“My brief experience of ‘living large’ was over, but the smell of oil paints, the sounds of Mozart’s ‘Little Night Music’ and the smell of Mildred’s biscuits remained long afterwards and helped shape who I am today.”
Ward was born in 1939 — the year Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II in Europe. In 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, an act that brought the US into a war that thereafter became global. Ward’s father was in the Navy.
My father joined the Navy in Long Beach. He went to Officers Candidate School and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant, Junior Grade. We moved to Boston, where the Shangri-La, my father’s aircraft carrier, was being built.
From Boston, the family moved to Virginia. And then, in Sea Island, Georgia, Ward and his mother said goodbye to his father as the Shangri-La headed for the Pacific theater. Soon thereafter, they left to reside with Ward’s mother’s parents in San Francisco. It was on Russian Hill that Ward was introduced for the first time to interests that would carry through the rest of his life.
Arriving in San Francisco, we moved into my grandparents’ mansion. I had never seen anything as glorious in my short life. It was a two-story affair with a view of the entire bay. I remember the classical music. The endless records. It was there that I was introduced to Mozart who would become my first favorite composer. It was also there that I was introduced to the wonder of painting. I remember at age 6, going out in front of their house and painting with students from the nearby San Francisco Art Institute. From that moment on, I had a strong passion for making art, something that I continue today.
I also remember the food. My grandparents had a chauffeur and cook — a husband and wife team – Mr. and Mrs. Mathis – who were the parents of Johnny Mathis. Celebrity aside, I remember Mildred Mathis’s biscuits. I was not interested in food before arriving in San Francisco, but have been ever since.
The small plane on display was used by instructors to help World War II gunners distinguish between friendly and enemy aircraft. Ward remembers the context in which his father gave it to him.
He didn’t talk much about the War until Life Magazine came out with its Photographic History of World War II. I was 10 or 11, and I was fascinated by that picture book and asked him lots of questions. In that context, he probably gave me the spotter plane and said that they were used to teach aviators and sailors the differences between American and Japanese aircraft.
Ward recognizes his luck in growing up in an era defined by war, yet able to experience so many privileges.
I suppose I live with a form of survivor guilt. Mine was a generation in peace but not of peace, constantly living with terror in a world of mutually assured destruction. In the big picture, life is a kaleidoscope of grandeur, and I get to live it and appreciate life as a gift, knowing that to many others it’s more a curse.
As the kaleidoscope spins and realities shuffle, one never knows what life is going to throw their way. Ward notes that, for him, it has been a wonderful world.
Despite the good life, who I am today still carries the burden of the world when I first arrived, when war stalked the globe and helped shape who I am today. A suffering world is a constant reminder of just how privileged I am.