Artist's grave revealed

West Chester, Penn. — Christina McCawley, the serials and acquisitions librarian at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, describes herself as “an art museum junkie” who admires the works of Horace Pippin.

Pippin, who lived from 1888-1946, is not widely known outside the art world, yet his works are in major museums and private collections. Fewer still know that from the age of three he lived in a house, since remodeled, which still stands at 339 West Main St. in Goshen. Segregation was ubiquitous at the time, so Pippin attended the “colored school” on Sayer Street, which is now a private residence. He left Goshen to serve in World War I, where he served with the 369th, a distinguished black regiment. He was wounded in the right arm and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. Many years later, he was retroactively awarded the Purple Heart.

After the war he settled in West Chester, Penn., where he was born and where he is buried. He taught himself to paint again, while supporting his weak right arm with his left.

Though born and raised in Goshen, McCawley says Pippen “is considered a local artist here in West Chester because he spent his adult life here and did most of his paintings here."

McCawley said was present at a Chester County, Penn. Historical Society meeting this past winter when “Jay Fuhrman stood up and he told everybody about the problem with the grave.”

Fuhrman and his wife, Fern Denney, are both Pippin admirers. Denney, who has a graduate degree in art history and is a guide at The Philadelphia Museum of Art, recalled her original impression of Pippin's grave in a recent phone call. “Jay and I drive to West Chester, and we stopped to find Pippin’s grave. It was so overgrown with shrubs and we felt that he is such an important painter that we thought his grave being ignored is not right. So when Jay found out author Bryant was speaking at the Chester Historical Society, he went to the meeting. After the discussion of the book he got up and said, ‘You know his grave is in the small [Chester Grove Cemetery] annex and it’s a shame that it is overgrown.’”

Moved by Fuhrman’s revelation, McCawley decided to visit the grave the following spring, but was unable to find it.

She called the DeBaptiste Funeral Home, caretakers for the African-American burial ground, whose owner told her how to find the grave, which lays beneath a large shrub. She recalls how hard it was to find: "It was totally concealed, you had to physically move the branches” to see the grave marker.

Removing the obstacle
"I got an estimate from Mason’s Tree Service," McCawley remembers. "The first estimate was $2,500 — too much. Two hours later he called me back and lowered it to $1,500, and I thought, ‘Well, I’m just going to do it. I’ll find the money someplace.’” McCawley called DeBaptiste back and got permission to have the shrub removed. She later received some donations, but paid for the removal mostly out of her own pocket.

The day after the shrub was removed, McCawley stood up at her Rotary meeting and told them what she had done. “There was almost no reaction," she recalls. "I wondered if they knew who Horace Pippin was.”

Afterwards, she noted, “The historical society did send me an email and thanked me.”

Fuhrman and Denney give all the credit to McCawley. “She was there and took it up as a cause to get it cleared," Denney said. "She made phone calls. She raised the money."

“Pippin’s contemporaries always realized his work was important,” she added. “[Clearing the stone] was very much the work of one person — she just totally took it on which I think is an amazing thing.”

No historic plaque marks his Goshen home, but there is a historic marker outside St. John’s A.U.M.P. Church — where he first displayed some of his early pencil sketches. The Goshen Public Library displays some photos of his artwork and has correspondence from Pippin regarding an exhibit scheduled there but never happened because of Pippin’s death in 1946.

For more information on Pippin, see “Horace Pippin lived here” in the Feb. 5, 2011 edition of The Chronicle.