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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Guide Weather Subscribe Contact Us February 19, 2005 Harriett Spira Harriett Spira passed to Heaven on the 11th of February, 2005. Because of her extraordinary intelligence and artistic prowess, by special dispensation from God, she was spared the usual visit to Hell where almost everyone first goes and is made to understand the damages one did to others during one's life. Harriett's extraordinary perception always comprehended any such damage, and she always apologized to the one she had offended. Born June 7, 1914, she started her artistic work at age 4 when she was bedridden with measles. She drew and drew and drew. At age 7, (1921), she submitted a silhouette cut from black paper to a Chicago newspaper which had a children's page entitled "The Topsy-Turvy Club." Her work won first prize and was published. Also at age 4, in 1918, she sang "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again" to a rapt small audience. She was a highly gifted actress and occasionally took a role in her husband's plays produced at the Quartz Theater in Ashland in the 1980's. Harriett loved living in Ashland. The mountains around her stimulated her painting. She loved traveling, and always drew going to strange places. A peculiar statement of hers last year was, "Why not 1 + 1 = 0?" She had rediscovered the field of two elements, originally discovered by Galois, a brilliant 18-year-old mathematician. I tried once to get her to convert to orthodox Judaism, (my religion), and she studied hard for a few months and decided against it. She did not want to be restricted in any way. She took art classes at UC Berkeley, Chicago, Durham NC, Lansing MI, New York, London, Paris. She did drawings and watercolors in Israel. She had two children, Constance and Bradford, both formidable artists. I eventually adopted them. Harriett's mother was a painter of realistic scenes. As a young woman she married a charming man from the Midwest, a traveling salesman for a cigarette company. He kept a locked trunk in their bedroom. The maid advised Harriett's mother to open it. She jimmied the lock and found a large number of love letters from women on his route. She divorced him. Obviously Harriett's strong personality descended from both parents. While Harriett's mother was single again, to make ends meet she rented rooms of her home to Vaudeville performers. Their wild lifestyle greatly influenced Harriett. Her mother eventually married a solid German craftsman interior decorator. Harriett and Bob met at the Henry George School in Chicago. In 1954 I drove from Berkeley to Chicago in a 1937 black Cadillac, very heavy, and impressively high in gasoline consumption. My sister Leta had been a very skilled and brainy assistant to the School Director, John Lawrence Monroe. She left to devote herself to her classical piano studies. On my landing in Chicago I talked with John and he hired me as an administrative assistant. Harriett worked there also and was in the middle of a divorce. We went to dinner a few times, and I romanced her by playing the piano in my Near North Side digs. She took me to her apartment on the North Side where I met her two children, Connie and Brad. There was ongoing friction with her ex-husband about getting the children to her on weekends. Seeing the situation I talked her into going with me back to California, and getting the children for a few weeks in summers. Agreement was reached and we married on November 22,1954. We went back to Berkeley, and we both worked while I completed my math Ph.D at UC Berkeley. In preparation is a set of books compiled from slides of her paintings and sculpture. Harriett wrote and illustrated a children's book "The First Peep." She recently completed a second children's book, "Tick-Tock the Clock" about a clock who one day decided to run backward. It caused trouble for the family at the beginning of the workday. We spent 50 years together, working in the arts. She brought dignity and a touch of class to all other endeavors. Survivors are her husband Robert; two children, Constance Simonsen, Medford, OR, Bradford Burdick of San Jose, CA; sister Mignon Winegar, Arcata, CA; grandson Dakin Maher, CA; great-grandchildren Autumn and Merwin Maher, CA. 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