During the summer of 1976, some recent graduated of the College of Architecture at UK asked me to drive to Louisville and show then my latest my latest projects. The event easy to take place at Nanine Hilliard’s house. Nanine was an environmentalist, photographer and lecturer on how people respond to their built environment. She had been married for thirty-five years to Grady Clay, an urbanist who published Landscape, a journal on city planning. They had been discovered for a couple of years. Nanine was born to upscale parents. Her mother’s grandfather was Theodore Irwin, who owned a good portion o the Erie Canal and collected original books and manuscripts. His son was educated as a doctor, with a liking for fine living and cars of his era rather than doctoring, he moved to Pasedena, California and commissioned Arts and Crafts masters Greene and Greene to build a new house in Pasedena around an existing earlier design for clients named Duncan. This created the Duncan- Irwin House which must be included in any selection of the Greene brothers’ best work.

Nanine was the only democrat in her family. She had attended Vasser in thr mid thirties and while on a student exchange program she saw Hitler in ’36 while in Vienna.She asked the family hosting her, about the negatives of Hitler. The father put his hand to his throat and drew it across to imply that he dared not criticize Hitler. I was taken back by her story of her parents, who like many Americans, were unaware of the nearing explosion of Hitler on Europe.

Back to my presentation at her house in Louisville. The house was a white painted frame house, rather nondescript, but sited at the top of along sloping property with lawns and a pond surrounded by trees at the bottom, an inviting environment in which to raise her three boys. I was beginning a book, Building to Last, which called for building plazas and historic cores as zoned historic works of public art to reclaim craftsmanship and citizen participation. While discussing my ideas and drawings, Nanine challenged most every point. I had just been divorced and later on the lawn, it was obvious that she wanted to socialize and we began to see each other. After her divorce Nanine had traveled to Egypt to study the work of the noted architect, Hassan Fathy. Fathy advocated a regional housing type using traditional construction and in layout, time tested social arrangements. Nanine had also spent months living in a tent subject to flash floods in New Mexico where she did the cooking for Peter Van Dresser and his small group of environmentalists. Early in our relationship, she talked about Prince Kropotkin and Anarchism. Nanine’s ideal of community was the smallest group with the least constraints as possible. In Berkely, she volunteered on beautification committees and worked weekly in The Native Plant Garden in Tilden Park.

Nanine had many interesting friends. With my friends we had an active social life. I think Nanine had social genius. She was always lively, intelligently conversational and always looked forward to gatherings. She washed all the dishes while I did the cooking. Nanine was a student of childhood behavior and had given lectures on children’s environments. Before I met her, my friends, Bob and Toby Bowlby, had heard her lecture and had been impressed. She was an advocate of adventure playgrounds which she had observed in England. There was one such playground in Berkeley where children were presented with material to improvise toys and constructions of their own making. On anticipating a dinner guest who was bringing in a toddler, Nanine strung about seven plastic milk containers on a cord. The tot gamboled about the garden decks pulling the containers noisily behind him while the adults conversed uninterrupted behind a sliding glass door. I include this anecdote to point out her approach to problem solving.

During her career as a photographer she photographed Anna Halprin’s dancers at work during the nudity phenomenon in the sixties and did an original series of photographed flames. I think she could have made a career in photography but after setting up a dark room in our Berkeley house she switched to gardening. Nanine helped me edit the book I had started when we first met. On principle she charged me ten dollars an hour for working on it. Nanine has always supported my projects in art and architecture and came up with the title of my book Painting the Mental Continuum. Nanine was also a friend and classmate of Sylvia Mcglaughlin, nationally known environmentalist who worked tirelessly to save San Francisco Bay and to establish parks. In her nineties Sylvia was photographed sitting in a tree on the UC campus as part of a protest over the University plan to cut down trees to build an addition to the stadium.

Nanine and I had, what in my opinion, was a great marriage. Lots of fun and travel. We each had our own projects. For about eleven years Nanine worked on a family history project organizing thousands of family letters dating back before the civil War. We had a number of visits from Nanine’s sister in law, Joy Hilliard. Joy was a sportswoman who had lost her husband Ted, in a climbing accident at age 47. He was attempting to assist a fellow climber in trouble when they both fell to their death. Ted and Joy were environmentalists and there is a large room in Denver Library by Micheal Graves dedicated to Ted. I found much to criticize about Graves “postmodern” design but I did admire his reasonable and elegant armchairs in Ted’s dedicated room.

Nanine was thirteen years older than I. Her Mother lived to ninety-five. At eighty-five Nanine had a stroke which handicapped her walking and left her short-term memory of about 10 minutes. We still had good times. We went to movies allowing an extra twenty minutes each way to navigate into the car and theatre. We read many good books together. Nanine had a massive brain hemorrhage on May 1, 2005 and passed the following day without gaining consciousness at eighty-eight. I particularly keep up with her son, Ted and his wife, Colleen and their boys David and Paul.