UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #1428
ALLISON, R. BRUCE

ALLISON, R. BRUCE (1949-)

Interviewed: 	March 28, 2015
Interviewer: 	Harv Thompson, Maryo Gard Ewell
Index by: 	Stephen A. Pierce
Length: 	56 minutes

Abstract: In his March 2015 interview with Harv Thompson and Maryo Gard Ewell, Bruce Allison offers his memories and reflections about the life and work of Robert Gard. Beginning with a recounting of how his early influences encouraged a love of the outdoors as well as a love of literature, he explained how he met Gard during the 1970s. He then detailed his long friendship with Gard, sharing remembrances of a number of Gard’s acquaintances and friends along the way. This interview was conducted for inclusion into the UW-Madison Oral History Program and the Gard Foundation’s UW-Madison and WI Community Arts History Project.

Key Words: Robert E. Gard; Chicago IL; San Diego CA; Brown University; Vietnam era; New Democratic Coalition; Madison WI; Rhinelander School of the Arts; The Deacon; Frank Lloyd Wright; Taliesin (East); Joe and Katherine Bradley; Beyond the Thin Line.

First Interview Session (March 29, 2015): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:56	Question: Talk about your early years. Answer: Allison was born in Point Loma, CA, in 1949. His parents met in WWII as US Navy volunteers. While in the Philippines, his father contracted spinal meningitis, whose treatment eventually led to his early death. His mother was the son of an Orangeman who emigrated to Chicago and made a living as a sometime tinkerer and farmer.

00:03:40	[no question] Allison’s paternal grandfather was a farm agent in northwestern Illinois, where he met his wife, got graduate degrees and then became part of the Univ. of Illinois extension service when it was formed. This allowed his precocious father to advance quickly academically and go to U. Illinois; it dismayed Henry Orson, then, when Allison’s father joined the Navy in WWII.

00:06:18	[no question] He recounted how his father’s work carried them from Bethesda MD—where he met Allison’s mother—to NYC—where they married—to the San Diego area—where Allison was born—to Benita CA—where they became fully immersed in outdoor life—to the Chicago area again. Allison reflected on how difficult this move was for an outdoors-loving young boy.

00:09:30	[no question] He remembered not being able to wait to go to college. He had been very successful academically, almost at moments to the point of embarrassment in one case. He attended Brown University, where he dreamed of being the great American writer. But during his freshman year of college, applying his formulaic HS style of writing to a composition assignment, he got a D, which changed his life by teaching him to make room for creativity and new knowledge.

00:14:34	[no question] He commented on a number of his other undergraduate writing teachers (one of whom was John Hawkes), under whom he learned a lot about creativity.

00:16:51	[no question] Graduating in 1971, he reflected on the tumult of the Vietnam era—the women’s and civil rights movement, the lottery, assassinations, the 1968 Democratic convention—which tended to make on focus on social change as well as one’s studies. He related how his father, now a bank executive, had difficulty processing the changes and profoundly differed with Allison over the 1968 convention.

00:20:56	[no question] Having applied and been accepted to law school, he nevertheless after college felt like he needed a break from school, so he began working for McGovern’s New Democratic Coalition in Providence RI.  While there, he stayed with T. P. Plimpton, whom he had gotten to know during his undergraduate career.

00:24:50	[no question] While living with the history-loving Plimpton, he worked on what became his first book, Democrats in Exile (1974), a title borrowed from Eugene McCarthy’s speech to the young protesters at Grant Park in 1968.

00:25:35	[no question] He charted his political and intellectual trajectory during the early 1970s—he became interested in Mildred Loomis and Ralph Borisodi, who had formed the School for Living. From there he went to a conference at which Helen and Scott Nearing spoke about getting back to the land and living the good life—Allison decided that these stories and speeches should be recorded, and this recording became his books Humanizing our Future and Toward a Human Future. 

00:28:40	[no question] When these books sold well, he thought he could make a living that way; but one of the board members of the School of Living advised him to have a trade and invited him to work for his business. He talked about how his father reacted when he told him he wanted to work climbing trees, first with disappointment, but then realizing (from his own experience) that corporate experience might not be the right route for everyone.

00:32:00	[no question] Before starting his job trimming trees, he went with his father to Europe as his father ran a bank in Cardiff, Wales. He kept a journal as he travelled Europe and N. Africa and published this as his second book Travel Journals. When he returned to the US, he bought a printing press and began printing books.

00:34:03	[no question] After apprenticing with , he decided that landscaping would be more profitable than self-printing and he love the outdoors, so he decided to move to Madison, having never been there before. He initially lived in Black Earth, WI, hung out with a “back to the land” community in Richland Center and commuted to Madison to work.

00:36:59	[no question] He explained how he started his tree business in Madison, by visiting the director of the UW Arboretum Katherine Bradley. When Bradley was intrigued by his approaching her, she allowed him to trim some of her trees, and he related how he won her respect. Bradley became one of his great advocates in Madison.

00:40:13	[no question] He explained how he became involved in the Madison writing community—Bradley’s neighbors were James and Peg Watrous (UW art history), Emily Early, and Art and Ivka Goldberger (who had lived through the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and was active in Madison’s writing community).

00:42:10	[no question] He explained how he met Robert Gard. Involved in the Madison Writers’ Association through Goldberger, he attended the Rhinelander School of the Arts in 1977 with Emily Osborne and Mike Doyle (two friends from Richland Cen-ter). He recounted in detail how he first met Gard.

00:44:47	[no question] He recounted how he and Gard developed a friendship around his publishing work.  Gard asked him to publish An Innocence of Prairie (1978) first. Through a rowing friendship, he was able to have Kurt Carpenter illustrate the book with wood engravings, Gard loved the final product, and the success and publicity of the book encouraged a close mentoring friendship between Gard and him.

00:48:33	[no question] A second project arose from his and Gard’s involvement with Grace Episcopal Church, where Gard was a deacon. Gard wrote an historical fiction The Deacon (1979) that set a story of the cultural changes of the 1960s in a Grace Episcopal-like church family. He thought the title should have been The Ghost of Grace Church.

00:51:30	[no question] He talked about other adventures he and Gard had during those years—going to the Cuba Club, where he met L. G. Sorden, going to the Gard Theater, etc.

00:53:24	[no question] He explained that Gard introduced him to many others involved in this “creative moment” in Wisconsin—Betty Durban and others. He opined that “mingling with other creative people is the greatest way to get your juices going.” Through the WI Arborist Association (with whom he’d help edit, he helped edit the state licensure legislation for spreading pesticides, fungicides, etc., as per federal regulations), he met Ed Hasselkus, who advised his PhD dissertation in forestry later on. In 1983, Gard officiated his marriage at Grace Church. And then by 1982, Gard introduced him to Jerry Apps, who was active at Rhinelander, and then got him to teach at School of the Arts. Apps helped Allison get through writing his PhD.

00:59:50	[no question] He discussed Gard’s connection with Taliesin, the Frank Lloyd Write Foundation, and August Derleth, about whom he told several anecdotes. As part of the Arborist Assn, which had meetings in Spring Green sometimes, he noticed that Lloyd Wright’s cemetery’s trees were dying. Not long after, Aubrey Banks contacted him to look at the trees.

01:01:34	[no question] Continuing to discuss Gard’s interest in Frank Lloyd Wright, he related how he met Mrs. Wright for the first time at Taliesin in order to assess the situation with the trees and Taliesin and Unity graveyard. Something he said to her must have stimulated a sympathetic response, and he’d been caring for the trees there ever since.

01:08:10	[no question] Continuing to talk about Gard’s interest in Taliesin, he recounted how, when Mrs. Wright died, she requested that her cremated ashes be combined with Frank’s and buried at Taliesin West (Scottsdale). This conflicted with the investment WI had put into the Frank Lloyd Wright memorial in Spring Green, though it was impossible to reverse this decision. He explained the story of the exhuming of Wright’s body and how it revealed the hemlock near his grave died in the process. 

01:12:03	[no question] He reflected on how Gard encouraged the kind of stories he’d been telling. He listed some of the books he’d published and how they connected to Gard’s legacy.

01:14:51	[no question] He recounted the story of how Gard died in 1992. He told a story about going over to Gard’s house often to care for his trees, and how Gard was never late—but for this meeting he didn’t arrive. He discovered Gard had fallen and was in the hospital in intensive care. He then narrated how he visited Gard for the next several weeks, sang songs to him, etc.

01:18:49	[no question] After Gard’s death, he related, he tried to keep up with Maryo, Gard’s daughter, and Gard’s wife. He reminisced about Gard’s wife’s move to hospice, how he discovered she’d had a fall, and how she died.

01:22:12	[no question] He narrated the story of how, trying to process all that had just happened after Gard’s wife’s death, he saw two red-tailed hawks above the trees of the hospice center; at the dedication of the Gard storytelling circle on Muir Knoll, a red-tailed hawk was “held in suspension” above the ceremony. 

01:24:35	Question: Talk about other connections you made at Lowell Hall. Answer: He said some of the best times he had there were working on The Deacon (at which he learned a good bit about editing and the author’s authority).

01:26:48	[no question] He suggested that the milieu in which Gard lived and the connections he made was one of the most remarkable things about his experience with Gard. He gave the example of listening carefully to Joe Bradley, who, though he’d had a stroke and was difficult to understand, was immensely funny and intelligent to talk to.

01:31:56	[no question] He related Joe Bradley’s refusal to give up to Gard’s vibrance after retirement. He talked about Gard using his skills to research Alzheimer’s, deploy the institution, and make connections with people that resulted in the book Beyond the Thin Line as a tribute to his friend John Whitmore.

01:34:08	[no question] Allison gave a number of examples of how Gard’s work always focused on giving people the courage to follow their artistic impulse—among whom were Dave Mergen of M&I Bank and many others.

01:37:04	[no question] In line with Gard’s vision, Allison bought a farm that wrapped around the Madison school forest. He recounted the story of how this happened—approached by teachers worried that the farm would be developed and spoil the school farm, he made a low offer (by real estate standards), but was later approached by the realtor to buy the property. Gard in his inimitable way envisioned a theater on the property.

01:41:47	[no question] He reminisced about the opening night of the Players Theater in Spring Green.

01:44:04	Gard-Ewell and Thompson wrapped up the interview.

00:56:00	End of First Interview Session

End of Oral History #1428