Written: Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Today is the bicentennial-birthday of Frederick Law Olmsted, (April 26, 1822 – August 28, 1903), who is considered the Father of Landscape Architecture. When I first heard of him, it was through Robert. Olmsted designed Central Park, Riverside Drive, Riverside Park, Ft. Tryon Park, in Manhattan, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Forest Park in Queens, Vanderbilt Mausoleum in Staten Island, Grand Army Plaza, Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, and more, all in New York City: His legacy includes parks, buildings, campuses, cemeteries, public and private works, all over the country.

In today’s The New York Times there is an insert on Olmstead.

You can watch a wonderful program about him here: Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America.

How does Olmsted intertwine with this story? He was influenced by the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, which was founded in 1838 as a rural cemetery. “A magnet for history buffs and bird watchers, Green-Wood is a Revolutionary War historic site (the Battle of Long Island was fought in 1776 across what is now its grounds), a designated site on the Civil War Discovery Trail, and a registered member of the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary System.” (from: https://www.green-wood.com/about-history/)

It is an incredibly beautifully place with Gothic gates, towering tombstones, statuary, mausoleums, lakes and winding roads and a bunch of fairly recent runaway green parrots that live in the towers of the gate. Since its opening, people would use Green-Wood as a park, they’d walk, take in the sun, have picnics. It is now a venue for theater, lectures, performances, tours. It was, in fact, one of Robert’s favorite places, we made frequent visits there and and marveled at the graves of hundreds of Civil War soldiers, people of repute (and ill repute): Think of: Louis Comfort Tiffany, Boss William M. Tweed, Henry Ward Beecher, and DeWitt Clinton, as well as businessmen Edward R. Squibb, William Colgate, and Charles Pfizer. There are artists and musicians, composers: Leonard Bernstein, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and others who are part of NYC history, for one, baseball’s Charles Ebbets. There are some 600,000+ residents; the list goes on and on, the grounds are 478 acres and they are packed. Tours of the famous, (with fantastic stories) are amazing.

And what does this have to do with Robert?

He wanted to be buried there.

But that’s not where he/we will eventually end up. We did a little exploration and yes, it was expensive but he knew what he wanted. The issue was sealed when I told him that as much as I loved him and Green-Wood, I wasn’t going to schlep to Brooklyn to visit him.

Around 2017, Robert insisted on buying plots in Flushing Cemetery,  which was a good solution as it is a place that looks like a mini Green-Wood Cemetery, it is in the area where he lived most of his life and a short distance from where he lived as a child and as an adult. It is also a beautiful arboretum, plotted by engineer, Horace Daniels, founded in 1853, on 75+ acres, where many famous folks rest, among 41,000 others:

• Louis Armstrong (1901–1971), musician and singer
• Bernard Baruch (1870–1965), financier, after whom Baruch College is named
• Laurie Bird (1953–1979), a film actress and photographer
• Eugene Bullard (1895–1961), the first African-American military pilot
• Ellis Parker Butler (1869–1937), author of Pigs is Pigs
• Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. (1865–1953), cleric
• Charles S. Colden (1885–1960), lawyer, Queens County District Attorney, and New York Supreme Court Justice
• Joseph Fitch (1857–1917), lawyer, assemblyman, and city magistrate
• Dizzy Gillespie (1917–1993), jazz trumpet player
• Hermann Grab, writer
• Johnny Hodges, long-time Ellington band sideman and soloist
• Thomas Birdsall Jackson, United States Congressman
• Jan Matulka, Modern artist
• Lemuel E. Quigg, United States Representative from New York
• May Robson (1858–1942), actress
• Aris San, Greek singer who spent most of his life in Israel and United States.
• Vincent Sardi, Sr., founder of Sardi’s restaurant.
• Hazel Scott (1920–1981), musician and singer
• Charlie Shavers, jazz trumpet player
• Battling Siki (1897–1925), boxer, remains repatriated to Senegal
• Frederic Storm (1844–1935), US Representative for New York (1901–03)
• and let’s not forget Richard C. Hellman of mayonnaise fame

It is also interesting to note that some of those escaped green parrots live in the treetops of this cemetery!

So, now that I have provided you with a bit of New York City history, let’s go back to Robert. Robert, as you know, was trained in architecture, city planning, and all things related, and he is the one who opened my eyes to many things through his studies and his background. His input affected our photography of cities, of architecture, of public portraits, of street photography: It was a common interest, a meeting of the minds for which I am forever grateful.

But now he lies in bed a few miles away.

One of Robert’s former colleagues took me to see him just the other day. Here is how it went: I took his hand and, as usual, he has this routine of gripping it with all his might. He brought my hand to his mouth and he kissed it again and again. At some point I had to pry my hand loose because this man, as diminished as he is, has incredible strength, and that translates, I believe, to his will to live.

When we first entered and I greeted him, he had that “angry” tone that I hadn’t heard in a long time. It’s just now that I realized he hadn’t used that voice in many months. Later, one of his roommates became agitated and was screaming at his two visitors. I asked Robert if the noise in the room upset him. “NO!” was the adamant reply.

We tried to converse. Robert recalled the schools where he worked but could not remember what he taught, which is so unthinkable as he was a master teacher and teaching science was his life. During a lull I said, “What do you miss the most about being away from home?”

“YOU!” was the response.

Orvieto Cathedral

“If you/we could go anywhere on earth, where would you want to go?”

“Orvieto!” he said. (The place where we dreamed of retiring, it was a great fantasy; on our visits we’d sit across the piazza and watched the day fade, in awe, of the Orvieto Cathedral.)

I took his hand again and the squeezing began, so tightly, that I was in pain, his nail was digging into my palm, and I began getting agitated, “Ok, Rob, let go, let go of my hand,” and he squeezed even tighter. I had to forcibly remove my hand. His nail almost cut through my skin.

I began to have a reaction of fear, almost of revulsion, of wanting to bolt. The confusion of duty, love, fear, pain, anxiety, horror and disbelief, each time I go, is a dreadful soup. It is one I am force-fed, each time I visit, and I can never digest it, I can never make sense of it all. The feelings boil in my gut.

And then that other behavior, that weird hand movement that I first saw when the Chicago friends visited, that up and down, repetitive, open palm, hitting of a visitor’s hand, or the bed. The motion I still can’t understand, that hand jive that seems like autistic behavior, or anger, or frustration or the inability to access the right words to provide a confused visitor with some answers. But there are no answers, there isn’t even a clear cut explanation as to what is going on and how all of this started, developed, and kidnapped him in the first place. But, likely a blend of his NPH which is a form of dementia, (supposedly treatable) and having Covid twice.

Robert’s hands from childhood to adult: played instruments, drew up plans and blueprints, painted, constructed, designed and manifested, carried his photographic equipment—and mine while we traipsed through hilltowns all over Europe in the heat. He’d use those hands to drive a stick shift on a winding road, or hoist our heavy valises onto racks in trains.

He held a child. He wrote lessons for thousands of students. He held books and newspapers and read everyday. Turned on mechanical players of CDs and vinyl of his classical music, of all kinds of music, and now, now he grabs onto my hand and doesn’t want to let go. Now he beats time with that strange up-and-down hand motion on the bed, slapping out the simple rhythm that is fading, that will lead him to Flushing Cemetery—that looked like Green-Wood Cemetery—that inspired Olmsted to create beauty all over the city and the country.

Everything is related: we are all related by the joys and sadness of the human experience. It’s all about the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega, and that crazy hand jive.

📌The series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

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