“How about some dessert?” the server asks.
“Ice cream,” Ed answers. “Vanilla. Two scoops.”
When it arrives, Ed spoons tiny bites into his mouth with the care a poet chooses le mot juste for his last line – or an accomplished artist finds the right hue for his next brushstroke.
Ed Dlugopolski was more than 90 years old when he died last year. His career teaching art at Glenbard West High School spanned several decades, including the 1970s when my wife, Tia, was his student, then later a teacher in his department.
Ed inspired Tia’s passion for creating her own paintings, sculptures and block printing. He also was her mentor. As a first-year teacher at Glenbard West, Tia received some advice from Ed. “Sometimes you need to use a more serious voice with students. You’ll need to be stricter, using a more serious tone.”
Soon thereafter, a boy spilled ink in Tia’s classroom. She firmly told him, “You need to be more careful. You need to clean this up.”
Looking up, she saw Ed walking by in the hall and realized he’d heard her speaking to the student. He winked and went on.
As chair of the Fine Arts Department, Ed wrote an annual budget. Because he took this duty very seriously, outlining the department’s needs, he wanted to make sure the school principal was reading it.
“So every year,” Ed recounted, perhaps over ice cream, “I would slip in something outrageous like a color TV, a big deal in the early ‘70s, to see if Dr. Elliott was paying attention.”
Over the years, we became friends with Ed and his wife, Joyce. We shared a love of the Elgin Symphony as well as many meals, over which he proved his loyalty of reading every Shaw Media column I wrote from its first 1990 appearance. In fact, he saved every hard copy, including it in his other artistic masterpiece, his journal.
He took pride in writing in it every day, whether about weather, his activities or musings. Because that’s what artists do – write, compose, paint, sculpt, dance, act – in order to express, even if only for themselves, those precious creative impulses and gestures.
Any reminiscence of Ed must include his handshake. When meeting him for the first or 100th time, he smiled and held out his hand. Taking it, you realized you were in for more than you expected. His fingers squeezed your hand hard and did not let go, when expected, after the first couple of seconds. His eyes measured how you reacted to this forced intimacy. He delighted in catching people off guard, toyed with their nervous appreciation – or frustration.
He was a teacher and this was his test. You passed if you joined in his bold amicability.
Ed also loved to entertain restaurant staff. Rarely finishing his whole order, he’d ask for a “to go” box. “And don’t forget to include the silverware,” he’d say with a face as straight as a slide rule.
His art, if a symphony, was polyphonic, from colorful abstract pastels to Van Gogh-like self-portraits to minimalist charcoal sketches. A celebration of Ed’s life and art was held Jan. 10-12, thanks to Batavia’s Water Street Studios. For information about buying his art, call 630 761-9977. All sales support the studio.
His commitment to teaching, to art and to family and friends will be measured by the number of people who learned from him and loved him.
And that says more than I can ever say here.
• Rick Holinger’s new chapbook of poetry, “Down from the Sycamores,” soon will be available for presale. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, his writing appears in Hobart, Chautauqua, Southern Indiana Review and elsewhere. His book of poetry, “North of Crivitz,” and collection of essays, “Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences,” are available at local bookstores, Amazon or richardholinger.net. Contact him at editorial@kcchronicle.com.