Not all the news last week was bad.
Sometime Columbus resident (We share him with Brooklyn, NY.) Robert Ivy was named a master architect by the architecture fraternity Alpha Rho Chi. Robert, who is editor in chief of Architectural Record, is only the seventh architect to be accorded this honor.
Three of the seven in that exclusive circle are Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, R. Buckminster Fuller and I.M. Pei, all giants in the world of architecture.
In his position at AR, Robert travels the world meeting architects, seeing projects and then writing about those experiences and directing coverage of the magazine. You would never know it by his unassuming persona.
Years ago when he practiced architecture here, Robert, for his firm, renovated the brick building on Market Street that now houses David Dunn”s law offices. Prior to Robert, Milton Morton, a sign painter inhabited the upstairs; a florist — Milton”s wife — was on street level.
Milton painted signs, made keys and was one of the few people in this part of the world who worked with neon. To enter his shop was to travel through time and space. Milton”s studio was cluttered with jars of paint; the walls bore the outlines in many colors of sign stencils on the walls (something Robert and David have wisely preserved). Two or three bare bulbs hung from the ceiling, though most of the light came from skylights. You felt like you were on another continent, say in 19th century Paris, in the studio of an impressionist painter.
William Mauldin
On the March 29 edition of PBS”s News Hour an anchor interviewed the deputy chief of the Wall Street Journal”s Moscow bureau about the terrorists bombings in that city”s subway system. The interviewee happened to be William Mauldin. We knew him when he was Willie and a cub reporter at The Dispatch. Actually, we knew him as a middle school classmate of our oldest son, Peter.
His dad, Bill Mauldin, who was once assistant pastor at First Methodist Church, e-mailed us the link to the story (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/terrorism/jan-june10/russia2_03-29.html).
In his e-mail, Bill thanked us again for giving Willie … excuse me, William, his start.
Willie is one of many gifted journalists who have cycled through The Dispatch newsroom. None were more intrepid. Within hours of the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Towers, Willie called me from New Haven, Conn., where he was an undergrad at Yale. He said he was going to try to get to Manhattan by train and wondered if we wanted a first-person account. The front page of the Sept. 12, 2001, Commercial Dispatch carried Willie”s account of that outing. We also ran a gripping narrative of that day Robert Ivy wrote for his magazine.
Barbara Bigelow
I”d like to nominate Barbara Bigelow as the permanent “Miss Get ”er Done.” She”s to credit for the Possum Town Mile-A-Day Marathon, an event we”re cosponsoring with the YMCA where Barb ably handles community relations.
A couple months ago we pitched the idea to Barbara and Y Director Andy Boyd. That was all it took. More than 100 people have signed up, committing to walk at least 26.2 miles during the month of April.
The hope is that once people experience the pleasures of being out in nature walking in a beautiful time of year, they will make a habit of it. For more information, including a list of walking tracks in the area, go by or call the Y at 328-7696
Appreciate it, Barb. Thanks to you, more of us are off and walking.
Bee rescue
Since buying Highland House in 1994, Dr. James and Celeta Holzhauer have poured untold amounts of love, attention and money into the stately mansion on Park Circle once known as the Lindamood home.
When Bill Livingston, the contractor presently working on the house discovered a hive of bees living in one of the metal scrolls in the gable of the mansion, Holzhauer asked Livingston to do all he could to save them.
Livingston found me through Jack Chilcutt at New Home Building. Friday morning around 7 o”clock, he and I, on a motorized lift ascended to the site of the hive. I pumped the smoker while Bill pried the scroll from the house. Fortunately, the hive was confined to the metal container and did not extend into the house, which Livingston said is built with 2-inch thick oak boards.
The good doctor will be pleased to know the bees are now living happily ever after in our backyard, though their new digs are far less stately.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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