Byte Sized Biographies…

Robert E. Lee: Valiant Hero or Misguided Traitor? George Parke Custis was kicked out of Princeton, left St. John’s College of Annapolis after only one semester and made a living renting out all of the various plantation properties that he had inherited.  By comparison to the industrious and spartan Robert E. Lee, Custis was an indolent patrician who lived on the wealth of his ancestors. Eventually, understanding that his daughter was enthusiastic about marrying Lee, Mary … Continue reading Robert E. Lee (Volume 2, Episode 10, Part 2) →

Herman Melville: From obscurity to immortality Herman Melville, 1861 When he died at age 72, on September 28, 1891, Herman Melville was so obscure that those who even remembered his literary output presumed that he had passed away many decades earlier.  Melville’s works were out of print, his last novel published more than thirty years before his death.  The title of his epic work Moby Dick was misspelled in Melville’s New York Times obituary and one of his most respected efforts, “Billy Budd, Sailor,” had not even been published. Elizabeth Shaw Melville, Melville's Wife Despite the initial Shaw family misgivings about how their future son-in-law would make a living as a writer, Herman Melville and Elizabeth Shaw were married in Boston, in August of 1847.  They became permanent residents of New York City and the writer spent the next few years grinding out a succession of books. Nathaniel Hawthorne Packing off his family to his in-laws in Boston, in October, 1856, Melville first set out for Glasgow and then Liverpool and a meeting with his friend, now diplomat, Nathaniel Hawthorne.  Their reunion was friendly even warm but Hawthorne’s journal entries, while empathetic, depict Melville as a conflicted, lost soul.

Herman Melville: From obscurity to immortality When he died at age 72, on September 28, 1891, Herman Melville was so obscure that those who even remembered his literary output presumed that he had passed away many decades earlier.  Melville’s works were out of print, his last novel published more than thirty years before his death.  The title of his epic work Moby Dick was misspelled in Melville’s New York Times obituary and one of his … Continue reading Herman Melville (Volume 2, Episode 9, Part 1) →

Herman Melville: From Obscurity to Immortality Melville's Massachusetts Home-Arrowhead Over forty, Melville need not be concerned with actually having to fight for the Union but in 1863, he and his wife decided to move back to New York City, exchanging Arrowhead, which he was unable to sell, for his brother Allan’s East 26th Street home. Herman Melville, Last Photograph, Mid-1880's Throughout this time period, Melville continued to toil away at his custom’s officer’s job.  When he began working at the Customs House in 1866 he took a horse drawn streetcar to work.  By the 1880’s, so much time had passed that Melville took the Third Avenue El, an elevated railway, to his office on the Upper East Side. Elizabeth Shaw Melville, Later In Life Melville would remain in this position until his resignation on December 31, 1885.  By that time, his wife had inherited a considerable amount of money from an aunt and other relatives, enough to allow Herman to retire.

Herman Melville: From Obscurity to Immortality Over forty, Melville need not be concerned with actually having to fight for the Union but in 1863, he and his wife decided to move back to New York City, exchanging Arrowhead, which he was unable to sell, for his brother Allan’s East 26th Street home. Throughout this time period, Melville continued to toil away at his custom’s officer’s job.  When he began working at the Customs House in 1866 … Continue reading Herman Melville (Volume 2, Episode 9, Part 2) →

Ted Ngoy, the ultimate American Dream, including donuts Ted Ngoy's First Donut Shop, La Habra, California Eventually, in 1976, one of Ted's customers showed him an ad in the local newspaper, the Orange County Register, advertising a donut shop for sale.  Ngoy had meticulously saved 20,000 dollars, the seller financed the rest of the $45,000 purchase price. Ted and his wife, Suganthini, with Richard Nixon By 1985, Ted was a millionaire and a very respected member of the Cambodian community.  He and his wife moved into a 7,000 square foot home in Mission Viejo and Ngoy became active in the Orange County Republican Party. Ted Ngoy in Cambodia, 2017 Most media accounts of Ted Ngoy end sometime around 2014.  It’s hard to keep up with an individual so far away from the western press, even in the age of the internet. But, judging from his Facebook page, he is alive and surviving quite well. His “photos” page features him, a man in his seventies, with a much younger and beautiful woman who he began dating when she was in her teens.  Judging from the photo they seem quite happy.

Ted Ngoy, the ultimate American Dream, including donuts Eventually, in 1976, one of Ted’s customers showed him an ad in the local newspaper, the Orange County Register, advertising a donut shop for sale.  Ngoy had meticulously saved 20,000 dollars, the seller financed the rest of the $45,000 purchase price. By 1985, Ted was a millionaire and a very respected member of the Cambodian community.  He and his wife moved into a 7,000 square foot home … Continue reading Ted Ngoy, The Donut King Of Southern California, (Volume 2, Episode 8) →

Frida Kahlo, Mexican icon Frida Kahlo Photographed By Her Father Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo Calderon was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacan, Mexico. Today, Coyoacan, officially a borough of the Federal District, is part of the urban sprawl of Mexico City.  But when Frida was born it consisted of open space, farm and ranch land.  Although her birth probably occurred at her grandmother’s house, Frida would spend her childhood and much of her life living in the Casa Azul, the blue house built by her father in 1904. Carl Wilhelm Kahlo was born in Germany and emigrated to Mexico in 1891, when he was nineteen, his Hungarian father, a wealthy jeweler, paying for his passage. Frida and Diego Rivera Known during her lifetime as merely the wife of Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo subsequently ascended to artistic prominence and popular culture fame in her own right, becoming a worldwide social and political icon. Her sickly childhood, painful existence, tortured relationship with Rivera and brief life provided a tragic backdrop to her artistic accomplishment, now recognized as unique and transcendental.  She remains so revered in Mexico that her works have been designated as national heritage objects, prohibited from foreign export.  Internationally, she is now perceived as one of the most important and original artists of the twentieth century. La Casa Azul La Cas Azul, Frida Kahlo's ancestral home. Frida and Diego Rivera's House With Separate Residences In early September, Frida got a telegram from her family back in Mexico City informing her that her mother was seriously ill, her breast cancer now entering a terminal stage.  Accompanied by her American friend Lucienne Bloch, she was forced to take trains and even a bus over the flooded Rio Grande back to the Mexican capital, an arduous journey that took five days.  One week after her arrival, her mother died, leaving her father in a state of grief and confusion.  She would remain in Mexico for a month to grieve with her family and also check on the house that was being built for her and Diego.  Her prospective home would have a bridge that connected two separate wings of the structure, one for her and one for him.

Frida Kahlo, Mexican icon Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo Calderon was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacan, Mexico. Today, Coyoacan, officially a borough of the Federal District, is part of the urban sprawl of Mexico City.  But when Frida was born it consisted of open space, farm and ranch land.  Although her birth probably occurred at her grandmother’s house, Frida would spend her childhood and much of her life living in the Casa Azul, the … Continue reading Frida Kahlo (Volume 2, Episode 7) Part 1 →

Frida Kahlo: Mexican Icon Trotsky In Mexico Since the death of Lenin in 1924, a power struggle over not only over the Soviet government but also the international Communist movement ensued with the winner Josef Stalin and the loser Leon Trotsky.  But Stalin was not content with merely expelling Trotsky from the party and the country.  His megalomaniac paranoia would subsequently require the physical extermination of his opponent, including Trotsky’s family.  Many of Trotsky’s relatives, including his first wife and children would be imprisoned, exiled or executed.  Initially expelled by Stalin, Trotsky himself fled first to Turkey, then France, where he was initially offered asylum but subsequently rejected and ultimately Norway, which also eventually deported Trotsky to Mexico Trotsky's Study And Assassination Location, Mexico City In the winter of 1939, Frida would be reintroduced to a Trotskyite sympathizer named Jacques Mornard.  While in Paris, Mornard, who lived in the French capital at the time, claimed that he was moving to Mexico City and aggressively asked her to help secure him a home near hers and an introduction to Leon Trotsky.  She refused, explaining that she and her husband had had a falling out with Trotsky and suggested he find a residence on his own.  Mornard eventually made his way to Mexico, accompanied by his American girlfriend, Sylvia Ageloff, a trusted member of Trotsky’s inner circle.  It would take months, but Mornard, who routinely dropped Sylvia off at the Trotsky compound and did small favors for the entourage eventually ingratiated himself into obtaining a personal meeting with the Soviet exile.  Ostensibly, Trotsky was to review a political article that Mornard had written.  In the late afternoon of August 20, Leon Trotsky ushered the younger man into his study and began to read his work.  Unfortunately for Trotsky, Jacques Mornard was actually Ramon Mercader, a specially recruited Stalinist assassin who took an ice axe from underneath his rain coat and plunged it into Trotsky’s skull.  Although the blow did not immediately kill Leon Trotsky, he would die of his injuries within 24 hours. Frida Painting In Bed Most of the rest of the decade would be consumed by painting, teaching and attempting to find solutions for the various ailments that plagued her which included a chronically infected hand, her right foot which was troublesome and restrictive, a deteriorating spinal column that was also overwhelmingly painful and even possible syphilis that was diagnosed in the early forties.  However, it would be during this time period that Frida would paint some of her most quintessential works. Frida's Four Poster Bed, Frida Kahlo Museum Frida’s degenerative spinal condition would begin to require surgery and a succession of casts designed to allow her mobility.  She would fly to New York in May of 1946 for surgery that would fuse four vertebrae with bone and a metal rod.  Returning to Mexico, she would be placed in a steel corset and remain bedridden for eight months. Frida's Life Mask, Frida Kahlo Museum Frida Kahlo celebrated her 47th and last birthday on July 6, 1954.  Drawings and notations in her diary indicate that however it would arrive, she knew the end was near.  Officially, she would die sometime in the early morning of July 13, from what a doctor officially noted as a “pulmonary embolism.”  Wracked by pneumonia, in constant and excessive pain only dulled by massive amounts of opiates, this certainly would not be a far-fetched prognosis.  However, on the evening before her death she insisted on giving Diego Rivera an anniversary present, despite the fact that their anniversary was a month away.  Later, her nurse would claim that Frida intentionally exceeded the number of painkillers she was supposed to take.  Her final diary entry was both ominous and revelatory:             “I hope the exit is joyful-and I hope never to come back.” La Casa Azul Today, Frida Kahlo Museum