Locals Joseph Zyble

Ninety-two-year-old Bill Hamilton has seen many things over the years, from experiences spending his childhood overseas, his military service and the role painting has had on shaping his career and life. He continues to live his best life, enjoying the lessons learned from...

Art & History

by Joseph Zyble

Life is good, really good, according to newlywed William Hamilton. Well, he may not qualify as a newlywed since recently celebrating his one-year anniversary to his wife, Diana, but he is happy, and there’s no place he’d rather be than in Marquette County.

Sure, a lot of people feel that way about this area, but Hamilton isn’t like a lot of other people. To begin with, his parents were Presbyterian missionaries serving in China when he was born there in 1929.

He was eight years old the first time he remembers coming to America. His family returned to Atlanta for a year in 1937 to get reacquainted with relatives and friends, and his parents gave presentations to raise monies for the missions.

“In China there was very little motorized transportation,” he said. “It was all rickshaw and oxen powered. When we got to San Francisco, it was like being transported to a different world.”

Returning to China in 1938 was also memorable. While they were away, the Japanese military captured the region of China where his family lived.

“When we entered Shanghai, it was a completely different China than the one we left a year earlier,” Hamilton said. “I remember seeing the devastation of parts of Shanghai due to the shelling of the city from the gunboats on the river. The main destruction was to the main railway station. There were two or three thousand Chinese killed in that attack who were trying to leave the city.”

He remembers hearing bombshells soaring overhead and witnessing aerial dogfights in the skies.

They also discovered that the Chinese pastors in the area had been imprisoned as well. Fortunately, Hamilton’s mother had been raised in a missionary family that served in Japan, and her knowledge of Japanese language and culture helped her advocate on behalf of the jailed missionaries.

“My mother was perfect for this role—she knew how to speak to the sensibilities of the local commander,” he said. “Her efforts, along with the efforts of others, they got the Chinese pastors released.”

It wasn’t all bad under Japanese rule. The local commander took a liking to Bill and his sister because they reminded him of his own children. The kids got to ride on the commander’s Australian thoroughbred and took trips into town with him for ice cream.

“We had a good counter-balance to the popular belief that all Japanese were evil,” he said.

The family stayed in China until early in 1941 when the state department ordered all missionary families to leave due to the growing threat of war. Hamilton’s family returned to America, with the exception of his father who opted to stay and run the mission by himself. However, he too ended up leaving later that year.

“We found out afterward that he caught the last ship leaving Shanghai to make it to the states,” Hamilton said. “Three weeks after he was in Honolulu on the stopover, the Japanese got there and attacked Pearl Harbor.”

In China, Hamilton was home schooled, but in America he was enrolled in junior high.

“As a missionary kid, you were kind of an oddity in school,” he said. “Kids would cluster around you and tell you to say something in Chinese.”

In school he was very happy to go to art class. While living in China, he liked to draw and had created a comic strip to entertain his siblings, but he never had any formal training in art. His teacher must have noticed his artistic knack because one day he received a special assignment.

“There was a day I went to school and there was snow on the ground,” he recalled. “That’s rare in Atlanta. My art teacher took me to the top floor of the school and set me in front of a large window to paint the view of the snow-covered rooftops. It was a nice painting. I won a scholarship with that painting.”

Unfortunately, he had to pass on it. At age 12, he wasn’t interested in studying with 16-year-olds, the typical age at the special school where the scholarship was awarded.

He continued to enjoy painting

Lighthouses are common in Hamilton's work, as well as nature scenes, as shown below, of a sunlit forest trail. (Photos by Joe Zyble)

during his high school years. After graduation, he went to college on a scholarship awarded by Davidson College in North Carolina.

“It was a liberal arts college, but they didn’t really teach art at that time,” he said. “I was fortunate that there were other schools all around that I could take art classes from. I learned to paint primarily from taking a course here and a course there.”

In college, Hamilton earned a commission in the U.S. Army through the ROTC. Upon graduation in 1950, his entire class was sent to Korea as officers due to the outbreak of the war—with the exception of Hamilton, who was told to return home to await further orders. He joined the Air Force in 1951, which would bring him to Korea as a military pilot a year later.

“In one week’s time, I got married, I got my bars as a second lieutenant and received my pilot’s wings,” he said.

He flew 29 missions during the Korean War. “When I was stationed in Korea, and later in Japan, my fellow pilots would bring their helmets to me to paint a design on,” he said. “That turned into painting airplane portraits of the planes we were flying back then. I had a deal with the officers club, where I was allowed to hang my paintings there. I got to be well known on the base.”

During his off-duty time, Hamilton could often be found drawing or painting.

“It was the start of an art career that I hadn’t really planned on,” he said. “It was developing into a growing thing. I combined the love of flying and airplanes with the love of painting. Eventually, the love of painting took over.”

Wherever he was assigned, he took advantage of opportunities to enhance his skills.

“When I was stationed in Louisiana, I joined a men’s art group off base,” Hamilton said. “We’d get together once a month; we had to make a different painting each month, and we’d show them and criticize each other’s paintings to see how they could be improved. I learned a lot from that.”

From there, he sought out artist workshops by established artists.

“I chose the artists who painted like I wanted to paint and signed up for one of their workshops,” he said.

As his skills grew, he made a significant change.

“I transitioned from painting in oils to painting in watercolors because watercolors are so much cleaner and neater and easier to work with to me than oils,” he said.

His Air Force service brought him to Puerto Rico for three years. He was there during the

Cuban Missile Crisis, which was taking place not too far away.

“It was a much more tense situation than most Americans realize,” he said.

He also served in the Vietnam War, involved mainly in air refueling operations.

He was stationed at K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base in 1967, when he served as a lieutenant colonel.

“I ran the wing command post,” Hamilton said. “It was a pretty complex job, and one of great responsibility, and I was aware of that. The command post would send air crews to war if we ever had to.”

He continued seeking out artistic opportunities in the area. Hamilton had already discovered and admired the work of Nita Engle prior to ever coming to the U.P. He eventually went to three workshops she conducted.

“The most rewarding of the workshops was spending a week on Isle Royale with my wife, and going to a different location every day for seven days,” he said. “I got many paintings out of that experience.”

He also participated in the open-air painting sessions at early Art on the Rocks shows.

“Back then they met around the statue of Father Marquette,” he recalled. “I attended one at that location and then they moved it to Presque Isle the next year.”

Like many people who have spent time in the area, the Air Force commander and artist was captivated by the region.

“The more I saw of the U.P., the more I loved it, and to me the ideal home would be a house on a lake surrounded by white birches and pines,” he said.

He found that home on Little Lake in 1970 and still owns it today as a second residence. He and his first wife, Liz, raised three kids there.

He retired from the Air Force in 1973 after 20 years of active duty. From there it was back to college where he earned two master’s degrees: one in history, the other in art education from Northern Michigan University. He hoped to become an art instructor in an area public school.

“I wanted to teach art but I could never get a full-time position,” he said. “I did some substitute teaching in Gwinn and I enjoyed it even though I couldn’t get a regular, full-time job.”

He used his time to perfect his art, taking advanced workshops when possible.

I’ve been influenced by a series of visiting artists who’ve led workshops in the area and sometimes out of state,” he said.

One such workshop was by a Chinese-American artist in Duluth. “He liked to paint goldfish. It’s a favorite subject of Chinese artists. I have the painting I made at that particular workshop and it’s one of my favorite paintings,” he said.

Hamilton gave it to Diana as a present.

Created at a goldfish painting workshop from a Chinese-American artist in Duluth, this is Hamilton’s favorite work of all his paintings. Goldfish are a common subject of Chinese art. (Photo by Joseph Zyble)

While he deeply admired the style of Nita Engle and learned much from her art lessons, he also learned another valuable lesson from her: an artist could actually earn a living selling their work.

Between his Air Force pension and his wife working as a nurse, the couple could still get by.

“We didn’t depend on the sale of my art, but it was something nice to look forward to,” he said. “I was in on about 20 Art on the Rocks shows. And I moved from oils to watercolors and I was painting mainly landscapes, woods and lakes in the different seasons.”

In 2001, he met Friederike Roach, who was opening up the Michigamme Moonshine art gallery, and decided to give gallery sales a try.

“I found it much easier to give the art gallery a percentage of the sales and let them worry about the advertising, setting up shows and so forth,” he said. “I was successful there. Michigamme Moonshine earned a reputation as the place to go for quality art.”

When Michigamme Moonshine closed its doors recently, Hamilton moved his work to the Zero Degrees gallery on Third Street in Marquette. The co-op style gallery has a variety of artists who work in a variety of media. They take turns staffing the gallery.

Bill Hamilton’s depiction of the Eagle Harbor Lighthouse.

(Photo by Joe Zyble)

“I’m looking forward to meeting the other artists. Many are retired professionals like me who were looking for a second career,” he said.

He considers Marquette the perfect community for him.

“I love Marquette,” Hamilton said. “I think it’s given me everything I need as far as a city goes. It’s small enough to be enjoyable. During normal times, there is always something going on that makes life interesting. Diana and I are both members of the symphony. We enjoy good music. We also enjoy good restaurants; there’s a lot of good restaurants.”

At their home in Marquette, the living room windows look directly into a thick woods. The walls and shelves are adorned with art, and there are books stacked on the coffee table. A thick one on top of the stack is a biography of Alexander Hamilton.

“He’s an ancestor from five or six generations ago and I wanted to learn more about him,” he said.

Hamilton has no plans to slow down.

“I don’t drink, never smoked and I’ve always tried to stay on the right side of the good Lord, I guess,” he laughs. “I’m going to be 100 years old before I quit.”

Genetics also seem to be on Hamilton’s side. Both of his parents lived well into their nineties, and he has a sister who is 95.

“I’m 92 years old but I feel a lot younger,” he said. “Part of that is falling in love all over again and getting married, and also starting a new phase of my career. I wake up every day and I’m glad to be alive.”

MM

About the Author: Joseph Zyble is a troll who hasn’t lived beneath the bridge for 30-some-odd years. He is married to the lovely Melanie and they have two cats together. Oh yeah, and some grown-up kids, and a big, yellow dog they frequently wind up babysitting (dogsitting?) too.

December 2021 Marquette Monthly 27