Henri Reynard Speaks Out

Bill and Al

---

In reading the NY Times this morning I noted that there were two men's deaths last week that left many of us poorer for their passing. I read the obits in the Times not in the vain hope of seeing any of my less favored personal acquaintances names there; that is unlikely. I read them because there is a momentum building in the lives of all of us who have been on this planet more than sixty years and I sometimes feel its cold breeze on the back of my neck. Obits are a form of whistling past the graveyard for me. Two men of ink and the pen or brush, Al Hirschfield and Bill Mauldin made many of us smile in the face of life, and death. They were very different men, possibly connected only by their love for drawing and their insights into the subtle little things about people that were exposed in their art. Bill used his cartoons to make points about the similarities between people, Al used his drawings to show the subtle differences that people use in defining their roles in life and on Broadway.

I admired the work of both men enough to know who they were early in life, and to recognize their distinctive styles from those of other artists. Willie and Joe were the best part of my memories about WWII most of which were gained in the few years after the war. They were a part of what was a kinder and more self-assured America in my memories. Memories are inaccurate and biased and mine are no exceptions to that rule. The world has placed more pressure on our sometimes a great nation in times past than it does even today, Willie and Joe's cynical responses to those pressures made most of us smile. The world of beauty and glamour that is Broadway was well served by Al's drawings, caricatures if you insist, of the most and least glamorous workers in the art of acting.

Human beings are mortal, that fact is probably irrevocable, but artists are sometimes the least mortal of all of us, and possibly the most touched by divinity. Elevating and exposing the foibles, features and fecklessness of fellow travelers is a task that needs doing every day and is difficult to do without using anger or other emotions to color the deeds portrayed. The fearless exhaustion that permeated Willie and Joe was so well received by our men at war because it was so familiar. The subtle virtues of Al Hirschfields glamorous caricatures stand in stark contrast to those muddied, muddled men, who were heroes to us all. Two men who brightened all of our lives with the wit and amusement at the vanities that we all fall prey to at times have passed, I shall miss them.

Has their America passed too, gone without a trace? I think not! While sometimes I fear that we have lost our way in this convoluted world of ours, I seldom am able to take the present so seriously that I lose sight of either the past or the future. The present difficulties with Iraq, threatening to become a war, are really nothing new or different. WWII was a fight that we didn't pick. We would possibly have stood on our island here between the two sheltering oceans without intervening if the Japanese hadn't helped us make the decision. It was a decision that saved Europe, Asia and maybe the world from dominance by two far less kind empires than ours has become.

We are more committed to keeping the world safe for commerce than we are to keeping it safe for Democracy now, but that was the goal of some of us then too. The side benefits of that kind of effort do sometimes bring nations closer together. We need to build bridges that connect us to peoples of all nations, and keep the trolls out from under them to the greatest extent possible. War is not a good way to do that, nor should it be used lightly as a solution to problems that can be resolved in other ways. Even North Korea cannot help but benefit from a more open trade policy. That is the great dream of those of us who hope that the problem of nuclear armaments controlled by them can be resolved peacefully.

Oil in Iraq is a real reason for us to have an interest in the political climate in that nation. The death of the tyrant Saddam will not end bitter feuds and evil in Iraq. But it may help us find an anchor point for that bridge which will endure. War is a last resort in all cases, I worry that we are becoming too committed to using it as a handy solution to too many problems. But it is a dangerous world out there, and we are less isolated now than we were before the war of Willie and Joe. I will miss the new work from Al and Bill that I will never see again, I miss their America too. The WWII America had the simple virtue of a truly evil enemy that needed to be defeated. That enemy was easily identified, the world is more confusing now.

I love my children as much as Al must have loved his daughter Nina, and hate the idea of leaving them a more confusing world than the one I inherited as a young man. But then, we muddled through didn't we even in times that divided us deeply. It is a worthy task, that, muddling through. We will just have to keep on keeping on and kick our leaders in the fanny when they get too fancy for their own good. That is a job that is best done with humor as Al and Bill both knew well. I will miss them most of all for that the essential good humor of their work. Thank you Bill and Al for your gifts to us all, we are grateful to have known you both.