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Edie McKee took this photo of Charley during their years at the Art Academy. Courtesy of Charley Harper Art Studio
By the fall of 1941, Charley and Edie were both back at the Art Academy of Cincinnati for another year of study. They had become close friends with a group of other students, going on field trips and spending time together, sketching or socializing outside of class. Charley was finally among others who appreciated art as much as he did. He told Edie that his new friends were the nicest he’d ever had. 8
Charley had not yet developed a style in those early years of art school. He was trying everything. Most important, he was learning to paint realistically.
When you look at Charley Harper’s work today, you might not think that he was ever a realistic painter, but he was frequently quoted as saying, “I think you have got to learn to draw realistically before you can venture out on your own. You’ve got to know how to put everything in before you will know what you can leave out successfully.”9
Eventually, Charley Harper would develop a unique style all his own. But first, World War II would get in the way.
DID YOU KNOW?
Water striders belong to a family of insects called Gerridae. Because of their ability to glide across the surface of water, they’ve earned a lot of interesting names, such as water skippers, pond skaters, and—as Charley grew up hearing them called—Jesus bugs. Microscopic hairs cover their entire bodies, even their legs. These hairs give them the ability to shed water, helping them maintain virtual weightlessness. Water striders prefer the still water found in ponds and puddles.10
3
THE ARTIST BECOMES A SOLDIER
I remember when I was in grade school that I used to think how lucky I was to be born after all war was ended, because that’s what the teacher always told us World War I was for. On Armistice Day, one of the local veterans would talk to us . . . and I’d think how nice and brave and unselfish of him to go across the sea and fix it so that I’d never hafta be bothered with war.
—Charley Harper1
ON THE DAY before Thanksgiving 1942, Charley Harper walked in to the post office in his hometown in West Virginia. He was not there to mail a letter, but to see the Navy recruiter. It was his Plan B.
Charley would have preferred Plan A: to be in Cincinnati with Edie and their friends, enjoying his third year at the Art Academy. But war changes many people’s plans, and the United States was now involved in a second world war. Like all young men, Charley had registered for the draft, and now, he had learned that his number was up. In early December, just a few short days away, he would be told where to go to join the United States Army.
Charley had never wanted to join the military, but he’d decided that if he had to enlist, he’d choose the United States Navy.2 On that November day at the post office, he was setting into motion Plan B. He’d enlist in the navy before he was drafted into the army. But when he arrived, the recruiter told him the navy had more men than were needed, and although he could enlist, he’d be put on a waiting list. Charley enlisted on the spot.
Well, almost. First, he ran to his older sister Ruth’s nearby home to take a bath. Charley knew that enlisting required a physical examination, and he suddenly realized that, because his parents were in the process of moving from one house to another, he hadn’t had a proper bath for days. He made a quick excuse, ran to his sister’s house, and had a good soak in her bathtub.
He passed the physical and waited, wondering who would call on him first: the army or the navy.
There was a great deal to think about during those days. Charley missed Edie and her parents, whom he’d grown to affectionately call “the Kees.” He longed to be in classes in Cincinnati, growing as an artist and learning from the academy’s accomplished teachers. War would only delay his career. And, of course, Charley knew that there was a very real possibility that war could do worse. It could end his career. It could end his future with Edie. It could end his life.
“I get so mad I grind my teeth when I think how well I was getting along at school and how much I was improving and how many opportunities I was having,” he wrote to Edie. His next sentence, however, proved he was as selfless as the veteran he had heard speak at his school so many years before. “But that’s all the griping I’m gonna do (right now) because I guess all the other guys feel the same way.”3
On the last day of November, a letter arrived from the United States Army. Charles Harper was to report for duty on December 9, 1942. Charley still held hope that the navy would call on him before the ninth, but it didn’t happen. He spent the next week getting his hair cut, having a picture taken (at his mother’s request), and going to the dentist.
Rationing limited access to certain products in order to supply American troops with what they needed. Charley captured the beginning of gas rationing in his hometown with this sketch in December 1942.
Courtesy of Charley Harper Art Studio. Photo by Ross Van Pelt-RVP Photography
He visited with his family and painted a portrait of his mother and another of his high school principal, Clifford Brake. A visit to Edie’s parents’ home in Cincinnati to say goodbye wasn’t possible, but Charley was okay with that. It would be easier not to say goodbye at all.
On December 9, almost exactly a year after Pearl Harbor was attacked and the United States became involved in World War II, Charley became a soldier. His next letter to Edie was mailed from Camp Chaffee, Arkansas, where he would spend thirteen weeks in basic training.
Within a week of arriving, Charley wrote to Edie and asked her to send some art supplies—some pens, several nibs, ink, and drawing paper. Not knowing what the army would be like, he’d left all this behind. Charley soon discovered, however, that between drills, marching, obstacle courses, and KP, he just might find time to draw.
A few days before Christmas, invitations to eat Christmas dinner with local families were distributed around the barracks. At first, Charley didn’t take one. He wasn’t sure he wanted to spend the holiday with strangers. “Besides, I’m going to be so homesick that day, I’ll want to be alone.”4 But by the next day, Charley had decided he’d go after all. It seemed those who stayed behind at camp on Christmas Day would be participating in a ten-mile hike. Suddenly dinner with strangers didn’t sound so bad after all.5
In 1942, Charley, the art student, became Charley, the soldier.
Courtesy of Charley Harper Art Studio
On Christmas Day, a truck with a tarp over the top bounced across the Arkansas countryside, delivering the new young soldiers in pairs to the homes of their hosts. When Charley and a soldier named Francis were dropped off, Charley surveyed the run-down country home. He wondered if he should turn and chase the truck down, but once inside, he changed his mind. “It looked like the people were doing a good job making the best of what they had.”6
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