Doug is about the only person I remember when
I was interviewed by Drake's Art Department
in 1970. In part it was because of his
personality, which was as opposite of mine as
a personality could be, but also because of a
question he asked: What art excites you? What
I said hardly mattered (at that time it happened
to have been South German Rococo), but the
question said a lot about Doug. He was interested
in a colleague who was as truly involved in art
as he was, and as delighted by it. (It's been
a good question to ask other candidates, and it's
remarkable how many seem never to have felt much
passion for anything.) Doug's presence here was
one of the things that kept me at Drake.
Even with an MFA degree he felt slightly
intimidated by intellectuals, but that didn't hold
him back much. A lot of us faculty members took
ourselves way too seriously. He was fine at
undercutting our pretensions. We needed someone
like Doug. When he left Drake, the Art
Department lost a fair amount of its vitality.
Amy and I loved the parties at his and Bonnie's
idiosyncratic and friendly home in Johnston,
overlooking a broad prairie that now, alas,
is filled with newer and much less interesting
houses. Visiting them in Lesterville has been a
real joy, one that we didn't experience nearly
as often as we'd have liked. He was always
entertaining, but he was also a Good Man. It
was a pleasure and a delight to have known him.
I missed him when he left Drake.
I'll be missing him much more now.
