Gillett

I spoke with Gillett Griffin and will see him on my holiday trip to Richmond.  Right from the time I first knew Mike, he talked about his friend, Gillett .  He and Gillett met at Deerfield in the mid 1940s, played opposite him in Arsenic and Old Lace school production and have been friends ever since.  Together with another fast friend and fellow Yale buddy, Jack Marmaras, they owned Barber Hill in Colrain since 1952. This 1810 Farmhouse on 260 acres of land has the Green River as an Eastern border and its northern border is the State line of Vermont. It is now in a Land Trust for the children and grandchildren of Mike and Jack..Gillett has never married and graciously deeded his share to Mike's and Jack's kids.  I am the product of a family owned business and I am always fascinated by how families and friends keep enterprises going decade after decade.  Particularly three strong personalities such as Jack, Gillett and Mike.  For many years, Jack was the head of  Design operations for Ciba Geigy; he died in 2008. Gillett was the curator of the Princeton Pre-Colombian Art Museum for many years.  He donated his collection of Mayan and Olmec statues, jewelry and relics to the Museum. As a teacher and archeologist, Gillett was the mentor and friend of leading Mayanists Linda Schele and Mary Ann Miller (who dedicated their ground breaking book The Blood of Kings to Gillett).  Gillett also counts among his friends every major 'name' in the pre-columbian archeology world  from Michael Coe and Ed Shook to Merle Greene Robertson and Gertrude Blum.  it was through Gillett that Mike and I became involved with the eco-tourism group Far Horizons. With that group of rotating archeologists, we toured for two to three weeks the Mayan sites of Central America four times.  I will write more about that in another essay.

Gillett also has the incredible claim to fame as being a friend of Albert Einstein.  When Einstein was named Person of the Twentieth Century in 2000, CBS produced a special and Gillett was a prominent figure in that film. In 1953, when Gillett was a 25 years old art historian in the making.  He had taken a $2,400-a-year job at the Princeton University Library' Graphic Arts collection.  Albert Einstein was 74 and already a Nobel Prize winning physicist.  Gillett was working with a fellow librarian, Johanna Fantova, who was a close companion of Einstein's at the time.  Johanna invited Gillett over to the house for dinner and to meet Einstein, his step-daughter Margot and his secretary, Helene Dukas. Gillett described the meeting as this: "Einstein reminded me of the character Gepetto from the Disney movie 'Pinocchio'---kind, inquistive, mustachioed and very European.  Einstein greeted me with a small ball and maze puzzle and asked me to solve it.  I complied.  Apparently with everyone, when he met them, Einstein would give a small puzzle.  If ou give a person a puzzle, you could size them up, and relax. Einstein was basically a shy person, and he probably felt uncomfortable with people." Gillett's friendship with Einstein lasted to the time of the great man's death.

Another friend, Allen Rosenbaum described Gillett: "So many people love and respect Gillett that when you become his friend you are included in a very extensive extended family.  He is a very gifted graphic artist, and his letters are especially prized for the delightfully witty illustrations with which they are always annotated."  I have a series of twenty of these drawings because my Belgian dad always sent tangelos-hybrids of grapefruit and tangerines- to friends, family and customers during the New Years' holidays.  I continued his tradition.  Within a week of receiving his bushel, I would get a gushing note from Gillett with an illustration of him swimming in a half of a tangelo, or
in 2005 Gillett at the beach with a bucket as an orange tsunami was about to wash over him, Gillett with straw in mouth leaning into  a sea of orange juice while floating in a scooped out half of a tangelo, Gillett juggling tangelos or one of my favorites of him sitting, fork and knife in hand, at my dining room table with a half of a tangelo about two feet in circumference.  These are so wonderful and so very special to OUR friendship.
Gillett has always been a generous warm friend.  He and Mike did not always agree on everything, but compromises were always reached.  Three of our grandsons have the middle name Griffin.