Continued Charles Fremont

Washington University School of Fine Arts was the obvious choice and I spent four happy years there, majoring in painting. My BFA in hand, I traveled to New York and then on to a summer art school in Maine, where my sleeping room overlooked a enoumous lake where loons called at night and where I often rowed a boat in the twilight after supper. My newfound friends called me Cheerful Charlie, after a Pogo cartoon strip. "The Cheerful Charlies are alert, and what else? Kindly. But brave, gay, kindly, and what else? Out of their cheerful minds!"

My first job was in animated films. This was punctuated by training for the Air National Guard and a leave of absence in Europe. By mid March of 1963 I was walking the deck of the S.S. Ryndam. The sailing was an evening departure, with the Statue of Liberty ablaze with light off the starboard bow, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge still under construction, and then the enormous silence of the open sea. I spent nearly seven months in Europe, in my luggage a selected Baudelaire, two suits, two cameras, a couple of Michelin guides, and Arthur Frommer's "Europe on 5 Dollars a Day." Here I am in Piazza San Marco, Florence, Italy.

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