Jeaniegray and Bill Oleson and yours truly photographing ourselves at arm's length, circa 1980 |
Hansel and Gretel and the Witch , Senior thesis at Yale Art School in egg tempera by Jeaniegray Schiebel (Johnson Stokes Oleson) |
The Opera Singer |
Poster of Hamden historic homes drawn by Jeaniegray Oleson for the Town of Hamden Historical Society |
I visited Jeaniegray at a Hamden nursing home (Arden House?) a few weeks before she died as I drove from Vermont to Connecticut for Thanksgiving with family. She was not awake but I stayed awhile and left a small plant with a note on it which her relatives did not see.
I had placed it behind a curtain for sunlight .
I wrote this tribute to her when I returned to Vermont. I had promised her thirty years before that I would deliver her eulogy, but her children did not know that.
I wrote the tribute in such a way that it could simply be kept and read privately by the family.
They asked me to deliver it at her funeral, not knowing it fulfilled her wish and my promise.
PDK
Note to the text: To my child's mind, Jeaniegray was a "daughter of privilege" because her father, Otto Schiebel ---who lived around the corner from my childhood home and from Jeaniegray's---- sent her to Yale and drove a "Cadillac" or "Pontiac" and once owned a "yacht", none of which I had experience of in my family---especially the fancy cars!
Me, circa 2006, wearing Connecticut Governor's Footguard Uniform, which belonged to Jeaniegray's father, Otto Schiebel. |
Edgerton, (left front) a "castle" of 80 rooms, a block past one end of Hamden where Mount Carmel lay |
Edgerton, (right front) a "castle" of 80 rooms, a block past one end of Hamden where Mount Carmel lay. |
The Sleeping Giant, at the other end of Hamden, where Mount Carmel proper sits. |
For that story, go to