Photography by Ira Gardner: Goodbye Verlane

The words appeared on my computer screen Monday afternoon, "I am sorry to inform you that Verlane Desgrange passed away last night from a chemotherapy induced coma. She was recently diagnosed with widespread cancer. "

You don't expect to see this sort of news during a busy work day. I quickly moved on to to the pressing task at hand, the next student at my office door, and ultimately the next conversation with my boss Amy dealing with a budget issue.

As I was preparing to say "talk to you later..." Amy asked me "did you see my email about Verlane?" I realized I hadn't let it sink in. I had brushed it asside and zeroed in on all the items that had to be done. I get so many spam and memo emails every day that I often skip over emails that I think can wait for a response in favor of ones that I can supply a short and prompt reply, whether it is telling a student to feel better and try to make my next class, or requesting approval for a purchase request. Amy's question about seeing the email about Verlane's death hit me in the gut. I hadn't let it sink in because there wasn't really a response possible via email. Verlane isn't receiving them any more.

I really liked Verlane. I was honored to be the department chair of Applied Visual Arts and to represent her Saddlemaking program until her departure when the program was closed in 2004. I made this portrait of Verlane in her office to mark her tenure with us. It hangs in our Division break room.

Verlane was a kind and gentle soul. She had the perfect cowboy accent that was a combination of her blond hair, blue-eyed Daytona Beach Florida childhood drawl and rugged and practical Wyoming adulthood. She drove a pickup truck large enough (and noisy enough) to pull a team of horses.

She drove back and forth to Wyoming frequently. Although she lived in Spokane when I knew her, she continued to maintain her house in Wyoming. By her description it sounded like paradise, a little farm house in the middle of nowhere without indoor plumbing or any of the other modern conveniences that could distract her from working in the barn on her leather. Verlane was a master craftsman, a visual artist who sculpted with leather.

She loved photography and would often have an old Nikon F in hand when she was driving around our country side. Since I teach photography we had instant rapport. On more than one Monday morning I would receive an email with her invitation to see her latest photographs. She also loved to photograph the saddles students made in her program. Before she left Spokane she acquired her first digital camera and often the emails would contain jpegs of amazing sunsets or rivers for me to look at.

Verlane was strong yet gentle in the face of a class of men who feared she would be trying to teach them all to ride side saddle. She encountered a lot of resistence from her students at first, much like I imagine most women did in the old west. By the end of her first year at SFCC all the burly cowboys who came from all over the region to study saddlemaking learned to respect her every word and to appreciate English Saddle alongside the venerable western saddle. Who could resist her combination of smile and skill.

To me, Verlane fit with the image of the cowboy living a life of freedom on the range. Although disappointed in the closure of her program, she exuded the confidence of a craftsman who knew she could settle down anywhere and make a living. Have hat and saddle, will travel was essentially her motto. The value of her skills was obvious.

After I got off the phone with Amy, I thought about Verlane and all of the conversations we had in the parking lot, often with me having to extract myself because I was always in a hurry as compared to her soft spoken deliberate pace. We always left at, "we'll get together again soon."

I drove over to my parents house to pick up my son after work Monday. I just happened to be borrowing my father's big ol' Suburban because my little car couldn't navigate the roads after the weekend snowstorm that had hit us. As I heard the CD playing my dad's favorite country music, I found myself thinking of Verlane. It was as if I was celebrating my own private memorial with her. It was perfect. Snow was on the ground, the truck engine was loud, and John Denver was singing:

He was born in the summer of his 27th year Comin' home to a place he'd never been before He left yesterday behind him, you might say he was born again You might say he found a key for every door When he first came to the mountains his life was far away On the road and hangin' by a song But the string's already broken and he doesn't really care It keeps changin' fast and it don't last for long But the Colorado rocky mountain high I've seen it rainin' fire in the sky The shadow from the starlight is softer than a lullabye Rocky mountain high He climbed cathedral mountains, he saw silver clouds below He saw everything as far as you can see And they say that he got crazy once and he tried to touch the sun And he lost a friend but kept his memory Now he walks in quiet solitude the forest and the streams Seeking grace in every step he takes His sight has turned inside himself to try and understand The serenity of a clear blue mountain lake

And the Colorado rocky mountain high I've seen it rainin' fire in the sky You can talk to God and listen to the casual reply Rocky mountain high

I imagined Verlane as this Florida beach girl who fell in love with the mountains and a way of life. I waited for the song to end before I entered my parents house. My son ran to me with a hug and asked me how my day was. I told him it was a busy day and a sad one. A friend had died. My father, ever the romantic gaelic, pulled out a bottle of Tillamore Dew and with my mother we shared a wee toast "To Auld Lang Syne..."

Goodbye Verlane, I'm sure we'll "get together soon..."