Hugh Newell Jacobsen lectures at the Virginia Center for Architecture. He’s using two of my renderings of his design for the University of Maryland Alumni Center. — Photo courtesy of the Virginia Center for Architecture, used with permission.

I was sitting in the office of Hugh Newell Jacobsen in Georgetown. The great architect had missed a plane — so he had unexpected time on his hands, and he told me stories. He told me all about how Eero Saarinen had come up with his design for Dulles Airport, counting the steps one would take from Chantilly to Paris (the plane he’d missed was a connecting flight to one that would take him to Paris).

So I enjoyed a relaxed conversation with one of the great icons of modernism. He told me about his time working for Phillip Johnson, his own embracing of historical forms in a modern context, stretching the arts associated with crafting a fine building. He talked of reverence for history, 45 degree roofs, the meaning of red doors (an unmarried daughter lives in the house), and life itself.

And he gave me the compliment highlighted above. He had seen my work in a journal of rendering and sought me out to illustrate some of his designs. I was honored. Yesterday I opened my new copy of Residential Design Magazine. There was a house that was unmistakably a Jacobsen design. The magazine arrived on March 11, Hugh’s birthday! And so I remembered an all-too brief time when I had the privilege of knowing and working for Hugh Newell Jacobsen.

Nantucket Residence by Hugh Newell Jacobsen, — Renderings by Bob Kirchman

Jones Museum design by Hugh Newell Jacobsen. — Rendering by Bob Kirchman

Boxwood Winery by Hugh Newell Jacobsen. — Rendering by Bob Kirchman

Residence in Aspen, Colorado by Hugh Newell Jacobsen. — Rendering by Bob Kirchman

Residence (unbuilt) by Hugh Newell Jacobsen. — Rendering by Bob Kirchman

Model of the University of Maryland Alumni Center by Hugh Newell Jacobsen. — Model by Bob Kirchman

Ray Prohaska in his studio.

Gratia Prohaska was born in 1901 in Muo, which is a tiny fishing village on the Bay of Kotorska, in the town of Kotor, on the Dalmatian Coast in what would become Yugoslavia. Gratia, or “Ray” as he was called, was named for his village’s patron saint. There was a chapel to Saint Gratia in the nearby mountains. He was eight years old when his family moved to San Francisco in the United States.

After studying at the California Institute of Fine Arts he began a long career as an illustrator for publications such as The Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping, McCall's, Redbook, and Ladies Home Journal. He was also an accomplished photographer.

His illustrations for magazines and advertisements are rich, showing strong composition and a love for bright colour.

Ray successfully moved from illustration assignments to the world of fine art. The following pieces show that transition.

Clearly Ray was moved to explore color, form, and composition. He was a keen observer of his world, particularly Long Island (he loved to fish). The last painting above is inspired by the watermen he admired.

He became artist in residence at two southern colleges, Washington and Lee and later Wake Forest. But his true loves were first his wife Carolyn and then the seashore. He never ceased to be inspired by the light of the seashore.

He was my teacher. He was a brilliant man, devoted to his craft, but at 5:00pm he would depart from the studio like clockwork, saying “I’m going for a walk with Mother!”

The history of the American Experiment is a fabric woven of countless instances of improbable, unimaginable success. Whether it is the supernatural protection that surrounded George Washington – the Father of our Country throughout his life, the mysterious weather conditions that favored the movements of the Continental Army at critical battlefield junctures, or, the unique, longstanding success of a revolution unlike any other in recorded world history; it is difficult, nearly impossible to explain the outcome of any of these, and so many more events like them, without allowing for divine intervention. In his first inaugural speech President George Washington described it as, “the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men.”

With a large cast, and filmed on location across the country and the United Kingdom, The American Miracle [click to learn more] stars Pat Boone, Kevin Sorbo, Nicole C. Mullen, Cameron Arnett, and James Arnold Taylor, along with authors and scholars Joseph Ellis, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert P. George, Akhil Reed Amar, and Jana Novak, among many others, including some local talent from Augusta County, Virginia:

After a brief (2 day) showing in theaters, the film was only available on DVD. We recently found it on Amazon Prime, and it is well worth a second viewing.

A series of Miracles? — or ‘Coincidences?’ Here is a well-sourced historical film that presents the evidence.

WONDER was not, as some might suppose, simply a retrospective show, nor was it just about the photography that I had taken up of late (though some was certainly included). Nor was it a collection of old architectural renderings (though some of those could be seen as well). The show was really about WONDER (as its name suggests), VISION, IMAGINATION and DISCOVERY. This look back is sort of a companion piece, if you will. The show ran from 09/09/2016 to 01/06/2017 in Crozet, Virginia.

The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.” ― G. K. Chesterton

There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.” -- C. S. Lewis

The Venue:

Tabor Presbyterian Church
5804 Tabor Street (PO Box 446)
Crozet, VA 22932
434-823-4255

The Exhibition:
WONDER I | WONDER II | WONDER III | WONDER IV
[Links to Photos of the Show]

THOUGHTS ON WONDER FROM THE SHOW

These thoughts were part of the descriptive narrative of the WONDER show.

WTC Memorial Concept, Xaver Wilhelmy, Concept Art Watercolour by Bob Kirchman, 2003.

Autumn/Winter. — Painting by Bob Kirchman

Spring/Summer. — Painting by Bob Kirchman

On the side of a mountain in Albemarle County, Virginia there is a scenic pullout on Interstate 64 overlooking the Southwest Mountains and the Rockfish Valley. Here stands a most fitting tribute to the workers who keep our roads safe and moving... and have sacrificed their lives in that work.

The simple memorial concept is a collaboration between VDOT Design Engineer Harry Lee and his daughter, Stephanie. It was not built with public funds, being financed wholly by donations from VDOT workers and their friends.

The wall is inscribed with the names of highway workers killed in the line of duty. The silhouette of a hard-hatted worker is repeated at the Eastern edge of the wall, reflecting the diverse group of people who work together to keep our roads safe. The Eastern edge creates a silhouetted void to honor the ‘missing man.’

Driving to Charlottesville, I receive a call from the client I am rushing to see... she is running late. I pull into the overlook and pay a visit to the memorial. It’s message is simple. Every road worker is someone’s son or daughter, father or spouse. We should pass through the work zones like they are our own. Every day highway workers go out to keep us on schedule and safe. When we slow down and move over, we return them the favor.

Photos by Bob Kirchman

Constructing topography for my model of Ellicott's Mills for the B&O Railroad Museum.

A Milestone Monday Feature

In Chapter 14 of Chuck Balsamo's new book Make Me a Legend Pastor Balsamo talks about the importance of finding a good mentor. He brought back some important memories as I recalled the influence of a man named Reggie. Reggie served in the Navy during World War II and achieved the rank of Aviation Machinist's Mate, Second Class. He was a first class mentor.

I met this amazing man because I went to school with his daughter. He was a Chevrolet mechanic and an avid outdoorsman. He introduced me to the wonders of Coastal New Jersey as I happily paddled for hours through marshes and creeks. At about 50 years old, Reggie became an instructor at the vocational technology school. There he discovered his true gifts and passions.

At an age where most men are thinking about taking it easy, Reggie enrolled in Rutgers University and pursued a degree in administration. Education and young people had become his true calling and he graduated from college the same time one of his daughters did.

Days at Reggie's place where full ones. He lived in a little postwar bungalow, and when his children and their assembled friends were descending on the place around ten in the evening, he'd put on a pot of coffee. It came as no surprise that Reggie enjoyed lively conversation and sometimes these talk sessions would end in the wee hours of the morning. Good coffee, however, always made up for sleep deprivation.

Reggie went on to become a high school principal, but I have to believe that the best classes he ever taught were at his own kitchen table. He noticed that I was a hands-on guy struggling with an academic world. He found information on architectural model making and shared it with me. "You'd be good at this, Bob." Years later I was literally living off of this compliment. My little studio built models for architects, including one famous one. I worked on several models for resort projects in Japan, though I'm not sure how a man who served in the Pacific Theatre would feel about that.

No doubt, this man has influenced many young lives in a similar manner. I am priviledged to have known him. It is an even greater privilege that in some small way, the baton that he passed, is indeed passed to another generation.

Last week I conducted an art workshop that I had been invited to do. The inspiration came to take a couple of our students to conduct it with me. They were wonderful! One can do no less than to share the encouragement a man like Reggie has given — it is way too good to be kept under a bushel.

A story is told of Andrea del Verrocchio, who was the mentor of Leonardo. At around fourteen, young Leonardo became apprentice to the Master, Verrocchio. You started out cleaning the shop and mixing colours, then progressed to painting in parts of the background. Eventually you moved on to painting important parts of the works.

When Leonardo painted an angel in an altarpiece, it was such a wonderful rendering that it outshined the work of the Master. The legend goes that upon seeing Leonardo’s angel, Verrocchio put down the brush and never painted again!

Nice story, but I seriously don’t believe it. My young apprentices create admirable works as we paint. My ‘demonstration’ painting is way too ‘distracted’ as the main function is teaching technique. I often see brilliance in the hand of a student. It does not cause me to want to put down the brush, rather it becomes something wonderful.

Detail of The Baptism of Christ by Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo. The angel on the left is Leonardo’s.

If anything, it becomes a doorway to new wonders. When a student becomes the teacher, you celebrate the wonder.

The truth is that Leonardo and Verrocchio continued to work together for quite some time.

The most influential people are often unsung and unknown.How many people know the name of Edward Kimball? [1.] Kimball led a shoe salesman to Faith in Christ. The shoe salesman happened to be Dwight L. Moody. George Westinghouse [2.], the inventor of the airbrake, was mentored by a man in his father’s shop! While his father, George Westinghouse Senior, didn’t think young George would amount to much, his shop foreman took the young man under his wing. George developed a passionate interest in steam engines, and built a working steam engine at the age of fifteen!

He read every book he could find on the mechanics of steam engines, and in the process, learned a lot about fluid mechanics. This would inform him in later life as he developed the air brake and worked with electricity.

It all started with a mentor, whose name is forgotten, who fanned the flames of a young person’s passion. So here is a salute to Reggie, and all who put their faith in young people today!

Dr. Vivien Theodore Thomas was born on August 29, 1910 in New Iberia, Louisiana. He was the grandson of slaves but completed high school in Nashville Tennessee. He dreamed of continuing his education and becoming a doctor but the Great Depression in 1929 dashed his hopes for higher education.

Thomas had found a job at Fisk University as a carpenter for their maintenance department. He worked through the Summer of 1929 but was laid off in October of that year following the stock market crash. This put his educational plans on hold and eventually he found work as a laboratory assistant with Dr. Alfred Blalock at Vanderbilt University.

The original job description was caring for the dogs being used for surgical experiments. Thomas fed the animals and cleaned their cages. Dr. Blalock took notice of the young Thomas, discovering that he possessed keen hand-eye coordination, a sharp intellect and the ability to think on his feet to solve problems. No doubt, Thomas' carpentry skills and training came in to play here.

Blalock began using Thomas as a technical assistant, having him perform much of the actual work in developing new surgical techniques. Through the 1930's Blalock pushed on into new frontiers in vascular and cardiac surgery. Thomas did essential work in perfecting the surgical procedures. This pioneer work made Blalock one of the leading surgeons of his time.

In 1940 Blalock was offered the position of Chief of Surgery at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. He requested that Thomas be hired with him. Their 34 year partnership would continue to push the barriers in surgical technique. Their work would eventually lead to learning how to correct the heart defects that caused blue baby syndrome, Their work on crush syndrome led to understanding that would save the lives of thousands of soldiers in World War II.

Baltimore society was even more segregated than Nashville and Johns Hopkins only hired African Americans in their houskeeping department. Thomas was put on the payroll as a janitor but worked alongside Blalock in surgery. He turned a few heads walking the halls in his labcoat. Here many wonder that Blalock so valued Thomas professionally but allowed him to be distanced socially. Both men, it must be remembered, where men raised in the old Southern society. The separation was highly codified in a city like Baltimore [I still have a map of the city from my youth that matter-of-fact labels the white and colored swimming pools in Druid Hill Park]. The recognition of merit over race and the mens' friendship was enough to remove the most insurmountable of barriers.

Blalock didn't object to Thomas initially being 'assigned' to housekeeping but by 1946 he had negotiated his status as the highest paid lab assistant at Hopkins.

Watching Thomas perform an intricate surgical procedure, Blalock remarked "That looks like something the Lord made." Thomas was able to perform complex surgeries with such efficiency of motion that the students said that he made them look effortless. When a young surgeon in training moved in too close to observe, he might unknowingly step into a spot next to Blalock, who would tersely remind him: "Only Vivian is to stand there!"

In 1976 Johns Hopkins presented Thomas with an honorary doctorate and appointed him an instructor of surgery, acknowledging the work he had already been performing for decades.

My Mother as a small child, in the arms of my artist Grandmother Lola Dalton Carpenter as my Grandfather Ose, a cattle farmer, craftsman, and inventor looks on.

During the great World War my mother went to work at the Martin Company in Baltimore. She worked in the engineering department and helped develop the airplanes that fought in the Pacific. Her background in mathematics and physics gave her a unique perspective, to say the least. She proudly stated of her tenure at Martin: "I REFUSED to make coffee for them!" Yes, this was the late forties and early fifties you have to remember.

How cool is it to have a mother who pointed out beautiful airplanes! She grew up in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains so she pointed out many other wonders as well. Her drawing skills were amazing. So was her ability to convey lessons about the way the world works in everyday tasks. Her kitchen was a laboratory and once she continued to divide the last piece of pie to show us kids how you could divide something in half for infinity. There were five of us kids and Mom could cut a pie into seven equal pieces flawlessly. Her good eye was often not appreciated when we did home improvement projects. If something was crooked, Mom saw it!

Mom could show you "all the colors of grass." Something I always mention when I do workshops with students. She knew the subtle signs that the seasons were changing. I am eternally grateful for her teaching me how to see!

We took her ashes and Dad's to the beloved mountains overlooking her girlhood home and it is always a sacred time for me to step into that little spring valley that is green all the year and remember.

Autumn/Winter. — Painting by Bob Kirchman

Tribute Written by Ryann Child

[click to read]

Dr. Martha A. Carpenter passed away peacefully surrounded by family in Charlottesville, Virginia on October 13, 2026. A distinguished physician and former J. Francis Dammann Professor of Pediatric Cardiology at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine, Martha was a trailblazer for women in medicine…

Read more

An interesting object that can be found in the vast gardens at Montpelier is Madison’s Temple, inspired by the ancient Roman Temple of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth and home. The temple is a monopteron—a circle of columns supporting a domed roof. The temple at Montpelier was constructed by carpenters James Dinsmore and John Neilson with the aid of mason Hugh Chisholm in 1810-1811. It was probably based on a sketch by William Thornton‘s wife Anna, who visited Montpelier in 1802. The “sacred fire” that burned inside the Temple of Vesta symbolized safety, security, and longevity of the Roman Republic; in the U.S. it became a representation of liberty. President George Washington in his inaugural address in 1789, which was drafted by Madison, stated that “the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”

The temple is said to be both useful and beautiful (utile dulci). It stands on top of an ice house and thereby protects it from direct sunlight. At the same time, the ice house makes the temple cooler than its surroundings and therefore a comfortable place to stay during the warm summer months. In addition, the Temple of Vesta supposedly contained a sacred statue associated with Minerva, the goddess of wisdom (and later war). Madison believed that “[k]nowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” as well as that the “advancement & diffusion of Knowledge[…]is the only Guardian of true liberty”. The plaque at the temple states that it is assumed that Madison built this temple to celebrate both knowledge and liberty. — Library of Congress

We visited the temple at Montpelier…

…as a team of archeologists were excavating the icehouse underneath it. — Photos by Bob Kirchman

Here we stand in the room in Montpelier where James Madison made an exhaustive study of the world’s great civilizations as he sought to draft the United States Constitution.

Fascinated by Madison’s temple atop the ice house, we wandered out to it only to find a full-fledged archeological dig in progress. We peered into a carefully excavated trench at wagon tracks over two centuries old. The ideal photograph of the temple was not possible though. That’s when being a painter gives you a bit of an advantage.

The Dawn of Liberty is the little painting that resulted. It became a birthday present for my lovely wife, and a nice reminder of our “date with history.”

Our National Capital’s Classical Beginnings

“...the Capitol ought to be upon a scale far superior to anything in this Country.”

—George Washington to Thomas Jefferson, 1792

James Hoban was born in 1762, in Callan, County Kilkenny, Ireland. As a boy, he apprenticed as a carpenter and a wheelwright. He was later trained in the neoclassical style of architecture at the Dublin Society School. Just after the Revolutionary War, Hoban immigrated to South Carolina. There he designed the old state capitol building in Columbia. At the suggestion of George Washington, Hoban entered the competition for the design of the President’s House in 1792. Not only did he win the design competition, but he received the commission to build the house as well.

It is not surprising, then, that the President’s House in America was inspired by Leinster House in Dublin, where the Irish Parliament meets. Hoban was also influenced by James Gibb’s Book of Architecture (published in 1728). The presidential mansion would be constructed between 1793 and 1801. At the same time, James Hoban was also enlisted as one of the supervisors of the construction of the United States Capitol.

The Capitol was the design of physician and amateur architect, Dr. William Thornton. He won the design competition in 1793. The prize was $500 and a building lot in the new federal city. Thornton had been born in the British West Indies and studied medicine at the University of Aberdeen. He became a United States citizen in 1787, moved to Washington in 1794, and was later appointed head of the Patent Office by Thomas Jefferson.

The north wing of the Capitol was constructed first. Both it and the President’s House were built of Aquia Creek sandstone, quarried near Stafford, Virginia. The government owned quarry provided most of the stone for the early construction in Washington. Though the soft, porous rock was not ideal for constructing great public buildings, it was a wise and economical choice at the time. Rising above a bucolic landscape, as yet mostly undeveloped, the President’s House and the Capitol represented the promise of the new republic.

On August 24, 1814, British troops marched into Washington and set both buildings on fire. Fortunately Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who actually supervised the building of the Capitol, had specified fireproof materials inside. Though ravaged by fire, the structure remained – “a most magnificent ruin.” The President’s House was but a gutted shell. The outer sandstone walls remained, permanently charred by the flames. When members of Congress returned to the city, they were of course dismayed. There was some sentiment expressed that the center of government should be moved to Philadelphia or some other established city.

The option to rebuild, however, prevailed. Hoban supervised the rebuilding of his President’s House. New timber framing went up inside the blackened sandstone walls. The walls themselves, hopelessly charred, were painted white. Consequently an immigrant from Ireland was responsible for giving us the White House – one of the most recognized buildings of our day. James Hoban would also design the State and War Offices, built in 1818. This would be his last federal commission.

As the nation stretched westward in the mid-nineteenth century, other great classical buildings would be added to the nation’s capital. The landscape around the great buildings remained relatively undeveloped until the mid-nineteenth century. Low brick and frame houses, as well as open farmland, made up the character of the District of Columbia.

Born in 1781, Robert Mills came from South Carolina to Washington at the age of nineteen. He became an apprentice working on James Hoban’s President’s House. America’s first native-trained architect, Mills would design a number of significant buildings in the nation’s capital and throughout the country. Among them are the Treasury building, begun in 1837 to replace the original building, which burned in 1833. Mill’s design featured a massive Ionic colonnade, inspired by Greek classicism. It was not universally popular, and there were even calls for its demolition while it was being built. Still, the fireproof building’s strong façade was preserved, and Mills set a precedent for the architecture of the city.

Mills went on to design the Washington Monument – the “first” Washington Monument, in Baltimore, Maryland. His design was a large Tuscan column, on a massive base, topped with a statue of the president. Begun in 1815, the monument was completed in 1825. When Pierre L’Enfant laid out the city of Washington, he had reserved at the west end of the National Mall, a place for a large equestrian statue of the first president. In 1836 a competition was held to choose a design for a grander monument to Washington, to be erected on that spot. Robert Mills proposed a 600 foot high square shaft, slightly tapered, rising from a large Greco-Roman peristyle (circular colonnade) wreathed with thirty-two Doric columns. Mills’ design would eventually be simplified to the great obelisk we know today. It would not be completed until 1884, when the aluminum capstone with the simple inscription “LAUS DEO” (Praise be to God), would be placed, completing the point of the obelisk.

The United States Capitol would be an ongoing work, under the supervision of a succession of architects – among them, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Charles Bullfinch, and Thomas U. Walter. When Walter came to the task in 1850, the Capitol was too small, so the larger wings Walter suggested were begun. Walter also envisioned a high fireproof dome – the one we know today. The original dome, completed under Bullfinch, was simply not large enough for the expanded Capitol, and so it was removed in 1856. Construction of the larger Capitol and the large iron dome would continue until the outbreak of the Civil War, when it was halted. President Lincoln, seeing the Capitol and its half-completed dome as symbolic of the needed restoration of the republic, ordered construction to continue. It would be finished in time for his second inauguration in 1865.

During the conflict, troops were camped on the grounds of both the Capitol and the unfinished Washington Monument. Ovens were built in the Capitol to supply bread to the soldiers and the base of the monument served as a slaughterhouse. After the war, the great railroads entering the city had terminals on L’Enfant’s Mall. The city itself had grown, and would continue to grow. Defensive fortifications and functions had led to a swell in the population. As the nation grew between two great oceans, so did her capital. Originally sited in the center of the states, with an eye to westward expansion up the Potomac River, her growth was now propelled by the railroads that entered her in so many raw-scarred corridors. The grand buildings of the originally envisioned city now rose above a sprawl of unbridled growth. The sublime intent of the original plan was lost beneath a bustling and ever-expanding metropolis.

As the city approached the 100^th anniversary of her founding, however, one man would make a discovery that would lead to a renaissance in the planning of the republic’s capital. That man was Glenn Brown, a resident of Alexandria, and the Executive Secretary of the American Institute of Architects. As the anniversary approached, Brown did extensive research on the Capitol, and in the process rediscovered the work of L’Enfant, Ellicott, and Banneker. Brown was a pioneer in the documentation and restoration of historic structures, his work foreshadowing that of preservationists today.

Brown visited the great White City Exhibition in Chicago in 1893 as the guest of Daniel Burnham, the fair’s lead architect. The fair inspired in him a vision. At the 1900 convention of the AIA, Brown launched an ambitious crusade to realize the L’Enfant plan in its entire splendor. Senator James McMillan of Michigan picked up the torch. He served on the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia. Although Congress was not willing to pass a comprehensive planning bill, McMillan was able to establish a parks commission for the city and secure the pro-bono participation of a number of important designers of the day. The group included architects Daniel Burnham and Charles McKim, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Charles Moore.

Where Brown had found a National Mall crossed by railroad tracks, and home to a gas plant, and lumber mill, McMillan’s group created beautiful renderings and models of L’Enfant’s plan recast in light of the times. Beautiful classical buildings would rise along a stately mall that intersected with the Ellipse in front of the White House. A corridor of trees would frame the grassy Mall as it extended to the Washington Monument. Gone would be the railroad tracks, now buried in a tunnel and entering into a grand station designed by Daniel Burnham. A new expanse of green would extend to the station north of the Capitol, defined by Louisiana Avenue and First Street.

The Mall itself would be extended to include a great Reflecting Pool and a monument to Abraham Lincoln, designed by Henry Bacon. Government offices would be housed in a ‘Federal Triangle,’ styled after the great buildings of Paris such as the Palais du Louvre. John Russell Pope, the great beaux arts classicist, would also design a number of beautiful buildings for the capital. His Jefferson Memorial, along the Tidal Basin, is a splendid marble Parthenon, reminiscent of the style Jefferson loved. He also designed the National Archives, where America’s founding documents are enshrined. In a career that spanned the 1930s, he gave life to Brown’s original vision.

Pope’s 1941 West Wing of the National Gallery of Art is considered by many to be his crowning achievement. The building is built of Tennessee pink marble in a beautiful beaux arts adaptation of classical forms. The Roman Pantheon inspired central portion is flanked by well-proportioned wings. When Pope designed the building, the majority of its collection was Italian Renaissance artwork. He created an ideal space for their display. The building rises above the Mall on a series of walled terraces. It is monumental yet subtle at the same time – a fitting statement for a nation that has chosen to place great cultural treasures on her greatest public space. It is a building that not only has stood the test of time, it defines the very concept. Nothing to compare with it has been built in Washington since.

Lincoln Memorial by Henry Bacon

Film by the National Civic Art Society.

Autumn/Winter. — Painting by Bob Kirchman

Spring/Summer. — Painting by Bob Kirchman

Mohomony. Painting by Bob Kirchman

These paintings I have done of the mountains I love. David Crockett loved mountains too, and wrote this poem;

Farewell to the mountains whose mazes to me
Were more beautiful far than Eden could be
No fruit was forbidden, but Nature had spread
Her bountiful board, and her children were fed
The hills were our garners - our herds wildly grew
And Nature was shepherd and husbandman too
I felt like a monarch, yet thought like a man
As I thank the Great Giver, and worshipped His plan

The home I forsake where my offspring arose
The graves I forsake where my children repose
The home I redeemed from the savage and wild
The home I have loved as a father his child
The corn that I planted, the fields that I cleared,
The flocks that I raised, and the cabin I reared
The wife of my bosom, farewell to ye all
In the land of the stranger, I rise or I fall

A shortened version is sung by Fess Parker, who plays Davy Crockett in the movie. I think that might have inspired me to paint the first one.

Detail of “Cherokee Portal” — Watercolour by Bob Kirchman

The Art of Painting in the Rain

I painted this in the North Georgia woods that were once part of the Cherokee Nation.

“A lot of people come out here to paint this place… but the only one who ever got it right was an ‘Abo’ (Aborigine), because he was painting his own land.” – Joe Harmon in A Town Like Alice

In the novel, Joe Harmon lives in the Australian Never-Never, and observes this connection to the land in his Aborigine neighbors.

Cherokee Portal is the only painting in this series painted on site in watercolour. The rest were painted in studio. I was at an architectural renderers’ conference in Georgia when we had a morning set aside for painting en plein air. Most of the participants settled in around the resort buildings for a ‘busman’s holiday’ painting architecture.

But here I was in Brasstown, high in the mountains – way up in Cherokee country. Those mountains were calling. I set out with my paints up a mountain trail. It was a brisk autumn day and a bit overcast. In fact, it kept getting more overcast. I set up and it began to rain.

And then the mountain told me her story. I’d heard it years before, hiking the Appalachian Trail in Georgia. It was a story of long ago, when this was the Cherokee Nation. I painted away as the raindrops added their random flavour to my watercolour. My friends and I had been drenched when we set out to hike the beginning of the AT. Now the rain began again. The mountain continued her tale where she had left off.

The rain picked up. The day was raw. The colours were beautifully muted. The song of the mountain and her people was vivid. But the rain had grown intense now and I couldn’t paint. Frustrated, I made my way back to the resort, back to my fellow renderers who were knocking off nice little architectural details as they sheltered under porches.

My day though was ruined… or WAS it? I relaxed at the resort, chatted with my fellow wizards, had lunch, and retired to my room. There it was, my ‘ruined’ painting. It seemed to want my attention. Reluctantly, I responded.

I took the painting and my supplies into the bathroom. I added the crisp tree trunks and defined the trail – now it was a passage through time. As I worked, I was inspired by the story of the mountain. It was like a passage from J.R. R. Tolkien. I was visiting another time. I was feeling the inspiration of those who lived in these woods long ago.

That is how I came to paint Cherokee Portal. I cannot consider it a work solely of my own. Perhaps more of us need to paint in the rain.

“Breakthrough.” — Painting by Bob Kirchman

Margaret Hamilton used to take her little daughter to work with her. At the time she was working in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Instrumentation Laboratory, which had received an unusual assignment. NASA was going to the moon. North American Rockwell and Grumman were building the hardware, but software was a relatively new field. Yes, there were programs for predicting weather (Margaret Hamilton had worked on them), but creating a guidance system for a spacecraft headed over 200,000 miles from earth, that was something the people who designed aircraft just didn’t know. They could build the vehicles, but they had no clue how to write the code to fly them.

So; NASA had given a rather unique contract to the computer people at MIT. They were tasked to create the program that would take the astronauts to the moon. Hamilton, a trained mathematician, had come to MIT to work for Edward Norton Lorenz. Initially she wrote programs for predicting weather and later wrote code for programs to track aircraft and satellites.

In 1965, Hamilton joined the team in the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory creating the digital path to the moon. Of course, the hours were long and unpredictable, so she often brought her six-year-old daughter along with her. Little Lauren enjoyed playing in the Apollo simulator and would amuse herself in the cockpit while her mother worked.

Then one day Lauren pushed a button that wiped out the program, returning the settings to a default position. The computer thought it was back on the pad. Lauren had been virtually flying deep into space. Margaret of course saw the problem; “What if an astronaut accidentally wiped the computer during a critical stage of the flight?” Hamilton brought up the matter with her superiors.

“Astronauts are trained professionals,” she was told; “they would NEVER do that!”

But Hamilton knew that in the adrenalin pumping moments of, say, a moon landing, men wearing clunky gloves might just unwittingly do just what Lauren had done. She pressed the matter, but ultimately was told to forget it. The software was finalized and delivered without Hamilton’s suggested modifications.

Then in 1968, NASA decided to send Apollo Eight around the moon. Veteran astronaut Jim Lovell was the commander of the mission – and he, just like Lauren had done before, pressed the button he was supposedly never going to press. Lovell wiped the computer flying in space.

Fortunately; Lovell was no stranger to losing his eight balls, having shorted out the electronics in his Banshee over the Sea of Japan. That night he had followed the luminescent algae churned up by his carrier to safely land. Now he was coasting in deep space! But Lovell was an old Navy man, and using the stars and a sextant, he was able to verify the spacecraft’s position.

It took the team on the ground nine hours to recreate what had been lost. Fortunately; the spacecraft was in a coasting mode. Can you imagine what would have happened if that scenario had played out during a critical phase of landing or rendezvous?

So; Hamilton revisited her concerns with her higher-ups, who greenlighted her development of a way to recover from a ‘Lauren’ incident in the future. Hamilton addressed that problem and fixed another. “What if the computer got overloaded in the actual flight, wiping critical data and processes while it struggled to process less critical operations.”

Hamilton brilliantly wrote a way for the spacecraft’s computer to prioritize what it did and retain essential data if it did overload.

It probably wouldn’t be needed, but now NASA was happy for the reassurance.

Then came the famous landing by Apollo 11 on the moon. As the astronauts descended in the Lunar Module, the dreaded overload alarms “1202” and “1201” sounded. But Hamilton’s program kept the essential landing function in place! The ground team was able to greenlight the lunar landing in spite of the alarms. The program was improved before subsequent Apollo flights, but it is agreed that without Hamilton’s work, the lunar landing might have ended in disaster.

Hamilton’s work was instrumental in establishing computer science as a discipline, and her methodology paved the way for reliability in the future. Now it is taught routinely in schools.

The Spring House at Capon Springs...

A Repeat of a Favorite Article

Early in the Great Depression a Philadelphia businessman came to the wild mountains of West Virginia. His interest was in distributing the healthy spring water of an old spa resort to the city of Philadelphia so he came seeking exclusive distribution rights.

Capon Springs had been a popular destination since the Nineteenth Century when a group of Baltimore investors had financed the construction of the 500 room Mountain House there. After the Civil War, Capt. William H. Sale took over the resort and added more rooms.The resort thrived until 1911, when the Mountain House burned down. The large annex, which Sale built in 1887 then became the main building and is the center of the complex today.

When Lou Austin arrived with his plan to bottle and distribute the water, Capon Springs was in decline. Austin bought the property in 1932 at auction and proceeded with his plan to distribute the water while his wife, Virginia, took over hospitality operations.

Federal regulators were challenging health claims of bottled spring water at the time and Mr. Austin found himself in the middle of legal proceedings. He won at the Federal level but soon found that State and local regulatory agencies where in cahoots with the Feds. EventuallyAustin was forced to abandon the sale of the water and concentrate on the resort.

Here is where the Divine inspiration appears. Unlike the Homestead and the Greenbrier, which fashioned themselves into high-end hotels, Capon Springs literally became an extension of the Austins' personal hospitality.

Initially the Austins' friends visited and enjoyed the atmosphere of family style dinners and no locks on the doors. Friends invited friends and the circle grew. Guests today follow'the Capon Way'and enjoy an atmosphere more like a family gathering than a hotel stay.

The resort grew, and by the mid Twentieth Century was a thriving vacation destination. The wonderful healthful water from the springs is now provided free of charge. You can drive in anytime and fill your own containers or buy bottles to fill at the front desk. You are free to decide for yourself on the merits of the fine tasting water which flows from 1600 feet below the surface at a rate of 100 gallons a minute; A rate that seems unaffected by the cycle of drought and rains on the surface.

...is explained by Austin's grandson Jonathan. The family still operates Capon Springs today.

The original Mountain House.

George Maharas and Martin Milner portray two young men on a cross-country journey in the television series Route 66.

At the beginning of the sixties, Route 66 ran from Chicago to Los Angeles. In the 1970s it would be largely replaced by Interstate 55, Interstate 44, and Interstate 40. — Historic Map

George Maharas and Martin Milner ride a ferry in episode one. The first Corvette was actually light blue, so the black and white cinematography would show more of the car’s body detail. We kids always imagined it as red — but a red car would have looked almost black in black and white. Chevrolet (who sponsored the show) would provide a succession of Corvettes during the run of the show. They were always a lighter color. — Screenshot

When we were kids, we loved the car. It was at first a 1960 Corvette, quickly upgraded to a 1961 model. The auto maker provided new Corvettes for the entire 4 season run of the show – finishing with a Sting Ray. Since the show was filmed in black and white, a lighter color car was always provided. Posters and publicity photos had the car red, black, or blue. It didn’t matter, the car was a thing of beauty for a ten-year-old kid!

Martin Milner and George Maharas portray two young men on a cross-country journey. Milner plays Todd Stiles, a college boy whose fortunes changed when his father unexpectedly passed away. He worked alongside Buz Murdoch (Maharas), a ‘survivor,’ according to his own words, of “Hell’s Kitchen” in New York. Murdoch was an orphan, who grew up tough. Stiles grew up privileged, but both find themselves unemployed and practically penniless – so they strike out together.

As a story, it is the age-old story of two opposites coming together. The new Corvette is a gift to Todd from his father. The fact is they are traveling across the country looking for employment, camping gear strapped to the back of the Corvette. It was a good show, but my father didn’t like to catch me watching it because it had a lot of fistfights and such. Spending my youngest years in Baltimore, I was no stranger to the violent society of young boys. I had been slugged quite a few times myself – and yes, I sometimes slugged back.

And this was in the sanctified halls and playgrounds of the local parochial school.

But I digress. The show begins in the days before Interstate highways. The ‘grey’ roads on maps often were marked with the instruction to “make local inquiry.” That’s the twentieth century variation of “here be dragons.” They could sometimes be impassible. In episode one of the first season, Todd and Buzz are forced to do just that — “make local inquiry” – albeit a little bit late as they find themselves broken down in a town harboring a dark secret, “Garth,” Mississippi — a fictional town set on the Pascagoula River. Actually the episode was filmed in Concord, Kentucky [1.], a town on the Ohio River.

As television shows go, this is pretty well written. Riding a ferry on a back road of the “make local inquiry” kind, they find themselves in the town of Garth with a broken Corvette. The story is intriguing and well written. Faith and clergy are positively portrayed, and the young men — red-blooded young American men — portray noble values as they face difficult situations. They also take on tough issues, such as when Buzz has to come to terms with his difficult childhood.

There is a redemptive theme to the story. These two men tend to leave a place better than they found it. It’s a good show.

Much of old route 66 is gone now, bypassed by the superhighway. So too, much of our modern media is devoid of what I will call redemptive closure. Sometimes it is a good thing to get off of the main road for a while. Sometimes it is still good to “make local inquiry.”

Vincent van Gogh’s Unappreciated Journey with Christ

By Mark Ellis, November 9, 2012 in Godreports

The Raising of Lazarus, 1890

A record 1.2 million visitors came to the giant retrospective of Van Gogh’s work in Amsterdam in 1990, which coincided with the 100^th anniversary of the Dutch post-Impressionist’s death. What visitors did not see at that major exhibition were van Gogh’s Christian-themed paintings, which were left in the basement of the museum.

“None of the religious imagery was in the show. It was deliberately kept in the basement,” says William Havlicek, Ph. D , author of Van Gogh’s Untold Journey (Creative Storytellers). “In Western art there has been a move toward secularization through existential thinking,” he notes, which followed the disillusionment of many artists after two world wars.

Havlicek spent 15 years researching and studying more than 900 of van Gogh’s letters. His revealing book dispels many of the myths that surround the painter’s tumultuous life. “Vincent’s letters portray a very different story than the popular tale of the mad artist who cuts off his ear,” Havlicek notes. “What emerges instead is a story of selfless loyalty, the epitome of the Gospel’s sacred counsel—‘love one another.’”

“Many of his religious letters were held back and only released in the last five or six years,” Havlicek adds.

Vincent’s father and grandfather were pastors and it seems many in the van Gogh family gravitated toward religion or art. His father Theodorus – a Dutch Reformed minister — was not known as a compelling preacher, but a “welfare pastor” who distributed food and clothing to the poor, Havlicek notes.

As Vincent’s zeal for Christ grew in his early twenties, he wanted to study theology, but failed his entrance exam for seminary. Instead, he went off to serve as a missionary to coal miners in the Borinage district of Belgium.

He found miners who were sick and starving, living a bleak existence, without adequate food, water or warm clothing. A mining explosion had left many in a horrible condition. Fighting for survival, they apparently had little interest in his evangelistic appeals.

In response to their plight, Vincent gave away everything he owned, including most of his clothing. To tend to their medical needs, he ripped up his own bed sheets for bandages, and slept on straw on the ground. “By such actions he won the admiration and respect of the workers, and was able to convert some of them,” Havlicek notes.

The Sower, 1888

“Vincent was a very generous man. He understood that unconditional love of God extended to unconditional love for others. He would never recognize love that was not an action.” Van Gogh was also inspired by the writings of Charles Dickens in his compassionate response to human suffering.

Sadly, a church committee overseeing Vincent thought he suffered from excessive zeal and fired him because he did not dress or preach eloquently. “It did not seem to matter to them that he literally poured out his life in sacrifice and service on behalf of the diseased and destitute,” Havlicek laments.

Vincent went home to his parents, but the physical and emotional ordeal of caring for the miners and the rejection by the church hierarchy had taken its toll. He appeared to suffer a nervous breakdown, which caused his father to make his first quiet inquiries about committing Vincent to an asylum.

Pieta, 1889

At the same time, the drawings Vincent had made of miners and others captured his brother Theo’s interest. He persuaded Vincent to begin formal art studies at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Van Gogh wanted to continue to serve God with his art, stating: “…to try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God. One man wrote or told it in a book, another in a picture.”

In 1881, he fell in love and proposed marriage to woman who was seven years older. She turned him down, but his advances persisted in a clumsy manner. Exasperated, the woman and her parents forcibly rejected Vincent, partly due to the struggling artist’s inability to support himself.

During the time Vincent lived with his family, Vincent and his father got into more and more heated arguments. After one particular violent exchange on Christmas day when Vincent refused to go to church, Vincent left to live on his own in The Hague.

The following year Vincent attempted to rescue a prostitute, Sien Hoornik. He wrote of his unusual relationship with Hoornik in his letters: “I met a pregnant woman, deserted by the man whose child she carried. A pregnant woman who had to walk the streets in winter, had to earn her bread, you understand how, I took this woman for a model and have worked with her all winter. I could not pay her the full wages of a model, but that did not prevent my paying her rent, and, thank God, so far I have been able to protect her and her child from hunger and cold by sharing my own bread with her.”

The Good Samaritan, 1890

As one might imagine, his family was shocked he had taken in a prostitute and pressured him to alter his living arrangement. His parents continued to explore the idea of committing Vincent to an asylum due to his errant behavior.

Vincent’s father died of a stroke in 1885 and Vincent’s sisters blamed him for “murdering” his father, due to the emotional fallout from their intense discussions and unresolved conflict.

After his father’s death, Vincent went into a tailspin. “Vincent embarked on a three-year drinking binge in Paris,” Havlicek notes. “This was the most destructive period of his life. Even so, he continued to produce some remarkable work inspired by the Impressionists who exhibited in the great city.”

He experimented with absinthe, which was a highly popular drink in some circles made from unstable wormwood alcohol. The unpredictable side effects for many users included nerve damage, blindness, and insanity. Absinthe may have triggered the epileptic seizures that began to plague Vincent during this period.

The Shief Binder, 1889

“After drinking a large quantity of absinthe, Vincent slashed off a portion of his ear,” Havlicek recounts. “It’s possible he had a grand mal seizure when he slashed the upper part of his ear,” he says.

Most art critics and historians believe Vincent lost his faith sometime between 1882 and 1885. Yet Havlicek found abundant evidence in Vincent’s letters and his art that an abiding faith remained, even as his health and behavior deteriorated. Surprisingly, most of the Christian-themed paintings appeared in the last three years of his life.

For the sake of self-preservation, Vincent moved to Arles in southern France, where he had an unusual meeting one day in a café he frequented. A local peasant walked in who bore a striking resemblance to his deceased father. “This chance meeting led to some of the most emotionally wrought portraits in the history of art – a father’s posthumous portrait painted vicariously using the face of another,” Havlicek notes.

Portrait of a Peasant, 1888

Vincent painted the man’s hands clasped as if in prayer, holding a shepherd’s staff. “He surrounded his father in a gold light, which is always a symbol of the divine,” Havlicek notes. “It’s a sacred work; Vincent loved sacred references.”

Havlicek made the significant discovery that a saintly bishop’s ruminations on the cosmos in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables inspired one of Vincent’s most famous works, The Starry Night:

Victor Hugo wrote, “He was there alone with himself, collected, tranquil, adoring, comparing the serenity of his own heart with the serenity of the skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendours of the constellations, and the invisible splendour of God, opening his soul to the thoughts that fall from the Unknown. In such moments offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night inhale their perfume, lighted like a lamp in the centre of The Starry Night…”

The Starry Night, 1889

Vincent used the same title for his painting and Havlicek notes the striking similarities. “The theme of Les Miserables is redemption,” Havlicek observes. In van Gogh’s painting, “the stars are painted like flowers. There is an interaction between the earth and heaven. It is as if heaven is reaching down.”

“Starlight implies in Vincent’s view that the darkness of sin, guilt, and death are overcome by divinely mediated grace.”

“Van Gogh’s interest in the Gospel is very profound,” Havlicek says. His paintings, The Good Samaritan, The Raising of Lazarus, The Sower, The Sheaf Binder (or harvester) all display Christ-centered themes.

Havlicek even sees the work of Christ in van Gogh’s famous painting of sunflowers. “In 1886 van Gogh found sunflowers thrown in a street gutter in Paris. He went home and painted these beautiful cast-off flowers. The way the flowers were transformed through love shows redemption.”

Four Cut Sunflowers, 1887

Van Gogh died under unusual circumstances in what most label a suicide, but Havlicek has some doubts. “No gun was ever found,” he says, and there were no powder burns near the fatal wound to his abdomen.

Two boys admitted they were target shooting near van Gogh and had an encounter with him that appears suspicious. “One wrote a confessional letter years later Vincent lingered for two days after the fatal shot. When he was interviewed by police, Vincent said, “I’m hurt but don’t blame anybody else.”

Havlicek believes that if he was shot accidentally by the boys, it was consistent with Vincent’s character to withhold that information. “He had a very sacrificial aspect to his personality. There were several times in his life when he took the blame for someone else,” he says.

“He loved Christ enormously at the end of his life,” Havlicek maintains. “He said Christ alone among all the magi and wise men offered men eternal life. In spite of a broken life, something glorious emerged.” (read more)

A Brilliant Portrayal

Portrait of Benjamin Franklin is a 1767 portrait painting by the Scottish artist David Martin of the American politician and inventor Benjamin Franklin. It was painted during his lengthy residence in London when he was acting as colonial agent for Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. The work was commissioned by the Edinburgh merchant Robert Alexander, a friend of Franklin. He is shown seated next to a bust of the scientist Sir Isaac Newton.

Delivered Thursday, June 28, 1787, Philadelphia, PA

Mr. President:

The small progress we have made after 4 or five weeks close attendance & continual reasonings with each other -- our different sentiments on almost every question, several of the last producing as many noes as ays, is methinks a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the Human Understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of government, and examined the different forms of those Republics which having been formed with the seeds of their own dissolution now no longer exist. And we have viewed Modern States all round Europe, but find none of their Constitutions suitable to our circumstances.

In this situation of this Assembly groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. -- Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance.

I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth -- that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without [H]is notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without [H]is aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that “except the Lord build the House they labor in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without [H]is concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall be become a reproach and a bye word down to future age. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human Wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, and conquest.

I therefore beg leave to move -- that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.

Mr. SHARMAN seconded the motion.

Mr. HAMILTON & several others expressed their apprehensions that however proper such a resolution might have been at the beginning of the convention, it might at this late day, I. bring on it some disagreeable animadversions. & 2. lead the public to believe that the embarrassments and dissensions within the Convention, had suggested this measure. It was answered by Docr. F. Mr. SHERMAN & others, that the past omission of a duty could not justify a further omission-that the rejection of such a proposition would expose the Convention to more unpleasant animadversions than the adoption of it: and that the alarm out of doors that might be excited for the state of things within, would at least be as likely to do good as ill.

Mr. WILLIAMSON, observed that the true cause of the omission could not be mistaken. The Convention had no funds.

Mr. RANDOLPH proposed in order to give a favorable aspect to ye. measure, that a sermon be preached at the request of the convention on 4th of July, the anniversary of Independence; & thenceforward prayers be used in ye. Convention every morning. Dr. FRANKLIN. 2nd this motion After several unsuccessful attempts for silently postponing the matter by morning. Dr. FRANKLIN. 2nd this motion After several unsuccessful attempts for silently postponing the matter by adjourning. the adjournment was at length carried, without any vote on the motion. [1].

Skyline Drive near High Top. — Photo by Bob Kirchman

“It is a wonder way over which the tourist will ride comfortably in his car while he is stirred by a view as exhilarating as the aviator may see from the plane.” — U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd (Virginia)

Today we often think of highways as utilitarian necessities at best, and it is true that they are often not designed for asthetics, but there was a time when motor roads, like many other things, were crafted by designers who had an incredible sense of beauty.

The roads through the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Smoky Mountains are indeed beautiful. Built to gently follow the contours of the land, they became a part of the landscape rather than a cut through it.

“Macadamized and smooth, with easy gradient and wide sweeping curves, the drive unfolds to view innumerable panoramas of lofty peaks, forested ravines and the patchwork patterns of valley farms.” – Harvey Benson

Harvey Benson drew up the initial design for the ridge-top road. It is still much as originally envisioned. The biggest change is that the simple white center line of the original road has been replaced with AASHTO standard yellow lines. The road is still a popular destination, much as Benson intended.

Building a bridge. — Public Domain Photo

A Magnificent Tunnel. — Public Domain Photo

While it is often thought that the stone bridges and tunnel portals were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, that is not the case. The builders actually employed Italian and Spanish master masons. Their work is timeless, much like America’s earliest railroad viaducts built by Benjamin Henry Latrobe for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

NPS Surveys done in modern times capture the beautiful design of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

A historical photo captures the original white center line.

(continued from here)

“1. Invention is rarely created in a vacuum. 2. Always read your colleague's/competitor's white papers. 3. The flashy guy who gets all the big grants just sometimes ain’t all that smart, and 4. Persistence, hard work and humility is always a great combination in any situation.” — M. K. Wharton

1. MEETING THE CHALLENGE

Jules Verne wrote From the Earth to the Moon in 1865. Set in post-civil war America, the story is one in which weapons are turned to exploration — not unlike the postwar aspirations for space exploration in the twentieth century. Verne did a wonderful job of designing a method of sending men to the moon. He couldn’t figure out how to land them there and return them safely to earth.

That was the clear mandate in Kennedy’s challenge. It was the thing that had never been done before. Fanciful depictions of rocket ships landing on the moon indeed existed in literature — but they were concepts.

Émile-Antoine Bayard created fanciful illustrations of Jules Verne’s story of a trip to the moon. Verne’s lunar mission would be shot from an enormous cannon, ironically located in Florida (he correctly noted the location, closer to the Equator, would assist the vehicle in getting aloft).

Werner von Braun’s original concept for a lunar lander compared with the Lunar Module that actually made the trip in 1969. — Collier’s

A “Voice in the Wilderness”

When John F. Kennedy called for a manned lunar landing, Werner von Braun and most of the experts ‘knew’ how it would be done – big rocket flies to the moon, fires retro rockets to land (there’s no atmosphere), and blast off again to return to earth. It was a beautiful concept.

The problem was that it was a big heavy machine, and landing it on the moon and lifting it off again was challenging the laws of physics. New rockets would have to be developed — big ones! Engineer John Hubolt at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia challenged conventional wisdom by suggesting Lunar Orbit Rendezvous as a way to use a smaller spacecraft to actually land on the moon and take off again.

John Hubolt explains Lunar Orbit Rendezvous. — NASA Photo

He was indeed a “voice in the wilderness,” and said so in his report to Associate NASA Administrator Robert Seamans. Risking his career, he bypassed the normal chain of command in doing so – and saved the program billions of dollars and countless months of research by using technology NASA already had. The idea wasn’t really original. Yuri Vasilyevich Kondratyuk, a Russian engineer of Ukrainian ancestry, had first come up with the concept. [1.]

Yuri Vasilyevich Kondratyuk. — Public Domain

Interestingly, the Russian lander would be developed very similarly to the American Lunar Module. Hubolt led an American team developing Lunar Orbit Rendezvous while his Soviet counterparts did the same. When Lunar Orbit Rendezvous was chosen as the way to do it, a new technology would have to be built.

The Russian Moon Landing Module that never flew. — Public Domain

The Apollo 11 Lunar Module ‘Eagle’ on the moon. — NASA Photo

Verne had put his astronauts in a free return trajectory (Apollo 13 would indeed do that in the next century), and in doing so avoided dealing with the unknown technologies that would be essential to the Apollo program. Kennedy’s mandate made it imperative that the means of landing on the moon and returning be developed. Lunar Orbit Rendezvous was the way to do it — in theory at least. Now someone would have to make it work. This is the story of a little company on Long Island who took up the challenge — and won it.

Tom Kelly’s Team Took Us to the Moon (and Got Us Back Again)

“We all knew that we were part of a majestic endeavor, and that we were making history happen.” – Thomas Joseph Kelly

Thomas J. Kelly was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 14, 1929. He won a Grumman engineering scholarship in 1946 and graduated from Cornell University in 1951 with a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree. He continued his post graduate education while working for the Grumman Corporation. After serving in the U. S. Air Force, and a year working for the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, he returned to Grumman in 1959. He retired from the company in 1992.

Leroy Grumman, the company’s founder, had struck out on his own in 1929. Working out of a rented garage, he began developing some of his own experimental airplane designs. In 1932, he presented the U.S. Navy with the FF-1, his first production fighter aircraft. The plane’s design continued to be improved, leading eventually to the creation of the F4F Wildcat, Grumman’s first fighter with folding wings.

Grumman built tough planes. The “cat” series, built for the U.S. Navy, had a reputation for getting their crews home. The sturdy aircraft, designed and built for carrier deployment, earned the company the nickname “Grumman Iron Works.” Aluminum, however, was the material Grumman engineers had real mastery over. They formed it into beautiful aerodynamic shapes to build their planes – and the famous Grumman canoes. In 1944, Grumman’s vice president, William Hoffman, was struggling to portage a waterlogged wood and canvas canoe, when he had an epiphany. He designed an aluminum canoe and one year later the company produced them as a sideline. Though they are considered archaic now, in the late sixties and early 1970s they were considered “the boat to beat.”

Grumman was not a large company, but its people were innovative. The familiar Long Life Vehicle (LLV) of the United States Postal Service, fleet delivery vans for UPS, and even a fire truck body were designed and produced by the people of the Grumman Corporation. The company’s most innovative project, something that had never been built before, would emerge out of the “Cold War” of the 1960s – the lunar module which carried Apollo astronauts to the surface of the moon.

Tom Kelly spoke of his involvement in the early development of the moon lander: “Well, I guess I've been involved in Apollo-related work as long as anybody in Grumman, actually. I started on the thing in 1960 -- April 1960. We started some in house studies at Grumman on manned space flight, and particularly manned lunar mission type activity. As you know, at that time, there were a number of NASA funded studies, and we competed for all of them; we never won any of them but we kept conducting our own in house studies. We went down and gave our own study conclusions to the NASA people right along with everybody else; I guess we were not unique in doing this. But, the point was, we had a very active interest in house, and we just wouldn't let it die; whether it was funded, or not, we kept going with it.”

The gamble paid off. Grumman’s preliminary study would earn it a place in the competition to build the actual lander. When President Kennedy announced in 1961 that America would go to the moon, Grumman had in place what Kelly describes as “a knowledgeable technical study group that could prepare a competitive proposal.” Still Grumman’s executive officers felt that their company just wasn’t big enough to handle project Apollo. They came up with a creative solution. They would bundle themselves into a proposal to be made by the much larger General Electric Company. GE would actually present the proposal, acting as the prime contractor. Grumman vice president Joe Gavin would coordinate this cooperative venture. Grumman would become, officially, the command module crew compartment subcontractor.

The GE/Grumman venture lost the competition to build the command module, which was won by North American Aviation. But Grumman’s expertise was not to be wasted. When NASA decided that they would develop the program around the lunar-orbit rendezvous approach, Tom Kelly and his team were well prepared to offer their proposal for the lunar lander. In the fall of 1962 the little airplane manufacturer on Long Island beat out seven competitors for the lunar module contract. Now General Electric would work with Grumman to produce the spacecraft that would actually take men to the surface of the moon.

Now Kelly and his engineering team realized, as their initial elation wound down, that they would be faced with the same challenge that had faced Leonardo da Vinci, the Wright Brothers, and Charles Lindbergh – weight! Every step forward in human flight had involved overcoming the limitations imposed by gravity! NASA had come up with an initial estimate of 30,200 pounds for the spacecraft. The craft that landed on the moon, and launched the astronauts from the lunar surface to rendezvous with the command module for their trip home, had to fit within this prescribed limitation. Since a manned lunar lander had never been built before, the seven years Grumman was given to create it don’t seem so long!

Kelly’s team worked tirelessly to conserve weight in unusual ways – in particular the engineering of the astronauts’ seats. Grumman built fifteen landers, six of which actually went to the moon. Some of the landers that didn’t fly are on display in museums and visitors often ask “Where are the astronauts’ seats?” In 1964 the design team eliminated them. The astronauts flew the lander standing up! In gravity that was one sixth that of earth, the astronauts could fly, land, and take off standing in the craft. Their legs were all the shock absorbers they needed. Removing the seats saved weight in itself, but the move also allowed the astronauts to stand closer to the craft’s windows – allowing them to be significantly smaller. This saved hundreds of pounds of chemically tempered glass as well.

With no seats, the astronauts also had more room for donning their space suits for the walk on the lunar surface. They could also hang their sleeping hammocks for the rest they needed while on the moon. Astronaut Pete Conrad would refer to the cabin design as a “trolley car configuration.” Bethpage, NY, where the landers were built, is just 30 miles east of Brooklyn, where trolley car motormen actually stood up, operating a throttle with the left hand and a brake with the right. According to Kelly, those trolley cars had already inspired the name of a baseball team. Manhattan residents, who had more subways, sometimes referred to Brooklyn’s inhabitants as “trolley dodgers,” hence the team’s name came to be the Brooklyn Dodgers. Did the trolleys of Brooklyn also influence the design of the lunar lander? Conrad’s reference suggests it might have.

The lander had to operate in extreme temperatures. The original design called for sheet aluminum skin covering a layer of insulation. Again, weight was a factor, so the team came up with the Kapton sheeting (a kind of mylar foil covered with gold leaf) that gives the lower part of the craft it’s ‘tinfoil’ appearance. In the end, the fact that the lander never had to fly in atmosphere determined that it would be a rather unglamorous shape on a foil covered quadpod, or four legged stand. Eventually engineers would refer to the lander as the “bug.” The first manned LM, flown in earth orbit by Apollo 9, would be called “Spider.” After one more dress rehearsal in lunar orbit by Apollo 10, the “Eagle,” flown by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11, would land on the moon. The date was July 20, 1969 – eight years after John F. Kennedy laid down the challenge.

Tom Kelly and the Grumman team had done some thinking beyond the task at hand that would prove invaluable just two missions later. They recommended designing “lifeboat” capabilities into the LM. These capabilities would save the lives of the Apollo 13 astronauts when their command/service module was crippled by an explosion. The crew fired up the LM and used it to provide life support and navigation right up to the time that they jettisoned it. The command module was the only part of the spacecraft that could reenter the atmosphere. Though the LM “Aquarius” was consumed in a fiery reentry itself, the “Grumman Iron Works” team had successfully delivered one more crew safely home.

(to be continued)

Interview with Tom Kelly

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

[click to listen]

Thomas Joseph Kelly, aerospace engineer responsible for working on the Apollo Lunar Module, is interviewed about the science of getting to the moon. Kelly describes direct descent, Earth Orbit Rendezvous, and Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, and explains why each did or did not work (Lunar Orbit Rendezvous was selected as the best method). When building the Lunar Module, Kelly modeled it to have two parts, one for reaching the moon, and the other for orbit, and walks through some of the practicalities of designing the module for a low-gravity environment. As the first spacecraft that would operate solely in space, the Lunar Module was required to be lightweight, and describes the extreme measures of building the craft. Time and money were big pressures on the engineers, with both NASA and the competing Russian program pushing the engineers to build as quickly and as cheaply as possible, and Kelly speculates that higher-ups at NASA might have known about the Russian attempts to reach the moon. Kelly describes working long hours, but calls it “a labor of love”, and describes early, rejected models of the Lunar Module, and talks about the astronauts’ roles in the tests of the modules. Apollo 8 was originally planned to test the Lunar Module, but because the module was not ready, it was pushed to Apollo 9, which Kelly explains, and Apollo 8 instead sent the Command and Service Module (CSM) to the moon without the Lunar Module. — Library of Congress

Sarah Beach Guppy

Sarah Guppy and her husband, Samuel Guppy had six children, Samuel Guppy Junior, Thomas Richard, Sarah Maria Ann, Mary Elizabeth, Robert and Grace. Thomas Richard Guppy would become one of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's assistants, working with him on the construction of the ships Great Britain and the Great Western. Sarah herself is said to have made models for Brunel of his inventions.

Brunel’s Mentor

Preparing for the story on Isambard Kingdom Brunel, I discovered a second attribution for the Clifton Suspension Bridge, Sarah Beach Guppy. Apparently she briefly was thought to have created the design for the bridge over the Avon Gorge because she had patented an iron chain bridge design in 1811. The problem is that her design is substantially different from that used by Brunel. Still, it is of note that a woman born in the Eighteenth Century had ten patents to her name. Born in 1770, Sarah married a merchant named Samuel Guppy and they had six children. Mr. Guppy’s business took him to London and the family was friends with the family of Marc Brunel. That Marc and Sarah were both inventors certainly created some sort of bond. Although it is commonly believed that Marc Brunel was Isambard’s primary teacher, it seems Sarah became a special mentor to the young man. He was 36 years younger than her.

When young Isambard arrived in Bristol he had never actually designed a bridge. His work to that point had been assisting his father Marc in the construction of the Thames Tunnel. Barely escaping death when the tunnel collapsed, young Brunel went to Bristol to convalesce. Some historians speculate that Guppy collaborated in the design for the Clifton Bridge. Other sources say that she built models of Brunel’s designs. This points to the distinct possibility that Sarah not only collaborated with Marc and Isambard, but served as a mentor to the younger Brunel. Her first invention was a method of making safe pilings for bridges. Thomas Telford asked her for permission to use her patented design and she gave it to him free of charge. She was generous with her genius.

As a friend of Isambard, she helped in the creation of the Great Western Railway, making many recommendations to the directors of the company. In 1841 she recommended planting willows and poplars to stabilize the railroad embankments. Her son Thomas would later become an assistant to Isambard Kingdom Brunel, working on the Great Britain and the Great Eastern. Young Isambard even painted a portrait of Sarah. The two families enjoyed a rich shared creativity. Isambard and his wife Mary were great patrons of the arts. I did not know Isambard was a painter himself, although his renderings and the detailing of his projects show his artistry.

As to the attribution of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, the work would appear to be original with Brunel, still, great design does not happen in a vacuum and Sarah Beach Guppy deserves recognition for her contribution – even if it was simply her mentorship of the great designer.