Luck and Fame: My Chance Meeting with Norman Rockwell in Colombia

Every so often our achievements –the ones we are primarily responsible for - are seen as less important than those we get by chance. While we all fall into some lucky moments now and then, and we all need such luck to get ahead, sometimes that bit of luck overshadows at least some of who we think we are.

Such a chance occurrence happened to me while a PCV in Colombia in the mid-1960s. There were more than 700 volunteers in Colombia at that point and I was assigned to a teacher training and physical education program. My job was to support PCVs working throughout the country. Wearing a coat and tie and given the title of Volunteer Leader. I worked in the national PC office in Bogota. That office had recently moved from the center of the city to a large, old, colonial style house in a northern, residential district. One day, in early 1966, while working in this old house, there was a knock at the back door near my desk. That had not happened before, at least to my knowledge, and I could only assume that somebody got lost looking for the main, street entrance. I think I was the only one who heard the knock and went to open the door.

Through that door, I welcomed to the office Mr. Normal Rockwell, his wife, and a representative from the now defunct, Look Magazine. Norman Rockwell looked at me and said “you’ll do.” That didn’t mean anything to me as I proceeded to usher the group into the Director’s office. I don’t mean to suggest that the visit was not a big deal, as we all knew the Rockwell’s would be there that morning. We just didn’t expect them at the back door and no one expected me to be the greeter. They were in the country to take photographs of one or more volunteers working in communities. These photos were intended to represent PCVs in various parts of the world and would be used by Rockwell back at his studio, which now forms part of the Norman Rockwell Museum (http://www.nrm.org/ ), to paint what emerged as a series of four paintings for the June 1966, publication.

Norman Rockwell, at that point in the 20th Century, was well known as an illustrator and artist who primarily did cover page illustrations, more than 300, for example, for the Saturday Evening Post, as well as for commercial products like soup cans, and for other magazines like Look and Life. Rockwell was best known for his tender and ideal views of primarily white, North Americans, working and playing in everyday life. While he was as famous as Wyeth, O’Keeffe, Lichtenstein and Warhol, his fame was not with museum curators, scholars or independent painters, who thought of him more as an illustrator than a painter or artist. Instead, his popularity was with editors, publishers and readers who admired him for his earthy views of the common day man. Ultimately, before his death in the 1970s, he earned the respect of all of the above, along with receipt of the Presidential Medal of Honor.

Leaving the Rockwells with the Director, I returned to my work. About 15-20 minutes went by when I was interrupted by the Director who suggested that I should go home, change into some street clothes (apparently to appear as a “real” PCV), and meet him and the Rockwell’s in a socio-economically poor “barrio” or neighborhood , located between the office and the central city. Something was clearly up as he handed me his car keys and told me to take off. I met the group as instructed and by the time I arrived they had already arranged, through some monetary compensation with the local Catholic parish priest, to take photographs of a few individuals and objects in the community.

The Rockwell s set the scene by picking a few of us to pose for the photos. He placed me on one knee sandwiched between two other individuals on the ground in front of a ramshackled house. I was told to hold a set of blueprints, as my mtstizo looking acquaintance on my right and my Indian looking acquaintance on my left, looked on. The priest was placed standing, with folded arms, behind the three of us, overlooking the apparent PCV led planning process. As part of the scene setting, Mr. Rockwell had set a hat on the “Indian”, which was not well accepted by him nor a good fit. Rockwell also objected to the “Indian” wearing tennis shoes (“Croydon”) as not appearing as indigenous as Rockwell had envisioned. Of course, the indigenous did not wear such hats in Colombia and tennis shoes were what they all wore. So, in the Rockwells’ mind, they had just set the stage for providing an image to the world of the Peace Corps actively working with the poor, planning the future in a country viewed as the symbol of John F. Kennedy’s Latin American “Alliance for Progress.”

As Rockwell went on to another area of the city to pose a female volunteer, who ultimately appeared in the magazine as representing Peace Corps in Africa, I had just become a Rockwell “model.” In my naiveté, I asked Rockwell if I would some day be able to purchase the soon to be painting. He responded “no,” that I would not have enough money. I learned later that the paintings ended up in the Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA. having been either donated or purchased. I did get some photos of myself with Rockwell and of the Rockwell’s taking pictures of others in the neighborhood which I eventually donated to the Museum.

Not only was the publication of the June, 1966 Look Magazine that summer of interest to friends and relatives, curiously, it has remained so for everyone who has come to learn about it for the last forty years. My “day job” after Peace Corps eventually became that of an academic, holding professorships at six universities, deanships at two, and vice president and provostships at three, along with having published the normal number of books and articles to earn the positions. But, under the right circumstances, my day job has always seemed to be overshadowed by the Rockwell painting. It has been re-published as a postcard (as “Peace Corps in Bogota”) and used as a poster for fund raising by returned Colombian PCVs. In the late 1990s I was invited as a “Rockwell model” to visit the Museum for a reunion of all such models. While there, the painting was hanging in the Museum and I met with docents, providing them some background.

There certainly was no substantive reason for me to become Rockwell’s model of a PCV in Latin America. I was not involved in most of the typical work of volunteers in agriculture or community development as the painting portrayed, and I was not even actively pursuing teaching or coaching related to the purpose for which I had been sent. Nevertheless, there it is, an example of how sometimes luck, or being in a given place at a given time, can overshadow accomplishment. I guess I could have won a lottery or been struck by some other event that would have brought me not only some fame but monetary resources as well. But, that knock at the back door remains one of those examples of how one never knows what will pass in front of, or through one’s life at any given moment, and of how no matter how one tries, it may be that unexpected occurrence which overshadows what is earned or sought after.