Of Presidential Advisers, Bearcats, and the Vacant Chair, Vol. VII

By David "Chet" Williamson Sneade

Impressionist painter Ellen Day Hale was born in Worcester in 1855. Often tagged with the left-handed compliment of “She paints like a man,” a Hale self-portrait was once criticized by a teacher who said that she needed to make the hands “smaller and prettier.” An unidentified writer on the New England Historical site said, “Ellen refused. When she brought the painting back to show in Boston, one critic said it demonstrated ‘a man's strength in the treatment and handling of her subjects.’ The painting, which she began in 1884 at the age of 29, tells us a lot about the bold and unconventional Ellen Day Hale. Her bangs, for example, could have connoted promiscuity – or androgyny. Her bold gaze and her fashionable outfit suggest her willingness to push traditional boundaries.”

Hale was a product of strong, independent women and people of note. One of her great aunts was Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of the “anti-slavery” novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Another was the respected educator, Catherine Beecher. The other was the suffragette, Isabella Beecher Hooker. Her first cousin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, was a social reformer and author of the popular short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. Ellen’s aunt was Susan Hale, a respected watercolorist and her brother was the art critic Philip Hale.

Ellen first studied privately with William Rimmer and later with Helen M. Knowlton and William Morris Hunt. In the late 1870s, she moved to Philadelphia to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she came under the influence of Thomas Eakins. In 1881, Hale and former teacher, Knowlton, traveled to Europe where they studied at the Jardin des Plantes and Académie Colarossi in Paris. Hale would eventually exhibit at the Paris Salon and the Royal Academy of Arts, among others.

Holly Pyne Connor in her book, Off the Pedestal: New Women in the Art of Homer, Chase, and Sargent, wrote that Hale was considered a New Woman: a successful, highly trained woman artist from the 19th century who never married. Other New Women artists include Elizabeth Coffin, Mary Cassatt, Elizabeth Nourse and Cecilia Beaux.”

Biographer Claire Angelilli, said Hale never married. “She found a lifelong partner in fellow artist Gabrielle de Veaux Clements, whom she met in 1883. Hale and Clements became close friends in 1885 while they were enrolled at the Académie Julian in Paris. While traveling and studying in Europe together, Clements taught Hale how to etch.

Early Morning Vegetables, Charleston, South Carolina (hand-colored etching on paper)

In 1893, the two artists returned to the United States. They moved into a house near Gloucester, Massachusetts together and named it The Thickets. The exact nature of their relationship is uncertain, but during this time, lifelong relationships between women were not uncommon and often referred to as ‘Boston marriages.’"

Hale died in Brookline in 1940.

Lt. John William Grout was born in Worcester in 1843. He was a Civil War soldier who died at the age of 18 at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff. According to Loren C. Veigel, Grout’s death inspired a poem that was later turned into a song. It immortalized the fallen Worcester soldier. The song, ‘The Vacant Chair,’ is “an allegory that describes the pain suffered by the family of those killed in the war when sitting at the Thanksgiving table.”

The text was written by Henry S. Washburn, who once lived in Worcester. It first appeared in print in Isaiah Thomas’ Worcester Spy in November of 1861. It had been set to music with little success until the famous songwriter George F. Root, author of ‘The Battle Cry of Freedom,’ rearranged the piece.

“The Vacant Chair” became a hit and was a favorite of both the Northern Blue and the Southern Gray. The opening verse, which reads: “We shall meet, but we shall miss him,” is often mistaken as the song’s title. For many years, “The Vacant Chair” was played at funerals of fallen soldiers of the Civil War.

The son of Jonathan and Mary Jane Grout, young John was a graduate of Andover’s Phillips Academy before joining the 15th Massachusetts Infantry. He rose to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant and was killed on October 21, 1861 in Leesburg, Loudoun County, Virginia. His body was not recovered until November 5, 1861 “after being washed 35 miles back to Washington, D.C. His remains were identified by the name written on his clothing.”

Veigel says that Washburn’s poem of Grout’s tragic fate seemed to embody, “the sacrifice made by so many young men during the soul-wrenching Civil War which had only just begun. When the boys marched away in the spring of 1861, many did not realize that they would not return for the holidays with family. It was expected that the war would last only about ninety days, making it a sure thing that they would all be reunited in plenty of time for the annual November feast (by this time a tradition in many families, though not made a national holiday until a few years later when Abraham Lincoln, following the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, proclaimed it such.”

Grout is buried in Worcester’s Rural Cemetery.

Political Consultant Kenneth Patrick O'Donnell, Sr. was born in Worcester in 1924. He was a special assistant to President John F. Kennedy, an aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson, and an adviser to Robert Kennedy.

O'Donnell was the son of Alice M. (Guerin) and Cleo O'Donnell. His father was the football coach of the Holy Cross Crusaders for some 20 years. His brother was a star on the team. Kenny graduated from high school just as WWII broke. He served in the U.S. Army Air Force from 1942 to 1945. In a flying mission over Belgium in a B-17 squadron, O’Donnell was shot down. “He was imprisoned, escaped, and emerged with the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal with Four Oak Leaf Clusters,” Haynes Johnson of The Washington Post reported.

After the war, O’Donnell studied at Harvard, where he received his BA and later received a Bachelor of Law at Boston College. For a while, he worked as a salesman before migrating to public relations. His roommate at college was Robert Kennedy, who in 1958 enlisted his friend to work on his older brother’s first congressional campaign.

O'Donnell and Robert Kennedy

Writer Ann Connery Frantz says O’Donnell became well-known in political circles during the 1950s and ’60s. “Lesser-known is the crucial role Worcester played in Kennedy’s ascent to power,” she wrote. “O’Donnell was responsible for it. He suspected Worcester would be critical to JFK’s 1952 Senate victory (while no one else even considered the overlooked city) and pushed to focus there. After JFK beat Henry Cabot Lodge in a huge upset victory, he remarked to O’Donnell: ‘You are either a political genius or the luckiest SOB on the planet.’”

John F. Kennedy and O'Donnell

O'Donnell, along with David Powers, co-authored Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. According to WIKI, the years following the assassinations of President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, “O'Donnell grew increasingly depressed and began drinking heavily. His depression and alcoholism were exacerbated by the failure of his own political career.”

He died in 1977 at the age of 53. He is buried at Holyhood Cemetery in Boston.

Author and historian Harriette Merrifield Forbes was born in Worcester in 1856. She was married to Judge William Trowbridge and the mother of the more famous Esther Forbes, author of Johnny Tremain, a historical work about the American Revolution. Harriette was described by the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) as a capable researcher, who wrote New England Diaries, 1602-1800: A Descriptive Catalogue of Diaries, Orderly Books and Sea Journals, and Gravestones of Early New England and the Men Who Made Them.”

The AAS is the custodian of the more than 800 Forbes photographs of 17th and 18th-century buildings, landmarks, and structures taken throughout Worcester County. Mostly glass plate negatives, they capture such long gone sites as the Oread Institute (where Forbes studied), the home of Ethan Allen, and a string of lost hotels from Worcester’s past, and much more.

According to the society, the photographs are part of “a larger collection of Forbes' papers which reflects her work as a historian of early New England. The negatives have also been included in an online exhibition of Architectural Resources at AAS.”

The Old Hammond House

The AAS also has a collection of Forbes photographs of old burial grounds. “The colonists used their finest skill and raised their most enduring and characteristic works of art in memento mori,” she wrote in her notes about these American sculptural treasures.

Harriette Merrifield Forbes died in 1951. She is buried at the Pine Grove Cemetery in Westboro.

Vocalist Charles “Carlo” Francis Hackett was born in Worcester in 1889. Described by Marston records as a gifted singer with a “beautiful lyric tenor voice and a handsome stage appearance, Hackett was one of the first American tenors to establish a solid, international career.”

Hackett studied with Arthur J. Hubbard at the New England Conservatory before taking private lessons with the great Italian Opera singer Vincenzo Lombardi. The Worcester tenor made his debut in 1914 in Genova, as Wilhelm Meister in Ambroise Thomas’ three-act comic opera, Mignon.
Music critic Erik Eriksson wrote: “An exemplary Roméo in Gounod's once immensely popular Roméo et Juliette, tenor Charles Hackett achieved considerable popularity with several major companies without becoming a star of the first order. … When he returned to the United States in 1919, he was already a polished artist with successes at many of Italy's leading houses to his credit. If at times his dramatic fires burned on low flame, he was nonetheless appreciated by many connoisseurs for his finesse and unfailingly musical performances.”

Hackett made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1919. He appeared in Rossini’s Barber of Seville. “Deemed by one critic ‘a master of bel canto,’ Hackett was not heard by the doyen of critics, W.J. Henderson, until he essayed Alfredo in La Traviata on February 6,” noted Eriksson. “On that occasion, Henderson enthused over Hackett's ‘mastery of mezza voce’ and declared that he sang his diminuendi ‘with the skill of Bonci,’” Eriksson said. In total, Hackett sang for nine seasons at the Metropolitan. He is said to have had a “highly successful career at Milan, Monte Carlo, and Paris.” He made a number of recordings for Edison and Columbia. A collection of his recorded work can be heard on the Marston label.

Hackett died in Manhattan in 1942.

Illustrator John Wolcott Adams was born in Worcester in 1874. He was a descendant of American royalty. His ancestry includes two presidents, John and John Quincy Adams.

John Wolcott Adams found his way in the arts. He showed an early interest in theater. It has been documented that he designed “at least one stage setting that was designed for a 1923 Walter Hampden production.”

J.W. Adams was a student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. After graduation, he moved to New York City and enrolled in classes at the famed Arts Students League, a school that produced such legendary artists as Thomas Eakins, Childe Hassam, William Merritt Chase, and later Jackson Pollack, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Louise Nevelson. Right around the turn of the century, Adams moved to Wilmington, Delaware to study with Howard Pyle. He also shared a studio with fellow artist, Henry Peck.

The Prize Fight

According to Schoonover Studios, the “home of great American Illustration,” located in Wilmington, Adams was greatly influenced by Pyle. The studio has chronicled the history of many of the master illustrator’s students, including Adams. “Under Pyle's instruction, Adams undoubtedly advanced to what was to become his characteristic pen-and-ink manner -- a lively, detailed, finely-wrought depiction of people and events in a vignette or small scenario settings. Here also Adam's interest in portraying American historical incidents would have found informed encouragement.”

The site also said that after his Wilmington sojourn he returned to New York City. Adams’ illustrations were published in many of the best-selling periodicals and publications of the day, including Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s and Youth’s Companion, among others. As good as his illustrations apparently were, unfortunately, his depictions of black life in America can only be seen as racist.

He died of appendicitis in 1925 in New York City.

Basketball player Stanley John Modzelewski, better known as “Stutz” was born in Worcester in 1920. He took his name from a popular car of the day – the Stutz Bearcat, a name that he changed legally. He was from then on called, Stan Stutz. He was a three-sport star at Classical High School but didn’t establish himself in the world of basketball until college. At the University of Rhode Island, between the years of 1940 and 1942, Stutz was the NCAA’s leading scorer. He poured in more than 1700 points, which was a collegiate record for its time. He was also a three-time All-American.

Joe Falls, Sports Editor of the Detroit Free Press, described Stutz as “the greatest scorer in the history of college basketball, breaking all the records set by Hank Luisetti. … [He] originated the one-hand jump shot, but it was Stutz perfected the running one-hand shot.” Falls also noted that the game was simple then and everybody shot the basketball with two hands. “His coach at Worcester Classical High School was so repulsed by the idea that he kept young Stanley on the bench,” Falls said.

After graduating college, Stutz briefly played in an independent professional league before being recruited to play in the fledgling American Basketball League (ABL). He then played nine years in the National Basketball Association (NBA), logging time with the “original New York Knickerbockers,” as well as with the Baltimore Bullets.

According to the Pro Basketball Encyclopedia, Stutz “set a Knicks scoring record for playoff games that was not broken until 1969 by Willis Reed. During the 1945-46 season, Stutz led the league in scoring and the Bullets to the ABL championship.”

Retiring from playing, Stutz for a short-time coached the ABL’s Washington Tapers. The New York Times said that after retiring as an active player, "he served as one of the National Basketball Association’s top referees.” At the same time, Stutz was also in business as an executive for Tuck-Tape Company.

He was married with two sons and a daughter. He died in New Rochelle, NY in 1975.

Editor Rufus Stanley Woodward was born in Worcester in 1895. As a young sports reporter, he was the first to coin the phrase “Ivy League.” He was referring to athletes from elite schools like Harvard, Princeton, and Yale distinguished by the verdant leafy growth clinging its brownstone buildings.

Woodward went to Amherst College, where he was a football standout. He graduated in 1917 and with WWI still raging in Europe, signed on with the U.S. Merchant Marines. After the war, he took a position as a cub reporter at the Worcester Gazette, where he eventually became the City Editor. The talented young journalist rose through ranks of journalism moving next to the Boston Herald before taking a job at the New York Herald Tribune.

“Rufus Stanley Woodward was a gruff man who had been a lineman at Amherst, a student of Greek and Latin, and a literate, direct, no-frills writer,” said colleague, Ira Berkow. “As an editor, he strove to produce the best sports section in the country, and competed fiercely, especially against The New York Times, which had a staff of about 50 compared to about 25 for the Herald Tribune.”

During WWII, Woodward served aboard two U.S. ships, the Hornet and Enterprise in the Pacific, where he covered the invasions of Iwo Jima and Guam. Berkow also noted that “Woodward, who wore thick glasses, went overseas as a war correspondent with an airborne division at age 48 and parachuted from planes behind enemy lines, even though the loss of his glasses would have rendered him nearly blind. But he made it through the war.”

Woodward held positions at the Tribune from 1930 to 1948 and from 1959 to 1962. In between, he did some freelance work as an editor and/or writer for a variety of publications in New York City. His books include Sports Page and Paper Tiger. He is responsible for recruiting the great sportswriter, Red Smith. Woodward is a member of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame.

He died in 1965 in White Plains, NY.

Mrs. M.

Artist Phyllis Sloan was born in Worcester in 1921. She was raised in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Her training comes by way of Carnegie-Mellon University, where she received a BA in Fine Arts in 1943. Her concentration was in industrial design. For about a year she worked as a freelance designer in New York City, before heading back to Ohio. She became the co-owner of PDA Design Company in Cleveland.

According to the Art of the Print, Sloan began actively “experimenting with printmaking around 1960. Her oeuvre consists of a remarkable variety in this field, including etching, silkscreens, lithographs, woodcuts, linocuts, monotypes, enamels on copper, ceramic tiles, and heat transfer prints. For many years her work in figure studies, still life and landscapes have placed her art in high esteem.”

Woman in Black

“There is no authoritative history on 20th-century art in Cleveland, but if there were, Phyllis Sloane would certainly deserve a prominent place in its pages,” said Steven Litt, who added that she was “a quiet, steady, strong presence in the Northeast Ohio art scene for decades.”

The Art of the Print offered a list of exhibitions: “Her art is included in the permanent collections of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, New Mexico Museum of Fine Art, Santa Fe, Philadelphia Art Museum, Rutgers University, The Massillon Museum, The Cleveland Museum of Art and the University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque.”

The Red Comb

In the early 1970s, the artist co-operated another venue, the Sloane-O'Sickey Gallery in Cleveland. She was the recipient of a collection of major awards including those from the Print Club of Philadelphia Purchase Award, Visual Arts Award from the Miami International Print Biennial, and the North Carolina Print & Drawing Annual.

For many years, Ms. Sloan spent her winters in Santa Fe, eventually moving there in 2003. She died in New Mexico in 2009.

Actor Robert Frazer was born in Worcester in 1891. His given name was Robert William Browne. According to the Independent Movie Database (IMBd), Fraser was the “first person to portray Robin Hood on film, in Robin Hood (1912).” The site also noted that he was a “silent screen leading man, who, when sound came in, portrayed outlaws in numerous "Poverty Row" westerns. He played an Indian chief in the Tom Mix serial The Miracle Rider (1935) and a high priest in the Republic serial The Tiger Woman (1944).”

Bob Edwards described him as the dashing leading man of silent films, saying, Fraser played “rugged heroes in adventure films and was cast as a romantic lead opposite some of the silent era's top female stars, among them Clara Kimball Young, Anita Stewart, Mae Murray, and Renee Adoree. Pola Negri, who appeared with him in Men (1924), claimed that Frazer was the greatest actor she had ever worked with.

“The fact that he spent most of his career in B pictures reflects either on his luck or Negri's judgment. In 1927, while shooting Back to God's Country on location in the Sierras, Frazer and company were trapped in a blizzard and snowbound for nearly three weeks; the incident led to the suicide of the film's director, Lynn Reynolds.”

Edwards also noted that when the silent screen era ended, Fraser settled into character parts. He was a victim of a witch doctor, played by Bela Lugosi, in the 1932 film, White Zombie. He was also known for his work in The Vampire Bat, Two-Gun Caballero, and The Fighting Parson.

In his spare time, Fraser was an amateur inventor who patented a process to improve color photography. He was married to actress Mildred Bright. He died of leukemia in 1944.

He is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, CA.

This is a work in progress. Please send all suggestions, comments, and corrections to walnutharmonicas@gmail.com.   Thank you.