Island
Living 44: One Twentieth-Century Life
by A. D.
Coleman |
|
Turns out that
I crossed paths with death twice this year. First
with the car crash in late June about which I've
written here; then, in early November, with my mother's
passing at the age of 85. She'd undergone a long,
slow decline, both physically and mentally. Her
end came quickly and painlessly, a relief to us
all.
My mother's
life spanned most of the twentieth century. It fell
to me, as the writer in the immediate family, to
draft her obituary. What a strange and solemn task
-- to sum up someone's existence in a handful of
words. Here's what I wrote:
Frances
Allan Coleman, 85, co-founder and former editor-in-chief
of the Plenum Publishing Corporation, died peacefully
of natural causes on Saturday, November 4, 2000
in Willits, California. Beginning in the late
1970s Ms. Coleman suffered numerous strokes,
and in her last years was diagnosed as an Alzheimer's
victim.
Ms. Coleman,
the former Frances Louise Allan, was born in
Elkins, West Virginia, June 6, 1915, to James
and Emily Allan. After a year at Davis &
Elkins College she left West Virginia, living
briefly in Pittsburgh -- where she edited a
union newspaper -- before moving to New York
City.
In New York
she worked as an assistant to the noted documentary
photographer and filmmaker Arnold Eagle, as
a result of which she became a serious amateur
photographer, and also found employment as a
freelance editor. During World War II she met
and married Earl Maxwell Coleman, then a writer
of poetry and fiction.
In 1947
they founded a custom translation service, Consultants
Bureau, which they developed into the Plenum
Publishing Corporation, a major New York-based
scientific-technical publishing house. Consultants
Bureau in 1949 pioneered the rapid, efficient,
and accurate translation into English of top-level
Soviet scientific material in both journal and
book form. In 1960, as Consultants Bureau Enterprises,
Inc., the company became a publicly held corporation
traded on NASDAQ; in 1965, it changed its name
to Plenum Publishing Corporation.
By 1965
the company was publishing more than 100 Russian
scientific journals in translation -- the largest
such program in the world -- along with numerous
English-language scientific journals, as well
as 300 new scientific books annually and extensive
reprints in the humanities through Da Capo Press,
one of its divisions. Ms. Coleman served as
editor-in-chief of the entire scientific program
of Consultants Bureau and then Plenum Publishing
from its beginnings until 1965, when she retired.
Her marriage
to Earl M. Coleman ended in divorce in 1965.
Upon leaving Plenum, Ms. Coleman traveled widely:
in south and central America, in Finland, and
in Africa. She reactivated her earlier interest
in photography, relocating for several years
to San Francisco, where she took courses at
the San Francisco Art Institute with Ralph Gibson
and Larry Clark. She soon began exhibiting and
publishing her pictures under the pen name Fran
Allan, eventually specializing in wildlife photography.
Her work, represented by the agencies Black
Star and Animals Animals, appeared in print
internationally.
In 1977
she returned from a lengthy stay in Kenya and
co-purchased the Wagon Wheel Ranch in Willits,
California, in Mendocino County, which she shared
with her life partner, the Canadian John Hatch,
until his death from lung cancer in 1990. She
continued to live on her ranch, with full-time
private care, and died at home.
She is survived
by her two sons, Allan Douglass Coleman, a writer
and teacher in New York City, and Dennis Scott
Coleman, a real-estate broker in Garrett Park,
MD; by her daugher-in-law, Julie Knowles; and
by her three grandchildren: Edward Allan Coleman,
a chef in New York City, and Allison Taylor
Coleman and Max Wellington Coleman, both of
school age.
A small
private memorial service will be held in Willits
in early December.
•
In 2000 I made
more than twenty out-of-town business trips, including
six to Europe. Fittingly, my final trip of the year
-- and of the century, and of the millenium -- had
a purely personal purpose: a small ceremonial gathering
at the ranch on which my mother had lived out her
life and died.
The flight west
went very smoothly. I met up with my younger brother
and his family at the San Francisco airport; we
drove north to Willits together. Several local papers
there in Mendocino County had run the obituary I
wrote, it turned out, so some letters of condolence
awaited us. We put together a simple ceremony for
our private goodbyes to Mom. Those who attended
-- in addition to myself and my brother Dennis and
his wife Julie and their two kids, Allison and Max
-- were her court-appointed conservator, Earl Phoenix;
her care-giver team, Sharren Kidd, Gloria Day, and
Judy Williams; and her groundskeeper-handyman, Raul
Chavez.
The weather
had been overcast and chill the day before, as it
would be the day after also; but Sunday, December
10 turned out clear, bright, and reasonably warm.
We started at around 11:30 a.m., walking down to
the duck pond on the lower half of the ranch, where
she'd loved to feed the birds and sit and smoke
when she had the strength to do that. I spoke about
her life, sporting a French policeman's hat that
she used to wear, smoking a Cuban cigar I'd smuggled
in on my last trip to France, and drinking a bit
of cognac from a bottle I passed around. I also
handed around her last passport, from 1983-93; she'd
been in Romania, the Soviet Union, Australia, Istanbul,
and various other exotic places even during those
debilitated years.
I read some
remarkable poems of hers and a dream of childhood
from a typed page's worth thereof, probably from
the period of her psychoanalysis -- things I didn't
know she'd written that I'd found the night before,
going through her papers. Dennis, a former music
teacher and guitarist, and Max, who plays clarinet,
did a rendition of "September Song" to
commemorate Mom's love for John Hatch late in her
life. Allison read a very sweet letter she'd written
as a farewell to her grandmother. Den and Julie
spoke about her. The invited guests told stories
and shared some memories.
Then, as it
got near 1 p.m., I took her ashes from the box.
They were in a plastic bag, and probably weighed
two or three pounds. I passed those around the semi-circle,
for people to feel the weight of them and know in
their own bodies that she had truly gone. I announced
her full maiden name and married name, her birthdate
and birthplace, her death date and place of death.
Finally, I took what the fire had left of her and
gave it to the air, the earth, and the water: scattered
most of it into the pond, then poured the remainder
around the bases of several eucalyptus trees she'd
planted there when she first moved onto the ranch,
for the winter rains to drive into the ground. The
others told me that a hawk came to circle overhead
while I did this.
•
We shared some
lunch, then said a melancholy goodbye to her loving
caregivers. Afterward, we had a short meeting with
her conservator, who ran us through the upcoming
drill of executing her trust and selling her place.
Once he'd gone, we went through Mom's things to
see what we wanted (or needed) to take. By the end
of her life she had few possessions. Some of the
things she'd intended to give us we already had,
left with us during her several moves to and from
the east coast. What I took as keepsakes to bring
back to my place on Staten Island filled one small
suitcase. I also volunteered to serve as the archivist
of her papers and negative files -- a few cardboard
boxes' worth of materials they'll ship to me. Eventually
I'll sort through that, order it somehow, perhaps
pull out the poetry and some images and self-publish
a small commemorative volume of those for family
and friends. We talked about starting a family-album
project using one of the computer programs now available
for that purpose.
Early the next
morning we bid farewell to the ranch, drove south,
and caught our separate flights back to our homes,
to the holidays, and to the century to come.
back
to top
back
to journal index
©
Copyright 2001 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved.
By permission of the author and Image/World
Syndication Services,
P.O.B. 040078, Staten Island, New York 10304-0002
USA.
|
