Friends Who Enriched My Life - Part II


Cheryl Daye Wooten
At a friends wedding,
Massachusetts, circa 1967

Cheryl Daye Wooten

Cheryl was pleasant and well-grounded. A sweet person with much intelligence. We shared a love for creating art, and were friends from the sixth grade (1956) until just after college (1966). We also shared many of the same classes during this time.

We saw a lot of each other over the years, frequently visiting each other and going to museums or various events. Her conversations were always stimulating and meaningful.

Knowing my interest in stereoscopy, she had located an extensive set of Holmes viewer cardboard slides. We contemplated The Book of Tea, which we had recently read, while drinking from a simple red clay Chinese tea pot with a bamboo handle she had bought. We shared many a ride home from college, holding the trolley doors open for each other — in defense — as it seemed the buses and trolley car operators relished slamming the doors on our portfolios.

In the earliest days, we were pampered by our wonderful junior high art teacher, Ruth Weidenheimer (who shamelessly favored students who had a love for the arts, rather than the ones who elected the class for an easy grade). In the later years, we shared complaints about our idiosyncratic instructors, or other peeves.

Sometime around 1965 Cheryl told me about the constant harassment she experienced at various part-time jobs she had while in school. While a waitress, she received inappropriate propositions from customers, fewer tips, and more complaints than the other, white-skinned workers. While working at the library, the full-timers illegitimately complained about her work, and the one time she heated an onion soup lunch on the hot plate in the basement — stunk up the library, they claimed — and tried to get her fired.

Racism had a profound effect on her sense of well-being at work, and a direct effect on her income. I was shocked to hear it. And saddened that she had never mentioned this to me before.

I didn’t know what to say except, “I’m so sorry. Oh, Cheryl.”

But I had a secret as well, I never told her what my father had asked. Sometime in 1964, my dad asked me if I felt romantic toward Cheryl. I said “No, we were just very good friends.” He told me he was glad (sounding much relieved), so I asked, “Why?” “Because she was black,” he said. I was deeply ashamed he thought that, and surprised because he had not shown me this prejudice before. In fact, he had repeatedly indicated that he thought all people should be treated according to their deeds. But it was now clear that equal treatment ran up to, but did not include, a potential next-of-kin.

Cheryl and I eventually lost contact. She was a friend to me for many years, which makes me still very fond of her.


——— Mr. Abe Lincoln

The big junior high school assembly on patriotic themes was coming up and they wanted a presentation by the art class. Patriotism was big in 1958. There were to be speeches, songs and the entire school orchestra. One of the projects Cheryl and I worked on together came out of this foment.

Our art teacher, Ruth Weidenheimer, asked for ideas for presenting a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, which fit the patriotic theme. The picture was to be based on the famous sitting statue of Lincoln located in Washington, D.C.

I had seen a Dinah Shore TV program that, during one song, had a painting magically appear on a surface behind the singer. It was my guess that painters worked behind a surface made out of semi-permeable material. I suggested to the class that the process might be duplicated with a wet bed sheet.

Ruth brought in a big wood frame, vertically supported, and stretched a sheet across. We soaked it and used simple, water-based poster paint. With just the right amount of soaking and paint consistency, the painting appeared, as if by magic, on the other side of the sheet. It worked beautifully.

Four of us, her star students, were assigned to the painting job: Cheryl Wooten, Hope Daniels, Lorna (I am tempted to say her last name was Doone, but I really don’t remember), and me. A giant frame was rigged, over which four sheets had been stitched together. The four of us penciled the outline of the huge figure, careful to align our individual quadrants to each other’s sections. We did a run through on the brightly lit auditorium stage, and it looked wonderful. Four groups of almost random lines appearing out of thin air to finally complete a handsome likeness of Abe Lincoln.

The night of the big assembly, with four new sheets sewn in place, the four of us soaked the sheets to the proper wetness on our cue, which was the close of a stirring speech. Just as the orchestra began the strains of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the curtain parted to reveal the blank sheet “canvas” we were to paint upon. The lights, which had been bright throughout the rehearsal, were suddenly replaced by a very deep, dark red. So dark, in fact, that our guiding pencil lines where rendered invisible.

Lorna whispered in shock, “I can’t see a thing, what do we do?”

Furious that our hard work, and moment of glory might be destroyed by a lighting designer’s madness, I whispered back something profound like, “Damn it.”

Cheryl whispered, “Fake it.”

And so we did. And perhaps because the light was so dim in front of the “magic” painting, the audience didn’t seem to notice, or care, that the lines forming the likeness were composed of four very different sections which didn’t quite match. The loud applause and cheering seemed to indicate that it didn’t matter that Mr. Lincoln look like a hunchback with limbs of varying lengths.


——— The Playground

In September 1966, Cheryl invited me to see a project she worked at. A playground had been built by the SNAP program on an abandoned lot in the middle of one of Boston’s most economically depressed areas. The playground was constructed mostly from found or inexpensive objects, such as railroad ties, telephone poles, car tires, and gravel. She was a counselor there, and, for about three hours, I was also.

One lad of about seven got most of my attention. I encouraged his romping and simply watched as he ran all over the structures. He had dark olive-brown skin, curly reddish hair, and beautiful big brown eyes. He was short for his age and acted tough.

At one point, he fell against a metal post and was knocked to the ground. Instead of crying, as would be natural, he stiffened and barely breathed. I ran over to him thinking he was seriously hurt, a bump had developed on his forehead. He said he was O.K., ignoring what must have been a very painful bruise. When Cheryl said it was time for us to leave, the kid with the bruised forehead grabbed my arm and begged, “Please take me home with you.” I was stunned and stuttered, “I couldn’t.” He promised, assuming the problem might be his behavior, that he would be a good boy.

I asked, “But what about your parents? Wouldn’t they mind?” “They wouldn’t care,” he said.

Barely making a living for myself, and having no idea how I could support a child, I wanted to take him home. I wanted to put ice on his wound, and tell him he was a good boy. I wanted to watch him play, go to school, grow up, and eventually to love and protect other children, perhaps his own.

Instead, I told him goodbye as lovingly, as gently as I could. I cried all the way home, and have not forgotten him for 34 years.

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