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Betty's Relationship with Betty had many friends but probably the closest was Charlee Wilbur (sometimes referred to as "Charl"). The two met during World War II when Betty was living with Kirt in the rented house on Greenbrook Road in North Caldwell, NJ and Charlee was living a quarter mile up the road with her husband's parents while he, Richard "Dick" Wilbur", was in the Army serving in Europe. The two apparently met when Charlee was out taking a walk in the neighborhood and when I believe Charlee was pregnant with daughter Ellen, probably in 1943 or 1944. (Ellen was my first childhood playmate when I was born in 1945). They hit it off right away and spent much time together till war's end since Betty's husband Kirt was working 80 hour weeks and Dick was overseas. The close friendship they developed would last the rest of their lives. Before the end of the war both had worried that their husband's wouldn't hit it off when they finally met as Kirt was an engineer and Dick a poet but this fear turned out to be unfounded and they got along fine together.
Immediately after the war Charlee and Dick would move away from North Caldwell (and eventually to Connecticut for many years and then Massachusetts) but would regularly visit Dick's parents in North Caldwell providing Betty, Charlee and their families plenty of opportunity to stay in touch and socialize. In 1949 Betty and Kirt moved into "The Coop" which was only perhaps 100 yards from the elder Wilbur's home. (Dick's father was noted portrait artist Lawrence Wilbur who in 1959 painted the 3 portraits of myself and my brothers which are discussed in the "General and Other " section.) In the late 1940's and 1950's Richard Wilbur would become one of the best known and respected contemporary living poets in the country. He has remained widely known, published, and respected in literary circles to this day. Over the years he would receive many awards for poetry including 2 Pulitzer Prizes and in 1987 was appointed only the second Poet Laureate of the United States. Over his career he would be a professor at prestigious institutions of higher learning including Wesleyan University, Smith College and Amherst College (his alma matter and where I believe he still holds the chair in poetry once held by Robert Frost ). In the early 1960's when I attended a private high school in Vermont I recall well that Richard Wilbur along with some of his poems (and even some family photos) were highlighted in one of my required English text books.
Over the years when they couldn't physically visit each other Betty and Charlee would talk on the phone regularly and their families would also become close. Charlee would be named the godmother of one of my brothers and Betty would become the godmother of one of the Wilbur's children. The two families sometimes vacationed together and I recall the Wilbur's spending time with my family at the Dorset, VT home where my parents had met in 1941. In 1958 or 1959 the two families spend a week's vacation together (in nearby rental homes) on the island of Martha's Vineyard just off the Massachusetts coast.
Around 1956 the
Wilbur family spent a year in Italy on a sabbatical from Dick's
teaching duties and while there obtained two rare purebred Chocolate
Point Siamese cats which they brought home with them to Connecticut The
male and female cats promptly had kittens, one of which was given to
the Hine family generally and me in particular. My father didn't
particularly like cats so within about a year, and after the kitten
I'd named "Tiny" got into our chicken dinner one night, father said
the cat had to go. Tiny relocated to mother's sister's family
who lived on the 8th floor of a Manhattan apartment building in New
Your City and where he was appropriately re-named Ting-Tang.
After a year or two in the city Ting-Tang moved back to the home of
his birth with the Wilbur's after the two cats they'd returned
from Italy with had passed away. Ting-Tang enjoyed the
Wilbur's home in Connecticut much more than the cramped apartment
and would spend the rest of his long life there becoming a
distinguished country mouser in his old age. I recall that
every time we'd visit the Wilbur's in those years, my former cat
would regularly be napping on top of the refrigerator where
he could monitor all the activities going on in the kitchen.
In the early 1960's, and for reasons I can't remember, the Wilbur's befriended and came to know the very famous 1930's and 1940's Big-Band era musician and band leader Lionel Hampton. Lionel Hampton and his band members were invited to the Wilbur's Connecticut home to parties on more than one occasion when they were performing in the New York City area. In 1961 Mr. Hampton invited the Wilbur's to bring some friends and be his personal guest at a performance at the then famous and exclusive Metropole jazz club in Manhattan. The Wilbur's invited Betty, Kirt and myself to attend this special occasion along with well known Broadway playwright Lillian Hellman. We had front row seats and had a great time.
In 1963 Betty moved back to
her childhood home of St. Louis following her divorce. This
made it more difficult to frequently visit with Charlee but they
stayed in contact with frequent phone calls. And of course
they'd get together when Betty would visit the east coast every few
years. I recall that the Wilbur's visited Betty several times in St.
Louis when Dick was there for poetry readings but don't recall if
they visited California during the early
years of Betty's second marriage. Charlee and Dick did visit Betty and John several times
and stayed at the Hermann, MO farm.
Sometime during her second marriage Dick gave Betty and John a
signed one page poem titled "The Writer". It's not dated so I
have no idea what year this might have been. I found it among
Betty's possessions after she passed away. The poem was
clearly typed on Dick's typewriter and is on fancy paper but I
believe it's a souvenir reproduction of the original (except for
Dick's personal inscription) and thus I suspect that there have
probably been many
such copies of this poem distributed. The poem appears in Dick's 1988 book titled
"Richard Wilbur - New And Collected Poems" and was apparently
written in 1976.
In 1992 (and during the period when Betty's health was failing) someone in Hermann, MO who was aware that she knew Richard Wilbur asked if she could arrange for him to attend a local poetry reading in conjunction with Missouri Writers Week. Betty said sure and, while I don't know how much she was involved in all the planning details, contacted Dick and arranged for him to come. This became a huge event for the local literary arts community and people came from all over Missouri. Local business made donations to fund the Wilbur's expenses for the occasion and Charlee and Dick of course stayed with Betty and John at the Hermann farm. Dick's 1992 poetry reading in Hermann was probably the last time Betty and Charlee saw each other in person. Betty's health was beginning to fail and in the following years I recall her saying she and Charlee sometime talked almost daily as mother's health deteriorated.
Epilog
I'd pretty much lost direct contact with the Wilbur's in the mid 1960's when I'd come to Colorado and only heard about them through Betty who regularly talked about them. In October of 2008, 12 years after Betty's death, I visited the North East for the first time in almost 30 years and made a point of visiting those of my parents generation who I'd known growing up and had made an impact on my life. I spent about 5 hours with Dick Wilbur at his rural Cummington, MA home (in the western part of the state where he and Charlee had moved some decades before so he could teach at Smith College and later Amherst.) Dick appeared in good health both physically and mentally at about the age of 87 and was living alone with the help of a part-time caregiver who periodically came by. We discussed old times and I shared appropriate photos of the Hines and Wilburs which I'd digitized from Betty's lifetime photo collection. Dick was still teaching one day a week at Amherst (they'd provide a driver to transport him) and he was still actively writing poetry in his study building adjacent to his house. When I asked if he planned to publish another book he said yes but wasn't specific as to when. Subsequently "Anterooms: New Poems and Translations" was published in November of 2010 and has a 5 star rating online (as do most of his books). As of 2008 when I visited Dick had 2 Siamese cats living with him (which I suspect were not descendants of Ting-Tang except perhaps emotionally) and Betty's ceramic lion, made and given to the Wilbur's in the mid 1950's, was still on guard duty half hidden under the bushes just outside Dick's study keeping an eye on all those coming or going.
A final story which involved me. One day in early October of 1987 I got a phone call from Betty who indicated that Charlee had called to say that Dick would be the subject of a special TV report regarding his selection as U.S. Poet Laureate on the ABC Evening News. (1987 was in the pre-internet days when most Americans got their news each day from one of the 3 major national TV networks of which ABC was one so Dick being on the national TV news was a very big deal.) Charlee was looking for someone to record the broadcast segment as apparently the Wilbur's either didn't have the video tape recorder necessary or perhaps wouldn't be home to do it. This was fairly early in the days of home video recorders and mother didn't have one so she called me because she knew I did. I recorded the 4 minute segment and mailed the VHS video tape to the Wilbur's so they could play it for family members and friends who couldn't watch it live. Charlee sent me a thank-you note and returned the video tape to me a month or two later. I stored it with my collection of tapes which I suspected wouldn't be watched very often and promptly forgot about it. In the fall of 2011 I decided to clean out my long un-watched collection of video tapes and ran into it. Since it was short and easy to do, I digitally captured the 4 minute ABC News piece, burned a quantity of DVD copies, and mailed them to Dick so he could pass them along to his kids and grand kids. Dick subsequently send me a thank-you note which included a reference to mother's ceramic lion still supervising events from just outside of his study.
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