Tribute to Evelyn Ortner

Wednesday, November 15th from 5:30 to 7pm at BAM’s Harvey Theatre
More details later. Please spread the word to all of Evelyn and Everett’s friends.

the yin and yang, the pearly glow,

was so refined as not to show,

the gruff facade of big bad bear

so tempered and smoothed

by her grace and flair.

 

 

could one exclude that fabulous hair

which let us know that she was there

and like a beacon in the night

called out to us that all was right?

 

 

and only by her charm and wit

(and not a little bit of grit)

could this great show now raise its curtain,

declaim its’ lines, of this i’m certain

 

 

a darker more forbidding grace

would crush the spirit of this place

if not for Evelyn and her beau

who shared with us their constant glow

 

 

but let’s not be so darn poetical,

as our feet are planted in the mud,

and yet, it seems so damn heretical

to deny the truth of a springtime bud

 

 

that flowered 50 years and more

that weathered the storms, the winds and war

the petty, the cruel, and all the cons

and yet endure, still arm in arm

 

 

so shall it be and so remain

(regardless of this dim refrain)

that all within their radiant sphere

knew truth and love and friends were near.

 

 

at breakfast or lunch and surely at dinners,

in jammies or ascots or fabrikants’ clothes,

these two never placed, but always were winners,

from ship to shore from head to toe!

 

 

and even the general would surely announce

to all the world and brook no argument

that absent from his fair haired lass,

he would be at most, at best, a seargent.

 

 

but give him his due he demands no less,

this portly Ortner is out to redress

the crimes of low brow architects,

these new age vandals with no respect

 

 

for a Mr. Mckim or a Mr. White.

if the building is subtle, stood the test of time,

they’ll gut it and rut it and make it crass,

with trembling fountains and mountains of glass.

 

 

and so these two of noble stature

this dynamic duo, in classical rapture

amidst brownstone dust in old park slope

took up the banner, and gave us hope.

 

 

and now, how cruel is fate to toss

with no regard for this great loss,

upon the rocks our souls and hearts

our lovely muse, from us, departs.

 

 

and yet how surely we are still blessed

to have loved and known the very best

within us all, she showed a way

to curse the darkness and love the day

 

 

and thus dear Everett in this time

we mourn with you an age old crime

that gives and always takes away

the best, the blessed, for whom we pray.

Evelyn Ortner Memorial Service
9-23-06 by Dexter Guerrieri

Many of you knew Evelyn as a fabulous hostess, a charming conversationalist, a sartorial genius, and as indefatigable an activist as her husband, Everett. She was also a loyal friend to many. My wife Jane and I and our children Olivia and Julian feel privileged to have counted her as a friend.

I first met Evelyn and Everett 14 years ago when I joined the monthly meetings of the Brownstone Revival Coalition board of Directors, which they had helped found 20 years earlier. I loved brownstones, often known these days as townhouses, and Evelyn was an expert in identifying all the styles, from Romanesque to Elizabethan to all the variations in between.

Then eight years ago, when Evelyn was 74 years old, it was time for a new challenge.

To quote Everett: “A 13th century French Chateau, its inner courtyard strewn with the stone blocks which seven centuries earlier had formed its walls and towers, was the inspiration for the founding of Preservation Volunteers. It was winter, 1978. Two Americans, whose first names both begin with an E, traveling in Normandy, were intrigued by the fact that it was crawling with workers, perhaps twenty or more: French volunteers, the Americans were told. In 1998, twenty years later, the Ortners returned to see an amazing transformation: the guard tower and fortifications had been resurrected. The loose stones had all been put back where they had been centuries before. Displays in the huge lower vaults showed drawings and photographs by the organization that had been responsible for the magnificent reincarnation of the ancient chateau.”

Fast forward to the present, about 96 Preservation Volunteers meetings later, and 6 years of successfully linking volunteers to historic sites in the United States; Evelyn, along with Everett, myself and several others here today have thrilled in the life-changing role we have had for volunteers, whole communities, and most importantly, the revitalization of historic structures. Projects ranged from a community center in Gunnison, Colorado, which was once a one-room schoolhouse to the painting of historic Leffert’s Homestead in Prospect Park to restoring mausoleums right here in Greenwood Cemetery.

Evelyn, I will miss your wry wit at board meetings, your observant and incisive comments, and your indomitable will. You were brave when you took a stand, and you inspired me to be brave too. You were a big-picture thinker, and yet you were not averse to rolling up your sleeves and doing the truly thankless work as well. As a matter of fact, I can only have one complaint: when there were matters of dispute, you took Everett’s side more frequently than you took mine… but I suppose that’s understandable.

Evelyn and Everett were famous for their formal dinner parties, both large and intimate, bringing together an eclectic mix of intellectual, civic minded and artistic personalities. The resulting conversations were jovial and warm, sometimes fiery, and always stimulating. These evenings were set in the warm atmosphere of their immaculately-restored townhouse, filled with mementos from their world travels.

From the nineteen sixties onward, she welcomed new members to the Brownstone Brooklyn community and made them feel that they were part of a cultural renaissance. She helped make lasting ties, which she maintained with a dizzying social schedule, part of what it meant to join the townhouse community.

She also guided walking tours of historic Brooklyn, and years ago, she and Everett gave a personal tour for my wife Jane and me before we moved here. Then, one year ago, when we bought a townhouse in Brooklyn Heights, Evelyn was immediately helpful, offering guidance on layout and color schemes, and the benefit of her many years of experience as a very successful interior designer. The Ortners were our first dinner guests, eating takeout with plastic utensils in the back yard, amidst the paint buckets. It reminded Evelyn of forty years earlier when she and other new townhouse owners helped each other as they pioneered proud ownership of these old buildings that were being ripped down in the name of Urban Renewal.

I’ll miss Evelyn as a friend. The day before she died, I stopped by to pick up boxes of Preservation Volunteers files. Everett was thrilled, of course, to have two newly-empty filing cabinets for his ever-pressing new projects. Evelyn soon joined us and smoothly, imperceptibly, flawlessly transitioned the queries about her health into conversations about whether my children were studying Egypt, and how she had some books to show them. Egyptology, of course, was one of her fields of expertise, based on her volunteer work at the Brooklyn Museum. It was a nice moment.

These are my memories, yet I’m sure each of you has your own. Please add to this page by sharing your anecdotes and commenting on the thoughts of others.

from Maribeth Flynn:

When Clem Labine offered me the privilege of speaking at Evelyn’s service, he said that one of Evelyn’s proudest associations was with the docent program at the Brooklyn Museum. I can only say that my pride equaled if not exceeded hers at having her among our number. I was flabbergasted when I had a call from her about six or seven years ago saying she wanted to join the program. This was THE EVELYN ORTNER calling, and I was somewhat intimated. Back in the 70s when Tom and I first bought our home in Ft. Greene, the Ortners were already famous – stars of the renovation movement in Brooklyn. They were the North Star we followed as many of us struggled to make a home and a life in houses and neighborhoods that totally frightened our parents. Theirs was the imprimatur that we were not crazy. So, after Evelyn and I negotiated what she would NOT do as a docent, she joined the program and worked in so many special exhibitions that I have lost count, beginning with the Hiroshige print show through the most recent Tree of Paradise. She especially loved the latter with its complex layers of art, architecture, history, ritual, community practice, and women, all of which was Evelyn’s standard fare. There were also tours in the museum’s collections that were hers alone; she lectured on stained glass, of course and one of my favorites was a tour where she used paintings, decorative arts and period rooms to tell the story of Brooklyn’s Dutch roots. But eventually Evelyn ascended to the throne of Hatshepsut or, as she said on some days, Hot Chef Soup. She was without a doubt, a Queen of Egypt and I’ve seen the slides – all 700 of them - that prove it. Evelyn had very clear preferences as to the collections and exhibitions to which she would devote her time and energies, but she could surprise me. However, I did have my suspicions, that, when she turned up at presentations on topics like Graffiti or the architecture of the museum’s new entry she came not just to learn – we all know Evelyn loved learning new things – but also to tease Everett. As for museum visitors, she was available, engaging, and eager to share her vast knowledge. I have tour groups and college professors who asked specifically for her for their tours in the museum’s Egyptian collection. And she gave full measure of her energy and knowledge every time she went into the galleries. Her notes on a tour this summer when the museum was somewhat slow – “two fabulously interesting guests – so knowledgeable!” Note the term guests. Evelyn treated visitors to the museum as if they had stepped across the threshold of her parlor on Broccoli Place. And how very-Evelyn to pull out all the stops, even for two ‘guests’. Evelyn was the heart of the docents as well. She was a peer trainer, a resource, a leader, a mentor, and most decidedly a good friend and support to the extraordinary group of men and women I am privileged to call colleagues. For me she was a source of wise counsel and support. Evelyn also became a surrogate godmother to me. Not in the sense of Catholic practice, in having responsibility for overseeing my spiritual life – although that would have been a very good idea. Evelyn showed me how one can, in this sometimes unhappy and disappointing world, live a good life, doing good. Grace and graciousness are my husband Tom’s words for her. I would just add generous – amazingly generous - open, funny, caring, great company and a host of other qualities and life lessons I simply have not had time to catalogue in these few sad days. I will miss those qualities and most especially her greeting when I picked up the phone: ‘This is my lucky day” she would say to me. But it was really MY lucky day that she was at the other end of the line. Today, I don’t feel that lucky. Her death has left a hole in my heart, but like my mother, I know she will be on my shoulder the rest of my life. I do have one more thing to do for Evelyn today. Later this afternoon, II will read her name during the Prayers of the Faithful at Mass at the Oratory so that the community – a Brooklyn community- may remember her in their thoughts and prayers. And as her friend Dennis Corrado would say, Amen? Amen.

From Amanda Gersh

I had been living in a filthy pit in Williamsburg, where the rent went up as the ceiling came down. I despaired entirely of finding a better Brooklyn digs until my friend Kavita called to tell me that a room had opened up in the spectacular brownstone where she lived. Arriving for my interview with the Ortners, I walked up the steps of 272, and was greeted at the door by this fabulous vision of a woman in a silk kimono with the trademark silver hair…Ushered into the house — a giant jewelry box — I knew I’d be lucky if I got to live in it. The real luck, of course, far outlasted the privilege of living in an exquisite house. It was in finding a home with the Ortners, something that has stayed with me long after I left 272.

I spent two years in Broccoli Place and moved out only because of the BP curse — marriage and/or children, not necessarily in that order, seems to claim all of us who left. (Why else leave?) But leaving the house didn’t break my bond with the Ortners. Evelyn and Everett are people who only increase the number of their friends. All of which makes it even more remarkable that they are so able to pay attention to the many Broccolians and ex-Broccs like me, as well as all the extended entourage that comprises the Ortner circle, around the globe. Thus, when I moved from Park Slope and had baby Astrid, home extended itself across Prospect Park and into Kensington, with Evelyn and Everett making drop-offs of homemade soup and beef stew. When my parents and brothers and sisters came to stay, they stayed in Hotel 272. And no matter that I eventually moved to Wyoming, the love and generosity continued with emails, clipped out newspaper articles, invitations to functions, the perfect raincoat for Astrid, her first magazine subscription, Chinese slippers from Pearl River… Astrid turned two shortly after Evelyn died, and in true Evelyn fashion she made sure even that event didn’t prevent her from being the organized generous person that she was. Card and books, complete with dedications, came in the mail regardless.

In thinking of Evelyn and reading these tributes, it astonishes me that she was able to be so many things to so many people…and their children…and their children’s children. Like all brilliant people, Evelyn was fascinatingly complex: modern and Victorian, mother hen and glamorous doyenne; brusque and patient, she dispensed dry wit and warm thoughtfulness in equal measure. But perhaps her most extraordinary quality was her ability to actually DO so much for so many people, seemingly at the same time. Was there really only one of her?

When I last spoke to Evelyn shortly before she died, she deflected any concern or sympathy and her only complaint was that she would not be allowed whiskey for two weeks. Everything else, she said, was “wonderful.” Wonderful was a word she often used and it so accurately captured who she was and how she felt about her life with Everett.

I will miss the vertical chicken, beef bourg-onion, fruit compote, silly puns and spot-on advice.(Evelyn, I am still trying not to let spousal arguments send one of us to the couch for the night.) I will miss seeing the lady of the manor in her red shoes, darting off to do an Egypt tour or to meet Monica Sweeney or one of her many other great friends. I am sure I’m not the only one who can still hear Evelyn’s singular voice (extra deep when one called before 10am). I hope never to forget it.