SECTION SIX
Service and remembrance are closely linked. The group of fallen servicemen crosses over from one panel to the next.
Let’s return to the theme of military service that crosses the line between these two panels and the group of men who lost their lives. The US Navy serviceman in green fatigues on the left side of the line is Stephen Brunton who served in Vietnam, transporting troops and supplies on the dangerous jungle rivers of the Mekong Delta.
Next to him stands Calvin Barra of the Calpella winemaking family. Calvin was drafted into the Marines in 1944 and served in World War II for nine months. He was killed at the battle of Iwo Jima, just days before his 20th birthday. His father Antonio and brothers Pete and Charlie were working in the vineyard when uniformed men drove up to bring the sad news. Read more here. See him in uniform below.
The man kneeling in uniform is Army Sgt. Jason J. Buzzard (above), who was the first Mendocino County serviceman to die in the Iraq war, victim of an improvised explosive device in Baghdad. He was a 31-year-old husband and father of two, whose motorcade returning his body home to Ukiah was greeted by highway workers, policemen, and hundreds of citizens all along the route from Sacramento.
The fourth man in this group who died for his country is presented differently, as an older person painted in a picture frame. This is because his circumstance was different; Michael Moore was a pilot in Vietnam but he was able to come home. He married his sweetheart Betty and they had two children. He worked in sales and then as a Ukiah middle school math teacher.
But his service in the US Air Force in Vietnam ultimately claimed his life due to complications from exposure to Agent Orange. Read about Michael Moore on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial website and see him below.
Michael Moore’s family attended the mural Grand Opening, glad to have his and others’ delayed sacrifice represented.
The two figures at the bottom of the two panels represent the ultimate sacrifice in iconic form.
The fallen soldier in World War I dress uniform lies in state as if we are at his wake. His headstone straddles the line between service and remembrance, where – in the land of the living – a woman grieves his loss. She places the memorial red poppy on his grave and they cascade upon her. The poppy as symbol of the fallen came from a poem written by World War I brigade surgeon John McCrae who was struck by the sight of the red flowers springing up in ravaged Flandres battlefields littered with thousands of dead. The woman painted here could be the soldier’s wife, or sister, or the daughter he would never know.
The top of the scene depicts Ukiah’s Russian River Cemetery in spring with cherry trees in blossom and Memorial Day wreaths laid along gravestones lining the road.
Remembrance refers not just to families but to communities and cultures. We remember and miss our loved ones. But it’s also important to remember events and actions, to remember people who epitomized or changed their communities. Or who acted with such compassion that we want to thank them forever. All of this is true of the next group!
The famous Ukiah painter Grace Carpenter Hudson was part of a truly distinguished family. All four of her grandparents were abolitionists who fought to make Kansas a free state by moving there (from Vermont and Indiana) in order to be eligible to vote against slavery. Grandmother Clarina (below), while still in Vermont, took the unusual step of leaving a difficult husband and supported her family by teaching and then by publishing poetry and essays on the role of women in society. Her second husband was a progressive newspaper man, so Grace’s father Aurelius was brought up in this environment.
In 1854 the Kansas Territory was positioned for statehood and many abolitionist New Englanders flooded in, as did pro-slavery settlers from Missouri. The Nichols-Carpenter family soon worked four land claims and Aurelius A.O. Carpenter started two newspapers, the Herald of Freedom and the Kansas Free State. On May 21, 1856, a pro-slavery mob burned much of the free-state stronghold city of Lawrence and ransacked the two newspaper offices, wrecking the presses and dumping the type in the river.
In response, abolitionists organized around John Brown and murdered five of the offenders. This led to the Battle of Black Jack in which A.O. Carpenter, an excellent sharpshooter, was crucial to the abolitionists’ victory. Along with other wounded men, he was nursed by neighboring free-state women, including his future wife Helen McCowen.
Kansas entered the Union as a free state in 1861, but by then A.O. Carpenter had joined the McCowens traveling by ox wagon on the California Trail. They settled in Potter Valley, where Grace and her twin brother Grant were born, and where the family became close to the many native Pomo living there.
Aurelius co-founded a newspaper called The Mendocino Herald and soon the family moved to Ukiah where Helen and her husband established a photography business. She did much of the portrait work while he traveled as a County Assessor. He took photographs of all types of work and everyday places and these images are how we remember A.O. now. Important resource: Aurelius O. Carpenter – Photographer of the Mendocino Frontier by Schenk, Holmes, Smith-Ferri 2006
Raised in this educated, artistic and entrepreneurial family, Grace was well positioned to achieve success. Add compassion to this mix: Grace’s mother Helen saw the Pomo people as equals and recognized their tremendous suffering as white settlers took their land, food, freedom and safety. Helen took in Native workers and servants, but she treated them like family. This universal respect appears in the Carpenters’ photos and Grace’s work as she developed into a mature and world-renowned painter.
Another crucial resource: Grace Hudson – Artist of the Pomo Indians, a Biography by Lanson and Tetzlaff 2006
Grace’s progressive family recognized her talent and the value of education. At age 15 she was enrolled in the California School of Design, living on her own in San Francisco! She excelled and desired to keep painting. In 1889 she met the man she would marry, young Dr. John Hudson, with whom she could follow a creative path.
John Hudson developed a rapport with his Pomo patients and began learning about their language, culture and exquisite woven baskets. Ultimately, he stopped practicing medicine to become an ethnographer, while Grace focused her painting on the lives of the Mendocino Pomo. Mary Mitchell was Grace’s model for The Dowry 1902 and I painted her with her baby Garland from the photo below.
This was my source photo for their portraits in the mural. Her parents Helen and A.O. Carpenter appear behind them as well as the gravestone Grace designed for herself and John which is located in the Russian River Cemetery.
The man standing to the left is Soon Quong Wong, the Hudson’s Chinese cook, but also close friend. His wife remained in China but their four children visited often, attended Ukiah schools, and all had a deep relationship with Grace and John. The life and work of the Hudsons exemplified empathy and cross-cultural respect when that was not the norm.
Chinese in Mendocino County, Lorraine Hee-Chorley 2009
Grace and John Hudson’s home became the Grace Hudson Museum and Sun House in 1986.
When the City of Ukiah purchased the estate in 1975, it included an astonishing collection of Pomo baskets and artifacts, the photographs and hundreds of glass slides taken by A.O. Carpenter, Grace’s mother Helen’s diary tracing the development of Mendocino County, John Hudson’s manuscripts and field notes, and the largest collection of Grace Hudson’s paintings in the world.
Now, who is that couple next to their model-T? This where a history mural can grab onto the last wisp of a fading memory and keep it alive.
They are Frank and Mary Robinson, among the earliest Black residents in Ukiah. They had no children and no grandchildren to save photos and remember their deep kindness. But one man did, and he told me before he himself passed away. This was Mr. John Hill, who appears in panel 21 hospitality.
Remember the story of the Perry family who came to Ukiah looking for integrated schools? They were the first Black kids and there was just one school, so they enrolled and did well. But when their father refused the demand of a few men to take his kids out of school, he lost his job and their home. Frank and Mary Robinson decided to help the Perry family. The Robinsons owned property on Gobbi Street and they offered to sell the Perrys a lot for one dollar!
Big John worked at the Ukiah Drive-In for years and was one of the few who remembered the Robinsons, recalling their kindness and Mary always cooking something in the kitchen to share.
I painted the Robinsons standing next to their Model-T. Big John told me that Frank would drive up and down State Street with Mary sitting in the back seat, her long scarf flying in the wind. They honked at people who waved back at them. Mr. Hill passed away soon after the mural was complete. I’m grateful to him for sharing his stories so they can stay alive.
The remembrance of loved ones ranges from honoring a long life well-lived, to despair over a life snatched away too soon. Robyn mourns the loss of her husband Ron after a long and loving marriage, while White Wolf grieves for his teenage niece.
The carved baby gravestone is an angelic representation of all those infants and young children who slipped away. Kelly Ann Farley was just 18 when she was lost in an accident. Her gravestone reads “Our Little Butterfly – Absent in body… but not in spirit.”
Another set of portraits also came from tragedy, but represent a vibrant brother and sister while they were joyously alive. They are Kressa Jean and Kai Logan Shepherd, who were among nine people to loose their lives in the horrific 2017 Redwood Complex Fire.
Kai loved baseball and the San Francisco Giants honored the siblings posthumously with a special game invitation to parents Sara and Jon Shepherd in 2018. Kressa delighted in blue dragonflies so one appears next to her portrait.
This was a heart-wrenching subject to paint. But it is one of the deepest functions of art — keeping loved ones alive after they have passed from our realm. It was an honor to be allowed to do that with Kressa and Kai, who are so missed by their family, school, and community.
The next portraits are of loved ones lost at the end of full lives.
This is Orval Elliott Jr. of Hopland holding a note and photo of his Grandmother Alice Connor Elliott who, in the Pomo tradition, had made him a beautiful basket at his birth.
My painting portrays him and his grandmother, but also represents him in the act of honoring and remembering her. She lived from 1896 to 1984, witness to many changes and part of a loving family and strong culture. A long life well-lived, she is nonetheless missed.
The couple painted in a framed photo are Robyn and Ron McDaniel, who ran Ukiah Locksmith for many years. After a date one night in 1970, when Robyn was locked out because her family had fallen sleep, the couple said “What the heck!” and eloped to Las Vegas. The photo was taken of them newly married in an all-night chapel.
They were married for 46 happy years, but since his death in 2016 Robyn grieves his loss deeply. She would walk by the mural every day to touch Ron in the picture.
The next set of portraits are of people whose work helped the world understand and remember this region. Notice the white-haired woman painted in a frame. This is Judy Pruden, a relentless advocate for historical preservation in Ukiah.
Judy was a founder of Pumpkin Fest, served 20 years on the Planning Commission, and was dedicated to the beautification of Ukiah’s downtown. Sort of like the historical plaque commemorating Judy’s promotion of historical plaques above, I painted Judy to preserve knowledge of her role in preserving knowledge of the history of Ukiah!
As I painted all the history and stories in the mural it gradually dawned on me and many others that this project needed interpretive plaques, like the historical markers Judy championed but different in that they illuminate the imagery next to them.
After Judy Pruden died in 2015, her husband Mike Morgan established a memorial fund in her honor at the Community Foundation. It makes grants “to community-based projects that involve the public (all ages) in the understanding and appreciation of Mendocino County’s history.” I didn’t know about the fund when I painted her portrait, but later got one of these grants for writing and designing the mural plaques that are complete and in the permit process right now!
Just under Judy is a group of people devoted to understanding the plants native to this region. They are Ukiah botanist and horticulturist Carl Purdy, Covelo ethnobotanist Edith Van Allen Murphey, Native botanical experts Lucy Young (Lassik) and her husband Sam Young (Hayfork Wintu).
Carl Purdy came to Ukiah by stagecoach at age nine, transfixed by hillsides covered in wildflowers. Unable to afford college, he explored the county on foot, befriending local settlers including young Grace Hudson’s family. He learned about land management and edible and medicinal species from the Pomo. He filled out his careful research by corresponding with experts such as Luther Burbank in Santa Rosa. Read more here.
Purdy made a special study of lilies especially those native to northwest California. When he was 17 he sent a sample to a plant dealer in New Jersey who ordered 50 bulbs paying 75 cents each. Purdy had found his calling. Read his story below or link to the complete issue of Fremontia – Journal of the California Native Plant Society.
The botanical biodiversity of California is astounding. It was Carl Purdy more than any other individual who educated the American gardening public about the ecology, habits, cultivation and diversity of California plants and bulbs. Through lectures, published articles, scientific meetings, and his catalogs, Purdy made it possible to grow these previously obscure species in the gardens of Europe and America.
Carl Purdy and the Bulbs and Wild Flowers of California
Edith Van Allen Murphey standing behind Native botanical experts Sam and Lucy Young.
Courtesy of the Robert J. Lee Collection of the Mendocino County Historical Society
Murphey was a self-taught ethnobotanist who worked with tribes from Nevada, Idaho and Oregon, as well as the Native people of Covelo where she lived. She also worked with Carl Purdy, as you will see. This photo was my source for their portraits below.
Notice the group all stand on swirls of green indicating their deep connection to plants.
Edith Van Allen was a young librarian-linguist who came from Albany, where she used to chat with future President Roosevelt in the elevator of the New York State Capital when he was Governor. Her mother died at her birth and her father encouraged her to read a lot and gave her free reign outside. Coming from Mohawk country, she yearned to live with the Indians. In 1902 she came to be a librarian at UC Berkeley. Traveling to Sherwood outside of Willits, Edith fell in love with the Mendocino mountains and stayed to homestead there along with two other “bachelor girls” on neighboring spreads. Soon “according to custom” she married another homesteader. After her third husband died, Edith had had enough of marriage and determined to continue studying plants, gather Native basketry and survive as the Pomo did, by foraging and catching salmon.
Edith Van Allen Murphey’s wild and exciting life makes a perfect Mendocino County story!
At age 48 she told Carl Purdy he should not only give her advice about plants but should hire her. He scoffed, but then said “I do need a cook.” That was the open door. Read more here!
There is one last portrait in the panel, but it’s a house not a person. Why is it here?
The Conference Center is a big building on a big lot. It was formerly Penny’s and Safeway before that. There was a house built around 1881 exactly where we stood, behind Section Six of my mural. It was moved in 1951 to make room for the Safeway development. Julie Knudsen knew about it because her daughter was buying the house now, much changed and improved, at its “new” location on Luce Avenue.
I painted the house as it appeared in the earliest documents, more faithful to the families that built and cherished it.
Remembrance is full of people and emotion. We carry our departed loved ones with us in our hearts where they can no longer go, into the future.
And that is what comes next: