Panel text reads:
A Remembrance of Black Mountain College
Barbara Hill Steinau Student, faculty wife, mother, from 1937-1943
I went to high school in Laguna Beach California, where I lived with my mother and my brother, Pete (who later went to BMC). All my friends were planning on going to colleges in California. My mother happened to read an article called “Education on a Mountain Top'' in the Readers Digest. This article, by Louis Ademic, described a college far different from anything I had ever imagined. There was a democracy different from any other institution. Something about the place grabbed me. I decided I wanted to go there, 3000 miles away. I applied and was accepted. I worked two jobs that summer, 12 hours a day, in order to pay for my trip to the college, and to have some spending money. I took a bus to Chicano where the callene had arranged for me to meet Edith Vail who worked in the college office. Edith drove me the rest of the way to Black Mountain. During the trip she told me some about this strange new place I was about to see. Although I had been an honor student in high school, and president of my class, I had been shy, particularly with boys. I mad [sic] a decision during the ride with Edith that I would be different from then on. I would be outgoing and more relaxed with boys. I figured that no one here knew me, so that they would have no idea of how I had been. There was a party in Hank Henderson’s study the first night after I arrived. I remember the dress I wore. It had handmade lace from the lace factory my mother had organized when she lived in Turkey. One of the “old” students, named Mort, seemed particularly attentive. Being so far from home in such a stimulating environment was scary, and great. There was so much opportunity to discuss in class (far from anything I had experienced before). I remember that in one class I envied Suzie Noble because she felt free to talk so much. I wanted to be like her, and I didn’t. The Saturday night dances were great fun. Bobbie Dreier taught us how to make our own long dresses (Don Paige taught us to make our own patterns for the dresses). I'm not sure that I had worn a floor length dress before. The energy and enthusiasm on Saturday night was a delight. Dick Andrews was one of the most energetic and sweaty of the men (then we called them boys). When we moved to Lake Eden I loved digging for the foundation of the studies building. I remember one day digging with Ken Kurtz. Imagine being all muddy in a trench with my English teacher! I recall the number of times teachers said to me, "these are good notes now write a paper". I had thought I had written a paper, so these were distressing comments. To this day I write briefly. I have written a manuscript for parents and teachers in which the chapters are 2 and 3 pages long; I didn't how [sic] to elaborate. I remember my trepidation on taking the senior division exam. Two of the questions were: "How do you know the Philippine Islands exist?" and "How do you know the sky is blue?". I have no idea how I answered them but I have see them still [sic] as interesting examples of questions which have no right answers and which cause one to think. Mort Steinau and I were married after my second year at BMC. I stayed on as a student and Mort became the assistant treasurer and business manager. We stayed four more years, and our first child, Joan, was born there in 1940. What did I gain from attending BMC? My independent spirit was nurtured. I learned that it is important to have one own's ideas, not to go along with the gang thoughtlessly. This ability carried through in my work, and in my political activities. The only times I have been to Washington D.C. have been the many, many rallies for peace, for women, for gays, against nuclear weapons, etc. I learned from attending BMC that I am creative and clever with my hands and mind. I learned to repair things. I learned how to think problems through, to come up with new solutions to old problems. I learned to get pleasure from simple things, and that I don't have to be entertained. I learned to have faith in myself and to speak up for what I believe. I became an activist.
A Remembrance of Black Mountain College
Morton Steinau student, 1935-' 39 graduated in English Literature,' 39 assistant treasurer and business mgr ‘39–’43
In January, 1935 Bela Martin and I graduated from high school in Louisville, KY. For the prior year and a half we'd been in teacher Bob Wunsch's English classes. We dedicated our class's annual to him, complete with a full page picture and glowing praise. That same January Bob Wunsch - our hero, opener of our naive eyes to new worlds through literature - left Louisville Male High School to go to a new college in Black Mountain, N.C., a place he'd mentioned frequently and where he'd like to be. Bela and I, both almost penniless, decided that April to visit Bob at that new small college, to see him - not the college. The 400 mile trip, hitch-hiking, took three days. The first night, in the mountains of KY, the temperature dropped to almost freezing. We kept warm doing calisthenics on the roadside. About 10 P.M., rides being non-existent and the temperature still dropping, we negotiated with a motel to let us stay for $1 rather than the regular price of $5 (this was 1935; the war had not yet rescued the country from the depressions). Our approach was that, at 10 PM, no one else would show up to rent one of his empty cottages, so that $1 was better than none. Whether moved by our business acumen, or the thought that we'd be found frozen on his doorstep the next morning, he agreed. The next night we got a through ride to Asheville, and by mid-day we were in the town of Black Mountain. We had to query a number of people to determine: a) that there was a college named Black Mountain; b), where it was located; and c), how to get there. All these answered, we walked the three miles to Blue Ridge. We were warmly welcomed by Bob, and, because of him, it was O.K. for us to be unpaying visitors for a few days. However, we were uncomfortable: two really poor southern kids, both 18, we realized that we were out of place, in a situation far different from any either of us had ever known: wealthy art students, some with their own cars, all from New York or New England, most in their 20’s, art discussers and products. There were teachers (some used the word professors) with German accents so strong we had trouble understanding them. They had fled Germany to escape pogroms that as yet neither of us knew about. Our visit–we had vaguely envisioned a few days–lasted almost two months. We were there until the college made its annual forced-withdrawal from Blue Ridge, necessitating moving and storing all furniture, books, and any other possessions to the enormous Lee Hall attic. This summer departure was to make Blue Ridge available for the many summer conferences. By the time we were ending our visit we were invited to attend the college when it reopened in September. Finances were discussed: fee paid included tuition, room and board; full fee was $1,200. A sliding scale–down to $300–would be considered. If you couldn’t pay the full fee, only the treasurer would know that; there was no working off part of the fee: everyone there, faculty and students alike, was expected to participate in the work program. (Though not designed, as at colleges like Antioch, as a part of one’s total education, the work program turned out to be that. The work to be done was critically needed,: putting heat in the buildings, fixing broken plumbing, hauling coal, growing food). ​​My first year at BMC, starting September '35, was a heady new world: sitting in a circle with 4 or 5 or 6 other students, in a chair or on the floor, in old clothes, smoking or not, in a teacher' study/classroom, and we, the students, discussing among ourselves and with the teacher the subject we were there for. How different for me than sitting, with 30 or more other students, in rows of hard-top uncomfortable desks, listening to a teacher tell us what to know about the subject and what notes to take in order to be prepared for an exam given later at some unexpected time. At BMC I had my first drink (Frank Rice and I became beer drinking buddies; we bought Rupperts beer by the case, at 10 cents a bottle, and it was OK to keep it in the big walk-in refrigerator in the Lee Hall dining room). I smoked for the first time (when I wrote my brother I'd become a smoker he sent me a Kaywoodie pipe). Dunc Dwight and I invented an aromatic mixture: dried and crushed rhododendron leaves. I walked with girls in the moonlight, and hugged a girl for the first time. I saw girls (the term used in the ‘30s) working alongside me, digging and planting in the garden, in jeans and tee shirts; shoveling gravel to mend pot holes [sic] in the road, splitting wood. My earlier perception of girls (being from a male high school and having no sister) had been that they were always well dressed, makeup skillfully done, companions on an evening date, and then disappeared into a life unknown to me. When I graduated in 1939 in English literature, the outside examiner, Tucker Brooke, Yale scholar and professor, wrote that BMC and I evidenced excellence in teaching and in learning. I didn’t realize then that many of the non-academic things I learned as a student would be as important to me through life, in terms of living it as fully and variedly as possible, as the enduring enjoyment of learning from literature that began at BMC. I recall John Rice’s frequent statement that “BMC’s function is not to turn out educated (a part participle) but educable people, who will keep learning all their lives.” All our student years were at Blue Ridge. It was and is a huge religious retreat complex of many buildings. The college rented Blue Ridge for the first eight years of its existence, through June of 1941. We bought the Lake Eden property in 1937 and worked on winterizing its buildings, equipping the kitchen, and had a place to live in the summer when we could not be at Blue Ridge. In the summers of 1938 through 1940 we ran Lake Eden Inn, and had a print shop, pottery shed and musical and drama productions there. In June 1941 we moved the college to Lake Eden, radiators and all. The people of the village of Black Mountain knew something was going on, for a piano was kept on the open moving truck with John Evarts playing it with his usual gusto. We'll describe only two of the innumerable Blue Ridge buildings: Lee Hall and the Dining Room connected to it by a covered walkway. In those two sprawling buildings a community lived, very close to each other, twenty four hours a day - shouting, laughing, squirming, crying, working, loving, hating, and learning. This community made noises and did things still heard and talked about. It was a surprisingly small place to make such a loud noise: its maximum enrollment was seventy five students, with twenty to twenty five faculty and office staff. The total community, including families and kitchen and maintenance staff never exceeded a hundred twenty five. Lee Hall was the crossroads, the nerve center of the community. The large classes were held there: Albers' drawing classes, Rices's [sic] Plato classes, concerts on Saturday nights, stormy general meetings. To go anywhere, do anything, you went through the lobby. Lee Hall contained at least a hundred rooms, in addition to the lobby: college offices, a candy, cigarette and note pad store, post office, students and faculty studies and bedrooms. Every student and every faculty member had her or his own study, with faculty members' studies serving as their classrooms. Each person's study was a place to express individuality: e.g, you could paint each wall a different color; furnish the study with scrounged items or with new things bought in Asheville; or with rug, curtains and furniture you made yourself. You could hold a party, be alone or share it with a favorite friend. Door open meant anyone welcome; door closed meant you preferred not to have anyone else in there now; a "DO NOT DISTURB' sign on the door meant ABSOLUTELY no one else should come through that door, there being an agreement that that sign be hung only for serious study. Such available privacy, whether used or not, was an invaluable safety valve for the hundred people living in one building, close together in every aspect of their lives. The dining hall: three times a day we all assembled there, at tables of eight, unassigned places, where you tried to sit with certain people and avoid others. Nightly dancing followed supper, with John Evarts playing the piano. Play rehearsals and set building went on there; the plays were put on there. Bob Wunsch's skillful psychological casting (e.g. putting shy people in belligerent roles, and vice-versa) helped many of us see ourselves more clearly. When the college rented Blue Ridge in 1933 none of its buildings had previously been occupied in winter, so we bought a boiler and a hundred huge cast iron radiators, and with Bas Allen as teacher and main mechanic, installed the heating system. Lake Eden's buildings, also, were summer only. So, since we'd put the heating system in at Lee Hall and the dining room, we figured we could take it with us and reinstall it at Lake Eden - which we did in the spring of 1941. Doc Weatherford, head of the Blue Ridge Association, claimed that legally the radiators were "fixed" equipment. We claimed that since we unscrewed them and took them with us they were not "fixed". This resulted in a lawsuit, which we won; after all, we had the radiators. On a visit to Lee hall in the summer of 1995 we found it unchanged, right down to the rocking chairs on the pillared front porch. “Our” dining hall, up behind Lee Hall, had vanished. We noticed there are still no radiators.
A Remembrance of Black Mountain College
Barbara Hill Steinau Student, faculty wife, mother, from 1937-1943
I went to high school in Laguna Beach California, where I lived with my mother and my brother, Pete (who later went to BMC). All my friends were planning on going to colleges in California. My mother happened to read an article called “Education on a Mountain Top'' in the Readers Digest. This article, by Louis Ademic, described a college far different from anything I had ever imagined. There was a democracy different from any other institution. Something about the place grabbed me. I decided I wanted to go there, 3000 miles away. I applied and was accepted. I worked two jobs that summer, 12 hours a day, in order to pay for my trip to the college, and to have some spending money. I took a bus to Chicano where the callene had arranged for me to meet Edith Vail who worked in the college office. Edith drove me the rest of the way to Black Mountain. During the trip she told me some about this strange new place I was about to see. Although I had been an honor student in high school, and president of my class, I had been shy, particularly with boys. I mad [sic] a decision during the ride with Edith that I would be different from then on. I would be outgoing and more relaxed with boys. I figured that no one here knew me, so that they would have no idea of how I had been. There was a party in Hank Henderson’s study the first night after I arrived. I remember the dress I wore. It had handmade lace from the lace factory my mother had organized when she lived in Turkey. One of the “old” students, named Mort, seemed particularly attentive. Being so far from home in such a stimulating environment was scary, and great. There was so much opportunity to discuss in class (far from anything I had experienced before). I remember that in one class I envied Suzie Noble because she felt free to talk so much. I wanted to be like her, and I didn’t. The Saturday night dances were great fun. Bobbie Dreier taught us how to make our own long dresses (Don Paige taught us to make our own patterns for the dresses). I'm not sure that I had worn a floor length dress before. The energy and enthusiasm on Saturday night was a delight. Dick Andrews was one of the most energetic and sweaty of the men (then we called them boys). When we moved to Lake Eden I loved digging for the foundation of the studies building. I remember one day digging with Ken Kurtz. Imagine being all muddy in a trench with my English teacher! I recall the number of times teachers said to me, "these are good notes now write a paper". I had thought I had written a paper, so these were distressing comments. To this day I write briefly. I have written a manuscript for parents and teachers in which the chapters are 2 and 3 pages long; I didn't how [sic] to elaborate. I remember my trepidation on taking the senior division exam. Two of the questions were: "How do you know the Philippine Islands exist?" and "How do you know the sky is blue?". I have no idea how I answered them but I have see them still [sic] as interesting examples of questions which have no right answers and which cause one to think. Mort Steinau and I were married after my second year at BMC. I stayed on as a student and Mort became the assistant treasurer and business manager. We stayed four more years, and our first child, Joan, was born there in 1940. What did I gain from attending BMC? My independent spirit was nurtured. I learned that it is important to have one own's ideas, not to go along with the gang thoughtlessly. This ability carried through in my work, and in my political activities. The only times I have been to Washington D.C. have been the many, many rallies for peace, for women, for gays, against nuclear weapons, etc. I learned from attending BMC that I am creative and clever with my hands and mind. I learned to repair things. I learned how to think problems through, to come up with new solutions to old problems. I learned to get pleasure from simple things, and that I don't have to be entertained. I learned to have faith in myself and to speak up for what I believe. I became an activist.
A Remembrance of Black Mountain College
Morton Steinau student, 1935-' 39 graduated in English Literature,' 39 assistant treasurer and business mgr ‘39–’43
In January, 1935 Bela Martin and I graduated from high school in Louisville, KY. For the prior year and a half we'd been in teacher Bob Wunsch's English classes. We dedicated our class's annual to him, complete with a full page picture and glowing praise. That same January Bob Wunsch - our hero, opener of our naive eyes to new worlds through literature - left Louisville Male High School to go to a new college in Black Mountain, N.C., a place he'd mentioned frequently and where he'd like to be. Bela and I, both almost penniless, decided that April to visit Bob at that new small college, to see him - not the college. The 400 mile trip, hitch-hiking, took three days. The first night, in the mountains of KY, the temperature dropped to almost freezing. We kept warm doing calisthenics on the roadside. About 10 P.M., rides being non-existent and the temperature still dropping, we negotiated with a motel to let us stay for $1 rather than the regular price of $5 (this was 1935; the war had not yet rescued the country from the depressions). Our approach was that, at 10 PM, no one else would show up to rent one of his empty cottages, so that $1 was better than none. Whether moved by our business acumen, or the thought that we'd be found frozen on his doorstep the next morning, he agreed. The next night we got a through ride to Asheville, and by mid-day we were in the town of Black Mountain. We had to query a number of people to determine: a) that there was a college named Black Mountain; b), where it was located; and c), how to get there. All these answered, we walked the three miles to Blue Ridge. We were warmly welcomed by Bob, and, because of him, it was O.K. for us to be unpaying visitors for a few days. However, we were uncomfortable: two really poor southern kids, both 18, we realized that we were out of place, in a situation far different from any either of us had ever known: wealthy art students, some with their own cars, all from New York or New England, most in their 20’s, art discussers and products. There were teachers (some used the word professors) with German accents so strong we had trouble understanding them. They had fled Germany to escape pogroms that as yet neither of us knew about. Our visit–we had vaguely envisioned a few days–lasted almost two months. We were there until the college made its annual forced-withdrawal from Blue Ridge, necessitating moving and storing all furniture, books, and any other possessions to the enormous Lee Hall attic. This summer departure was to make Blue Ridge available for the many summer conferences. By the time we were ending our visit we were invited to attend the college when it reopened in September. Finances were discussed: fee paid included tuition, room and board; full fee was $1,200. A sliding scale–down to $300–would be considered. If you couldn’t pay the full fee, only the treasurer would know that; there was no working off part of the fee: everyone there, faculty and students alike, was expected to participate in the work program. (Though not designed, as at colleges like Antioch, as a part of one’s total education, the work program turned out to be that. The work to be done was critically needed,: putting heat in the buildings, fixing broken plumbing, hauling coal, growing food). ​​My first year at BMC, starting September '35, was a heady new world: sitting in a circle with 4 or 5 or 6 other students, in a chair or on the floor, in old clothes, smoking or not, in a teacher' study/classroom, and we, the students, discussing among ourselves and with the teacher the subject we were there for. How different for me than sitting, with 30 or more other students, in rows of hard-top uncomfortable desks, listening to a teacher tell us what to know about the subject and what notes to take in order to be prepared for an exam given later at some unexpected time. At BMC I had my first drink (Frank Rice and I became beer drinking buddies; we bought Rupperts beer by the case, at 10 cents a bottle, and it was OK to keep it in the big walk-in refrigerator in the Lee Hall dining room). I smoked for the first time (when I wrote my brother I'd become a smoker he sent me a Kaywoodie pipe). Dunc Dwight and I invented an aromatic mixture: dried and crushed rhododendron leaves. I walked with girls in the moonlight, and hugged a girl for the first time. I saw girls (the term used in the ‘30s) working alongside me, digging and planting in the garden, in jeans and tee shirts; shoveling gravel to mend pot holes [sic] in the road, splitting wood. My earlier perception of girls (being from a male high school and having no sister) had been that they were always well dressed, makeup skillfully done, companions on an evening date, and then disappeared into a life unknown to me. When I graduated in 1939 in English literature, the outside examiner, Tucker Brooke, Yale scholar and professor, wrote that BMC and I evidenced excellence in teaching and in learning. I didn’t realize then that many of the non-academic things I learned as a student would be as important to me through life, in terms of living it as fully and variedly as possible, as the enduring enjoyment of learning from literature that began at BMC. I recall John Rice’s frequent statement that “BMC’s function is not to turn out educated (a part participle) but educable people, who will keep learning all their lives.” All our student years were at Blue Ridge. It was and is a huge religious retreat complex of many buildings. The college rented Blue Ridge for the first eight years of its existence, through June of 1941. We bought the Lake Eden property in 1937 and worked on winterizing its buildings, equipping the kitchen, and had a place to live in the summer when we could not be at Blue Ridge. In the summers of 1938 through 1940 we ran Lake Eden Inn, and had a print shop, pottery shed and musical and drama productions there. In June 1941 we moved the college to Lake Eden, radiators and all. The people of the village of Black Mountain knew something was going on, for a piano was kept on the open moving truck with John Evarts playing it with his usual gusto. We'll describe only two of the innumerable Blue Ridge buildings: Lee Hall and the Dining Room connected to it by a covered walkway. In those two sprawling buildings a community lived, very close to each other, twenty four hours a day - shouting, laughing, squirming, crying, working, loving, hating, and learning. This community made noises and did things still heard and talked about. It was a surprisingly small place to make such a loud noise: its maximum enrollment was seventy five students, with twenty to twenty five faculty and office staff. The total community, including families and kitchen and maintenance staff never exceeded a hundred twenty five. Lee Hall was the crossroads, the nerve center of the community. The large classes were held there: Albers' drawing classes, Rices's [sic] Plato classes, concerts on Saturday nights, stormy general meetings. To go anywhere, do anything, you went through the lobby. Lee Hall contained at least a hundred rooms, in addition to the lobby: college offices, a candy, cigarette and note pad store, post office, students and faculty studies and bedrooms. Every student and every faculty member had her or his own study, with faculty members' studies serving as their classrooms. Each person's study was a place to express individuality: e.g, you could paint each wall a different color; furnish the study with scrounged items or with new things bought in Asheville; or with rug, curtains and furniture you made yourself. You could hold a party, be alone or share it with a favorite friend. Door open meant anyone welcome; door closed meant you preferred not to have anyone else in there now; a "DO NOT DISTURB' sign on the door meant ABSOLUTELY no one else should come through that door, there being an agreement that that sign be hung only for serious study. Such available privacy, whether used or not, was an invaluable safety valve for the hundred people living in one building, close together in every aspect of their lives. The dining hall: three times a day we all assembled there, at tables of eight, unassigned places, where you tried to sit with certain people and avoid others. Nightly dancing followed supper, with John Evarts playing the piano. Play rehearsals and set building went on there; the plays were put on there. Bob Wunsch's skillful psychological casting (e.g. putting shy people in belligerent roles, and vice-versa) helped many of us see ourselves more clearly. When the college rented Blue Ridge in 1933 none of its buildings had previously been occupied in winter, so we bought a boiler and a hundred huge cast iron radiators, and with Bas Allen as teacher and main mechanic, installed the heating system. Lake Eden's buildings, also, were summer only. So, since we'd put the heating system in at Lee Hall and the dining room, we figured we could take it with us and reinstall it at Lake Eden - which we did in the spring of 1941. Doc Weatherford, head of the Blue Ridge Association, claimed that legally the radiators were "fixed" equipment. We claimed that since we unscrewed them and took them with us they were not "fixed". This resulted in a lawsuit, which we won; after all, we had the radiators. On a visit to Lee hall in the summer of 1995 we found it unchanged, right down to the rocking chairs on the pillared front porch. “Our” dining hall, up behind Lee Hall, had vanished. We noticed there are still no radiators.
Artwork: 1995.63.1
A Remembrance of Black Mountain College and A History of Lee Hall Years
1995
Printed ink on foam board
This work was created for the 1995 exhibition Remembering Black Mountain College curated by Mary Emma Harris in conjunction with Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and the BMC alumni reunion organized by Mary Holden Thompson, founding director of BMCM+AC.
24 x 18 inches
In copyright
Gift of Morton Steinau and Barbara Steinau
Morton Steinau and Barbara Steinau, A Remembrance of Black Mountain College and A History of Lee Hall Years, 1995. Printed ink on foam board. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of the artist.
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