Three from Osage Street (poetry and prose sketches about growing up in
Girard, KS, in the 1940's and 1950's) by Thomas Lisenbee, Kay Z. Myers,
and Bret Waller.

Program presentation during Fall Festival Saturday, October 3rd at 2 pm
at the Library. Make plans to attend!

Biographical information on the authors:

Thomas Lisenbee lives with his wife, Sharon Paige, in Brooklyn, NY. Tom
graduated from GHS in 1956, from PSU (then KSTC) in 1960, and from
Tulsa Universtiy in 1961 with a MA in music. He was the son of Percy
and Evelyn Lisenbee, who were both teachers of renown for many years in
the Girard School System. Evelyn taught voice and piano privately as
well as Speech and Spanish at GHS (and, for many years, also choral
music). Percy taught everything else— from Accordion to Zither. If it
was a musical instrument, Percy could teach it and teach it well, even
though the only instrument he could play was the violin! While Tom
attended Tulsa U., he was an instructor in trumpet and also the
Principal Trumpeter for the Tulsa Philharmonic. In 1963 he left Tulsa
to go play with the Concertgebouworkest in Amsterdam, Holland. From
there he went to the Israel Philharmonic, then to Dublin, Ireland. to
play with the Radio Telefis Eirean Symphony Orchestra. In 1966, he
returned to New York City where he got all the lucky breaks that were
needed to establish a free lance career. He retired from the trumpet in
November of 2001, not because he tired of playing, but because there
was something else he wanted to do more: writing. Both his poetry and
fiction regularly appear in literary journals. In 2006, one of his
short stories was short-listed for the Raymond Carver Short Story
Prize. He has published one chapbook of poetry, Dogwalking and other
Poems (Wild Pines Press, 2004) and is a member of the Upper Delaware
Writers Collective. While acknowledging that he might not have enough
years left to become the writer he would like to be, his parents taught
him this: if you want to do something, then just do it.

Kay Z. Myers lives with her husband, John Myers, in Wayne, PA. She
graduated from GHS (as Mary Kay Zettl) in 1956 and then from KU in 1961
with a BS in education. Her parents were Karl (Dutch) and Wilma
(Billie) Zettl. Her grandparents, Joe and Marie Zettl, founded Zettl’s
Bakery, which (during the 1940's and 50's) had shops in Pittsburg and
Fort Scott, as well as in Girard. Her father served on the Girard
Hospital Board, and her mother helped found the Girard PTA. A perennial
student, Kay received her MA in Teaching of English (1982) from
Villanova University in Villanova, PA (where her husband taught for
years as a Professor of Chemical Engineering). When the youngest of
their five children was nearly grown, Kay earned her PhD in Literature
from the University of Delaware (1992). Though Kay’s major career was
homemaking, she also taught freshmen English classes part-time in the
Villanova area: at Harcum Junior College (1981-1985) and at Cabrini
College (1983-86). In 1989-91, Kay worked as Public Relations Assistant
for a Philadelphia Social Service organization, Episcopal Community
Services. Two of her more interesting volunteer experiences were (1) a
100-mile back-packing trip in Philmont, NM, as co-leader of an Explorer
Scout crew; and (2) organizing “Art & Religion, The Many Faces of
Faith,” a multi-ethnic, interfaith, religious art exhibition of 100
artists sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of PA. That exhibit ran
simultaneously for six weeks in 1997 at the Villanova University Art
Gallery and the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies in Philadelphia. Kay
has done much more writing than publishing—2 novels, 6 children’s
stories, and over 100 unpublished poems—but she did publish previously
a book of 52 poems, Philadelphia Marathon (Wyndham Hall Press, 1984)..

Bret Waller lives with his artist wife, Mary Lou Dooley Waller, in
Indianapolis, IN. Bret graduated from GHS in 1953, doing the art work
for the yearbook that year. He attended KU from 1953 to 55,
transferring to the Kansas City Art Institute in the middle of his
junior year to finish his undergraduate work there, and returned to
KUGirard resident, he was the son of Bret and Juanita Waller, and the
grandson of Marion G. Slawson—a Kansas State Representative, president
of the Chamber of Commerce, entrepreneur, and inventor with many
patents. Bret joined the staff of the University of Kansas Museum of
Art (now called the Spencer Museum) in 1964 as Curator, became Director
there in 1968, and served in that capacity until 1971. From there he
moved on to become director of art museums at the Universities of
Michigan and Rochester, NY; head of public education at the
Metropolitan Museum; associate director of the J. Paul Getty Museum;
and, for eleven years until he retired as Director Emeritus, Director
of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Bret has contributed essays to
scholarly journals, professional publications, and numerous exhibition
catalogues. Among his publications are catalogue essays in The School
for Scandal: Thomas Rowlandson’s London; Artists of La Revue Blanche;
Works from the Collection of Herbert and Dorothy Vogel; and articles in
scholarly journals on Georges Rouault, Tom Wesselmann, John Steuart
Curry and others. He wrote and saw produced a one-act play on the
famous legal dispute between James A. McNeill Whistler and John Ruskin.
Tongue-in-cheek, he “proudly states, however, that his magnum opus to
date is a huge corpus of finely crafted and as yet unpublished
administrative memos.

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Posted By Library Director to GPL Newsflash at 9/28/2009 06:10:00 PM