Dick Munske, Man Of Many Passions, 72
DGH
Richard Eric Munske, who was, at different times during his life, an
engineer, an editor and an electrician, died November 26, 2005, of
acute aggressive leukemia at Winchester Medical Center in Virginia, at
the age fo 72.
But those endeavors were only part of who he was. A habitue of
Washington's beat scene in the 1950s, he also was a painter who,
according to his wife, lived by an aphorism, origin unknown: "The
mediocre artist paints his life. The true artist lives his art."
Dick Munske sought to live his art through disparate enthusiasms and
often divergent inclinations.
He was born in Brooklyn, New York, into a military family. His father
was a veteran of the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War
II, as well as an accountant for the Brooklyn Dodgers and a military
governor in postwar Japan.
At his father's insistence, the Brooklyn boy ended up at Texas A&M
University, then an all-male, all-military institution. Although the
semirural school cultivated his science and math side, he left because
it failed to nurture his artistic leanings.
He dropped out, moved to the District and in 1956 received a bachelor's
degree in mathematics from American University. He also did graduate
work in geology, mathematics and philosophy at American.
In 1956, he took a job as a geophysics aide in the geophysics
laboratory of the U.S. Geological Survey, but his energy and passion
were devoted to his painting and the District's budding beat scene, the
avant-garde cultural movement often associated with writers Jack
Kerouac and William S. Burroughs and poet Allen Ginsberg.
When he wasn't painting large, abstract canvases in the Jackson Pollack
style, some of which he sold, he was hanging out at such beatnik
gathering places as Tasso's, a coffeehouse near Dupont Circle, and the
Coffee 'n' Confusion Club, a Foggy Bottom bistro. In a 1959 Washington
Post article, a DC police detective described the club on New Hampshire
Avenue as "real beat."
It was no liquor and bring your own poetry, the article noted. "You
gotta dig 'em," the detective said, describing a scene where beat
characters with two-month-old beards sat and discussed literature and
politics, listened to poetry readings or played chess. It was Mr.
Munske's kind of place.
He also taught at Georgetown Day School for a period and, between 1956
and 1961, worked for several companies as an engineer and a
statistician. He was an editor for several trade and technology
magazines throughout the 1960s.
Mr. Munske wasn't necessarily a great artist, his wife said, but he had
"the flamboyant character of the artist."
She added: "The titles he came up with were often as good as the work
itself."
A founding member of Les Amis du Vin, an international society of wine
connoisseurs headquartered in Silver Spring, he loved eating and
drinking and had a nose for wine and single-malt whiskey. On frequent
trips to Scotland, a place he loved, friends often tried to find a
whiskey he couldn't identify by taste or aroma. They were rarely, if
ever, successful.
He stopped painting in the early 1970s but continued to do wiring and
electrical work for the arts community. He also founded Munske Electric
in the early 1970s, specializing in renovation work. He retired in
1994.
In addition to his artistic interests, he collected rare books about
World War II and other topics. A big, bearded man, he resembled Ernest
Hemingway and collected Hemingway first editions. He often did
electrical work for Second Story Books and accepted his fee in books.
He lived in Washington DC until his retirement, when he moved with his
wife to a country home in Yellow Spring, West Virginia. He also lived
for brief periods in Spain and Paris, France.
His marriages to Karen Munske, Norma Connor and Pat Howell ended in
divorce.
Survivors include his wife of 32 years, Roberta Rochford Munske of
Yellow Spring, West Virginia; a daughter from his third marriage, Erica
Wileman of Bethesda, Maryland; and two grandchildren.
Washington Post
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