The
sculptor, Tom Penning, told me he admired and respected my grandfather, Henry,
for the caring and gentle way he took care of his wife, (my grandmother) May
Van Bramer Wilgus, during her long illness.
I never met my grandmother because Huntington’s Disease carried her away
several years before I was born. She
died at the age of 48 leaving three children, two grown, May and William and
one a teenager, Grace, and a very sad and exhausted husband.[i]
Henry
had fallen in love with the lovely May Van Bramer when they met in Tarrytown in
1912. She was a housemother at a boys’
school, and he was working on a tour boat.
It was, by his account, love at first sight. She was already engaged to a High Woods boy,
but she married Henry Wilgus from Elizabeth, New Jersey.
The writing is from a notebook that Henry put together when
he was an octogenarian with use of a stapler instead of glue thus the marks on
the picture. May has a pretty face and
her sense of humor in donning Henry’s wedding clothes is evident. The bulldog, Spud, was her pet, and she was
very fond of him. There is a fishing rod
lying against the boat.
The
Van Bramer family had established a family tradition of burial in the Woodstock
Cemetery. Henry purchased a large plot
in the front with enough room for five regular burials and unlimited
ashes. In those days, families often
arranged the person for burial themselves, so although May had been a member of
Trinity Episcopal Church in Saugerties, her calling hours and funeral were at
home. Henry tenderly placed all the love
letters they had exchanged in their early relationship and some of her
treasured books in her coffin.
However, his mourning was not satisfied by small gestures, so he
commissioned his friend Tom Penning,[ii] a
sculptor who worked in native bluestone, to carve a large urn with appropriate
symbols indicating family and devotion to God.
Henry rarely attended church, but he was a believer in his own way.
Henry
wanted the Wilgus family crest to be on the urn. He was somewhat sure it would be a wild goose
as the name suggests, but it turned out to be a chap who is half naked and
wears a leafy crown upon his head from the old English word “wildgos” meaning a
man with a wild disposition. Henry decided to use geese instead. Tom Penning, a devoted Roman Catholic, had
some knowledge of religious symbols, so he and Henry chose several for the urn.
|
 |
Six
months after the urn was put in place, it cracked. Tom was distressed and offered to make a new
one, but Henry said there could never be another exactly like it. The crack would stay to symbolize the old
saying “nothing’s perfect”. As years
went by, Henry added memorials to friends killed in WWII, to the bluestone
industry, and one to his good friend William Spencer, a quarry worker and the
subject of many tales told at the High Woods store. His own headstone was placed next to
May’s. There would be a lot of years to
live before it would be carved.[iii]
[i] May Van
Bramer Wilgus, 1888-1936.
[ii]
Tom Penning is best known for
his bluestone sculpture “Our Lady of the Hudson”, a bluestone statue at Port
Ewen’s Presentation Church, overlooking the river. It was done in 1952 with funds raised by
local boatmen and towing companies. For many years boatmen would blow the “Port
Ewen Salute” as they passed the ‘Madonna cradling a tug boat”.
[iii] Henry
Alexander Wilgus, 1894-1976.
No comments:
Post a Comment