[Oral history interview with Abe Greiss and related materials, Army town]

              ARMY TOWN – ORAL HISTORIES
INTERVIEWEE: Abe Greiss1
INTERVIEWER: J. Stephen Catlett
DATE: October, 2007
[Begin Recording]
AG: [unclear] my vision is gone now because they’re a problem, and I [unclear]—I can see, you know—I just can’t read little, tiny little type, which I don’t need to do anymore. The fact is that, you see when I was talking you asked me about teaching. I was very lucky in most cases because when I came out of high school I got a job in a department store in Newark [New Jersey].
JSC: Where were you born?
AG: I was born in Newark, New Jersey—
JSC: Oh, in Newark.
AG: Yeah.
JSC: Okay.
1 This recording, the original of which is stored in the Greensboro Historical Museum Archives, was conducted by J. Stephen Catlett, Archivist at the Greensboro Historical Museum, with Mr. Greiss at his home in New York City. Although conducted in 2007, it was a continuation of the ongoing research and documentation about WWII Greensboro, which began prior to the opening of the Army Town: Greensboro 1943-1946 exhibit and publication in 1993. As Greiss relates in this interview, he was an artist who came to Greensboro in 1943, and did a variety of painting assignments. Of particular note – and the reason he had contacted Mr. Catlett at the Museum earlier that year – was to find out if the huge jungle landscape mural he had painted in an African American building on base might still be in existence. To the best of Catlett’s knowledge, the structure (which name & location Mr. Greiss could not remember) was no longer in existence. Catlett did, however, take the opportunity to interview Mr. Greiss on a trip to NYC later that year. Unrelated to WWII Greensboro, but a significant aspect of Mr. Greiss’s biography, is the fact – as related in this interview – that he was the neighbor of noted urban activist and author Jane Jacobs. They helped organize and save the West Village in NYC from Robert Moses’s plan to build an expressway across lower Manhattan. AG: And a long story about that. There was a lot of interesting things there, because I—both my parents were immigrants, so anything I asked them, I never got an answer because they didn’t know anything more than I did.
JSC: Yes.
AG: So, I learned—you know, I learned to act on my own. I got a job doing artwork at a department store, and after a few months, I realized that there was something that the art director was doing which was making layouts and designing the advertising. So I thought that would be more interesting than finished art—which I did, too— I could draw anything.
I got the job because I could draw—very well. I mean, I—I could draw anything; that’s how I got the job. But, as I became art director, it was a fluke because after a few—less than a year, the art director that I worked with never—didn’t show up one day. And my boss, Herbert S. Waters[?], I remember his name, a little blustering fellow, big, tall [unclear]—He comes in and said that the art director wasn’t showing up; he sees me making these layouts. He says “Are you doing these layouts?” I said “Yes.” He said “Well then, you’re the art director.” [all chuckle]
I was seventeen—eighteen years old. And there were twenty-five—twenty or twenty-three people working there. Artwork, you know—
JSC: Good gosh.
AG: —was [unclear], and I knew what to do. I was surprised, but, all of a sudden I was art director—nobody knew it but me.
MC: [chuckles]
AG: There were twenty people I had to talk to so I called a meeting. And my meeting was about creativity, and I wanted to do something else. I began to work with two wonderful copy writers, one home furnishings and one fashion. And after a few—couple of
years of doing this, I learned all about vendor money and I learned some of the business.
Turned out that they were helping me and I was helping them, because we began to run some ads in the paper and appeared in a book or two, you know, and a couple of publications, and, you know I was one of the—sort of a big shot in a sense, you know.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
JSC: What company was that?
AG: [unclear] I was eighteen. It was called Kresge-Newark. It was a five and dime guy, but it was his big store. It was as big as Bamberger’s, you know, a fairly good-sized store. And anyway, I was doing very well. That’s where I began teaching. I began to talk to the people that worked there about changing it this way, and doing, you know, making corrections, and I really was helping them, believe it or not, because they were doing a routine job. And when you talk to people you find they have ideas, so, at the end of the year a good little group.
And I had a competition, which you’ll hear about later. Bamberger’s was part of Macy’s at the time, and—big store, too—but they had a lot of money, and Rosenblum [?] who was the art director there had a friend who liked him so much that he gave him whatever he wanted, and I had, you know, whatever I could get. [both chuckle]
And we were competing with each other at the time, and I think he took up some of my ideas, too, in some of his ads. Anyway, it was like, later on, he became my boss—later on I’ll tell you.
Anyway, I was doing very well as an art director when I decided to quit. There was a big problem with my family because they had no money, and my father went bankrupt, and no job, and we had no money. So I became the sole support of my father. And one day he said, while I was still at Kresge’s, he said to me “I want to start a business.” Because as a young man he was a sheet metal worker, a roofer, in Europe, and he knew how to work with metal. So he was starting a business with two other guys. He needed nine hundred dollars, and during the depression, in bad times, I was the only one to have—I had money in the bank.
JSC: Yes.
AG: You know, I started saving. So I loaned him the money, finally, and he started his business. When he did, I began—I decided I would come to New York and work. I did some freelance here and got to know other people in New York. But—and I had volunteered earlier to be in the, to be a pilot at the Air Cadets. I [unclear], and, of course, they—
JSC: Was this prior to the war? Or was this—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
AG: They wouldn’t take me because I was supporting my family. They weren’t—not that they wouldn’t take me—I didn’t volunteer to go in the army, but just to learn to be a pilot.
JSC: Oh, okay.
AG: They were called the Air Cadets School. Anyway, I went to New York and I rented a little place there and I was freelancing all over New York and doing very well freelance, too. So money was never a problem, for some reason, you know. It was for my family, but it was not for me.
Anyway, I was drafted. Finally I got a letter, because now I was free, and I was drafted in the army. Turned out, the army I was in was the Air Corps, because I had volunteered—you know, it’s interesting how you—things happen that you don’t expect, you know, consequences.
JSC: There was no separate air force at that time, it was the Army Air Corps.
AG: Army Air Corps, yeah. Anyway, I—When I was in the Air—in Fort Dix[New Jersey]—we suddenly were shipped out after being trained a little bit there. That was where they shoved [?] the New Yorkers, mostly. I came down to Greensboro, yeah, and there’s now we start a little bit into the story of what we’re talking about, hopefully.
JSC: Did—What year were you there? Do you remember?
AG: This is going to be confusing for me. These years I forget.
JSC: Yes.
AG: You know. It was—
JSC: The base opened in 1943.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
AG: It was a little—It was because I was held up. I wasn’t drafted right away; there was some time in between. It wasn’t planned, I had no plan, really. I said “Whatever happens, will happen.” And finally, I think it was in ’44—’43 or ’44—maybe it was ’43, I’m not sure.
JSC: The base—our military base opened in the spring of 1943.
AG: Around ’43, it was.
JSC: Yes.
AG: Around that time. But what happened, is I—we arrived at the BTC [Basic Training Center] Number 10?
JSC: Correct.
AG: We were taken to a barracks which was empty. Apparently they had just started to build this place, and all they had were the buildings, and some places were somewhat completed, and some wasn’t. In other words, it wasn’t really a finished product yet. So we were expecting, I suppose, to get the beds and all the rest. We had our duffle bags with us.
So they sent us out; we sat on the floor, in the barracks. We’re all sitting around and of course I had a sketch pad with me, as I always did. And I began drawing some things, you know. And some of the soldiers sitting there, they saw me sitting drawing, and two of the soldiers came over and said to me “Are you an artist?”
“Yes, I am, yeah.”
And they said, “You know the other guys in the other barracks are making signs that say Minnesota, you know, and Milwaukee, you know, and all that stuff. How about making a couple of signs—New York and New Jersey?”
JSC: [chuckles]
AG: “Where am I going to get that?”
“Why don’t you go up there to the sergeant there, you know, and talk to him? And see whether they’ll give you some paint.”
I said “All right.” So I went up there, and I see this guy—nice young fellow, good looking guy, master sergeant—stripes—and I tell him about—that they want me to make some signs. “Could I get some paints? Because I have brushes, and—“
And he says, “You make signs?”
I says “Yeah, I know how to make signs. By the way, that’s how I made money for my family. Making signs in Newark.” Anyway, so “Yeah, I know how to make signs.”
He says “Come with me,” and he takes me around the back, and here’s my friend—became my friend later—Michael Lekakis, a Greek sculptor, with two guys sitting at a table, making signs. And he saw me and he said “Can you make signs?” I said, “Yeah.”
So I—He said, “Sit down and make this sign.” He gave me some things. I knew how to make the one for the barracks first, so I did that. I told him “I made that sign.” They put
it out front of the barracks, and then he said, “Now you’ll have to make some more signs.”
Apparently what had happened—we were shipped in—a lot of the places didn’t have any signs at all. In other words, things were unfinished, so to speak. And eventually they had to get the beds in and all the rest of it. And so I started making signs. [unclear] materials, and I had—they had some stuff.
I began making the signs with Michael Lekakis, who became my friend for life later on. You know, a friend, we got to know each other. As we were making the signs, they began to get more fancy. All of a sudden they wanted a sign for the commissary of the officer’s club. You know, they—You know, they didn’t have any. You’d come there and you’d say “Where is the officer’s club?” No sign.
So you began making that kind of sign. And Michael, who was a sculptor, began taking large—there was plenty of wood around, you know, and he was—he sanded it down, polished it down, for me to make a sign. And he cut out the edges, you know, jagged edges on it, and he made it look— real sexy looker—it was exciting.
JSC: [chuckles]
AG: And then he would put a little tone on it—background on it for me. And I would make a sign, I’d paint the officers’ club and so on and—but then he—we said “Well, doesn’t look like much.” I said “I’ll make a painting of an airplane on it. We’ll get a picture of an airplane.” So I put an airplane on it.
So, you know, painted all—they looked really nice, to hang it up. When it was hung up, finally, the officers’ club, somebody saw it, they liked it. They said, “Who made that sign?” and they—Michael, and me. And they said, “Well, you know we have to do something in the officers’ club here—the walls are barren. You know, there’s nothing—You know, it’s very drab. It’s all wood—just wood.” So, they wanted—they asked me if I could do something in there to make it look better. [unclear] do something on the walls.
I walked in, took a look at it and I said “Yeah, I think I can do something.” Then I got that job, of making a mural or whatever I wanted on those walls. So I spent about, a couple of months, actually there—maybe less than a month. Yeah, I think it was about a month or so in there—got to know the place, and I began thinking about ideas of what I could do. And some of the ideas were quite elaborate, because there’s a space, and a little barrier of some sort, then another space.
The walls weren’t perfect, they were just small—fairly large drawings of whatever I wanted. I had some ideas; I began to make some sketches. I got to know a few very interesting people there. A matter of fact, Elmer Bernstein was there. He was the—later on became one of the hotshot movie music composers. He became very famous. And he became a friend; we were working a little bit together, trying to get some music people together. Matter of fact we met somebody there who was also a string—was part of a swing quartet from Europe, who became—started some kind of a little group—orchestra.
As I was working on this thing and my ideas were written, I put them down on paper. No one had—was in charge—I had to make all the decisions on what I would do. But one day after I had [unclear] started, one thing I was going to do—I was thinking of doing either landscapes or painted landscapes, or something to do with the air corps. You know, different jobs—pilots, mechanics, and so on, in some kind of a sequence that would look like what the army air corps was about.
Anyway, about a month or so after that, I got a notice that—we got a notice that Major Clarence F. Bush [?], had been made camouflage commander, or whatever the title was, for special services, and that someone else was going to be working in the officers’ club and they’re going to do something in there, in that—in the club. And that I would have to belong—become part of camouflage.
And among the people that were there was Michael Lekakis, and I got to see him again. We went to the offices—the new offices—and it turned out that special services did a lot of other things besides camouflage, but our main job was camouflage. And I was then—We started working on that. They began to teach us a little bit about camouflage, and we—some of the other artists—there were about six or seven artists working there—I got to be friendly with all of them.
But there were, in our barracks, was three other men that became my friends. Michael Lekakis was one, Rudy Staffol[?], and Larry Rabbet[?], and another man—I forget his name. But, three—the three of those men and I were friends, each of them working on a different thing. Larry was also doing—he was an animator from New York, and he did he did cartoon work for the PX[military base store]. Big panels of cartoons.
And, of course as we were being taught camouflage, we had to start building the camouflage area, digging foxholes and making a dummy plane hidden by those strips of fabric to camo—and a net over the planes.
JSC: Yes.
AG: In other words, it looked like a plane from the air, but it was actually just wooden [unclear]—had cloth. And we also dug holes and did dummy hideouts where the snipers could dig, you know, go in a hole. And we made a—something that looked like an old tree on top of the hole with a peephole. You know, little camouflaged sniper beds, I guess you call them. Michael was the expert for that, he was wonderful—he made it out of good materials—barbed wire, actually, rather wire and fabric.
JSC: Was the idea to potentially deceive the enemy thinking that there was an encampment or planes or—But they’re not really there?
AG: Yeah, yeah, that’s right.
JSC: Yes.
AG: Also there was a place for guns, we did one for guns and all that. But we also were painting panels describing the things about camouflage, how they’re—How it’s done. How you use paint and so on to hide different, you know, different facial structures, and so on. And Michael is making heads, also the black soldiers heads, had to paint the faces. Made it out of cement—He was so good. Wonderful sculptor.
And anyway, we were doing that for a while—quite a while. I’m getting a little off here. The next step was something which I didn’t expect. They had—they would—there were certain areas—there was an area that was separate—where the black soldiers lived. You know it was segregated at that time. In the back, toward the end of the camp [unclear]. Anyway, they had—they had no place to go to at night, or during the day even, where they could sit down at a table with each other and get food, snacks, drinks, stuff like that.
There was a complaint—somebody made a complaint, I guess—that something has to be done for them down there. And Major Bush was given the job of doing that, of getting somebody to do something down there. And they had mentioned that there was a—first they called it a handball court? You know, the size of a regulation handball court? And then somebody said it was a service club and then— nobody seemed to know what it was down there—a space which could be done—in a gym—in this—in the Negro—in the black service area.
Now, when the project was mentioned to the other—to all of us—no one seemed to be interested in doing it. Not anybody. First place, it was a long walk, and it sounded like a big, big thing, you know. What to do there, you know, who knows what to do. There were no ideas. So I was asked to do something in that area, somewhere in that so-called space. It was an empty space, ready to be—you know, for anybody to work in it.
JSC: Do you know why they asked you to do it, or did you—
AG: I think nobody wanted to do it.
JSC: Yes.
AG: I think everybody was doing something else. [unclear] Larry Rabbet was doing those cartoon things, Rudy was doing some painting on the walls, and the PX, too. And Michael was doing the sculpture things. And, in the first place, Michael was not a real painter; he was not a painter.
But there were other people like the person who got the job in the officer’s club; I remember his name, it was Paul Gray[?]. He was a little guy; I think he was—looked like the oldest one of the soldiers in our group. He was very small; I don’t know how he ever got in the army. He looked—He looked old to me, you know. [chuckles] He looked old to me, and he got the job of doing a series of landscapes, which I had thought of doing anyway. But he was very good. I saw one of his things; he was excellent. So, he was right for that job, I think. And it was—I think he did [unclear] a good one, you know?
AG: So, but he was very upset about being in the army, of course. He was drafted, naturally.
So, I don’t think he would want to be in the army. So, I went down to look at this place. I got the measurements—had measured—somebody had measured it already, but I went down to look at it. There was nothing in it except a counter—a long counter—it looked like it was going to be a service club, where you could serve some food, because the black soldiers had a problem in town, eating and so on. And some of them didn’t want to go to town; some stayed in the camp. You know, so a place for them to go. But they had no place like that yet.
JSC: Yes.
AG: So it looked to me like it was going to be a service club, when I saw it. [unclear] It was very big. It was ten feet—over ten feet— a little bit over ten feet high, thirty-three feet on two sides, sixty-six feet on two sides.
JSC: Yes.
AG: And big—That’s a big space.
JSC: Yes.
AG: And somebody had already painted the walls some kind of gray or white—something—some—it was a soft—nice, good color. Somebody expected—somebody to put something on it. Anyway, that had been done, and there was some water there—a place for a sink—a place for serving food on top of that counter, and a few chairs. When I looked at it, I thought, somebody had talked about the fact the soldiers were in the Pacific, and that some of them were in a place called New Guinea. I [unclear] some things on that—about New Guinea and so on. I thought, you know, it would be nice to do something that reflected that— the area the soldiers were going to go to, eventually.
And I found out that there were jungles there, you know, like obviously it was a tropical area of the Pacific. It was not far from Australia. It seemed to me that it would be an interesting thing to have something that had to do with the jungle, you know. The foliage and whatever it was. But, as I looked at this thing and I was—started to think of—I’d made up an idea in my mind that I was going to do something like that, I told the major that’s what I—He said, “That’s good. Let’s work on that, and see how we come out.”
And I started to do this,in my mind, you know, and I said—I finally got to the point, I said “You know, I’ve [unclear] talk to the manager about this.” I said, “You know, I can make up something, but, I believe in research, you know this is my background in advertising and graphics. Is that you don’t start from nothing, you start from something that’s, you know, reality—you know, the real world.” But you make it a fantasy.
JSC: Yes.
AG: Out of that real world. Then I had to think of how I’m going to do this. I told the major, “I’ve got to do research on this. Could I have a few months, a few weeks, or a few days to go to New York to the Museum of Natural History and take a look and see what they have up there, you know. Because they probably would be interested in this, too.”
I mean, they would be doing something for the, whatever was going on in the world.
JSC: Yes.
AG: And sure enough, when I got up there, he said “Yes.” I was lucky, I got a week off. I went up there with a color camera, to see what I could find, and fortunately I came into a room, and suddenly saw this room, where they had a display, in large windows, of New Guinea and some of the other islands down there—of another island down there, of the tropics, the animals, the birds. I was just flabbergasted; it was so much of what I needed.
JSC: Yes.
AG: You know, I mean, material—something to chew on, you know, something to work with. [unclear] Matter of fact, in the sketch, I started putting monkeys in there. Turns out, there are no monkeys in New Guinea at all. I had to get rid of them. [both chuckle] Get the monkeys out of it.
And so I took these shots, and made some sketches, and brought it back to the camp, and I told the major I had enough material to work with. He was not interested anymore, he was now on something else, and I started making this sketch—this model—and, by the way, I have a little map here of New Guinea—where New Guinea is, and this little chart here—
JSC: Yes.
AG: —shows—see New Guinea?
JSC: The little red[?]—
AG: You see him down there?
MC: Oh, yeah.
AG: My daughter got that on the internet. Anyway, this is—I thought you ought to see where it is.
JSC: Sure.
AG: Now, so—By the way, that’s me. I thought you might want a shot.
JSC: Oh, yeah.
AG: That’s [unclear]. In between—
[Converation Redacted]
AG: Take a look. This is Michael Lekakis and me winning an award and the major is giving it to us.
JSC: See, I’ve got all the newspapers from the base.
AG: Well, that’s—
[speaking simultaneously]
JSC: But that’s good to know.
AG: I don’t know where—[unclear] you can have that. JSC: December nineteenth—
AG: Anyway, I got that for you. So—
JSC: Oh, that’s terrific.
AG: So I’m going to put this up here, show you how, best I can—By the way, I must say, that before I show this—the major was a portrait artist in New York. When I told him what I was going to do, the idea, and that it was going to be a wall, sort of a stucco wall, that—and then the whole landscape, all around the top, that was my idea.
JSC: Yes.
AG: That I would need materials, and first of all I’ll make a sketch and we’ll talk about materials. He said, “Yes, I’ll get what you want—what you need.” So I began to make—I made this sketch. I’ll show you [shows sketch]. I don’t know if you want to see this—this is—
JSC: So this is actually to scale; there was a door here, that’s what that represents—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
AG: There was a door, that’s right. And this is the room. And this is the [manipulating model]—It goes like this. Can you all see? You might want to stand up.
MC: Oh, that is wild.
JSC: So it went around the whole—it was the whole—
AG: That’s right. And you come in that door. Come in that little door, there? See the wall is sort of a pinkish—the stucco wall. And these all are authentic birds, and animals—Now, since the monkeys were not there, there was tree-climbing kangaroos in that area.
JSC: Yes.
AG: So I used them instead.
JSC: What are these?
AG: What is that?
JSC: Some type of ape.
AG: A what?
JSC: Do you know what those are?
AG: I don’t know what you’re pointing to.
MC: Sort of looks monkey-like but I don’t know if it’s a mammal.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
AG: Oh, oh. If it’s a mammal, it’s a monkey.
MC: So those weren’t in the final project.
AG: Those are tree-climbing kangaroos. They look like—They’re not like monkeys, they look more like a kangaroo, but not quite. They pack a pack—a little pouch.
MC: That’s great.
AG: Yes. This foliage is accurate. I mean it wasn’t perfectly the same, I just made it—I put a little bit more—there was another problem that bothered me was the corners, you know, when you look in the corner you can see a—a sharp corner?—so, as I was working on this thing, I decided I’d like to go into advertising again. I had a plan. A concept. Not just any old concept—a good one. I said since I’m in camouflage, first thing I’ve got to do is camouflage the corners. So I put some bamboo and some leaves in each corner—a lot of bamboo—enough bamboo as you can see in some corners, so that you don’t feel there’s a corner there—it’s empty.
And also, you know I believed in what they call a focal point? That in the center of each wall, somewhere in the center, there would be a—something very, very critical that’s more colorful.
JSC: Yes.
AG: So that was the concept—the plan. And to cover up, no matter what it was—if it was a box of electricity or something—the leaf would go on top of it and look like a leaf.
JSC: Yes.
AG: In other words, I was a camouflage expert.
[Everybody Chuckles]
AG: After all, make it look like—you know. Now of course, when the major came down here the first time, this—the second time—he didn’t—you know, he’s looking at the sketch I had scaled this up after I made the sketch. By the way, a very big shot stage designer from New York came through inspecting these places, that was one of his jobs, and he saw this sketch. He said “I think that’s quite remarkable.” He said “You know, I think that would be very good if that’s executed.” Or something like that. The major was a little surprised, you know; they liked something that Abe Greiss liked.
AG: You know what I mean? He didn’t think [unclear]—
JSC: So that inspector saw this?
AG: I don’t think he saw much of me in the first place. Yeah, he liked this. That made me feel good, of course.
JSC: Sure.
AG: Anyway, I knew it was good, you know, but I wasn’t—anyway, I had a concept, and I now needed paint. The major didn’t know anything about paint. He was a portrait artist, you know. So I said to him—He said “Well, what do you want?” I said “Well, in the first place, I want color. Any kind of—big amount of color—oils, only oils—nothing else. Any color you can get—all of them—if you can get them all—red, blue, green—whatever it is, I’ll make some—I’ll make it work. But I have to have green at least, for sure. Or blue, I’ll make blue and yellow.”
Anyway, blue and yellow—so he said “Okay.” But he wanted to build a scaffold, and I said “No, no, no, no I don’t want to do a scaffold. That takes too long and [unclear].” He said “Well, what do you want?” I said “I want a ten foot ladder, that’s all. And somebody to help me move it, because it’s pretty heavy.”
I was pretty strong, by the way. I was very muscular in those days. You wouldn’t believe it.
JSC: [chuckles]
AG: I used to do weight-lifting and all that, and swimming. So I was pretty—you remember, you saw some shots; I was even muscular.
AG: Believe it or not. Anyway, the major said “Well, I’ll do that; I’ll see what I can find.” Finally he came back with the strangest thing I ever saw. You know what a regular paint can looks like?
JSC: Yes.
AG: For regular wall painting. With colors immersed in oil. It was a layer of oil this high and all solid liquid color. You know, like if you— and I looked at that and I said “My God, how can I—I can’t use that that that way.” He said “Well, what do you want to do?”. I said “You know, the oil would run right down your hand.”
JSC: Yes.
AG: You know. I can’t do that. I told him “I want a fifty pound bag, whatever size I can get, of titanium white powder.” You know, the color, you know, white—
JSC: Yes.
AG: —powder, and I’ll do the mixing. I’ll mix it all myself. Mix the color with the white, you know. Now you know as much as I—to make it thicker, like regular paint.
JSC: Yes.
AG: I wanted to make a regular, you know, to make a regular paint out of it. [unclear] okay, I just want that ladder, and he sent me a very strong black soldier who became an artist, too. I taught him how to paint, finally.
JSC: Do you remember his name?
AG: I can’t remember his name, I’m sorry. This is my memory problem. I wish I could; I’d love to help—
JSC: I think you have a pretty good memory already.
AG: Anyway, I’m trying, I thought of it. He was from Florida, and he told me a lot of things about his life. I was very much interested in him. But he was very strong, and he moved that thing around.
And you see, the idea was I didn’t want to start on a corner, you know, I knew this from experience. I didn’t want to start here in a corner and work my way around like this [demonstrates on model] because you can’t conceive—even if you have an idea—you want to work across—purpose—this way, across the work. Because you’re working with a sky, for instance, you must go across all the way around, you know, in the sky color, because color—sky has a color—not one color but two or three colors in it, and being thought out. And I had that ladder, which helped a lot.
And then, later on, shortly [unclear] it was, I think about a couple of weeks or so later, he sent me a young man who was supposed to be an artist to help me with this mural. And what is he going to do to help? He couldn’t do the design. I told him that what I wanted him to do is—on the wall—I want you to think of this, this kind of idea that, with some vines running down, and maybe a bug or two here and there. You know, a tropical bug—Make up the bugs, it doesn’t matter—
JSC: [chuckles]
AG: —what kind of bug. There is one like that, whatever you make up, I’m sure there’s one. So he, well, [unclear], he didn’t want to do anything. He hated the army. I can’t remember his name, either. He hated the army. He didn’t want to do anything. But the major wanted to get rid of him, I think. JSC: Yes.
AG: Have him do something, and he sent him to me. But he was not a bad guy, except for this constant raving about the army. [bell chiming] And also he used to sing out loud, he thought he was an opera singer, I guess, and all the black soldiers were making fun of him, you know, imitating him. It made him madder.
But anyway, he did the roots and the [unclear] that I had put in. I showed him the sketch and he followed what I did. I did a lot of that; he just followed it. And he did all right, actually, you know, in the long run. It kept him busy.
And, of course, there was a time in between when they had to sit around and wait for me. The black soldier moving the ladder, so I showed the black soldier—gave him some paper and used some of the paints. “Make some paintings.” I think later on he became an artist. I don’t know. A painter, maybe. But he started doing very—rather well, actually. He couldn’t draw, but he could put the color down nicely.
JSC: Yes.
AG: Well, as I finished—when I got this work to a point where it was as I say, you know, I came—the idea was what I wanted—I finally had it finished. Took about—now in between the time that I was doing this, I was still in the army, you know. I had to go and eat up, you know, I had to go and eat up where the white soldiers ate.
JSC: Yes.
AG: I’d leave the work, I’d go and eat and come back. It was about a fifteen minute walk, you know. Back and forth, and also, I had to lecture on camouflage. So I would appear before, maybe a hundred or so soldiers, there were more than a hundred, and get up on a podium—on a deck—with a microphone and lecture—do a lecture.
Then behind me was some painted things that the soldiers had made about camouflage, and I would lecture on camouflage to the soldiers. Because a lot of those guys knew more about it than I did, because they were farmers, and hunters, and they knew all about, you know, the birds, and how they camouflaged and so on. But I did a pretty good job of lecturing. I enjoyed that part, but then I had to do that once in a while—once a week, at least—and I also had to march.
We had to go on a march every now and then. You know, we get orders. Get in full gear, start walking—twenty or thirty miles or whatever they wanted, I don’t know—I just kept marching wherever they said, you know—
JSC: [laughs]
AG: —I didn’t even care where it was, as long as I could get out of there. Finished, of course I’d go back and eat a pint of ice—a quart of ice cream. Made me feel good. [unclear] on the way back. JSC: How long did you stay in BTC10 [Basic Training Center Number 10]? Do you know? Did they extend your time there because of your art?
AG: No, no, no. They kept me there as long as everybody else.
JSC: Two or three months, maybe?
AG: Because when I—I think it was about six months.
JSC: Six months.
AG: Maybe it was less. You know, I don’t remember. I don’t—You lose track of time in the army. You don’t think in terms of how long it is. Afterwards you think about it. I was in the army three years. Actually, well, when this thing was finished, and I got a notice that I had to be shipped out. I was going to be shipped out to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to start a new camouflage area up there.
Some of us were going to go. But we had to get there ourselves. We could go to New York and make a trip over to Sioux Falls—had to be there at a certain time—and, of course, I didn’t get a chance to sign the thing, or anything like that. I had friends—by the way, I want to tell you this, that—because Greensboro was a place, I spent time in town. Woody Staffel[?], Michael Lekakis, and Larry Rabbet and I used to go to visit the Barksdale family; I don’t know whether they’re still there. The Barksdale family—The father owned a photographic store in town. And they invited us to dinner every now and then. Daughter Susan was there, too. And we four of us—sometimes three of us only—Michael couldn’t come, we would have dinner there. They were very nice.
JSC: Yes.
AG: He had a photographic store and I have a feeling that he might have been helping the soldiers who took the photographs of the mural; he might have helped them possibly, because when they sent me these I was in Sioux Falls by this time. I was starting the camouflage area, you know, digging the holes again, you know, already doing the whole thing all over again. No mural, just that.
I got this letter—this letter with pictures in it. The pictures were prints, which I have downstairs, in an album. And those prints—I made copies of those—I’m going to have some of them for you here, and also, I think you saw the sketch.
JSC: Yes.
AG: I have something set up. I made a copy of this; it’s in here. And [unclear], yeah, when I got those prints, I was so surprised, I never expected them—anybody to do it. But I had invited the soldiers—our group—to come down to see the mural, and I told them I wanted them to—each one of them to go up on the ladder and paint a bat hanging from the vines in the ceiling. Way up on top.
JSC: Yes.
AG: So they all—Some of them came, not all of them, one or two of them came down—Stevenson[?] and somebody else—Ferguson[?]. I remember their names for some reason. They each painted a little bat; they all saw the mural, too, that way. They all liked it; they thought it was good. And, I guess, as I say, Larry, most likely, and Rudy Staffel, I think, probably did the photography. They came in one night, with lights. They probably got the lights from Mr. Barksdale.
JSC: Yes.
AG: Special lights, and a ladder. And they photographed—That was quite a job, photographing the whole thing, you know.
JSC: They must have really been impressed with your work to do that.
AG: Oh, yeah, they liked the work, they thought it was very good.
JSC: Now it was very unusual for the white soldiers to go into the black area, right?
AG: Yeah, but they came down.
JSC: Yes.
AG: They could come down to do, you know, work—working on this. It’s all right. But it is unusual, yes, they did. I came down every night. Every day. Except when I was camouflage expert. I was a pretty good expert, too, I did all right. I enjoyed that lecture, you know? I mean, even though it wasn’t something I had wanted to do, I had to do it. I liked it. And I liked everything about the other soldiers that with this group. All very friendly.
They were not associate—They didn’t associate with me, except the four of us. The three guys and me. That—I looked them up in New York. I couldn’t find Larry Rabbet, but Rudy Staffel I knew was from New Orleans, and later on I was down in New Orleans; I looked up his studio. He had a big studio. He was a ceramist—ceramic artist. He did a wonderful job with ceramics. And all good artists, you know? Aren’t they lucky to have them in the army? So cheap?
[both laugh]
AG: Not only that, I don’t think they hated the army. This one guy, who later on I found out that he had a heart attack—this one that was helping me with the vines and stuff—and I was trying to get him off this hate thing. But, he didn’t feel like—He was very unhappy. Nothing I could do.
JSC: Now do you have photographs up here? Of this? The installation? AG: What?
JSC: Photographs—Do you have photographs up here of the installation?
AG: No, I have them downstairs.
JSC: Oh, downstairs.
AG: I’ll show you; I have them in a book.
[Interview has moved downstairs]
JSC: This is wonderful.
AG: I thought the sketch was [unclear].
MC: How long did it take you to actually do this whole thing in the room where you were doing it?
AG: You mean the final—
MC: The final.
SC: Yes.
AG: The final thing? I would say it took about four or five months, maybe more, a little more.
MC: And you would start in a corner and go—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
AG: No, no, no, no, no.
MC: Oh, you didn’t start in a corner.
AG: Oh, no.
MC: But you said you didn’t go around—completely around.
AG: Well—
[Speaking Simultaneously] JSC: From side to side—elements—
AG: —I worked this way. You see, I think of the whole picture. I want to see what’s over here and also how it balances what’s over there. In other words, it can’t be this—It isn’t like, say, you put something on this side, then you put something on the other side—something this side and the other—it’s like—it’s a—it’s an eye thing. You see it, you decide by eye where it should be, but the concept was already in my mind, I knew—Have a focal point, as they say, in corners. But I had to work from this side; I’d start some areas here [demonstrates on model or sketch], and then I would take that same—some of those colors and work over here, on the other side.
MC: Right, so you didn’t do that whole side at once.
AG: No, no, no.
MC: Gotcha. So it balanced—
JSC: Layers—
MC: It’s got a balance.
AG: Balance—It’s got a balance. It’s—Now, I was familiar with the mural. I’d never made one, and I was—I knew a Roscoe[?]. I knew Siqueiros’ [David Alfaro Siqueiros] work. I knew Diego Rivera’s work—the Mexican great muralists—and I was enamored with what they did, and in the officer’s club that’s what I was thinking of doing. I mean not with the subject matter, but the army air corps subject matter. But, you know, it is a concept that they have, of creating an atmosphere—not just one—two pictures, you know—this idea of doing a photograph picture—in a picture, in a picture—it’s kind of a more—it’s kind of a moving—it’s like a moving—
JSC: It’s inter-related.
AG: —a moving—moving design. In other words, it’s not something that each person—if I—if you did it, or somebody else did it, or somebody else did it, they never would be the same. It can’t be, because—
JSC: When you actually put it on the wall, did you do sketches in paint, or did you just go right to the figures with the oil?
AG: Oh, no, what I did was—
JSC: What was your technique?
AG: I had a mural—I had a sketch. I scaled this up. Like a half an inch is one foot.
JSC: Okay. AG: In other words, what they call a grid. And I made sort of a grid out of it, which is I—you know we all do—I knew this was so because I used to watch the guys who painted the signs on these big billboards. They would have a sketch in front of them, and, you know, horizontal and vertical lines. They couldn’t make up this idea. They would follow the artist’s concept by filling in that little square with what’s in there, in that square. By adding on these pieces, it began to be the finished piece.
JSC: Yes.
AG: In other words, they couldn’t actually do the whole idea, only the artist could do that. So they did it on a grid. So that was a way of scaling up a sketch. Without the sketch, I couldn’t do anything. I mean, I’d have to have—this had to be so—the reason it’s so accurate, what you see here, is because it was going to be like that. That picture, that drawing, it’s on this piece of board, is going to be up on the wall. Not exactly, but you know, ninety-nine percent, because it’s on a grid. Also, the pink wall gave me an opportunity to just work on a big area, not do the whole thing.
JSC: Yes.
AG: Also I wanted to be sitting in an enclosed space. Feel comfortable. I wanted them to feel that when they sat there to eat something and drink something or to talk, that they felt comfortable with what they saw. That it wasn’t boring. To me, to bore somebody with what you do is the worst fate a person could have—to create something which is boring. So I had to make it as interesting—If I liked it, if I thought it was interesting, I think other people would like it.
[unclear] when I went to Woodstock, to look at places to buy. I didn’t plan to buy anything. My friend Sy[?] bought some place up there, and he called me on Sunday and said he bought a place, I said “Oh, I think I’ll do the same thing.” I went up there looking. I didn’t. When I came to this place I bought, when I drove down the driveway between the two houses—three houses there—old buildings—I told Carmen, I says “I think we ought to buy this place.”
JSC: It had a good feeling to it.
AG: That’s the whole thing. You have to have an intuition about it. Most people do have it. They say “I don’t like it—I don’t feel right here.”
JSC: But you never got—you finished this painting then you were shipped out right away? You never really got to see men eating or [unclear] the soldiers in there?
AG: I wish I had.
JSC: Yes.
AG: They had put—There were no tables—nothing. And I know—I used to come in on the side of where the black soldiers were sometimes at night, because I used to go to the—where they were baking the chow, what do they call it? Where the food was.
JSC: The mess.
AG: Yes, the mess, and I used to go in the black side, come from that side, and I know there was a restaurant there, and they couldn’t eat there. Nothing. So they had to eat some—had to get some—
[59:24 – 59:32 Interruption, conversation redacted]
AG: I want you to see some sculpture. Oh, these are yours. This is for you. I want you to take—I don’t know whether you want that. You can have it. And also, here’s what I have here. This is for you. And also—
JSC: Okay, so these are actually prints from—
AG: These are prints—Yes, directly from—
JSC: Do you have the chromes here?
AG: I never got chromes.
JSC: Oh, you didn’t?
AG: No. I never got chromes.
JSC: Oh, you just got prints.
AG: I wish I had the chromes. But, anyway—
JSC: So who took these? That’s you?
AG: Yes, they took that shot of me. I’ll show you. I have a print for you.
[Everyone viewing prints]
AG: This is—Oh here, I made a copy of this.
JSC: So is this the whole—basically the whole thing?
AG: This is for you.
MC: Oh yes, it’s got the doorway in it.
AG: If you—I didn’t have time to paste it on a board, but it could be a duplicate of what I showed you. This is—you could make a—
MC: The color turned out nice. It’s beautiful [unclear].
AG: Oh yes, copies are much better than they used to be. Is that okay? [unclear] take that?
JSC: Oh, yes. For sure.
AG: Let me give you this.
MC: Stephen, you don’t have any pictures of anything like this?
JSC: No, I’m going to go back and—Well, I got a lot of photographs from a guy named [Jerry] DeFelice, he was—lived in New York state, and he became really good friends with a local photographer, Carol Martin. And they were life-long friends, and early 90’s Luis came and brought me all the issues of the newspaper—He was at BTC 10 and then ORD—it became Overseas Replacement Depot later in ’44.
So I’ve got all the newspapers, and then he took the photographs for the newspaper, like Luis probably took this photograph, and he brought me a lot of the photographs. I’m going to have to go back now and look, because I’m wondering if they—I did a quick search, but I hadn’t gone through—I’m wondering if after you left they actually did an article about the service club for the African-Americans. So there may be something in one of the newspapers. If I come across that, of course I’ll get you copies.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
AG: You know, if I were—You and I would do things differently than most people, probably. If I were tearing down this place, doesn’t matter whether I liked it or not. Even a piece—I would keep it [unclear].
MC: Yes.
JSC: I’m going to give another look, as far as I know it doesn’t exist?
AG: Okay. Wouldn’t you think so? I mean just a hunk of it—not the whole thing, obviously, but just a chunk. When I put that bird in there, I didn’t just knock it off, you know. [chuckles]
JSC: Right, you took a lot—
AG: I put the eye in the right spot, you know. In other words, everything was done—
JSC: And you had researched the eye; you had researched the bird.
AG: Oh, yes. You know, I can’t do anything unless I really—I’m doing it for myself. It’s a challenge to me, I’ve got to—I’ve got to finish it and do it right.
JSC: There are remnants of some of the structures—the Armytown booklet that I sent you.
AG: Yeah, I haven’t—
JSC: That was—It had the color photo; you saw some of the installations exhibit. In fact my—Leslie and Jean Marie and my son Evan are in one of the color photos of the War Information Center. You’ll see three people, also my father-in-law.
One thing I did, is I created a map of present-day Greensboro, where the base was. People visiting the exhibit could take this map—I went—rode through it—it was developed after the war, became a shopping center and industrial center but Service Club Number One, which was for the white soldiers—I think it was a service club or it may have been a BX [Base Exchange]—I parked out front of the building, and it was a Quonset hut shape, and I walked down the alley and I could see—I actually tore off a piece, because underneath some of the corrugated iron—I think it was corrugated iron—I saw a piece of the actual outside. It was like black tar paper.
AG: Yes.
JSC: These were buildings they just put up with studs. They put this composition material, which I think on the inside was black, sort of like asphalt-like material. On the outside it was sort of drab olive green. Anyway, I tore off a chunk; we have that in our collection. A few of the buildings are there, but I’m not—I really don’t think this one—one of the service clubs was used after the war in our county—Guilford County—had the largest instance of polio when the polio epidemic swept the states in ’49—’48, ’49, ’50.
Guilford County had the most incidents. Our whole county came together—the whole city, even though we were still segregated. At first they put a lot of these kids in the service club buildings because they were still there. Then we actually built—the community came together within in a month or six weeks. In fact, there was an article in Life Magazine, they built this community hospital for the polio victims, and it was integrated. They let black kids and white kids come together, which was unusual for ’49, ’50.
But you’re right, you know, I don’t know—it’s possible that some buildings, you know, they plastered over it, put some other—maybe when it was torn down, they just never even knew what was there.
AG: That’s in the past, obviously, but—
JSC: But if there was something still there I’d love to find it.
AG: It would be interesting to know, but it’s not an essential thing. The fact is that, I was given this opportunity, which I never would have done, you know, ever, anywhere. I don’t think the other soldiers appreciated what they were doing as much as I did. To me, they were just doing it because they were in the army—you had to do it.
I felt when I was doing this that, even though the major didn’t like me that much, I could tell, you know. He liked Stevensons [?], he liked Paul Gray[?] very well but the Griesses, the Lekakises—anyway, we were just like second—You could tell. So it had to be an opportunity—In the first place, nobody really wanted to do it. It would never have happened, if I hadn’t done it. I don’t know what they would do there. Because it was—When you walk in that place, there was nothing on the walls.
JSC: Pretty drab.
AG: That’s an awful empty space there, and you say, you know, each thing can be covered with paint. [chuckles] It wasn’t like you leave an empty space somewhere. Don’t do it on that wall, do it on a—and, you know, my experience in advertising, graphics—I started as a painter, I didn’t start as a furniture artist or doing—I did everything; I did men’s wear and everything else in my first job. I got the job because I could draw. I could draw anything and that was not the problem. The problem was drawing something I liked.
JSC: Had you had any training, or schooling?
AG: Yeah, I was—I went to school. But I didn’t learn anything.
JSC: [chuckles] In terms of your artwork that was just totally natural ability.
AG: The man who was the art director was an art director of radio tubes, you know those tubes that they—and we had asked him to show us his work, and what I saw—you know I was just a kid—when he showed his work I was horrified, I was horrified. And I see, when he started asking us to make Ritz Cracker boxes. Making sure the salt is on the cracker and all that stuff. I realized afterwards my life—the chances that I would ever make a cracker box at the age of seventeen was unbelievable; it never would happen.
JSC: Only in America, probably.
AG: Yeah, well, even in America. I was just, you know—This was done by specialists and so
On, and he was teaching us, I learned mostly from reading books. I did, also, observation. I went to the museums, I read about—I copied Japanese, Chinese art. I’d get a book on Chinese art and I’d make, in black and white, and I’d do it in color. It was the same thing—it’s a copy. I could copy anything, when I put my own taste into it.
I learned about a lot of things. I learned how to use brushes. Matter of fact, in my first job I did drawings in ink, and pen and ink, and scratchboard and stuff like that. [unclear] scratchboard, and pen, and in color, but I never did wash, what they call wash drawings—gray. I got these books on Japanese brushwork, and I copied all of them, and I sat down in my little studio—I had a studio in New—in my father’s house in Newark, and apartment in Newark and I would just do brushwork. I learned how to use wash, with a brush. I actually copied the style—how to do it.
JSC: You taught yourself.
AG: I wanted to learn something; I found a way of learning it. And then, of course, nobody in the business ever told you anything. You had to find out for yourself; you had to look and see. When you ask somebody “How do you do that?” they won’t tell you. They just [unclear].
JSC: In terms of your military career, after you went to Sioux Falls, or went to South Dakota, did you ever go overseas?
AG: No—
JSC: Or did you just stay state-side?
AG: What happened was that, well, after we finished the camouflage area—almost finished—back-breaking work, I must tell you. The mural was hard work, digging is not a mural. I got a notice that I was going to be shipped to Biloxi, Mississippi to some group, and when I got to the camp, the camp there, there was a notice on the board that I was asked to join a film-producing group.
It’s wild, isn’t it? I mean, I didn’t think there was any such thing in the army, you know. And we were starting to work in a hanger, airplane hanger, airplanes all over the place. They were taking photographs of the motors and all the new airplanes, the B-29, which was a new plane. And then there was some airplanes that were observation planes, you know, a lot of work. I was an artist again, sitting down at a desk with [unclear], airbrushes—I learned how to use an airbrush in five minutes. It’s so easy, you learn little things like that. Doing airbrush skies, taking out—They take a photograph of an airplane on the field, full of garbage all the way through the back. You have to get rid of all that and make a sky. I learned how to do that, with a Paasche airbrush, stuff like that.
I worked there for awhile on that. And, of course, I got a commendation, you know, by that time I was a sergeant, and after I was there for awhile—about a year—less than a year—maybe it was a few months—I can’t ever remember how long. I made some friends there, too. I used to go to New Orleans a lot.
Then, of course, overseas there was still the B-48’s, the flying boxcar. But they were being shot down like crazy. They were losing airplanes, pilots, gunners, you know, the war was really getting pretty heavy and thick. It was getting towards the end of the war, actually—the European war—I got a notice that I was being shipped out to Harlingen, Texas to gunnery school. [chuckles]
Since I volunteered to be a pilot, I wanted to fly. They’ll make a gunner out of me. I said “Okay, I’ll be a gunner.” At least I’ll be bombing Nazis, you know. That was my objective in the first place. That’s the reason I didn’t mind going in the army, that was the reason I would do anything they told me to do, because that was my objective. That’s why I wanted to be a pilot.
Then they got me in this [unclear] in Texas—in Harlingen, Texas—and I was trained to be a belly gunner.
JSC: Wow.
AG: You know, the underneath, in the flying boxcar. Every time we went up there was some problem with it. Anyway, we flew all day, every day, and I was practicing gunnery, and then they taught me to fire every gun they could think of—shotguns, pistols, fifty caliber machine guns, I was firing. I took them apart, put them together again. You know that kind of thing?
JSC: Yes.
AG: They taught me all that stuff. I had a little trouble carrying that gun around, though, it was pretty heavy. It’s big—the bullets—fifty caliber bullets are that big [demonstrates]; the lead in it is that big. They’re a big, big bullet. I was trained to be a belly gunner. We were firing, there’s this target practice all over Mexico. In fact I did make a trip to Mexico once. Came back, because I was stationed there. As soon as I got trained to be a belly gunner, and I’m in the barracks, ready to go—We were going to go overseas, you know, as a gunner.
There was a notice—Everybody got excited; they had dropped the atomic bomb in the Pacific. And that was the end—Here I was, trained to be a gunner, ready to go, but not killing Nazis, it turned out I was killing Japanese. Which, you know, that was not my objective, but part of the war. Suddenly there was no war. The war was gone. It was over, practically. So I never got overseas. I was ready to go. [chuckles] They shipped me all over the place.
JSC: So that was in August of ’45. When did you actually get out of the service, ’46?
AG: About that time. But I had gotten married in New Orleans. ‘Excuse me, Carmen, I had to bring that up.”
CG: That’s all right. That was before my time. [everybody chuckles]
AG: My other wife. Anyway, was. That was not the best thing, but anyway, before, when I was in Biloxi they also shipped me to Denver. I was there for awhile, and back to Harlingen, Texas. The thing is that—the experience of flying—I was quite excited about it. I was not excited about being a gunner. I was a little afraid of it, as a matter of fact. Because when you get into that [unclear]—
JSC: That’s the worst position to —
AG: —it’s a lousy position. And you feel—It’s cold; you’re sitting on a parachute. They taught us how to jump. We never jumped, but they had the wire. Used to get up on a—way up high on a pedestal by ladder, and then slide down , the wire hooked on, jump off the thing and slide all the way down.
And then learn how to fall. You know, jump off a five foot, six foot stand, and learn how, when you hit the ground, roll over a certain way. All that stuff. How a parachute works. Also they tested us on different things. For endurance, so oxygen masks and all that stuff. I was ready to go.
JSC: Yes. So after the war—
AG: But you know that’s—you see, that’s the thing—I was not afraid to be a pilot. I wasn’t afraid, because I didn’t know what the hell it was for, what it was like, you know, until you do it. I was not afraid to do what they wanted me to do, but there were some soldiers who didn’t want to fly. When we were out on the first day, we were going to get on the plane after we were trained, and we’re sitting in a circle about seven—eleven men, and waiting—it was about three or four o’clock in the morning—cold—sitting on the floor—on the ground—waiting to get on the airplane—and three of them got up and walked into the headquarters, and I said to my friend, Grimes[?] I think his name was, you know G-R—Grimes—all the G-R’s were together and I said to him “Where are they going?”
“Oh, they’re going to refuse to fly.”
I said “What? You mean after they were trained to do this?”
“Yeah.”
I said “What’s going to happen to them?”
“Well, they’ll put them in the infantry.”
I don’t think that was right, you know, after training somebody. It was really sad that—I liked those guys, too—They objected to flying all of a sudden. They could have said no right away.
JSC: Right.
AG: But I was ready to fly. I liked the airplane. I wouldn’t do it now.
[Redacted 01:21:28 – 01:57:23 Discussion of his post-war work in NYC, e.g. at Macy’s and teaching at the Fashion Institute of Technology]
SC: This is actually the gentleman—Jerry DeFelice—who was the photographer, and when the base opened, he had gone to—What’s the air base in Denver? He got training in aerial photography because that’s what they were doing in the air corps.
[Lowery Air Force Base, Denver, Colorado]
AG: Yeah.
SC: He comes to Greensboro in ’43. The base has been set up. They say “Well, you’re going to start taking photographs of people, you know, to document for the newspaper.” The base newspaper. He had never done that so—They didn’t have a darkroom. He made contact with Carol Martin, who was a somewhat older man so he didn’t go into the service be he was the main photographer for the Greensboro Daily News. They had a lab, so he taught Jerry how to do portrait-type—he was just—He learned how to take pictures out of planes.
AG: Very important now.
SC: So they—He used the darkroom at the newspaper until they had a darkroom at the base. So Jerry then had all the newspapers from all the years and he brought me a whole stack one day, along with some of the photos in this book.
AG: Nice book. Thank you for the book.
SC: Oh, yes, it was—we actually, when we opened the exhibits—see now, I’m wondering—this type of artwork—do you remember—Did you happen to do that? These sort of directional signs, said this way and that way?
AG: No, we didn’t do that. I wish you could see those signs. Those signs we did, you know, Michael Lekakis was a very creative [unclear], I thought he was the most creative sculptor in New York. Matter of fact when I came back to New York here, I bought some sculpture of his. I have some here.
SC: Did you happen to see this? Now some of this may have been after you left the base. This was a black service club on base, and someone did some mural painting of a hand playing a piano.
AG: No, I didn’t see that.
SC: Okay, because that could have been after you left.
AG: Oh, sure. You know I wish I’d seen it sitting in the place.
JSC: Oh, that would have been exciting.
AG: I would have loved that. I would have come down and had a sandwich with them but I guess you couldn’t do that.
JSC: Well, I’m going to, when I get back to the archives, I’m going to look again.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
AG: I wish I could remember the name of the soldier who helped me—
MC: With the ladder?
AG: With the ladder.
MC: It might come to you.
AG: Such a nice man. He was telling me about what he was eating in Florida, where he lived. It was like a swamp, I think, the way he described it. The fact that he could eat a piece of meat was very unusual. He talked, in his own way, and I was glad to see him painting. It was important to me that someone was doing art, you know, who never did it before. I tried to encourage him to keep doing it.
JSC: What are your memories of Greensboro? The reason I ask is that, one thing that made our military base unique, as far as we know, it was the only base inside of city limits in the country. Most of the bases were outside, so I’ve talked with various service people, some of them came to, came back to Greensboro to live but, you know they talked about—they could walk downtown, because it wasn’t that far, it was maybe a mile, but—do you have much memory of—I mean you did say you went in town some, but—
AG: Well, I did go into town. I met some people there, but we spent more time with the Barksdales[?], I think; when we went into town, we went there, and so that we were not in the town a lot.
JSC: Yes.
AG: I knew the town, I could—you know, I knew where I was going and what’s going—what’s happening. Matter of fact, one of the guys in the officers club—was a good-looking guy—really good-looking guy—and I said to him one day “When are you going to town; I want to go in town with you. Because all the girls will be attracted to you—“
[Laughter] [Speaking Simultaneously]
AG: “—,and maybe, you know, there’ll be something left for me.”
MC: They’ll be drawn to him, right?
AG: But when he got into town he scooted away; I never saw him again. He had his own agenda, which I appreciated.
JSC: Do you happen to remember, I think the first year,’43—’44—there was information that there would be boxing matches at Memorial Stadium and some people said they remembered some of the troops like marching down Summit Avenue to go to the stadium. Do you remember going to the stadium?
AG: No, we didn’t [unclear]. I wasn’t interested in things like that.
JSC: Yes.
AG: I was very much interested in the Barksdale family, because I thought I would get to know people more by having dinner with them and, you know—
JSC: Sure.
AG: —and be part of their life. And I was very much interested in his little business down there in the photo—photography.
JSC: Now there was— the Jewish community in Greensboro is actually very large, I mean relative to most southern cities. There was one lady I interviewed, she and her husband were involved in helping to set up, first, sort of a—a welcoming group at the temple—Temple Emanuel, but [unclear] Klein—a lot of the Jewish soldiers would go out to her house in Sunset Hills. Does that—Does the Klein family ring a bell?
AG: The what?
JSC: Klein family?
AG: No, but—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
JSC: or Temple—
AG: the Cone family—
JSC: Yes, they were the big industrialists.
AG: Well, they—
JSC: Did you go to their house?
AG: Well, yes, I— Michael Lekakis was a very—more aggressive about meeting certain people. He found out that the Cone family had a estate—a beautiful building not far from the camp. And he said “Why don’t you come with me one time, and we’ll see his family.”
I said “Who are they?” and he told me and I said “Oh. It rings a bell now. Dr. Claribel Cone. Yes. The two sisters who met new[?] Picasso[?].” JSC: Yes.
AG: “That’s—they’re the ones—Are they there?” he said “No, they’re not there,” but then somebody else was there, was some family member. He said “we’ve got to go see this—the build—their house,” and I said “I’d be glad to go with you.” We went down there with him, with Michael, and I walk in and there’s a Matisse[?] on the wall, there’s some Picasso things; they had millions of dollars’ worth of art.
JSC: Yes.
AG: That they had bought, that Dr. Claribel Cone had purchased from Picasso and Matisse and all the others. I mean, they were some girls. That was some smart girls. They—and they also—what’s her name—the writer [unclear]—
JSC: Gertrude Stein?
AG: Gertrude Stein, they knew her. And, you know, I was fascinated by them.
JSC: Well, the textile industry—the Cones came to Greensboro in the 1890’s and built Proximity Plant—they wanted to build a plant for making denim that was in proximity—right next to, you know, the cotton, where it was actually grown, so the wealth of that family eventually was what Claribel and Etta Cone used to purchase the artwork, but yeah, it was a very wealthy—that building—their home was actually torn down in 1963.
AG: Was it? Oh, it was a great building.
JSC: Oh, it was a huge—it was sort of controversial but Wendover Avenue was— interchange was built—it was a road thing, and so that house was gone but we have photographs of the house.
AG: Well, you know here—
JSC: But that’s interesting.
JSC: Seeing that picture of it, I know it’s gone now, Stephen.
AG: I don’t know whether you’re interested, but—we had a big fight in the West Village—
JSC: Oh, I wanted to find out more about that. Robert Moses and—they built the expressway?
AG: Yeah, the arrogant attitude that his ideas—He had some good ideas, but the one he had around here was not such a good idea.
JSC: Was it going to be an elevated road all the way across or—
AG: He was going to take the West Side Highway here, which is really called the Miller Highway, is what it really is, and tear it down and do an underground thing, but coming in to the village was some lanes—some roads—one was the Broom Street [?] road and then there was—He was going to tear down certain areas in the West Village to build housing here.
He had designated—When I came back from vacation—[unclear] Florida, I’d opened up the New York Times—I read avidly all the time—and there was a little article in there—picture of the West Village area from 11th Street, to the church, Saint Luke’s Church over here, and then from Hudson Street all the way back to the river. They were going to tear down all these blocks and build a high-rise. Like they have on the East Side.
JSC: Yes.
AG: And just destroy everything here, and my house was in the middle of it—right here. I saw that, I said to Carmen “When do we put up the barricades?” I was ready to fight. Nothing like that would ever stop me from fighting. Because this was so arrogant, and so ridiculous that—tearing down a historical kind of neighborhood, and he was ready to do that. He meant to do it. He had the unions with him, too. The people on the river—the river—
JSC: Longshoremen?
AG: Longshoremen, yes. So I knew Jane Jacobs, my neighbor across the—over this fence here; she used to watch me do the sculpture in the yard. Poked her head over the fence. “Oh, I love to see you working out here.” Used to [unclear] marble structure out in the yard—garden, I should say. Sorry. They call it the garden here. It’s the yard. Anyway, she appreciated my work.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
MC: [unclear] your yard.
AG: In the yard—we’ll call it—
CG: You can go out there—
MC: Are these some of your sculptures?
AG: Yes, some of them out there, yes. That’s a few of them there. I have more in Woodstock than I have here.
JSC: Now was Jane Jacobs—Was she an activist prior to that?
AG: She was. She was a—she was not—I think she just knew—living here—that there was something wrong about this idea, that the neighborhood was being destroyed. [unclear] the neighborhoods, you know where things—That was the theory. That was a vibrant place; it was where people mingled. And they can go to a tailor shop, or to a grocery store, you know—live—live in a neighborhood.
When I called her on the phone, I was one of the first to call her, I said “Jane, I want to know when we’re going to start fighting, and I want to put up the barricades on—right on Greenwich Street as soon as we can.” I was serious. She said “We’re having a meeting at St. Luke’s this weekend.” I said “I want to come. Because we’ve got to stop this.” She said “Yes.”
So I went over there and that’s what started this thing. The neighborhood was full of smart people, people dedicated to the village, who liked the history of the neighborhood.
CG: Well, she wound up in jail.
AG: Well, no. She was—
CG: Jane did.
AG: She was only there—
JSC: Over this issue?
AG: One day—only once.
CG: Yes.
AG: No, that’s another story—
JSC: Oh, another—
[All chuckling]
AG: Another story. Because she says it so blunt— plainly—
JSC: Didn’t she write a book?
AG: It was called The Life and Death of Great American Cities.
[The book title is The Death and Life of Great American Cities]
JSC: Yes. I’ve never read that.
AG: I read it. When I told her that I read her book, she said “You mean, you actually read it?” “Yes, I read it.” I like that story; I like what you say.” “Oh, thank you, Abe” she said, “I’ll write an inscription in the book.” So she wrote something in there [unclear] know where it is. It’s around here somewhere. And that’s what started this going; it lasted three years.
JSC: When did that actually begin? What year?
AG: It was in the sixties.
JSC: Yes, sixties—early sixties?
AG: Sixties. You know, there was not—She’s not the only one. There was a gal lived on Leven [?] Street—she wasn’t even affected—but she knew this was wrong. I went to a meeting over there later on, and I’m sitting in the meeting and they’re talking about strategy. What should we do and what should we do. I’m listening to everybody. I made some suggestions, somebody else did, and then suddenly one of the women—gal sitting in the corner who was leaning against the wall—she said something. Started talking about strategy, and when I heard what she said, I said “Here’s a person [chuckles] who synthesizes the problem and analyzes it to the point—to the fine point where this is the way to go. No way out.” And I said to my—
JSC: She had a strategy already.
AG: A strategy, and I said to Carmen “I like who she is—who is she? I want to know her.”
JSC: Yes.
AG: [chuckles] She became one of my best friends around here.
JSC: What’s her name?
AG: Rashel Wall[?] She was from Pennsylvania. And she lived—She knew the gangsters and everybody down there. She was a friend—she knew the mayor, too—Mayor Wagner.[?] She knew a lot of people; she was a PR gal.
[PR is a term for public relations]
SC: Oh.
AG: In General Electric.
SC: So was it basically the community got the politicians to change?
[Speaking Simultaneously]
AG: Well, no, it was more—
JSC: Or whoever ruled?
AG: In the first place the concept was wrong. It was destroying a neighborhood that was vibrant already, and could even be better. And also, it’s part of history.
JSC: Yes.
AG: You’re killing history. The life here, as you can see, is free and open. It still is somewhat, you know? It’s becoming more of a fashion place now—and more expensive. But Rashel was also the strategist. Jane had the concept. She knew the—
[End of Recording]