A grandfather’s homecoming

THROUGH A TOWNIE’S LENS

“Sometimes it takes a journey to come home.”

— Stephen Levine from “A Year to Live”

On the occasion of his 60th birthday In 1945, my grandfather, Charles Everett Rush, sat for this portrait painted by Philadelphia portrait artist Arthur Edwin Bye.

Raised in Chapel Hill, I grew up idolizing my Granddad, director at UNC’s Louis
Round Wilson Library from 1941-54. After his death in 1958, I cherished this rendering even more, as it hung in my Grandmother Lionne’s home here in Chapel Hill until her death in 1991 at the age of 106.

It must be noted for accuracy’s sake that in my day, before the current Davis Library was opened in 1984, Wilson anchored, like a prime location on the compass, the southern point of the campus, facing north up Polk Place to South Building. Back then, Wilson, now re-named: “the Wilson Special Collections Library.” was THE University library, and thus, possessed a gravitas not to be underestimated. As adopted Tar Heel author Carl Sandburg once said, “They keep the old things that never grown old.”

When it comes to the old Wilson Library, I can rightfully lay claim to being a Carolina Blue Blood. Not only was Granddad THE University librarian, but during WWII when all the men went off to war, my grandmother, Lionne Rush, volunteered at the Rare Book Room, and finally, my own mother, Myra Lauterer, served on the Wilson staff for 20 years.

As a child, I had the run of the place; the giant globe of the earth in the main reading room, where the ceiling seemed so high that it could have been the sky, the spooky but fascinating “stacks,” even the smell of the place, which to this day renders me a 12-year-old again — a scent so ineffable and indefinable that one ascribes to the aroma of old books, and yes, maybe also of wisdom.

In short, Wilson was my boyhood home away from home. And grown ups, speaking to me, referred to Wilson as “your grandfather’s library.” So imagine my surprise when I became old enough to learn that the library wasn’t actually “his.”

Thus, the portrait of Charles Rush was as iconic as the image of George Washington on a one-dollar bill. And because Granddad Rush was my sole male role model in the family — all the more impactful. The painting, an imposing size, two and a half feet wide and three feet deep, and in the original frame, takes two heavy lifters to hang on a wall.

Observing the painting, you might find it curious that the subject is looking away from us, as we photographers say, looking “off-camera.” I’d always wondered about that unusual sideways pose, and I came to suspect that the old Quaker would never have desired such a portrait but rather that the whole affair was a birthday gift from his wife — a Methodist/Presbyterian by faith and thus not bothered by any expectations of humility. I bet Granddad relented to the sitting only as long as it reflected his humble Hoosier farm boy Quaker roots.

Also, you notice his hands are folded as in prayer, or thought, or study — fittingly over an open book, symbolizing his lifelong career as a librarian. Then, there in the background, in deep shadows, giving a nod to his lifelong passion for history, maps and his love for all things North Carolina, is a map of the Outer Banks marking the shipwrecks of “the Graveyard of the Atlantic.”

Over the years, I had lost track of this portrait, and it wasn’t until 2001 when Lynne and I moved back to Chapel Hill, that I discovered it, by sheer chance, hanging in the office of Wilson’s kind-hearted curator, Robert Anthony — a fitting location, for it was the very same office occupied by Granddad. The painting had been donated by the old librarian’s granddaughter (and my first cousin) Joy Surdam, who had inherited it from her mother.

During my 20 years back at UNC-CH teaching local reporting and photojournalism, I often took advantage of the proximity of the “J-School” to nearby Wilson Library, occasionally paying Granddad impromptu drop-in visits — a sentimental pilgrimage always welcomed by Wilson’s gracious curator.

But after Bob Anthony’s retirement and news of Wilson’s impending renovation, I began to wonder what would become of the portrait of the old librarian. Subsequently, I discovered that the portrait had been put in what they called “deep storage.” And it didn’t seem as if there were any plans to re-hang the painting.

Spoiler alert: happy ending: Hearing my plight, Linda Jacobson, Keeper of the North Carolina Collection Gallery at Wilson, encouraged me not to give up. Fast forward to last week when Interim Curator Lisa Gregory kindly arranged for the return of the painting to the family, with me acting as the Rush family trustee. My ultimate goal is to eventually donate the painting to Granddad’s alma mater, the Quaker College, Earlham, in Richmond, Indiana, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1954.

But first, I indulged myself in a little homecoming celebration.

It wasn’t until I brought the portrait home and placed it in the front hall where I had supposed it might hang that I realized the profound significance of the profile pose — the prayerful, studious, almost beatific pose — echoing and mirroring the exact same pose of my grandfather’s own father, the venerable old Quaker minister Nixon Rush, painted just before his death in 1914 by Olive Rush, my grandfather’s elder sister and pioneering Santa Fe woman artist.

Side by side, together again, father and son. A homecoming indeed.

As the Bard has written, “All’s well that ends well.”

Jock Lauterer is a longtime photojournalist, honored in 2020 by PEN America as a “Local Journalist Hero. He is a senior lecturer at the UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media and is the retired founding director of the school’s Carolina Community Media Project. The author of six books, Jock is also the winner of the 1998 National Geographic Magazine Faculty Fellowship, among his many accolades