Introducing Ray and Peggy Wise

For many years, Benny and I have had the privilege to have some good neighbors, among them Ray and Peggie Wise. They operated AquaWise well into their seventies, and had a feed store along with their water softening business . Originally from around Peru, Indiana, Ray fought in World War II, and then went to Purdue on the G.I. Bill. He earned his Ph.D. in Food Science from Purdue University in 1960 and subsequently did consulting and research for many major companies, often at his little farm outside of Lafayette with the help of his able and capable wife Peggie and their three children. He was a power-house and pursued many different interests, as well as farming and operating his own business in the course of providing for and caring for his family. One of his major accomplishments in his field was developing the powdered egg formula that the astronauts ate on their trip to the moon.

Although we had occasional interaction with Ray and Peggie at their store and in conjunction with Benny's refinishing, we actually got to know them better in later years. Benny especially struck up a close friendship with Ray and Peggie when he took them to the 2001 Farm Progress Show just down our road from our houses after Ray was recovering from open heart surgery and was unable get about without assistance. Benny and another friend of ours, Larry Giroux, also mowed the Wise's yard after Ray had that surgery, as good neighbors often do.

Ray and Peggie were friendly, kind, intelligent, and interesting people. They were members of the First Christian Church in Lafayette for most of their married lives. Although a disciplined, empirical scientist, Ray has lived comfortably with both his science and his faith. He is even somewhat of a mystic. Ray has given Benny and me some really fun and nice things to sell at antique shows and in our booth at Antique malls. Many items were primitives. One in particular was a bob sled he had made as a boy with a steering wheel from an old Model T Ford. More recently he contributed an old unicycle to our garage sale.

Peggie Wise passed away in late winter / early spring of 2006 after a long bout with Alzheimers and diabetes. When she had to move to a nursing home because of her medical condition, Ray faithfully went to sit with her every day. Married almost 60 years, he has been lost without her.

One of the things that Ray has always wanted to finish was an article on the fate of Marilyn Monroe. He had always felt that the research he'd done for his Ph.D. could shed some light on her death and he followed the news of the time and subsequent books about it with great interest.

He has been kind enough to allow me to post his observations on this blog, so stay tuned ... :)

From another of Aunt Firma's Patrons

Thanks to Robert Shaw for this photo of a 36 x 24 inch painting of a
short covered bridge that he and his family purchased at a church garage
sale several years ago. He says that it hangs in their family room and
that they enjoy it very much.
Thanks, Robert, for this lovely sample of Aunt Firma's work!
Sincerely,
JuneBug

How much is your painting worth?

A few years ago I received an email from Morris Robinson with an oft asked question:


Hello Jeanne:

I would like to have an idea of the value of a fall scene that I purchased from Firma in the summer of 1973. The oil painting is about 30 inches wide and 24 inches high. I don't intend to sell it. Rather, I intend to contribute it to my law firm.

Allow me to share an anecdote. When I purchased the painting, I gave Ms. Phillips a check drawn on a Boston bank. She accepted it. I couldn't help asking her, "How do you know that I am who I say I am and that my check is good?" I never forgot her response. "You didn't come all the way to Turkey Run, Indiana to pass off a bad check. Anyway, I can always paint another painting!" I have told the story many times. The check, incidentally, was good.

Best wishes.

Morris Robinson

I asked the family and got the following answer from cousin Dorinda that many might find helpful:

There are several questions that I need to ask ...

1. I would imagine that is in excellent condition, if not, then that would devalue the painting.
2. What type of frame is it in?? If the painting is in an ornate frame then the package is worth more than if it is in a plainer frame.
3. I have found that some subjects she painted are worth more than other subjects ( less known subjects i.e. a painting of Turkey Run Bridge is more memorable to collectors than an obscure barn).
4. Just going by size and subject matter, One sold last year on Ebay for $175.00 and another was over $200.00 approximately the same size.

Hopefully, this information helps you.

Dorinda

Also thanks to Dorinda for the following suggestion:

If you set up an automatic search on ebay for Indiana Artists, pay particular attention to paintings that may show up from Brown County artists from the 1940's, 50's, 60's, and 70's, to see what they look like and how they are priced. Aunt Firma used to go to Brown County to paint, and she may well have painted with, or at least met some of these people. The styles seem very similar.

Other relevant localities include Parke County and Fountain County - I believe Aunt Firma helped influence many of those artists. For instance the two Parke County artists listed below mention on the Parke County Covered Bridge Art Association web site that they studied under Aunt Firma - and I'm sure many others have also studied with her through the years.

Mary Harrison
Louise Michael

From one of Aunt Firma's Patrons

I'm taking the liberty to share this email and lovely photograph of Aunt Firma's work from Bill Morgan received some time back - thanks so for sharing this, Bill, the pic is gorgeous!

Jeanne:

I found you through a search for Firma Phillips on the web. Love your website, as I come from a family of maniacal amateur photographers, and, alas, have the bug myself.

Our mother passed away last Wednesday at age 88. We are sad, but she was ready to go, and said so outloud to several of us in the last few months. While her health was not the best, she was reasonably O.K. and active to the end. She took a fall on Wednesday morning, the first sign of anything wrong, and was gone by 2 the same afternoon. This was how she wanted to go.

We're now in the throes of deciding what to do with her things. Amongst the treasures are 2 works by your aunt that my brother bought for our parents. We will probably keep them in the family, but want to establish value for insurance purposes. We wonder if you might know who to contact who might know the value of her work these days. One work is painted on an old cast-iron flat iron, a winter scene of a covered bridge. It is signed, but not dated. The second is a large crockery butter churn, with winter scenes of houses and barns painted over the entire surface. The pottery lid is also fully painted. It is signed and dated 1972. My father drilled a small hole in the bottom and converted it to a table lamp, but we have the original wooden churn plunger if someone preferred to have it look like a churn again.

I do not have digital photos at the moment, but will send some if it would help evaluate the works, or if you would just like to see them. Thank you in advance for any information you can provide.
I'll be sending a link to your "Weddings and Funerals" story to my sibs - I think it would be a good read for them right now. It was for me.

-- Bill Morgan
Morgan Roemmel Design, LLC
Muncie, Indiana

Cousin Lowell on the topic of Firma

Firma did graduate from Kingman. I think she always had the talent to draw and paint but utilized it after Glen passed away(1962). Probably a financial necessity. I know that she was in the group of artist that started the Rockville Bridge Festival.

She studied painting at Wabash College after she had been painting for a while. She had a studio at Sugar Creek village by Turkey Run and previous to that one at Grange Corner just south of the old Grange Corner store and of course in both of her residences.

My sister Marie stayed with Glen and Firma while she studied nursing during much of World War 2. That was in Paris,Illinois. Marie would have not been able to afford nursing training without the generosity of Firma and was always grateful to Firma.

I would imagine that most of the artist that were of her era have passed on now ... contact the Covered Bridge Association for more information.

Sad that I know so little about a person I liked and admired.

Lowell

Addendum: When I said that Firma studied Painting at Wabash College ,I should have said she was tutored by an art professor from Wabash College. I think this was when she learned to paint with a knife. Barbara said that Firma had painted a picture of the instructor.

More History on Firma

This information about Firma came from my cousin Richard a few years ago ...

My wife, Marie L. Alward, her niece, was the sole heir to her estate when she died. Marie lived with "Aunt Firma" in Paris, Ill for a year before going to nursing school there and saw her frequently during that 3 year period.

Firma was the first in her family to graduate from high school which was in Kingman. Indiana. She was one of five girls and three boys. Her father was born in France and came to the US when he was ten. As an adult he was a coal miner and moved about Indiana where there were mines. Most of Firma's growing up years were in Fountain and Parke County. Living in small rural areas they experienced a great deal of prejudice, even to having a cross burned in their yard (KKK) because the community considered them foreigners and catholic . It was necessary for Firma to work to earn money to go to HS.

Artist Firma Duchene Phillips

Hi, everyone, I and my family would like to thank all of you who have
come across my story about my Great Aunt Firma Duchene Phillips
and have contacted us to let us know you have one of her paintings or to
share a memory of her or were just wondering about the current value of
some of her works. We have really enjoyed hearing from all of you and
seeing all the lovely pictures you have sent.

I am posting on this topic on my blog site for those who are
interested in Aunt Firma and her art work so that people can not only
share with us but with one another. I'll be happy to put any pictures
that you want to share of her works on the web so that you can link to
them - just email me.

I do watch for her paintings on ebay and will try to post a notice
here when someone puts up one of her paintings for auction. It has
happened a few times. It's funny - even though Benny and I have dabbled
in the antique and refinishing business for several years, I haven't
come across any of her paintings myself in antique stores or malls or
flea markets - hopefully that means people must be hanging on to them.

Thanks again and hope to hear from you!

JuneBug, Co-Proprietor of Second Looks Antiques and Refinishing

Her Last Picture

An amazing story ...

An amazing story … Came home to the answer machine light blinking. It was message
from a guy in Seattle, Washington, named Roger Ligrano. Said he had come by 19
or 20 paintings by a David Grossblatt. And that he had looked him up on the internet
and found my website on the Café Rienzi, and could I please call him back, as
they were very eager to find out the background of these paintings. When I called,
Roger Ligrano, as it turns out, is also an artist. He has exhibited with Dale
Chihuly at the New York Botanical Gardens in 2006. Anyway, here’s how the story
unfolds … A friend of Roger’s somehow managed to intercept three truckloads worth
of paintings on their way to the dump. He salvaged 19 or 20 of them and took them
to Roger. Roger started hunting down the artist. “Do you know,” he told me, “there
is almost nothing about David Grossblatt on the web? But whatever there is seems
to be closely related to this Café Rienzi.” He had come across my Rienzi page
and from there discovered my business page and phone number and decided he would
attempt to contact me after a number of other leads failed. He was very interested
in finding out about the artist, and whomever was getting rid of these paintings,
and about the Café Rienzi. So I called my Aunt Joan and Uncle Tom and am in the
process of hopefully hooking them up with Roger so he can interview them, so to
speak. In the meantime, Roger emailed several photographs of David’s paintings,
and without further ado, here they are:


Featuring the Discovered Works of Artist David Grossblatt, Co-owner of the Cafe Rienzi


courtesy of Ligrano Studios, Seattle, Washington












More tidbits from my conversation with Aunt Joan and Uncle Tom:

More Memories of the Cafe Rienzi

This comment about the Cafe Rienzi came to me on another message board by the way of Doug Schneider:

A bunch of my high school friends and I would take the Long Island Rail Road into New York, and head for the Paperbook Gallery. After buying our books, we would then go the the Cafe Rienzi. Here I would order a himbeersaft and hope that people would think I was a real beatnik, instead of a high school kid from the suburbs.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Doug! I was no where near New York and the Rienzi during my high school years, unfortunately. That was in the sixties. Makes me feel like I missed out. I just remember the stories my aunt told of the original founders starting it up and the hi-jinx and fights - arguing violently about how to cut the cake and what size to serve and throwing plates at each other across the kitchen. I think that last part was primarily my aunt and uncle's doing, lol!

My parents divorced when I was 13 or 12 and living in South America. But in my childhood, we used to be in and out of New York all the time visiting my grandparents and aunt. I loved to spend the night with Aunt Joan - she was so much fun. She'd take me to Charlie Chaplin movies in the Village and to coffee houses to get that real Italian lemon ice. I knew about real lemon ice and cappucino long before they found their way into the midwest mainstream - and it's still hard to find a really good one (of either) here in the midwest, altho occasionally I get lucky. Uncle Tom took me to his painting studio and let me paint.

Sometimes the family would eat out in the Village too - I remember this one place that had a garden area in back where you could eat outside - I think my Mom and Dad, and Aunt Joan and Uncle Tom, and I were all there for a Sunday meal. I was really little and I tried to catch the pidgeons ...

JuneBug

larry's Memories of the Rienzi

Just got a response back from larry, Harry Justman's nephew about the Cafe Rienzi.

"I was about 12 when harry left the biz.....my brother david did work at the rienzi on sunday afternoons for a while . I recall harry having only one partner named david....last name unknown. I could draw a floor plan from memory. I recall the display of fancy Italian pastries.....flimsy wire backed chairs and tables....real la bohme territory....big brass colored expresso machines...a dinky kitchen facility. While in law school in 1979 a friend of mine arranged a double date.....and in the middle dinner it flashed on me ......this resturaunt is the old rienzi, a proustian moment.

as to memories....my parents . quite provincial, seemed facinated by the bohemian types.....and as a child it was clear that my parents thought the patrons a bit exotic/dangerous.

harry liked the beats .....and got out of the biz when the beats morphhed into hippies.....who he did not like. My cousin nina had a birthday party in the back area .....complete with a then exotic pinata.

Before passin I would ask harry about the various iconic peoples passin through in rienzis heyday.

he would repond with statments like.....Kerouac, a fucking drunk............ect.

regret not being more concrete .....i was very young."

Thanks, larry!

Junebug

Thanks to Harry Justman's nephew ...

... for passing on this piece of information about the Cafe Rienzi.

"my uncle harry justman was one of the original owners......he sold his intrest in the mid 60's. my parents spent time there occasionally on sunday afternoons with my brother ands and me. my mom was harry,s only sibling.Harry died approximatley 4 years ago and is survived by his sister, two daughters,and four grandchildren."

Thanks, larry! Do you have any personal memories of the Rienzi? I was pretty young when my aunt and uncle got out of the scene. I have personal memories of Greenwich Village coffee houses, but they're pretty vague.

JuneBug

Beginnings of the Cafe Rienzi ...

Okay, I finally have time to sit down and type out a few notes from my last telephone conversation with my aunt about the Cafe Rienzi. It was started by a group of seven friends who were writers and painters in Greenwich Village:

• Tom and Joan Durant - Joan was a pianist and a writer, and Tom was a painter and philosopher.
• Eva (an Austrian immigrant) and Gert (a German immigrant) Berliner* - Gert was a painter. I'm not sure what Eva's art passion was at that time. Gert and Eva eventually separated and Eva is now a retired professor at an exclusive college in New York City.
• Amy Nakamura* (from Japan) - I believe Amy was an artist.
• David Grossblatt - a painter
• Harry Justman and Gloria Siegal

The Cafe Rienzi opened in June 1952 at 113 MacDougal Street. It was the first popular Coffee House in the Village. It had 25 to 30 tables - and seated 150 to 200 people. It had a back room and a front room. There were other Cafes in the Village at that time - small Italian Cafes, that only Italians went to - and a ritzy Cafe named The Peacock.
From the stories I heard growing up, it was a successful albeit tempestuous start. The original group of friends left one by one. Uncle Tom left after the first few months - actually I recall Aunt Joan told me once that the group (including her) kicked him out - I need to get the rest of that story.
Gert, Eva's husband, was the next to leave, and then Aunt Joan left in November and realized a life dream when she traveled to Europe for the first time. She went over on the Queen Mary.
Eventually Harry and David had the Cafe for ten years.
Almost all the famous writers and painters of the fifties and sixties, the beats and the abstract expressionists, frequented the Cafe - and my Aunt and Uncle had opportunity to meet them before they really became famous. Poets - Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Peter Allosci. Artists and sculptors - Mary Frank and Robert Frank, Franz Klein, Jackson Pollock, DeKooning, Bob DeNiro (the actor's father), and Paul Resika, who painted Aunt Joan's portrait and who lived downstairs from Edward Hopper. Writers like Larry Rubin, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin.
Aunt Joan recalled that they used to have loft parties and that she and Bob DeNiro used to love to dance together to Billie Holiday's music. Aunt Joan was also a counselor and teacher's aid at the Greenwich House for the son - Bob DeNiro the actor when he was a boy.
Well, other duties call, and that's about all I have for now. I'm hoping that Aunt Joan and Eva will be supplying me with more stories as time passes by. Aunt Joan wrote a couple of plays based on the Cafe Rienzi that were performed on Off Broadway.
JuneBug
*Thanks to Artemesia for the corrections on the names!

Memories of the Cafe Rienzi

first in a series of posts on the Cafe Rienzi

There are 11,000 hits when you "google" the internet for information of the Cafe Rienzi on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village, New York. It is mentioned in reminiscences and memoires of famous authors and poets and artists and musicians and even in the speech of a Nobel prize winner (The Dream Machine-Nobel Speech mentions the Rienzi). James Baldwin, Jack Kerouac, Bob Dylan and many, many more well known names crop up in connection with this cafe - as well as memories of many ordinary people who visted it and frequented it. It was a apparently a Mecca for these types of people in the 50's and 60's much like Paris was a Mecca for artists in decades and centuries preceeding.

What seems little known about the Cafe Rienzi is its beginnings - its roots. My aunt and uncle were two of the original group of friends who launched the Cafe Rienzi in the early 50's. I grew up hearing all those stories - the good times, the fights, and how one by one the original group sold their share and left. My aunt said she received $2000 for her share and spent two months or two years in Europe in grand style in London and Paris and Italy. She went over on the Queen Mary.

By now my aunt and uncle and the other folks who started the Cafe Rienze are quite elderly - in their 80's. But here I hope to start a thread of their memories of this historic and influential Cafe and piece of 20th Century American history. I have asked my aunt to write some of her memories about it, and she in turn has asked her friend Eva, and we will see if those are forthcoming - but for now, my feeble notes will have to do.
More to come as I get the time! My Aunt Joan and Uncle Tom Durant, two of the founders of the Cafe Rienzi, are pictured below.

JuneBug