Charles Gordon BOGGS: My Life  
I was born on 11th of June 1921 in Cornettsville, Kentucky, USA, a small village in the southeastern part of the state, in hill country. My father was a merchant who later became a farmer. This was fortunate for our large family of seven children. We moved to a farm we called "Meadowbrook" in 1926 at about the time the Great Depression struck the United States and just before the 1929 Wall Street Crash which made survival a problem for some of the rich and for ALL of the poor people such as our family. We were to survive by scrabbling in the meager soil of a worn out farm and by hanging together. I remember a period when my mother made her own laundry soap; and we all picked wild berries for canning in the summer to survive the harsh winters.

June 16, 1921: The Kid with Charley Chaplin opens in Hazard, KY
 
Above: Charles Boggs, ca. 1923
"Meadowbrook"  -- the Boggs family farm, near Dwarf, KY.  Troublesome Creek flows between the fields and the hills in the distance. Our dairy cows graze on the hillside in foreground.

Photo by Charles Boggs, ca. 1938
White Rock, Cumberland hills, KY Pine Mountain, Cumberland hills, KY Fall colors, Cumberland River The Cumberland hills today
My younger brother and I, and the youngest of our five sisters, managed to finish high school but that level of education was not on a very high standard in the "backwoods" of the Cumberland hills of Kentucky. After graduating from high school I tried working as a stock clerk in a small variety store in Hazard, the larger town and county seat of Perry County. But I was called back to the farm by my parents who needed someone to manage the small dairy of about twenty cows, the little enterprise which had assured us of some income over the past six years. I milked cows, by hand, of course, and delivered the bottled raw milk to customers in Hazard. After two years of this kind of labor I managed to save enough money to escape to the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, far from the mud and misery of the farm. I never went back to the farm except for brief visits. Main Street, Hazard KY 1937
At the University of Kentucky I worked at several places to pay for food and books. For awhile I lived with my sister's family and later was invited into the home of a professor of art and design where I stayed by paying a modest rent until I was drafted into the US Army in early 1943. I studied art and history primarily but I was not a very good student and merited no awards for scholarship. U of Kentucky
I served three years in the Army during World War II, most of that time training other soldiers or writing for publication in army newspapers. But I was sent to the Pacific war zone in June of 1945 where I was lucky to get a job in the headquarters of General MacArthur in Manila. When the war ended in the Pacific, I was sent, by plane, to Tokyo, with the early US Forces of Occupation. I stayed for only six months in Japan before I was mustered out, having served "my time" in the Army. Gen. Douglas MacArthur
I returned to the University of Kentucky in the summer of 1946 and continued my studies in art and art history. I worked for a while for an organization which was helping students in the war-torn countries of Europe. In 1947 I came to Europe, representing the University of Kentucky, and attended conferences in Paris, Denmark, and Prague. Thus I saw war-ravaged Europe after having seen the war ravaged Philippines, Okinawa and Japan. While crossing Germany of that summer, I could hardly guess that a few years later Germany, as well as Japan, would be, once again, world powers with flourishing economies rivaling that of the United States!!  War-ravaged Europe
In 1948 I received my degree in art from the University of Kentucky and got work as director of a small museum in Evansville, Indiana, on the Ohio River and not too far from either home or the University. I was able to get new programs started and to begin the collection of money for building a new museum for Evansville. Some of the programs are still in operation, now 50 years later, and the new museum is a lively institution in the community. But I found that work too much for me. I am not an effective "public servant", am not interested in power or prestige of any kind. I resigned and came to Europe. Sunset on Ohio River, seen from Evansville Museum
I arrived in France in September of 1950 and have lived here ever since. I still had two and a half years remaining of what is known as The GI Bill. The United States government, by way of the Veterans Administration, contributed to further education of the former servicemen of war time. This was done by paying each one enrolled in an approved institution the sum of 75 dollars per month. The tuition was also paid, and there were small grants for materials and books. It was a generous program considering the millions of ex servicemen it helped. I had finished at the University on the "GI Bill" and with some time remaining of that bounty I came to Paris to try again to "make noises like an artist painter.” Paris Metro Map centered on Montparnasse

These years were the best years of my life up until then. And Montparnasse was flooded with ex- servicemen from the USA. We lived in small hotels and ate our meals in modest restaurants such as the famous Madame Wadja's in rue de la Grande Chaumiere in Montparnasse. We also were able to travel in Europe. In those first years in Paris I made trips as a tourist to England, Denmark, Italy, Spain, and Germany.

 Arc de Triomphe, Paris; parade with U.S. troops
Boggs: Self-Sketch, 1950

The artist and his son, Gordon, Paris, 1953In 1951, in Montparnasse, at the Café du Dome, I met a nice Swedish girl. We were married in 1952 and our son, Gordon, was born in 1953, in February of that year. We lived in a large artist's studio in the heart of Montparnasse, right over Le Théatre de Poche. Le Théatre is still functioning.

Our "vie Parisienne" as a family was very active. Our place was a bit of a reception center for friends from all over. Thus our son, Gordon, was initiated early into an international environment. This was liberating for him and for us all.

 Charles Boggs in rented studio, Blvd. Montparnasse, 1953

While my wife, Birgitta, or "Gita", worked for a Swedish paper importer, I found a job as instructor in arts and crafts in US Army camps in the Paris area. This work lasted for eight and a half years. At about this time the US Army was preparing to leave France; the invitation to get out came from General de Gaulle himself when he decided to leave the military sector of NATO and create his own "striking force" for his own self defense. Probably one of the most arrogant gestures in European history to be made by an otherwise great man.

Charles Boggs, U.S. Army crafts instructor, 1950s
I painted from time to time but had to face a very personal problem with alcohol. I had a tendency to drink too much and generally at the wrong time and wrong place. I finally resolved this problem with, for a time, attendance at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. But meanwhile, my wife had left. She guessed that I had been too long in "trying to quit drinking". And she was correct. When she left and I was faced with divorce and managing on my own, I quit drinking. At this date I have been sober over 28 years. But, of course, I am over 78 years old! The artist and the gargoyle, Paris 1957

For several years I have been working as an artist-painter more happily than ever. I enjoy living alone; my independence is important for my work and my relations with others. I have many good friends from many countries.  My reading in mythology and the sciences in the past 15 years has made me more and more a convinced and ardent atheist. And the world is troubled by so many conflicting views of the universe and so many religious wars and disputes. I believe that the best chance for our species to survive on our little planet is for humanity to shift attention from hoping and praying for help from a god or gods to intensifying our secular activities in solving our human problems.

We need to devote more of our energies to standing up straight and learning who we are and where we really came from. We may yet have time to save ourselves with growing knowledge in biology, astronomy, all the sciences. Homo Sapiens, evolution's most advanced form of life on Earth, may survive another number of centuries if we human creatures begin to take care of ourselves and our precious environment in our beautiful little world as it spins around our Sun in the vastness of our little Milky Way galaxy in the immensity of the Universe.

7/1999

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