other sources, which I’m not sure I know much about, actually. Sure. Essential. Rustic, but certainly not like you felt like you were camping or something like that. They had –

 

GK: [00:28:51] All the amenities.

 

AM: [00:28:51] Yeah. Wonderful food. Once the main building was finished, again, it had these nice fireplaces. Oh, yeah. They would have various openings and exhibitions of the student’s work. Mrs. Bishop was a widow when we first knew her. Her husband had been up in the GM [General Motors] world. And Flint, in those days, where she lived, of course, was the home to Buick and Chevrolet. Anyway, that’s where I think the money came from. She had two sons and a daughter. We knew them when we all lived in Flint, but they didn’t show up too much at Haystack. But as time went on, Mrs. Bishop was interested in Christian science, and she had a friend who became really a companion who was a physician, but then also was moved over into Christian science – Meldon Everett. And Meldon bought a farmhouse up the road from Haystack, and it had some outbuildings which were used for some of these exhibits. Actually, she provided spaces for some of the faculty to live. And some of the faculty also lived in this house down in the “kingdom,” the lower area where we had lived that first summer. They put faculty and then scholarship students up in those spots.

 

GK: [00:31:07] Did you ever participate in any workshops or making?

 

AM: [00:31:12] No, no. I did not participate in any of the workshops. [laughter]

 

GK: [00:31:17] [laughter] But you’d participate in lively conversation.

 

AM: [00:31:21] And recreational times. Yes. Right. That would be the case, particularly those two years I was working on the farm before I got into vet school. The first summer – I went into vet school in 1959. The summer of 1960, four of us went west. There was a Cornell prof. who was moving to University of California Berkeley and needed his car driven, his Chevrolet. We’d talked about going west anyway. So, three of my classmates and I headed west. I won’t go on on this. We left one sort of somewhere in the Midwest, and then three of us went on to California. Then one of them went on to Hawaii. And Al Smith – another Al – and I hitchhiked our way up to Washington State and ended up in Mt. Vernon, Washington, freezing peas for Stokely-Van Camp. [laughter] And strawberries, too. Actually, I had a night shift, which was pretty interesting, and I had to join the Teamsters. In the daytime, we’d maybe go to the beach, but later on in the afternoon – anyhow, that was the summer, of course, JFK was nominated for the presidential nomination. Al and I, at the end of the summer, hitchhiked back. He lived in Vermont. I hitchhiked back to Maine. To make a long story short, it took five and a half days, and it cost me twenty-five bucks to go across the country. [laughter]

 

GK: [00:33:38] Incredible. Not like that now.

 

AM: [00:33:43] Then, after vet school the next year, which would have been ’61, it was the summer that I probably had the closest relationship with the school and when I met Nancy because I had started the summer out working on construction, road construction, part of Route 1 down near Stockton Springs. They were going to do a bypass area. I was working on that for a while, and I was really – I mean, we were cutting down trees and that sort of thing to make the space. I do remember, among other things, when we were doing that, running across a deer skeleton and bringing all the parts up here and putting them on the deck. Anyway, I got tired of doing that, and Dad said, “Well, why don’t you come up? There’s a lot to be done.” Again, this campus was not finished when they opened it.

 

GK: [00:34:53] When did they begin this campus? I mean, did you remember that?

 

AM: [00:34:57] Well, you mean building it or –?

 

GK: [00:34:59] Yeah.

 

AM:  Oh, yeah, they started – well, they really got things rolling about summer of ’59. Bill Muir, who was on the board, and maybe you know Emily and Bill Muir. Bill found this property. I think you’ve heard all that story before. Then, of course, they had to get the architect, and they found Ed Barnes. They started building probably the summer of ‘60, something like that. But when we came up – we were coming up with them – Basil Bray was the contractor, and things were moving along, but they weren’t moving along maybe as fast as they might have liked. But that reminds me of another story. One time, early in that construction, Bill Brown and Dad came up to see how things were going, and they ended up sleeping in the back of Dad’s station wagon. They got up the next morning, and Bill was complaining like hell because it was so uncomfortable. Dad said, “I don’t know. Seemed all right to me.” Bill says, “Yeah, that’s because you were sleeping on the side with the soft tire.” [laughter] And that was Bill’s kind of humor. Yeah. So, there was still a lot of activity going on right up to the time that the first students were to come. There was going to be a full load. But a lot of the cabins didn’t have the shingling done yet, and there was a lot of junk to haul off. Mike Cohen, who’s a well-known ceramicist, and I were on the dump patrol. I also was assigned to go pick up people in Bangor and bring them down. Of course, they really didn’t know where they were – as the roads got smaller and smaller and their eyes got bigger and bigger, and they’re wondering where this guy is taking them. Then, of course, we’d come into the entrance to Haystack, and then we go up over the ledge, and they really – and then it comes out on the road. In those days, we could come right down next to the deck entrance.  As soon as they saw the campus, you could just feel a palpable sigh of relief [laughter] as they said, “Oh, okay.” There were a lot of young people there that I got to know well. I obviously didn’t get involved in any of the art making. Well, yeah, I did a little sculpture that’s still in our house in Philly. I slept in that director’s, that other director’s cabin I showed you there.

 

GK: [00:38:48] Which was where? Describe it for the tape. It was by the dining hall?

 

AM: [00:38:52] Yes, by the dining hall. Down the – what’s it called? – luxury row or something? It was the first house on the left. Again, that one wasn’t even shingled. I certainly took part in most of the parties that would take place from time to time. Although, everybody who comes here is very focused on getting their work done. But yeah, there were – and I’d attend the lectures and that sort of thing. I met Nancy the first night. She probably told you about that. No?

 

GK: [00:39:37] Yeah. What was your impression? [laughter]

 

AM: [00:39:41] Sitting across the table from her first night of the first session? Well, my brother was sitting next to her, and she was more interested in him than me at that time. It was slow. It took a while for all that to develop. Anyway, she stayed on an extra session, and by the time the second session was done, we were – it turned out her parents were living in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, which wasn’t that far from Cornell. And so, that next Thanksgiving, I went down, and that’s how it took off from there.

 

GK: [00:40:30] Met the family.

 

AM: [00:40:31] Well, I’d met her mother and dad because they brought her up and came and got her. I was kind of a dogsbody for Dad that summer and doing whatever he asked me to do to keep things going. A lot of it was shingling.

 

GK: [00:40:58] What was your impression of the campus when you first saw it?

 

AM: [00:41:03] Oh, I thought it was spectacular. The other thing I do remember very clearly, those first few summers, were the crossbills in the tops of the trees there. They were wonderful birds, and they were everywhere, all in the trees. After the first couple of years, they were not here anymore. I think maybe they just don’t like to be around a lot of people. But sure, the coastline. We’d walk down there a lot. Oh, I remember clamming with Eric Hopkins, who knew a lot about clamming because he came from North Haven, I think, or Vinalhaven. Got to know Ron Burke, who was here as a scholarship student. Well, no, he was the monitor because he already had lots of experience in ceramics. I got to know a lot of people. It was a lot of fun. It was a great feeling of people focused, but coming from all over the place and very much getting long together. Mary Nyburg, of course, came that summer, and she brought a group of women with her who were potters. I think maybe she was instructing them, one of which was Pierre Salinger’s wife, Nancy Salinger. And Pierre Salinger was the press secretary for JFK. Mother, being a strong Democrat, pressed Nancy Salinger to please, perhaps could she obtain an autographed photograph of JFK? Not long after Nancy left, sure enough, an envelope from the hite House appeared to Priscilla Merritt. [laughter]

 

GK: [00:43:45] That’s great.

 

AM: [00:43:51] And I’ve got that today, actually. [laughter]

 

GK: [00:43:54] Were you on campus for a couple of summers?

 

AM: [00:43:59] No, that was really the most intense summer I spent on campus. Then, the next summer, I was back and forth, but I was working for a vet in Waterville. Of course, Nancy and I were going together more. So, I would come over for a short time, but I was pretty much tied up with work over there that summer. I had this beat-up old car, a beat-up old Plymouth station wagon to start with. Mom bought from some students who were here who wanted to get another car. It was all rusted out and everything else, but got me back and forth. Then, the next summer, when I was working in Waterville, there was a guy who was a friend of my boss who was in the used car business. He switched that for something a little better, but still a bomb that I drove from here, back and forth to Cornell. And I’d drive over here, obviously, to see Nancy. There were people coming back. Skip Johnson and his wife – Skip was a woodworker and then became chairman of the art department at UW Madison, where Paul Sacaridiz came from as well. Nancy and I became good friends with them.  Charlie Gailis, of course, was here the first summer, the summer of ’61. He was a scholarship student. That became a lasting friendship, of course. M.C. Richards – very interesting woman, potter, philosopher who had a Black Mountain College base at the time. Some of these people kept coming back and had recurring relationships with the school. Through Mother and Dad, I got to know them. And Nancy did, too. She came, obviously, that second summer. I do remember that first summer. I was just talking to Stu about this today. It was a beautiful September day before I had to go back to school. I was out putting shingles on that original director’s house. Things had either stopped here, or they were about ready to stop. I was listening to the radio as I was working and thinking as well, “What a great time it’s been, all these people coming from everywhere and getting along and producing stuff.” The news all of a sudden jumped in with the Berlin Wall being built. I thought to myself, “My God.” I mean, is a perfect example of how people can come from everywhere and create this energy here and work together and play together. How could this happen that they could make this division? That was a very powerful moment for me. It really, really was. Anyway, it’s something that sticks in my mind. When I think about it, I think about that summer. Not [only] the great times, but also that as well.

 

GK: [00:48:46] A little bit of a different – a utopian –

 

AM: [00:48:49] Yeah, right. Exactly. I mean, moving from that into reality, I guess, in terms of human behavior. Well, anyway, I won’t get into that.

 

GK: [00:49:00] Yeah. I was wondering what the shift from Montville to Deer Isle was like for you.

 

AM: [00:49:10] It’s interesting you say Montville.

 

GK: [00:49:12] Because it was Liberty.

 

AM: [00:49:14] We always referred to it as Liberty because that was the post office, even though, yeah, I think it’s in Montville. [laughter] The Liberty campus.

 

GK: [00:49:24] Yeah, Liberty campus.

 

AM: [00:49:25] The Liberty campus. The difference? I mean, this was much more magnificent, really. And the whole business just amped up another level because of the facilities, because of the environment, because of the layout. The Liberty situation was much more confined and much quieter in some ways, and certainly not as magnificent as this. I think that’s inspirational in a sense, too, to people just to be in that kind of environment, obviously. I guess that’s basically what it is. Of course, early on, the people who were originally involved in the development of the school were long gone. They were no longer associated with it. That’s another whole story on how that developed. I think their original idea was that it would be just a small operation that would be bringing people from Maine locally and teach them something about craft or print, which they could use either artistically or perhaps for some business or something like this. Dad’s idea was a lot more beyond that, a lot more expansive than that. Certainly, all of that developed in the old campus with respect to some differences of opinion about the direction of the whole thing. Then, because those people were not involved in teaching every session after the first summer, and a number of these young people were coming in from elsewhere, including Larson, all these people had more expansive ideas, or certainly, they had a lot more exposure. I’m hanging up on the word. They could see the potential of this thing really becoming much bigger than it was originally, than the original idea, I think. As I said, none of those original people were around up here at all when this was started.

 

GK: [00:52:59] Except your parents.

 

AM: [00:53:00] Except my parents and Bill Brown. Well, of course, some of the people who had been teaching there – Jack Larson had tremendous input into the direction of the school in many ways. There were lots of others as well. Yeah.

 

GK: [00:53:22] Where were your parents living on the island? Also, didn’t your mother have a gallery?

 

AM: [00:53:32] She did. That was where Elena Kubler’s is now.

 

GK: [00:53:37] Oh, really? Was it called Turtle?

 

AM: [00:53:40] No.

 

GK: [00:53:41] Oh, yeah. It was American –

 

AM: [00:53:42] It was called Centennial House.

 

GK: [00:53:44] Centennial House?

 

AM: [00:53:45] Yeah. It was bought from the Dow brothers if I recall. And I think, again, Bill Muir maybe found that house for them. That building that Elena has now as a gallery has been a bit more developed than it was – then, it was just the garage. Yes. Mom did establish a shop there, a gallery, that pretty much featured the work of the young artists who came through Haystack and got started. That included Byron Temple, that included Mike Cohen, that included Dale Chihuly, that included a lot of well-known people as time went on. She promoted that. Again, it wasn’t as sophisticated in setup as what Elena has, but Mom had a good eye for stuff, a really good eye. And they would also have openings there of – again, similar to what they had out in the old Haystack of work by all the current instructors or various social gatherings as well. Yeah, they lived there. And then eventually, when Dad retired, which was ’78, they built a studio for him, a print studio, in the upper level of that gallery area. That’s where he did all that development of his gelatin print technique and that sort of thing. They would continue to have people dropping in all the time who had Haystack connections. It was a pretty active time for them, for sure. Mom always had iced tea or something. Then, for a short while, she also had a food business there of ice cream, sandwiches, coffee, and that sort of thing. That was after the galleries, I do believe. Yeah. She was entrepreneurial in that sense.

 

GK: [00:56:52] When did you realize the influence of Haystack or your parent’s role in the craft world? Did you have a moment?

 

AM: [00:57:10] Yeah, I guess the first revelation of that would be that first summer I worked here in ’61. I had the opportunity to see how people interrelated with them. I had the opportunity to watch Dad in action. He wasn’t a – what should I say?

 

GK: [00:57:46] Yeah. How would you describe him?

 

AM: [00:57:47] Yeah. Detail stuff didn’t interest him much. He left that to other people. Ideas and encouraging people to express themselves and being open to – I mean, in the early days, young artists could come here and start talking with him. And he’d say, “Well, we don’t have any room in the place, but you can camp out there if you want to.” He was really open to that sort of thing. But the detail people who needed to make sure that the stuff got done and the buildings weren’t falling down and that sort of thing sometimes got a bit exasperated with him. I know the words; I’m just trying to – he was inspirational and also could relate to all these different mediums and talk about them. When he was introducing somebody at an evening session or something like that, he could always find the right way to express what they were trying to do. In that sense, that’s how he functioned. His own work – it’s very interesting, really. In his own work, he never thought of anything as being permanent. He even considered his artwork something that only had a life. If it then fell apart or fell down or something like that, that was just part of the way things were. I think he certainly had a sense of himself and what he was accomplishing. I don’t think he agonized over his enduring reputation or something like that. I’m trying to remember your question now.

 

GK: [01:00:48] Well, it was just when did you realize they were influential, which I think you answered.

 

AM: [01:00:52] Right. That first summer on Deer Isle. And then, of course, there were things that came around after retirement. There were a couple of events sponsored by the American Craft Council that he was invited to be involved in one way or another and presentation of awards or recognitions and that sort of thing. I remember one of those events was actually at Cranbrook, and Nancy and I went up there as well from Florida to meet him at the airplane. We drove around together there. How we got to Michigan was that when Dad was teaching Art at Colby Junior College in New Hampshire before the war, he met a gal who was one of his students. Right after he got out of the war, he was in the engineers. This gal had married a painter, an artist in Bloomfield, Michigan, and she was in art as well. They were taking a year off to Guatemala, and would Dad come out and fill in Bud’s classes. He was teaching a class at the girls’ school, Kingswood, and also this painting class up at Flint Institute of Arts. Anyway, that ACC session at Cranbrook – it was fun to come back and to see some of those things for me, too, and to drive up to Fenton, where we lived, and so on. Then, there was the big event that Dad could not attend in New York because he was slipping by then. And Mother went. Stu, of course, was there. First time and the last time I’ve ever seen Stu in a tuxedo, which was pretty interesting. This was a big, fancy event in New York, where Mother and Dad together received recognition for all the work they’d done in the craft field. That brought it home, of course, in answering your question.

 

GK: [01:03:43] What was your relationship, later in life, with Haystack? Were you on the board of trustees at one time?

 

AM: [01:03:50] I was on the board. I was on the board. Those were interesting times as well, for sure.

 

GK: [01:03:59] When was that?

 

AM: [01:04:05] A long time ago. ’75 to ’78 or ’79, something like that – ’80. And I was there when Charlie Gailis was president of the board and Ron Pearson was on the board. So, we’d come up. We also would come up some in summers, and certainly, as the kids were born, we would bring them up as well. The house we have in Stonington, in fact, my mother found for us. In 1970, we bought that house. We’d only come – some years, we didn’t come at all, and we rented it out sometimes. Then Nancy started coming more than I, and I’d fly in and out until I retired. Yeah, on the board then. The deliberations were a bit simpler, although I was on at the time when the glass facility was built, and I know the guy who designed that. I know his name. For the moment, it slips by me. But he was a brilliant guy, and he was the one that conceived of that building as it is there, and particularly, talking about making it a fireproof type building because it was going to be glass or metal work in there with a lot of fire. Dad was always worried about fire. He was very concerned about fire. But certainly, the endowment and all of that stuff was nothing like it is now. The whole financial thing was much simpler, I think, than it is now. Of course, at that time, Fred Wahl was the buildings overseer, like your dad was. There were situations where Fred would get a bit frustrated with Dad, [laughter] who never even noticed that stuff. [laughter]

 

GK: [01:07:06] The shingles falling off.

 

AM: [01:07:09] Exactly, yeah.

 

GK: [01:07:14] The decking.

 

AM: [01:07:14] Rotting beams. [laughter] All this stuff. That was the time – oh, yeah. Ed Barnes was never –as brilliant as this place is, the big buildings that have the rooflines come together, and the drains went down from the center. There were, in those days, just the simple drainpipe stuff you can buy in the local store. Oftentimes, they’d freeze up and burst. Well, it just frustrates me. I can’t think of the name. The guy who designed the glass facility also came up with a brilliant plan on how to mitigate that problem without changing the roofline. He was just brilliant. He’s no longer alive. He smoked like hell. That didn’t help him.

 

GK: [01:08:33] Was he on the board?

 

AM: [01:08:34] Yeah, he was on the board. He was on the board. I’m sure you can find his name.

 

GK: [01:08:40] Yeah, they can fill that in.

 

AM: [01:08:41] David Cheever.

 

GK: [01:09:01] When you come here now, do you feel like the legacy of your father and mother is still present?

 

AM: [01:09:14] Oh, sure.

 

GK: [01:09:15] Yeah, those early founders.

 

AM: [01:09:16] Oh, sure. Yeah, of course. It comes up every now and then, too. Of course, they’re both – their ashes are buried here.

 

GK: [01:09:26] Oh, I didn’t know that.

 

AM: [01:09:27] Yes. We don’t make a big deal of it with respect to the site, and so on and so forth. We go by that and think about them. And yeah, we’ve watched the evolution and watched the role. And again, I had never been out to this space, where we are talking, for all these years, it must have been here with these new boards and all. But when we brought people here to see the place, we’d end up going down on the shore because we love that. Our daughter was actually married down there on the shore. The kids all remember that as well. Of course, we’ve attended a lot of the galas and those events and watched all that develop. We think the world of Stu Kestenbaum and what he did for this place and how he saved it in many ways and really carried on in obviously a different way, but still the same general idea, the general feeling that Dad set up. Yeah. He was more interested also in what happened with the facilities as well as the programs. But he’s inspirational in his own way as well. There couldn’t be anybody better to succeed that, I don’t think, than Stu. [laughter] I really feel that strongly.

 

GK: [01:11:43] That’s great. That’s great

 

AM: [01:11:45] Yeah. They’re both mysterious in different ways. My Dad was still a mystery to me. [laughter]

 

GK: [01:12:00] The whole time. That’s so funny.

 

AM: [01:12:07] Inscrutable.

 

GK: [01:12:07] Well, thanks, Al. I don’t know if there’s any other periods of time that you want to mention.

 

AM: [01:12:14] I think you’ve covered it pretty well, actually. I hope I’ve given you some –

 

GK: [01:12:23] It was wonderful.

 

AM: [01:12:23] – perspective.

 

GK: [01:12:25] You’re very great. I mean, even just storytelling. You told some great stories.

 

AM: [01:12:38] [laughter] Well, okay, great. Thank you.