My Mother's Clothes

my mother’s mother’s clothes an of memories memories an album album of Jeannette Jeannette Montgomery Montgomery Barron Barron

Eleanor Morgan Montgomery Atuk in her backyard, Atlanta, c.1955

“Style is primarily a matter of instinct.” —Bill Blass

my mother’s clothes an album of memories Jeannette Montgomery Barron

welcome

BOOKS

Preface

The Queen of Memory Nobody loved clothes more than Ellie. When she arrived for a weekend visit to our home in Connecticut, the back of her car sagged under the weight of her suitcases—all packed lovingly, neatly ordered, pressed, not a handkerchief out of place. Jeannette and I had a closet especially available for her visits, wooden hangers ready. She would hang each and every blouse, pair of pants, and jacket, then say, “Let’s see the garden.” She’d have an outfit on in minutes, and the flowers seemed to perk up in attention as she rattled off each name in Latin, its nickname, and at whose garden in which country she’d seen it.

4

Ellie was all about memory. At the drop of a hat, she could spin a tale from her beginnings in the rural South, in winding Faulknerian sentences that climbed up walls like vines and spread through counties and states, with cryptic asides about who divorced whom and who took to the bottle. She bounded through decades, sometimes barely lifting her fork while we all ate, so as not to miss a beat. Nothing could impede her tales.

Once, before getting in a cab on a side street in Manhattan, taxi door open, one leg already in, she riffed into a tale. Soon, seventeen cabs were honking wildly. She stared a cabbie down and said, “Jus’ a minute. I’m not finished.”

So it was like watching Sandy Koufax lose his pitching arm when Ellie’s memory began to fade. It just couldn’t be. She was queen of memory, and cloaked herself no less in her clothes than her memories. As her condition worsened, Jeannette instinctively began to photograph her mother’s clothes, so she could trigger her mother’s memories. The photos started out simply staged, but soon Jeannette—always a simple dresser—sought out fabrics and patterns as backdrops. She found old papers in her mother’s closets and drawers. It was as if honoring her mother’s clothes brought out a hidden textile dexterity in her daughter. Living four thousand miles away in Rome, Jeannette began scouring small fabric shops on worn side streets, in buildings with patched mustard and umber walls. Each fabric had a personal reference for her mother: One was to a toile in their family’s home, or to a place Ellie had been when she wore a particular dress, such as a tablecloth from the restaurant “21,” one of Ellie’s favorite New York haunts.

Jeannette worked daily, climbing a tall ladder to attach fabric to strings fixed to a cornice, so as not to mar the walls in our Rome apartment (which is precisely how Ellie would have done it). She matched exactly one fabric to each article of clothing, with a precision that seemed an ode to Ellie.

Then, photos placed in a portfolio, Jeannette would visit Ellie, first in Ellie’s home outside Charlottesville, and later, when her condition had become full Alzheimer’s, at a care center. When Ellie couldn’t remember her daughter’s name, she could still recall when and where she’d worn her clothing: The time she piled strawberries in vats beside their pool for Bill Blass’ first trunk show in Atlanta; the time she’d gone to Highlands in August, walked into the corner pharmacy, and who did she see...; the time she’d worn a red cape and driven her beloved silver BMW four hours to the ocean so she could pack shrimp in an iced cooler to bring to her grandchildren, Isabelle and Ben—with a bouquet of peonies from her garden wrapped in a wet towel and foil, or with a bird’s nest she’d found in a shrub.

It was remarkable and moving—and sometimes nearly impossible to breathe—as Ellie’s memory was revived. Each visit prompted renewed energy for Jeannette’s project. She filled huge suitcases with her mother’s clothes, paid extra when the airport check-in attendant’s eyes popped over the weight, flew back to Rome, then set out once more to match her mother’s clothes with the right fabric, to not only create an ode to her mother, but to cull more and more memories.

As Ellie’s memory collapsed completely, it was like hearing a bagpipe deflate. Hers was a world so richly constructed, so thoroughly indexed in her mind, that it was as if a verbal tradition had been lost. Ellie was Ellie, there were no others. Even toward the end, one of Jeannette’s photos would elicit a memory, but in a tale too common, known to millions throughout the world, eventually those last memories faded.

And so, here they are for the world, a bouquet of flowers from a daughter to her mother, in memory of a mother whose memory was like no other.

Ellie used to call on holidays and say, “Happy days...happy days.” This is one of those happy days.

James D. B arron, son-in-law, Rome, 2009

5

6

Introduction

Lost and Found In Jeannette Montgomery Barron’s photographs still life is transformed into new life, into portraits where image, memory and a daughter’s love collide. Printed and preserved on these pages, clothes that were once chosen to express their owner’s taste and style, are altered. Marked by the outline of their age, time and place, they become in these pictures, a medium and a conduit. They conjure an original and vivid spirit back to life—that of the photographer’s mother, the beautiful and stylish Eleanor Morgan Montgomery Atuk.

The camera is only a mechanical eye. When it blinks it takes a picture. But the image it records is meaningless without the control of a human eye. By choosing with both the conscious and unconscious, the photographer’s intention is infused into the image as surely as the scent of a person is captured by their clothes. So, memory and photography can have an alchemical relationship, becoming each other’s essence. The camera’s shutter is a stopper on a scent bottle, trapping fugitive memories and releasing them from this book at each turn of the page. Through these pictures subtle fragrances are communicated by Montgomery Barron’s camera. A ball dress seems haunted by the scent of dancing and cigars; a woollen coat’s collar gently exhales fragrance whilst its wearer is gone. An absent mother is given form.

A photograph of a Norell perfume bottle, its last few drops the colour of an aged sauterne, becomes a potent image of loss and redemption. The bottle, its precious dregs, the extinct couturier’s name painted boldly on the glass—are as poignant as hieroglyphs on an everyday object from an Egyptian tomb.

Gently, as her mother lost her memory, Montgomery Barron started to recreate it in these pictures of her clothes. At first they were more for her mother than for herself—then touchstones of reminiscence for both. When Eleanor died, they became a continuum of farewell, an elegy, and a hymn.

These photographs are still lives. In them a mother still lives. A daughter and artist is defined. And a stilled life is restored.

Patrick K inmonth , London, 2009

7

8

I n the y e a rs since she ’s been gone , I’ve taken to curling up beneath my mother’s fur coat; it comforts me. Her name is embroidered inside, “Ellie M.,” so that it could be easily identified at a party filled with fur-wearing women. Sometimes I take naps with the coat as a blanket and am transported by the mixture of smells and a lingering odor of a perfume no longer in existence.

9

10

O ne of the things i miss the most is smelling my mother.

Whenever I used to visit I would sniff her constantly, trying to store up her smell, like filling up a gas tank and hoping it would last a long stretch in the desert. Someone could make a lot of money if they ever figured out how to bottle someone’s scent.

11

12

I h av e be e n t ol d t h at f rom t he s ta r t my mother was a child who aspired to city life. She was one of six children born and raised in Guyton, Georgia, a town so small it didn’t even have a stoplight. Somehow my mother convinced her father to enroll her in a private girls’ school in Savannah. So she rode the train every day with her father, “Big Daddy,” who commuted to his hardware and heavy machinery business on the waterfront.

13

M y fat h e r wa s f ro m a w e a lt h y at l a n ta fa mily whose business was Coca-Cola Bottling. My parents married when they were nineteen. My mother was very influenced by my father’s mother, Jeannette, my namesake, who was an elegant reserved lady and a beautiful dresser with wonderful manners. I remember wrapping gifts with her one day when she told me I used too much tape. My mother wore her charm bracelet after she died.

14

765 pe a c h t r e e ba t t l e av e nu e , n.w. was engraved on my mother’s stationary, our address. The street name refers to the battle waged at Peachtree Creek in Atlanta during the Civil War. It could just as easily have referred to the war between my parents after their divorce. Yet, in the last ten years or so before my mother’s death, my parents actually became friends again. I wish they could have figured that out earlier—it would have saved us all a lot of drama.

15

16

My c h i l d h o o d h o m e wa s v e r y f o r m a l , designed after a mansion in VĂŠzelay, France. My mother had seen a picture of the house in a book and hired a local architect to replicate it. They were just putting on the finishing touches when I was born. Every year on my birthday my mother told me the same story: Grass seed had been planted the day she went to the hospital to deliver me; when she brought me home, the grass was starting to sprout.

17

18

Sh e wa s a l l a b ou t more, more, more. I was always about less, less, less.

19

20

Sh e ac c umu l at e d a l o t o f s t u f f, so much so that there was an extra room in our house called the “junk room.”

Old papers, bills, a safari suit from a trip to Africa with a bunch of wild Texans (it was called the Cipango Tour, “sip-and-go”). When the door was closed you had no idea what was lurking behind. I don’t keep anything; this is why.

21

22

M y m o t h e r l o v e d a n d w o r e the hell out of this jacket, which was designed by Bill Blass for Maurice Rentner, before Bill had his own label. She used to always try to get me to wear it when I was in my twenties. But I was a whiteshirt-and-jeans girl, much to my mother’s disappointment (or maybe I did that just to spite her). My mother finally won—the jacket is now in my closet. I wear it with jeans, something she would have probably thought sacrilegious.

23

My nine t e e n - y e a r - o l d daug h t e r now wears what I call the “Lenny Kravitz jacket.” I can just imagine my mother ordering it from the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalogue, circa 1971. My daughter also wears all of my mother’s old costume jewelry and accessories, citing her style as a mix between her grandmother and Kurt Cobain. She even thinks they might be friends up in heaven. Probably so—my mother always gravitated toward eccentric people.

24

R ig h t a rou nd t h e t im e the soundtrack for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid started playing on our stereo, my mother got a new, short haircut and took up smoking. The phase didn’t last very long. Eventually, her hair grew out and she quit cigarettes.

25

26

27

M a m a l ov e d t o da nc e a nd s ing . At home she would sing to the radio, often getting the words wrong. Who cared?

28

Sh e wa s a lway s g i v i n g pa r t i e s . I remember one where she served fresh strawberries from a huge urn out near the pool, with powdered sugar on the side.

29

30

I r e m e m b e r m y fat h e r trying to teach my mother to swim in our pool. That’s probably the last time this bathing cap was worn. When she was a child, my mother watched her sister get stuck in quicksand. It took five minutes and several people to pull her out. From that time onward, she was terrified of the water. So despite my father’s considerable efforts, she never did learn how to swim...but she liked to sunbathe.

31

32

M a m a’s favo r i t e at age 84.

no r m a k a m a l i s ui t .

And she wore it

33

34

B i l l b l a s s h a d b e c o m e a g o o d f r i e n d of my mother’s by the mid-1970s. He would always make fun, lovingly, of our family, calling us the “Beverly Hillbillies;” after all, we had a “cement pond” out back. Once my mother and I were in the Blass showroom in New York, my mother trying on clothes. Bill just stood in the room while she changed. Sensing her uneasiness he finally said, ”Babe, do you think I care? I see naked girls all day long.”

35

36

A t y pic a l w eek in m y mother ’s life , circa 1979: pay taxes, check face blemishes, call Ted Turner, call Robert Woodruff (the president of the coca-cola company at the time), fly to New York and leave clothes at my apartment. I’m exhaused just thinking about all of this.

37

I f m y m o t h e r l i k e d a s h o e , she would buy it in several colors each season. I used to stare into the walk-in closet she claimed after my father left her for the Playboy Bunny (yes, that’s right), wondering why she needed all of those shoes. I remember the look on her face one day when a salesman at Gucci pronounced, “Madame, you obviously do not have a Gucci foot.” Boy, was she pissed!

38

I d i d n o t f u l ly u n d e r s t a n d how eccentric my mother was until I started photographing her clothes, examining her life. Only when I wrote her obituary for the newspaper did I realize the extent of all she had accomplished. She always had a project, an idea that burned at her day and night until she’d completed it.

39

40

Sh e wa s no t a s o c i a l i t e , that’s the wrong word. She was a woman who used her influence to get things done.

41

42

I supp o se t he de signer s k now that when a gown is going down South, they have to dress it up a bit. I can just hear them in their offices on Seventh Avenue: “This one’s going to Atlanta—throw on a few more ruffles.”

43

44

M y mother re a lly lov ed this gold Yves St. Laurent jacket.

It is as light as a feather—you could wear it as a spacesuit and also get a tan from its reflection. She took such good care of her clothes: the sleeves were always stuffed with tissue paper, nothing was put away without being cleaned and covered in plastic. I know she must have been keeping them in good shape for me to have someday.

45

There is a dre s s th at m y mother m a de out of upholstery fabric which reminds me of the scene in Gone with the Wind when Scarlet O’Hara rips down the curtains at Tara and makes a dress. I can imagine my mother doing this after her own personal war.

46

W h e r e v e r w e t r av e l e d i n t h e w o r l d , other coca-cola people hosted us—in Rome, London, Paris, or Vienna. I used to joke that I drank Coke from my baby bottle. It’s not so far from true, and I have the dental work to prove it. My great-grandfather, along with another partner, bought the formula from Dr. Pimberton, a druggist at Jessup’s in Atlanta who sold the concoction as a cure for hangovers and other ailments. The formula contained cocaine in those days and was bought for the sum of $1200. Less than a year later, my great-grandfather sold his share. Whenever I feel I’ve made a bad business decision, I think of this and feel better.

48

W e a lway s at e pe a nu t bu t t e r c r ac k e r s when traveling by car or golf cart. You can still find them in most gas stations down south. We also poured salted peanuts into bottles of Coke and drank/ate the concoction. A delicacy but definitely an acquired taste.

Mama’s car was always filled with everything you could possibly need in case there was some sort of disaster and you had to leave home quickly, maybe live out of the car for a month: umbrellas, maps, snacks, gloves, a needlepoint pillow that said, “When all of this is over I’m going to have a nervous breakdown,” Kleenex, you name it. Her refrigerator and cupboards were like that too, filled to the brim.

I think it had something to do with growing up during the Depression and, of course, just something to do with her.

49

50

Ch r i s t m a s w r a pp i n g wa s m y j o b , but my favorite part was delivering the gifts. My mother would drive, wearing her plaid Bill Blass Christmas jacket, and I would hop out of the car to ring the doorbells and present the gifts.

51

52

53

S h e h a d a r e a l t h i n g f o r t i f fa n y ’ s . And all the Bs— Bendels, Bergdorf’s, Bonwit’s, Bloomingdale’s.. .

54

M y m o t h e r s h o pp e d r e g u l a r ly at Rich’s Department Store in downtown Atlanta, where Sol Kent was her clothing advisor. She’d arrive for each visit to find Sol waiting, elegantly dressed in a beautiful suit and tie. While my mother tried on clothes, he would needlepoint geometric patterns of his own design. Sol’s wife, Irene, was equally chic and drove a black Thunderbird convertible. I thought she was the model of cool. My brother and I would occasionally hitchhike home from school in the 1970s just for the thrill, and Irene would sometimes pick us up. We may have asked Irene not to tell our mother about this.

55

56

B ac k w h e n a s i z e 10 was really a size 10, and there was no such thing as a size 0.

57

58

My

m o t h e r ’s p e r f e c t

little black dress. Heavy as lead.

59

S h e a lway s s a i d : “Never wear white before Memorial Day or after Labor Day.”

60

M y m o t h e r w e n t t o a h a i r s a l o n i n a t l a n t a , which was also frequented by my father’s second wife. I remember the times they were both in the salon together; all hell would break loose as everyone scrambled to keep them on opposite sides of the room. I would look on, trying to process the commotion, wondering why the salon would have booked them on the same day.

61

62

M a m a a lway s t o l d m e , “Take some ‘mad money’ with you on a date. If you get mad, you can just leave.”

63

64

I c a n pi c t u r e m y mo t h e r dressing to go out, standing in her bathroom in Virginia, putting her lipstick on and kissing this piece of paper. It makes me sad because I miss the sight of my mother in her crazy, cluttered bathroom/dressing room/command center of her world.

65

66

M y hu s b a nd a nd i m a r r ie d in 1988. We wanted to elope, make things simple. Of course, my mother would not hear of this. She immediately called Bill Blass, and the next thing I knew I was sitting in his office in New York. He designed what he called “the perfect wedding dress for your first marriage.” When I asked him for an invoice, he said, “There won’t be one.”

67

68

I h av e tried to w e a r m y mother ’s clothe s but just don’t have the right attitude to pull it off. As her friend Tom Fallon, who worked with Bill Blass, recalls, ”Ellie wore the clothes, they never wore her. She wore a beige organza [Bill Blass] halter gown with a very faint taupe print—daring, but conservative. Ellie was pale skinned, with pale blonde streaked bouffant hair, and the gown and stole were trimmed in pale taupe and beige ostrich feathers. The total effect was subtle but powerful because the cut of the dress was sexy, the feather trim almost vulgar, but in Blass and Ellie’s hands, the effect was high WASP power glamour—that was Ellie, and I was dazzled.”

69

70

One y e a r m y mo t h e r wa s I read it in the newspaper.

vo t e d “ b e s t l e g s ” of

Atlanta.

71

72

M y mo t h e r g a r d e n e d in h e r ni g h t g o w n early in the morning. She loved flowers and knew all of the Latin names.

When I was little, we would arrange flowers together; Mama would give me a tiny pewter vase and I’d work right alongside her, mimicking her larger arrangement with my smaller one.

73

74

W h e n s h e v i s i t e d m e i n n e w y o r k , where I lived from my late teens through my late forties, she would bring homemade collard greens and cornbread with her on the plane from Charlottesville, Virginia. Also peonies and irises from her garden, and washed and ironed tablecloths and napkins she’d taken away with her from a previous Thanksgiving celebrated at my home. She also shipped me leaves, birds’ nests, and hornets’ nests from her yard.

75

76

M y mo t h e r d e c id e d t o mov e from Atlanta to Charlottesville, Virginia in 1980. She bought a farm and some cows and lived life in the small college town that Charlottesville was in those days. In case she needed an emergency fix of glamour and entertainment, Washington, D.C. was only two hours away by car, faster if you drove like she sometimes did. She met her second husband in Charlottesville, a physician at the University of Virginia Hospital. Nuzhet was from Istanbul, Turkey, and extremely charming. They died one month apart. He called her Ellie-babe.

77

78

I s ta r t e d no t ic ing s ig n s of my mother’s memory loss about ten years before she died. She bought me the same book about tulips over and over again. I always acted surprised and delighted when she would bring it to me. When she visited I noticed she did not wander far from my apartment; she must have been frightened of getting lost. I did not always have the most patience, I admit, and I regret it.

Then somewhere in the mix, as often happens, I became the mother and she became the child.

79

80

D r i v ing wa s big in ou r fa mily. When they finally took Mama’s license away at age 83, she was shattered, her wings were clipped. She claimed it was some sort of conspiracy by the Virginia police.

When I drove Mama from Virginia to my house in Connecticut to spend what would be our last Christmas together, we passed a country store we had driven by many times before. I knew that was the last time we would pass by it together.

81

82

W h e n m y s t e p f a t h e r b e c a m e v e r y i l l with cancer and could no longer take care of my mother, my brother took her into his home. For five months, he cared for her while we searched for the next move; my mother required twentyfour-hour attention. My brother cooked for her, bathed her, took her to the doctor and the hairdresser. He slept with his ears tuned to the sound of the front door opening; sometimes my mother wandered off into the yard, or sometimes she just paced the floors at night. One night when I was visiting, sleeping in the bed next to her, she woke up and hit me over the head with a pillow. There were those moments of anger, which we just had to ride through.

83

84

I n t h e l a s t f e w m o n t h s o f h e r l i f e , she invented new phrases and words. “Very plus” obviously meant when something was really great. “Slim peas” meant that a piece of clothing fit just right, I’m pretty certain.

85

86

I w o u l d v i s i t m y m o t h e r as much as possible toward the end of her life, always bringing her something I hoped she might like. But I never imagined she would enjoy so much a catalogue from the designer Valentino’s exhibition in Rome.

When I brought it to her the month before she died, she was instantly transported to another world. We sat for hours looking. She pointed at one dress and said, “Oh, I’m going to take that one if you don’t want it,” and, “I haven’t taken one in such a long time.” When I tried to turn the page, she said, “Hold on, now,” scanning the whole page with her index finger to make sure she had seen it all. At one point she said, “I wanna die in that.”

87

88

“ I’m no t h e r e ,” she said at the doctor’s office a month before she died. She had had enough.

89

90

At t h e v e r y e nd s h e c ou l d no t ta l k , but I saw intense love in her eyes. She was not ready to leave the party but her dance card was finished. I told her it was ok to go, that I would be all right.

91

92

M y b r o t h e r a n d i w i t n e s s e d our mother take her last breath. After six days of anticipating this moment, no matter how prepared I thought I had been, it was cinematic, like a preview of my own death. People say we look a lot alike. The day before, I read out loud to her a Thanksgiving recipe from one of her favorite cooking magazines. My brother cried; we both knew she would not be around by Thanksgiving.

That night I slept on the floor beside her bed and held her arm after the nurse administered morphine. I wrapped my neck in one of her old scarves; I was freezing. Early the next morning, my brother saw her last smile, something I am jealous to have missed. It was a beautiful sunny day in the south of Georgia, about a hundred miles from where she was born, and she was four days shy of her eighty-fifth birthday. True to form with all matters of her vanity, Mama preferred to go out at eighty four. The nurses dressed her in a favorite Oscar de la Renta gown to go to the funeral home—it matched the beautiful burgundy hearse they sent.

93

94

I r e a l ly mi s s h e r , but I had missed her for years before her death. I think about her every time I see a beautiful flower, tree, sunset, ocean. . .or a special piece of clothing. When I see something I think she’d like, I still have the impulse to buy it for her. Then I remember she’s gone.

95

Designer Index

Bill Blass, dress, 2

Bill Blass, jacket, 6

Chester Weinberg, fur coat, 8

Norman Norell, perfume bottle, 11

Maud Frizon, shoe, 12

Charles Willis, charm bracelet, 13

Bill Blass, jacket, 17

Bill Blass, detail of gown, 18

Bill Blass, jacket, 22

96

Neiman Marcus, fur vest, 23

B.H. Wragge, tunic, 25

Mary McFadden, detail of skirt, 26

97

Maud Frizon, shoe, 27

Norma Kamali, bathing suit, 33

Bill Blass, jacket, 34

Pucci, sneakers, 37

Oscar de la Renta, gown, 43

Yves St. Laurent, coat, 44

Gucci, suitcase, 48

Bill Blass, coat, 50

Karl Lagerfeld, shoes, 53

Halston, dress, 55

Bill Blass, detail, inside of jacket, 56

Chester Weinberg, dress, 58

Ralph Lauren, pants, 59

Maud Frizon, handbag, 63

Bill Blass, garment bag, 67

98

Bill Blass, dress, 68

Bill Blass, dress, 75

Rich’s Department Store, coat, 76

99

Elsa Peretti, necklace from Tiffany’s, 79

Yves St. Laurent, cape, 83

Yves St. Laurent, blouse, 84

Norman Norell, detail of dress, 86

Norman Norell, dress, 91

Lanvin, scarf, 92

Eleanor Morgan Montgomery Atuk 1922 – 2007

Dedication & Acknowledgements

112

This book is dedicated to my mother, whose love and encouragement I feel every day of my life.

Thanks to my husband, James, who believed in this project and whose advice, love and support kept me going.

To Isabelle and Ben, who inspire me.

Thanks to my brother, Monty Montgomery, for his help, generosity, love and for taking care of our mother.

My father, Arthur L. Montgomery, introduced me to photography and is always supportive of my work.

Dr. Nuzhet Atuk, my late stepfather, encouraged me.

Delores Coleman took wonderful care of my mother and was her great friend.

Dani Shapiro was enthusiastic and caring.

The staff at Marsh’s Edge treated my mother with love and dignity.

Michael Gray helped me find the perfect publisher.

Thanks to: Christophe Boutin, Patrick Kinmonth, Antonio Monfreda, Phil Block, Martine Bedin, The American Academy in Rome, Jochem Schoneveld, Theres Abbt, Anna Skillman Walker, Walter Keller, Cornelia Lauf, Luca Selvi, Sarra Brill, Kathleen Fraser, Frances Kiernan, Francesco Solari, Maria Campbell, Letitia Baldrige, Tom Fallon.

Special thanks to my editor, Katrina Fried, my publisher, Lena Tabori, Kristen Sasamoto, Gavin O’Connor, and Carol Morgan —J.M.B. m y mo t he r ’ s c l o t he s : a n a l bum of me mor ie s

Photographs and Text by Jeannette Montgomery Barron For further information please visit online: www.welcomebooks.com/mymothersclothes Published in 2010 by Welcome Books® An imprint of Welcome Enterprises, Inc. 6 West 18th Street, New York, NY, 10011 (212) 989-3200; fax (212) 989-3205 www.welcomebooks.com

publisher :

Lena Tabori H. Clark Wakabayashi editor : Katrina Fried designer : Kristen Sasamoto editorial assistant : Gavin O’Connor president :

Copyright © 2009 by Welcome Enterprises, Inc. Photographs and text copyright © 2009 by Jeannette Montgomery Barron Preface copyright © 2009 by James D. Barron Introduction copyright © 2009 by Patrick Kinmonth All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file first edition

/ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in China by Toppan Printing Co., (H.K.) Ltd.