Interview with Carol Seifer, September 6th, 2018

Tom Owen: Good afternoon. It is September the sixth, 2018. I'm at [inaudible 00:00:10] campus at the University of Louisville and I'll be talking with CS. She had done an earlier interview with me back in August. I'm TO and as you recall if anyone's listening one interview after another, we talked about the graphic arts in Louisville and her relationship to her brother who a prominent, her white brother, a prominent graphic artist, Julius Freedman. Carol, let me go 1:00back to something I know we touched on in the earlier interview but just to kind of get my brain organized and maybe a listener as well. You were married to a physician. You had two daughters as I recall at St. Francis of Assisi School.

Carol Seifer: Not of Assisi, St. Francis.

TO: St. Francis, I'm sorry, yes, yes. St. Francis. [crosstalk 00:01:19] yes, yes, yes, absolutely. St. Francis School. At that time in your life, you began working, you thought for a short time, part time, perhaps with your brother Julius at his studio there on Hampden, H-A-M-P-D-E-N Court. Did he wave a red flag? How did this happen? How did you get involved?

CS: One morning there was a knock on my door at home. There he was and which was rare and he said that his partnership with Franklin Ross had ended and he needed a part time secretary until he could find someone to fill the position and so I said yes, as long as I could be home when the kids were home. And he said, fine. I continued to work for him until he got married.

TO: Okay say again for the record that period of time you walked in the front door to as a secretary helping him and that would've been what year about?

CS: Let's see, Melissa was in the second grade. She was born in '73 so she would've been seven, so I guess it was 1980.

TO: 1980 and you worked with him steadily until he married which would've been in 2000, early 2000 you think?

CS: Yeah the early 2000's.

TO: Early 2000's, okay. So the stress signal was his knocking on the door saying, "Carol, Carol, I need some help." What kind of help did he need?

CS: Well back then you didn't have computers so we had a ledger which had all 4:00the categories of expenses so I kept that ledger and then I wrote all the letters that needed to be written. Eventually I did all the taglines for the posters and he would continuously ask my opinion on which photograph to use for a poster. Then I happened, we happened to look into the fact that poster art became very, very popular and I began wholesaling his posters all over the world and by wholesaling I meant you would have to buy 100 posters at a time for each image. So I continuously did that and then we accumulated extra money so I knew he would not do anything but put it in a CD and these were the Carter years so I 5:00began investing 'cause in the Carter years if you had to borrow money you were in trouble. But if you had money, you were in hog heaven. Because interest rates were high, municipal bonds, triple A rated 10 and a half percent, non taxable. So I just invested all this money.

TO: So there was ... so your role evolved [crosstalk 00:05:21]

CS: Right.

TO: Financial manager.

CS: Yes.

TO: No question ever that you were investing his money?

CS: No, no. There was no [crosstalk 00:05:30]

TO: No question about that and he seemed pleased with some of the results?

CS: Oh yes, he was very pleased with the results.

TO: Very pleased with the results. And at the same time you were doing kind of secretarial work initially and then talk about a little bit of that, Carol, Carol. I've got several images here I know what the project is. Obviously I've been working on it. Look over my shoulder. Talk a little bit about that dynamic.

CS: Well back in those days you took slides and we had a huge like table and we'd sit the slides on the wide table and with magnifying glass we would go look at each slide and decide which image would be the best like for unbelievable color, the one with the gumball machine with an egg in it. He shot two different gumball machines. He shot a red one and he shot a green one and we thought the red one was better. So that's what I did.

TO: He would say, look over my shoulder or let's look at the light board and when you say writing captions, is that the word?

CS: Well it's taglines.

TO: Taglines.

CS: Like I came up with the idea of unbelievable color which was a series done for the Hennigan Printing Company and there was probably four or five different posters that we did and that's what I mean by taglines.

TO: I see, I see.

TO: Talk about that world wide marketing ... I just don't have a picture of that. Somebody's gonna buy 100 posters?

CS: Well back then you didn't have digital art, nobody had a telephone in their hands and there was a convention every year in New York for poster art and 8:00poster dealers would be there from all over the world. The farthest place I ever sent anything was Australia. And we showed 'em what we had and people began calling and we began shipping.

TO: See I hear that but I hear Louisville Ballet is gonna be written at the bottom of the poster?

CS: Yes well a [inaudible 00:08:10] interest. There was a TV show and I don't remember the name. Actually there were two TV shows. One of 'em showed the little ballet poster in the set and one of 'em showed fresh paint. They were used commercially but they were used ... people just bought poster art. If you couldn't afford to buy in quotes, fine art or photographic art, fine art, a 9:00poster was an easy way. You didn't even have to frame it if you didn't want to. You could pin it on the wall to decorate your dorm room, your ... whatever.

TO: Well, along the hallway to the bathroom in some restaurants and even in the bathrooms themselves there will be an exhibition poster.

CS: Right.

TO: In Paris or somewhere.

CS: If you go to the Bristol on Bardstown road and on the balcony seating area, you'll find a lot of his posters. He did a poster for Porcini's the restaurant. It's in their restaurant. People just, that's what they bought. It was affordable art and of course I'm bias but he produced beautiful imagery. In fact, in somewhere I went on this floor there's a Roy Stryker poster. He did 10:00that poster.

TO: Oh my goodness.

TO: So how did you tell people this stuff was available because you didn't have a website?

CS: No, no. It was really word of mouth. There were several big poster distributors and mainly we sent to those people. Then we would have the occasional person who wandered in the studio and wanted it and then for every charity auction people would want posters.

TO: Did you produce a catalog ultimately where somebody could leaf through a catalog and say, a dealer in, no?

CS: We never did.

TO: Never did a catalog?

CS: Nope.

TO: But just word of mouth and ultimately I guess you had a website?

CS: No, we never did.

TO: Never did. Oh my gosh.

CS: Well we ultimately have a website now. When it became digital, he's always had a website images and on that site, you can see his photography and you can see his posters now if you were to buy one of his photographs, it's obviously a lot more expensive because it's like in series of 10 only. But you could buy all his posters if you wanted to.

TO: By extension at this very moment in our discussion, are you continuing to do that role of providing poster art for dealers or whomever?

CS: What I'm doing is I started in the process. His website is still up. In fact 12:00I got a poster in my car that I'm mailing today. It's still up. The images site is still up. People email the site and I get the email and then I can send them the poster ... they have to send me the money, I send them the poster. But my ultimate goal and we're in the home stretch, I'm starting the Julius Freedman Foundation and when that website goes up, you can buy online. The money will go into the foundation which will give a $10,000 grant every year. The first grant will go to the Leukemia society, specifically for the type of Leukemia he died of which was AML and then after that, it will be either a high school or college person in the arts field will get $10,000 for to use for their education or if 13:00they're already an artist, to use for them to produce an article of art.

TO: Who's gonna be the referee, the gate keeper for that process? Just out of curiosity?

CS: Well there's me and there's two men, Ted Bussey and Chris Klonoski who are two people who work for the University College Design Association. Julius met, they used to be out of Chicago. Julius met them years ago when they asked him to do a photographic workshop. It would be a weekend workshop and he did many of those workshops all over the country for them. They all came to his funeral. He was very close to the whole group and the two gentlemen I just mentioned, asked me would I be willing to do the Julius Freedman foundation. My whole goal with 14:00my brother's sudden death and untimely death ... I mean death is untimely no matter when it was but he was only 74 which to a college student seems old but it's not.

TO: Yes, of course not.

CS: I wanna keep his name out there and I wanna take the money that he left me to give to other students because my brother loved to mentor young people. Or anybody that was in the arts field. I thought this is a way to keep that process going without him being here. So when that website goes up, you will be making a tax deductible contribution which will go straight to the foundation.

TO: Even if you buy a poster?

CS: Even if you buy a poster. Everything you buy off of that website will go to the foundation.

TO: I see, I see. Back to the management question. It just occurs to me there are a couple of aspects of that marketing distribution of posters, an extension 15:00of the creative business obviously and that is the whole licensing copyright stuff? Did you wallow in that?

CS: Well we have seven copyrights which the lawyers for the university when I gave everything I had to the archives were in a tizzy about. I told them that upon my death, those copyrights expire. We ran into someone ripped off the fresh paint poster. They did a poor job. They put bagels instead of eggs and we hired 16:00an attorney. I don't even think the people ... I can't remember if they were in the United States or not but anyway, we sued them and won and from that point on, there were certain posters. We didn't copyright everything but there were certain posters that were copyrighted.

TO: So you didn't have those kinds of challenges when in that almost 20 year period when you were working closely with Julius?

CS: We only had the one case.

TO: I see.

CS: That was it.

TO: I see, okay. Think of in that period when you were daily involved working with your brother. What was a typical day like?

CS: Well, we always, well except in the very beginning, we always worked in the same room so we were definitely across from one another. I would get there and if they were bookkeeping stuff to do, I would do that. He could be on the phone. 17:00We would discuss things about different projects. He did a lot of annual reports. And in those periods of times, I had to proofread everything that was done. He only made one proof mistake and it was his mistake and not mine.

TO: You're confident of that.

CS: Yes I am confident I did not make the mistake. That's when I began writing a seven with a line through it like Europeans do it would not ever be confused with a one. There would be proofreading to do. We would talk about ideas for a poster, ideas for a project. We worked, I would say half of the time I worked 18:00for him, we worked at Hampden Court. Then he became, he said I'm tired of working in the house, I'm renting space downtown and we're gonna move the whole operation and we're gonna open a gallery. Which we did on the second floor of what is now the Frazier Museum. Well, we had the second floor and it was a huge space, okay? He designed cases to show the art and we had many a show there but the problem with being there back when we were, there was nothing downtown. [inaudible 00:18:44] was there, Kentucky Mirror and Plate Glass were there.

TO: Right.

CS: But that was it. We couldn't even find a place to eat at. There was no 19:00Bristol downtown. There were no restaurants downtown. There was no science museum--there was nothing. So we were ahead of the curve and he was often ahead of the curve. So when Alice Lee Fraser decided to buy the building to house his collection, we had to move. We moved to a much smaller [crosstalk 00:19:20]

TO: Did he own the building incidentally?

CS: He did not.

TO: I see.

CS: He did not at the time. He bought the building and he saved the building. The building was gonna fall down. He had to put in probably well over a million dollars to tuck point the entire building.

TO: He being Julius? He being Owsley Brown?

CS: Owsley Frazier. He probably got the place up to code, he probably got ... I know he [crosstalk 00:19:46]

TO: The question was, did Julius own the building?

CS: No.

TO: I see.

CS: No, Julius never owned a building.

TO: I see.

CS: He regretted that he never stuck his neck out and bought anything on mainstream when it was really cheap because nobody was down there.

TO: So where'd you go?

CS: We went to it was literally almost next to Morton's Steakhouse now. It had been the Kathleen Meyer gallery so it was already set up as a gallery and she had given up a long time ago. It was Martha White. I'm sorry, her name was Martha White. In fact we did a poster for her gallery which is a beautiful poster. He went in there and then I left the business because he had gotten married and then his wife was gonna run the business but she got tired of it and she quit and when their lease ran out, that was it.

TO: Then did he go back to Hampden Court?

CS: Yeah.

TO: I see, I see. Did you ever know ... was and maybe I'm projecting here. Was Julius a procrastinator or was he pretty efficient in terms of management of time?

CS: Oh he was very efficient. Very efficient [crosstalk 00:21:13]

TO: So no fooling around, no waiting until the deadline?

CS: Oh no.

TO: Needs to be thought through some distance in advance?

CS: No. We suffer from high levels of anxiety. It was always ... deadlines were always met and he was always thinking. First of all he always had a camera in his hand and as time evolved and we became digital which by the way, he had to learn how to do that which was amazing because back in the day if you opened my brother's freezer, you would find ... in fact I was out at the farm and I opened 22:00the freezer. There would be boxes and boxes of film 'cause he kept 'em in the freezer. It kept 'em fresh. Well then everything went digital. So had to learn that so things that he produced like the fresh paint poster with three different colored eggs or the toe shoe on the egg. Well today, boom, boom, boom on a digital thing, you could do that. You could change the eggs any color. But back then, it involved a printing process. And with the gumball machine with the fish in it, easy to do now. Was not easy to do back then.

TO: Sure.

CS: You had to understand printing and he did. All the pressmen loved him because they would have boring things to print and then he would come and it was always something they played around with on the press.

TO: You know as a side bar and this is outside this narrative but as a sidebar, 23:00they may have already done a documentary. It needs to be 30 minutes long and it would be interesting to see how that was done up to the time of digital. That is, you mentioned earlier how he would go to the printer and actually stand there and watch the multi layers of color being applied.

CS: Right.

TO: That's something that I can only imagine and would be wonderful to see a documentary of some kind demonstrating that.

CS: Well sad to say the printers that he used with the exception of the Hennigan Company in Cincinnati. He used Pinaire, they're gone. He used Hamilton Printing and they're gone.

TO: They're gone, too. So this, my romanticize image of a creative person is 24:00that intense but could also get what I would call creator's block, artist's block. Did you ever see a time when Julius would say, I'm stuck.

CS: Not that he was stuck, he would have multiple ideas on how to go about something. He was prolific. He just was prolific. All of his digital library I own the copies of it. I have it on hard drives but it's kept at Unique Imaging Concepts because they're the people who began to print things on metal. He left paper, then he went to cloth and then he went to metal. Once again, those guys they would sit and they would play with the imagery to get the finish that he wanted.

TO: Oh goodness, that's more complex than I can imagine. You mentioned earlier on a tape that Julius was reticent on the phone. Is that an aspect of shy or ... I guess, what I'm probing here is, as people look back through his art to a creator, what kind of person was he? How would you describe him? We've already done that in terms of efficient as far as working is concerned.

CS: Well, my brother had a certain charm which we don't know really the basis of that charm but people love to be around him. I mean, his funeral was 26:00unbelievable, the attendance. But so he had a lot of people who wanna hang out with him and he would hang out with some and but his mind was always going about looking like this carpet has a pattern on it. We may, if given a camera, take a picture of the whole carpet. Not him. He would find one slight spot and he would shoot that spot and then from that spot, would go an entire piece of art. So he constantly, in fact, he had more ideas than he had people who hired him. Most of the people, aside from all the printing companies, he had all the non-profits 27:00used him because the art was so good. But he had many more ideas than he had customers for those ideas. It's like the one drawback of both of us is that we aren't pushy and we don't wanna hang with the people who could get you someplace and so for that reason, alone, he would've done more work but people didn't hire him. A lot of people were intimidated by him, they just were.

My brother did have a certain arrogance and 'cause he knew he was the best. At 28:00least the best here. And he also was very sarcastic.

TO: Sarcastic?

CS: We both have a problem with sarcasm.

TO: And so you think that might've been off putting to some people?

CS: Yes I do. I do.

TO: You remember an example of that?

CS: I really can't. But we were told by a professional that sarcasm was a form of anger and perhaps we should think through before we said anything. Sometimes you just couldn't help yourself.

TO: Yeah sure.

CS: You just couldn't.

TO: Well, he looked the part.

CS: Oh yes, yes.

TO: Of an artist.

CS: Yes he did.

TO: So maybe that was part of the charm, you think?

CS: He had that charm from the time he was young. I mean, women flocked to him 29:00like a bee to a beautiful flower. They just did. I would say with the exception of one or two people, all of his friends were women. His good friends.

TO: He certainly had artistic collaborators.

CS: Yes, he would collaborate with other people who were male.

TO: Who were male?

CS: Who were male but the people he hung with were 90% women.

TO: Oh that's interesting.

CS: Well he came out of a home with a mother, a grandmother, an aunt next door and two female cousins so he was used to women.

TO: You could say that.

CS: Yes.

TO: Yes you could.

CS: Yes.

TO: Did you all disagree? When you were working together. I know there's gonna 30:00be a break here that's gonna be painful and we're gonna touch on that but when but in that when you were working with him, would anyone get mad and say you dumb whatever?

CS: The only time that I got mad at him was he was out for lunch with the president of the Hennegan Printing Company and one of the ex ... I answered the phone, "Image, Friedman Gallery," like I always do and it was one of his ex-girlfriends and she proceeded to read the riot act to me that I was the cause of their break up. And when she fine ... it was a tirade, I mean it was unbelievable. And when she finally took a breath, I said, "I have no input on who he likes and dislikes and I'm going to hang up now before I say something 31:00very ugly back to you", and I hung up the phone.

CS: And he came back and I said to him what had happened and he said, "Oh she just has a drinking problem." I said, "I don't care what her problem is. I don't know what you told her or led her to believe" 'cause Julius could never be the bad cop. I always had to be the bad cop. I said, "It will never, ever happen again. Do I make myself perfectly clear?" And well ya know, and he never really took my side in the argument because years later I would see him talking to this woman. Now if the tables were reversed and one of my boyfriends read him the riot act, I would no longer speak to that person. I mean that would've been it. But he wasn't like that. He was not like that.

TO: You mentioned at one point that in his relationship to women, now obviously he surrounded himself with women and seemed very, very comfortable with women friends and many, many women friends. Talk about those more intimate, those more romantic relationships. Were there many, many, many along the way?

CS: Yes, my brother was a serial monogamist. So he would have a girlfriend for however long it lasted and most of them lasted many years. He would decide that he had enough but he would never tell the person face to face "look, I think we should break up." He would behave in a way that would make them break up with him. Then he would come crying to me that so and so left and he just didn't understand why. I would just give him one of the looks like, really? You don't 33:00know why? It was a pattern. He did it ... I'm probably the only one who could name every girlfriend, but there were a lot, a lot of girlfriends and that's how everyone of them ended.

TO: Maybe too much information. Would they tend to be live in girlfriends?

CS: Oh yes, yes, yes, they always moved into his house. The problem being that in those relationships, the woman, whoever the woman was at the time would complain to me about him and he would complain to me about them. It wasn't ... it began to get, for me, it began to get tedious. But that's how it worked. That's how it worked and he just was unable to cut the strings himself. His 34:00actions cut the strings but he never confronted the woman and said, you know, this isn't working out. You need to move out. Never.

TO: She would have to.

CS: She would get angry enough that she would leave. But I would say a good 90% of those women were at the funeral and maintained relationships with him after the initial ...

TO: Break up.

CS: Break up. Once they cooled down, they always stayed friends. Always.

TO: Did you have any insight into the serial monogamy?

CS: Well I think he liked the idea of being in a marital situation. There's 35:00someone to come home to, there's someone there to eat dinner with, there's someone there always to talk to. But it just didn't last.

TO: He grew weary kind of that face to face?

CS: I grew weary of having to listen to each and every woman tell me things that you know, I laughed. I already know that dear, this isn't my first rodeo. You're not the first cowboy, cowgirl, whatever.

TO: Yeah, right.

CS: But that's how he lived. His girlfriend from when he was in high school was at the funeral. He had lunch with her every year, at least once, sometimes twice. So they always stayed attached in some way, in some way. I think he 36:00needed that for whatever reason. I think he just didn't wanna be the bad guy. He had a sister. His sister, his shining knight in armor to protect him.

TO: While we're in this window, I guess I saw in running pro quest, the newspaper clips entering the key word, Julius Friedman, that there was a daughter, Kimberly?

CS: Yes, Julius was living in Louisville. He started dating a woman who came from an extraordinarily wealthy family who lived here. She was actually at Indiana University with me. We were the same age and with all of my brother's girlfriends, they always had sex and he believed her when she said she was on birth control. Excuse me.

Well she wasn't. So she became pregnant. Well in those days, you got married. 37:00And they did get married.

TO: They did get married?

CS: They did get married. I don't think it lasted six months. She ... they were invited to a wedding and he was an usher. I think it was my cousin's, our cousin's, our first cousin's wedding. He was an usher. So he's seating people and low and behold, he seats his girlfriend from high school. Well that night she became abusive and yelled and screamed. She was having an affair, yada, yada, yada. He jumped out of the window and he came home to live for awhile. It resulted in a divorce with him giving up all rights for the child.

TO: I got confused. The girlfriend in high school--

CS: He was just seating at a wedding. There was nothing going on between them, but the wife thought there was.

TO: Oh I see, I see. I see. So he jumped out of what window?

CS: They lived in a carriage house on the second floor of her parent's estate. So the marriage ended, excuse me.

TO: All right we paused briefly and now we're resuming.

CS: So they got divorced and ...

TO: He's now 20? He's now 25?

CS: No, no, no, no, let's see. Let's see, I would've been 18. He would've been 21.

TO: 21? At U of L maybe at that time. When did the divorce occur? Yeah, and you were saying Julius gave up all--

CS: Rights. That was the condition and she had the last name of her mother and none of us ever had a relationship out of respect to him. In fact, when my daughter's were born, he had a hard time being around them when they were young.

TO: Oh my goodness. Because he knew he had a daughter, he did not see that daughter, did not relate to that daughter, ever?

CS: No. One of his brilliant girlfriends who had no children suggested that he should contact the girl. He didn't even know where she was. And I don't know how 40:00I did it but I found out where she was. I said to him, he wanted to meet with her. I said, "well she isn't gonna meet with you without her mother there. That's number one. And number two, don't expect anything. But if you open this can of worms, you've gotta continue this." My daughter, Melissa, said the same thing to him. So I think ... they did meet. Through the eyes, she looks just like me, just like Julius. But she'd been in Louisville all the time and she knew about him, and never had made contact with him and probably because of her devotion to her mother.

Well, they met a few times and it was not the Oprah moment he was looking for. 41:00Finally he said, "I keep calling her and she doesn't call me back" and he let it drop. I felt it was only fair to mention her, she does exist. I've never spoken to her, but it did not go the way he thought it would go. He ... this is the only woman in his life that did not fall under the Julius Friedman spell. I think she's it. I don't think there's another woman alive today.

TO: The daughter did not--

CS: The daughter did not.

TO: Fall into it.

CS: And I'm sure her mother never spoke kindly of him or never spoke of him at all, but she knew who he was. She had every opportunity, he was a very public figure.

TO: Oh yes.

CS: To approach him. And she didn't. So he never forgave my daughter, Melissa, for being angry with him when he stopped. In her mind, and she's a therapist today, a psychotherapist. If you opened the can of worms, you continued. You didn't walk away unless she specifically told you, I never wanna see you again and I don't think that happened. So that particular girlfriend, who came up with this bright idea, was the same girlfriend who cursed me out on the phone because I caused them to break up.

TO: I see. So your daughter, essentially said to Julius with some strength in her voice, some judgment in her voice, "if you've begun to see Kimberly and even 43:00if the intensity of her willingness to see you on a regular basis, you've got to stay committed to try to see her?"

CS: Right. My Melissa had colic as a baby for six months so she's stubborn as a mule. She also felt that this was, you don't start something like this. She figured maybe the girl didn't wanna. She did accept the offer to meet him. But that was it. He really never forgave Melissa for being blunt about it. But Melissa was correct in this instance.

TO: At time on the journey to death and funeral did Kimberly show up?

CS: No. No. She did not.

TO: Changing the subject, when I look back at this iconic figure, in Louisville, I think of kind of two pieces of two seasons of creativity. Not necessarily mutually exclusive but I see the poster artist, annual reports and non profit organizations, commercial companies, distribution of and sale of posters so I see that piece of creativity. Then I see another aspect of his creativity and that would be the experimental art. The pushing on the edges and that's everything from piling stones on the farm to creating a more imaginative 45:00photographic imagery to doing it on metal to I don't know, I don't know, I'm not an artist. I'm not an artist but just looking back at the clips, I see these two pieces. Were they chronological? The one and then the other? Or were they more intermingled?

CS: I think they were chronological.

TO: Can you talk about that a little bit?

CS: He had done, well he started out with doing Liberty Bank's annual report and which he no longer have a Liberty Bank. He did Human's annual report. He did Brown Foreman's annual report. Slowly those, well Liberty left, was bought out and what was happening in large corporations is that they would have their own designers. So that part of the business and the poster art eventually petered 46:00out also. That's when he turned to ... he would take a job like for instance, there's a wealthy couple here who do nothing but photograph penguins all over the world and they wanted him to design a book which he did. But he began to produce more and more of his own art. He produced the book on for David Jones on the Floyd's Fork Project.

TO: Yes, yes. Parklands..

CS: If someone came to him to do a book, he would do it. But then he did his own book. He did a book of his own artwork, limited edition book, then he did a book called, The Book, which every student should look at, where he took books and 47:00photographed books but also took pages and would like accordion the page ... I mean, this is painstakingly absolutely detailed work and he photographed the book. It became The Book and a guy that he admired as an artist did the prologue to the book.

TO: Introduction or yeah.

CS: To the book about Julius in the book. Then before he died, he had teamed up with Dick Van Kleek who had been here and was the director of the Lonesome Pine 48:00Series, then left and went to Chicago and taught at Northwestern and retired and eventually came back and the two of them hooked up again and they were doing movies. That was his new thing. If he had lived that's where his focus was.

TO: Movies. What kind of movies?

CS: Well, --

TO: Actors or something to look at on the screen?

CS: Yeah, no, no, no. These were films. He did a thing called Convergence where he took two ballet dancers and two hip hop street dancers. They went to Angels Envy to film it because it's beautiful there with all the copper. The hip hop 49:00guys were dressed in what hip hop people would wear and the two ballet dancers were in, she was in a tutu. Actually they were in costumes from the Nutcracker. And so in the beginning you see them dancing, then you see the hip hop people dancing and eventually you see the two of them teaching the other one the steps and they converge. It showed at the Speed. It was probably about five minutes long. But five minutes long is just hours of taping to get those. That was the direction he was going. He was very excited about it.

TO: This had to be in the last two years?

CS: Yes. It was. It was.

TO: So the two pieces, part of it was related to poster art. Which did he enjoy 50:00the most or is that fair to say one over the other?

CS: No, I think he enjoyed both, it's just that by my investing his money at a time when interest rates were extremely good. If you had money, he was freed from having to make a living. It didn't mean he turned down jobs, he didn't. But the last two years of his life, one was focused on the 50 year retrospective that was at the Frazier Museum. He was extremely happy about that. They eventually bought a piece of the art he created in addition to the poster art and he spent a lot of time at the Lincoln School, which is an elementary school for the performing arts and he loved being around the children. They loved being 51:00around him. His film work, that's what took up his time.

TO: How long before his death did he know that he was critically, he was on a critical path?

CS: I got a call on June 20th and I had just recovered from having a massive kidney infection and kidney stones so I wasn't in great shape, and I got a call. He said, "I have a letter from my doctor" and he didn't read me the letter. I should've had him read me the letter. But he said, "Something's wrong with my kidneys and something's wrong with my blood." I said, "Well" I said, "I'm coming to pick you up and we're going to the emergency room." And my fiance happened to 52:00walk in the door and he said, "I'm going, too." So we went and when they read me the numbers, I leaned over and whispered to my fiance, "He's got Leukemia." And he said, "Well how do you know?" I said, "Well A, I was married to a doctor. B, I was a paralegal who read medical reports for Social Security disability. This is bad." But I didn't think it was that bad. So they put him in the hospital and transfused him and he was there eight days. On the eighth day that he left, they told him finally what it was. It was acute myeloid leukemia. And they wanted to do in-patient chemo and he said no.

He said, "I wanna go home and think about this." And she said, "Well you don't 53:00have very long to think about it." She said, "In the meantime, I want you to go down to the Brown Cancer Center and see Dr. Tse is his name." So he got out on a Tuesday. I picked him up Friday morning, we go down to see the doctor and he's optimistic. He said, "We're gonna get your white cell count down. They're gonna get the chemo, we're gonna do bone marrow transplant." He was, he said, "I'm giving you medication now to get the white cell count down so they can do the chemo." So we go home, I go to the pharmacy, I pick up the medicine, I give him the medicine. By Saturday afternoon he's violently ill. He's violently ill. Throwing up, so I call the doctor. He was nice enough to give me his cell phone 54:00number and I said, "Look, this is what's happening." He said, "That's odd." I said, "Well he needs something for the nausea and the vomiting." So he called in a prescription, I trot out to get the prescription.

No, so he had given this prescription which made him violently ill. That was Saturday. Monday morning I was getting him to have a shunt put in to start the chemo. So I get over there Monday morning, he's still throwing up and he said, "I just wanna die. Call hospice." I said, "Look, you've got an appointment with the doctor. I'm calling the hospital to tell them that you will not be there for the shunt" which I did. Trotted him over to the ... I called the doctor and I 55:00said, "You've got to see him right away." He had a 2:30 appointment. He can't wait. Trotted him over. So they take the blood and they say, put him in a wheelchair, put him back in the cancer wing of the hospital and by this time, his kidney function is very bad. And they can't do the chemo anyway.

So one of the people, one of the earliest girlfriends my brother had, had a son. Even though he eventually broke up with the mother, he's always was a father figure to the boy. He was in Providence, Rhode Island. He came to town. He comes to the hospital and ... "Why isn't he getting chemo?" I said, "Well he can't get chemo 'cause his kidneys aren't working." He said, "Carol, I will give him one of my kidneys." That's the devotion my brother evoked in people. I said, "Well, it's a lovely offer, but it's too late. There's not a doctor who would do that 56:00surgery." I made sure that he was on enough Ativan, both trips but increased it the second trip, so he wasn't anxious. There was a steady stream of people and he died. It was very interesting. He had one of his male friends from high school who was a doctor, [inaudible] of diabetic clinic in Boston. He called me and he said, "Carol, I wanna talk to Julius." I said, "Ronnie, you can talk to him, he cannot talk back." So I held the phone up to Julius' ears and he said whatever he had to say. I said goodbye, my brother died.

TO: Oh my goodness.

CS: Yep.

TO: So this is two weeks after diagnosis?

CS: From July 20th to July 16th.

TO: To August?

CS: No.

TO: July --

CS: No, June 20th.

TO: June 20th.

CS: So there's 10 days left in August --

TO: Yes, yes.

CS: Plus the 16 days so it was 26 days.

TO: 26 days. Goodness sakes. One thing we haven't touched on and I did wanna touch on it and that is you said to Julius when he got married. It was his second marriage, interestingly enough. When he got married, that you weren't gonna work for him anymore. And you had strong feelings about that.

CS: Well, what I said to him, he was 54 years old at the time. He had amassed ... a lot of stuff, a lot of property. He had a farm in Westport, he had the home on Hampden Court, he had all the stocks and bonds that I'd gotten for him. 58:00I knew his track record. So I said to him, we were at Jay's Cafeteria, and he told me only three weeks before he was getting married. He knew what my reaction would be. I didn't care if he got married. Hey, let somebody else take care of him for awhile. But you don't go into a marriage at 54 years old without an iron clad prenup. And once again, him being non-confrontational, said no. His famous words were to me, "I'm never gonna divorce her." And I said back to him, "But what if she divorces you?" Well knowing the track record of my brother's monogamous relationships. He did not listen to me and but he got very angry with me when I said I'm out. I'm not working for you anymore. And hindsight's always 59:0020/20, I should've stayed there to protect him but I knew you couldn't have two cooks in the kitchen. I mean this was different. This was a marriage, this wasn't a live in girlfriend. This was a marriage.

And I left. Well, I would say a year and a half into the marriage she calls me up and she says, he's this and he's that and [inaudible 00:59:24] and I said, well I'll talk to him. Called him up and I said, Julius was very good at defending himself. I said, "I don't wanna hear your defense because it does not matter. This is what she perceives. You keep going down that path and it will result in a divorce, you stupidly" always had to put that in, "do not have a prenup." So he would start flying right for awhile. It happened again. Said to 60:00him the same thing and the third time as they always say is the charm. She proceeds to divorce him.

It was a long, drawn out, ugly, ugly affair. What she had done which if I had been working for him would have never, ever allowed. Let this be a cautionary tale to whoever listens to this. Julius owned his properties outright. She convinced him to take out a mortgage and she got her name on both the properties. Even though he could legally prove he had owned them outright when they got married.

It was getting to the phase they were going to court. To reiterate about this 61:00woman is when they left, he bought her a house in Anchorage. That's where she wanted to live. Fine. I said to my brother, change the locks on the door. Did he?

TO: This was when they broke up? Yeah, he bought her a house as part of the break up.

CS: That's where she wanted. She wanted to live in the same house. Buys a house in Anchorage. Looking for victim number three. I said, change the locks. Once again, I should've just called Willis Klein, met them there, had the locks changed but I didn't. I thought, you know what? You're a big boy now. You got yourself into this mess. She would repeatedly come back to the house when he wasn't there. He would come home and he'd look at the walls and there'd be 62:00something ... something's odd. He'd realize that she'd been in the house, she had taken out art. She continued to do this. The locks were changed the day he went into the hospital. I said to one of his good friends who had come to visit us. Said Martha do me a favor, go sit at the house, Willis Klein is coming out. I can't leave him.

I want the locks changed. And then I called the people that had the code to the gate, to the farm, and I said, please change the code to the gate to the farm, which they did. So if she tried to get in either place, she could not.

TO: That would've been some years after the divorce.

CS: No, this was during the divorce. She was coming back in the house, before the divorce ended.

TO: I see.

CS: And stealing.

TO: But clarifying my way, I thought you said the day he went in the hospital. I must've misunderstood. Clearly misunderstood.

CS: This happened at least two years maybe the divorce went on. And she knew he was non confrontational. And once again, I should've gone to the lawyer with him. He had a very good divorce attorney and she kept telling him not to settle. But he did. That divorce was final in December. From December to June 20th, my brother was the happiest I've ever seen him. Short of when he was a child. And so when he got out of the clear blue there is not Leukemia in our family. I said 64:00to them, "He has gone through a very stressful, prolonged divorce. Could this have been the kick off?" They said, "Oh, absolutely, absolutely."

TO: Goodness.

CS: By the way, she had the utter balls to come to the funeral and sob hysterically like she was the widow.

TO: Do you think Julius ever regretted staying in and this is my word, Loserville?

CS: There were times he said, "You know" his favorite expression was I should've bit the bullet and gone ahead and moved away. I told you that anxiety was 65:00extremely prevalent in our family and for Julius to get on a plane by himself to go somewhere? Was anxiety producing enough. Much less to pick up, go to a city where he knew nobody, get an apartment and try to get work. He could've never done it. Now he would've been much ore famous I believe. He just couldn't do it. He liked to be ... I explain this to people. My brother and I always had this thing that we had to have a nest and the nest had to be pretty. Now he surpassed me a 1,000 times over with his two nests. But it was important. I don't think that he just like he couldn't stand up to this woman by saying we're not getting 66:00married without a prenup. End of story, end of sentence. She would've said, "I'm not getting married" and I would've said, uh, saved by the bell, baby. Saved by the bell.

I strongly suggest to people, marriage is very difficult. That whoever you are, at whatever stage of life you are, have the prenups in place. Let her have one. Let you have one. Then you can go to mediation. This is what I brought, I'm keeping. This is what you brought, you're keeping. And what we have together, we'll split that part of the pile. If you don't do that, one of my brother's closest friends who lived across the street from him, the son who Julius adored 67:00has been going through an ugly divorce. The divorce is final which cost a fortune, cost a lot of time. She refuses to come get her stuff from the apartment and refuses to put the car ... the car is in his name, to put the car in her name. They had been back to court three different times and she won't do it. So save yourself ... this is a cautionary tale. Save yourself the aggravation, you know?

TO: So the divorce only became final some a half a year before Julius's death?

CS: Yes, she was very unhappy about that because had they still been in this ... 68:00although he had already changed his will so I don't think she could've gotten anything. He had changed it. I said to him during the process, "For God's sakes, when you're at the lawyer change your will." I had to while he was in the hospital. Get power of attorney, healthcare directive. They emailed it to me and I had someone in the hospital notarize it because I couldn't have made the decisions for him. He would've had to make the decisions. I didn't make any decision that he didn't want. It's just, he was at a point two days before he died, he was unconscious. The day he died I was there everyday and the doctor came in and I said, "Look, they're only giving him Ativan" 'cause he was not on the palliative care unit. Had he been on the palliative care unit, they would've been giving him Morphine. I said, "He's not in pain because he can't physically 69:00say anything to them" and I said, "You know and I know where this is ending." I said, "Please up the Morphine." And they did and within three hours he died.

I don't know how much they up ... it could've been non-consequential. He could've been dying, you know, but if you don't have someone, if you don't have a healthcare advocate for you, you're at the mercy of the hospital. I hate to say it, hospitals are a commercial business. The longer you're there, the longer it's going cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching. They're at cross purposes now.

TO: If final question and then a comment and then I'm gonna ... I have a very small addendum that I wanna ask you about. If not an artist, what could Julius had become.

CS: Definitely not an accountant, definitely not a lawyer, definitely not a doctor. I guess it's in the same field. He would've been an architect. That's what he was going for in the beginning. He would've been an architect.

TO: That's right. I remember you telling me that on the first tape. There was, when I did and this is my last question. When I did my key word search Pro Quest of the Courier-Journal of Julius Friedman, I noticed that at a very young age when he was at U of L that he was in an automobile accident where there was a fatality.

CS: Really?

TO: Maybe I misunderstood that.

CS: I have zero knowledge of that.

TO: Oh really? Well again, I could've made the mistake but I did wanna ask about that. As I recalled the automobile accident was at Norris Place on Shady Lane. Something like that, somewhere there near Highland Middle School but I'm not sure.

CS: Well if it occurred, I never knew about it.

TO: Yeah, well I'm not ... if you've never heard about that, then I'm sure that either I made a mistake in my research or whatever but I did wanna ask you about that. Okay, anything else that you wanna put on this digital tape about you're being very closely tied to a very creative artist?

CS: Well, I loved my brother very much. We were alike in a lot of ways, different in some. I'm glad the time we spent working together because had we not been working together I wouldn't have seen him as much as I did. I always felt, you know there's that song from Beaches, The Wind Beneath The Wings, and I 72:00always felt I was the wind beneath his wings. That I allowed him to not have to worry about money. Not have to worry about bookkeeping, not have to worry about shipping stuff. He didn't like any of those things and it freed him to be creative. While there are things in his life I wish he had done differently,

CS: I ... when he died, up until that point, I had been the solider, I had been after the doctors. I had been after the nurses. He was never alone. Never alone. I lost it. I laid across his body and could not stop crying. What I said to him, which is true, I said, "Everyone has left and I'm the last one here and I don't like it." So we have ... I bought two plots together. I will eventually be 73:00buried next to him. It's one massive stone. Because like I used to say to people, I was his wife but we didn't have sex. That was the relationship we had. I always had his back and I don't regret ... I wasn't envious of his success. I just wasn't. I was just happy that I had a brother and we were so close.

TO: Were you close as close in that make up a year, 2002 to 2016?

CS: No. We did not see each other or talk to each other on a daily basis. Now, when he would go out to dinner with my fiance, he would strongly tell him how much he loved me, how [crosstalk 01:13:56]

TO: Just your fiance and [crosstalk 01:13:58]

CS: And Julius, often had lunch together.

TO: I see.

CS: And he would say how much he loved me and how much I was a huge part of why his life was like it was. He admitted to my fiance, he should've listened to me on the prenup. Never said it to my face. Never said it that you were right. But he told Sandy. I guess he figured it would get back to me and he did.

TO: But not as close when you weren't working with him everyday?

CS: I regret now after seeing what I saw occur, that I did not step back in and say, I think you need me. And he did and he never specifically said would you come back. I didn't. But it's you know, like you have two lobes of lungs, one 75:00lobe is gone for me. I feel it everyday. And that's why I'm doing the foundation. That's why I'm doing this. Why I gave stuff to the archives because he should be remembered.

TO: Well there is no doubt and I'm not any ... I'm not trained as an artist, don't know art. But his work was both beautiful and fetching. Meaning and fetching's not the right word but it's compelling is a better word. Compelling 76:00is a better word, certainly his poster art. I mean, I look at that, those images and just think of the imagination and the creativity that went into that.

CS: Well one thing I wanna reiterate. We had a rough childhood. And by choosing photography, which is what he did, you froze a moment in time. And his work is always a moment in time of beauty. And I think that's his great gift. He did a few posters for the peace poster for Nagasaki and for the Jewish Holocaust that are not things of beauty. But almost everything else, it's a moment frozen in time. I think that's why he liked it. It was there and then it was gone. But he got it when he was there. He could share that with anybody who wanted to look at it.

TO: Sure, sure. Is there still a demand for what he did?

CS: Yeah, I do get ... I do, I'm meeting a woman tomorrow at where I stored all his artwork and she is very much into botanicals which he is very much photographed. And was copied by the way, poorly but copied. Yeah, she wants to decorate her husband's office with his art.

TO: With his art. That's interesting. Well this is the ending of a very, very, very energetic and I think very helpful conversation. CS, I wanna thank you and 78:00this is the conclusion of end review number two on September the sixth, 2018. Thank you.

CS: Thank you.