Art, Romance, Life,
Howard Munce and Me,
Nora Raleigh

There was a message on my answering machine this afternoon. The caller ID said Howard Munce.

I knew that name.

Howard Munce is a local artist. An original. A founder. One of Westport's consummate artists. I had seen his name on the Westport Arts Center, seen his work hanging in the Westport Library. He had helped put together the book, A Community of Artists. For years he illustrated a column in the Westport News.

And I also knew he was old enough to have been a part of a Westport that had truly been an artist's colony. Howard Munce was the real thing.

Why was he calling me?

"Uh..hello. This is Howard Munce calling. I happened to see your name in the newspaper. I see you are a local author... I was just wondering. I am calling to see if you... if you..if you happen to know or are related to Nora Raleigh, daughter of the illustrator, Henry Raleigh...from Westport?"

He talked for a while longer, slowly and deliberately, perhaps cautiously. He not only left his phone number but also a lingering sense of a question not yet asked.

She was sixteen maybe even just fifteen but extremely attractive and different, quiet and reserved. She and her friend, Barbara Hartley would wait on the embankment every morning as Howard brought the horses down to the lake. He was seventeen, a counselor in charge of the horse stables and she was a camper. Now, can you see the steep grassy hill, the young man, and the two blushing girls? Is it 1931? Or 1932? No matter, it was summer. She was the daughter of a wealthy and famous illustrator. Of course, he had heard of Henry Raleigh. Knew who he was. After all, Howard himself had dreams of being an artist.

I was so excited to get Howard Munce's call. Yes! I am related to that Nora Raleigh. What a small world, I thought. What serendipity. He must think the same thing. Imagine, another generation of Raleigh artists to live in the area. I felt suddenly important.

But before I would return his call I thought of everything I knew about my aunt, which was nearly nothing at all. Nora was my father's half sister, the daughter of his famous father's first marriage. I knew they had lived in Westport and that in fact my grandfather Henry P. Raleigh had been one of the first well-known artists to settle on South Compo Road, followed by many many others. I knew my grandfather is considered one of American's foremost illustrators. His drawings filled the pages of the Saturday Evening Post for decades; his Maxwell House Coffee advertisements are classics; a letter from F. Scott Fitzgerald hangs on my wall thanking Henry Raleigh for his illustrating one of his short stories. "Your illustration is a wonder of its kind" writes Fitzgerald.

But what I knew best of my grandfather was that he left his first family to marry his sixteen year old studio model, my grandmother. And that shortly afterwards, with the new popularity of photography replacing illustration and the great depression on the horizon my grandfather became an abusive, angry alcoholic and very quickly bankrupt. The stories I heard from my father were brutal and frightening. My father's relationship with his half sisters, Nora and Sheila began only after their father killed himself, jumping from the window of a sleazy hotel in Times Square in 1944. My father insists he named me Nora, only because he liked the name. Nothing more.

He read of her marriage in The Westporter Herald only a couple of years later, while sitting in his car at the train station, waiting to pick up a friend. Was it raining or did the rain enter his memory years later? Was it dark, late at night? Maybe it wasn't raining but yes, it was dark. He read the wedding announcement under the dimmest light, the light that spreads out from under that clanking metal hood swinging from that rusty metal chain by the taxi stand at the Westport train station.

Certainly there is pain. There must have been a sharp pain. The sweetness of memory and the sudden acute understanding that something has ended-not because of anything he had done but perhaps because of what he hadn't.

So Nora had gotten married.

I call Howard Munce.

"Hi, Howard? This is Nora. Nora Raleigh? You left me a message.. . Hello?"

I didn't hear the pause,the quietest question hanging in the air; not yet, not then so I keep on talking. " Nora Raleigh is my aunt. So yes, I'm related."

Did he know right away? Was it that my voice was too young? Or was it simply not hers?

He saw her only one more time in his life. It is very romantic. Very dramatic.

Imagine. He is in his Marine Corps uniform. There are hundreds of people rushing through Grand Central station, dozens of soldiers on leave. The city is unified, the very air is heroic. It is 1944 and for the last time in our country there are so clearly good guys and bad guys.

Imagine, amidst all these scattered people, all this history and pandemonium, under the tremendous domed ceiling- he sees her. There. She is as a ttractive as ever, and it is night again. She married a fellow student from the ARt Students League, she tells him and smiles. She is happy to see him, she tells him this as well.

"Good luck," she says and then just as quickly she is gone.

Although, there will be that one time nearly, back again in Westport many years later when Nora's sister, Sheila will invite Howard to a dinner party. But she will call and cancel only days before the date of the party. Nora can't make it, she tells Howard. He will wonder if Nora changed her mind, perhaps upon hearing that Howard was now married and working as an artist himself, happy and successful. But he never really knew for sure.

"Is she alive?"

I am so surprised by this question I actually ask,"Who?"

"Your Aunt Nora," Howard says finally.

Still, it takes some time for everything to sink in. At least for me. My aunt Nora was never anything more than as old and round as my grandmother. It was my understanding they had all made some peace with each other in their old age -first family and second. But it was also my understanding that Nora died under suspicious circumstances. They said it was a heart attack. She was alone, living in a cluttered trailer in upstate New York. Her marriage had ended shortly after it began. She never had children. Her career as an artist never was. And unlike her sister and brother, Nora never seemed able to find enough significance in idolizing her alcoholic father. She never joined in on their fight to gain appreciation for his work not as commercial but true art. Collecting his original paintings, etching plates, the W.W one propaganda posters, and pages from old magazines did not hold for Nora quite the same meaning.

It was my understanding that Nora lost her own life years before she actually died .

"You didn't know?" I say to Howard.

"Know what?"

I tell Howard across the phone line. "She died a couple of years ago."

"Oh," he says. "I am sorry to hear that."

It is only then I understand that Howard Munce hadn't been calling me. He hadn't seen my name in the paper and wondered if I was related to the Raleighs of Westport of forty, fifty, sixty years ago. It wasn't about me at all. Nora Raleigh Baskin local young adult author, creative writing teacher, granddaughter of The Henry P. Raleigh.

He had been looking for her.

"Oh yes, indeed. I had a big crush on Nora," Howard told me later when we finally met and sat down to talk.

We were in his living room, surrounded by years and decades of art work, Howard's and others. Paintings, illlustrations, made art and sculpture. There was a side table by the door crowded with pictures of Howard's beautiful wife and their two children, as children and then grown with children of their own. A whole life and then some.

Howard speaks quietly, softly. He is extremely articulate and thoughtful. His memories are sharp and poetic, filtered only by wisdom and a sense of humor. It is hard for me to comprehend how much is different in our world and how much is still very much the same, like dreams and love and the pursuit of art.

"But how old would she have been...I mean, if it had been her? If I had been that Nora?" I did not yet comprehend how unimportant my question was.

"I had no reason to think it wasn't her. . .," Howard tells me.

Howard Munce turned ninety this year, which means the first Nora Raleigh would have been eighty-nine or eighty-eighty at best.

"But," he adds after a beat. "I really didn't do the arithmetic."

© 2006 Nora Baskin

1. Just Hanukkah

2. Finding Home

3. On Writing for Children
and Children Writing

4. Art, Romance, Life, Howard Munce and Me