William Conrad Lewis Weinraub – 50th Reunion Essay

William Conrad Lewis Weinraub

Date of Death: 24-Jan-1997

College: Timothy Dwight

From his widow, Anita:

After graduation, Bill took a job as an apprentice blacksmith at Mystic Seaport (it was the sixties after all). An MME at U Mass Amherst followed, then a 3-year stint with Bell Labs in Atlanta doing fiber optic cable research. Unhappy with being a miniscule cog in a huge corporate machine, Bill (and I) struck out on our own and became real estate investors (read: landlords) with many single family homes. At the same time, he pursued a long-standing interest in photography, ultimately specializing in textile photography and completing the photography for two of my books on the history of quilting in Georgia. The week after his 49th  birthday, Bill suffered a fatal heart attack and our daughter’s (then just six years old) and my lives changed forever.

I think Bill would agree that his greatest accomplishment/legacy is our daughter Stephanie. From the minute she was born he was a devoted, loving and completely involved dad. More than anything, my heart breaks that she was not able to grow up with him, and every life event is wrenchingly bittersweet because of his absence. How proud he would have been to see her thrive at Yale (ES ’12), involving herself in a cappella and oh so much else as Yalies are wont to (over)do. A year as a costumed interpreter at Coggeshall Farm in Bristol, RI followed graduation (sensing a generational pattern?), then off to Scotland on a Fulbright. Earning two master’s degrees there, his little Steffi now has a job in her field (architectural conservation) with Historic Scotland and is newly married. How proud, indeed, he would be, and how greatly missed he is.

And his daughter, Steffi:

The memories I have of my dad are happy, but they’re also two-dimensional, the fondness of a very small child for an indulgent and fun parent. But as I grow up I realize how I miss knowing him as one adult to another. I find I have to glimpse him sideways, through other people’s lenses – their recollections, no matter how trivial, add to my collection of details that I hoard like treasures, tiny pieces of a much larger jigsaw. I look at photographs of him and try and figure out what’s going on behind his eyes. Frustratingly, he is frequently wearing sunglasses, or looking away. In every home movie, he is the camera man, always out of sight. Besides scientific publications, the only words I have of his are the annual Christmas letters he used to write, which show the wicked wit of a man who could casually and unpretentiously quote Chaucer in a paragraph about home refurb.

Aspects of my personality go chasing after his. He loved Tolkien, and The Hobbit was the first novel I ever read – at five, with his help – and so I too am a passionate LOTR buff. I’ve tried learning to play his Gibson guitar, but my fingers will always be just a little too small. Now I proudly shoot on a Nikon, just like him. After Yale he ran off to Mystic to work as a costumed living history interpreter, and after Yale I ran just a little further – to Rhode Island – to do the same. After doing my Yale degree in Medieval Lit, and then moving to Scotland to pursue medieval history, I found an article about him from the 70s that mentions medieval craft skills as one of his main interests – I’d never even known.

These details are tantalizing glimpses, but they’re also infuriatingly trivial and don’t come close to making up the picture of a man; it’s tempting to extrapolate too much from such data. But the picture I build is of someone who could truly call himself a Yale man – whether he would have described himself thus or not – a passionate, insightful person with manifold and diverse interests that he pursued to proficiency. And, like all Yalies, just a touch of the good type of madness.

——-

(This memorial was published in the New York Times on January 26, 1997)

Weinraub, William C. L. Age 49, of Norcross, Georgia. Beloved husband of Anita Z. Devoted father of Stephanie and brother of Jerome. Graduate of Horace Mann School, Yale University, University of Massachusetts, he was an accomplished businessman, craftsman, musician, and raconteur. His passing leaves a void in all our lives.

From Douglas Leonard:

Billie Weinraub was a gifted, deep thinking, firmly-grounded old soul whom I was privileged to experience as a roommate, hallmate, good friend, and best man. He had a sharp wit and the ability to effortlessly pontificate on a wide range of concerns, from physics to snobbery to the music of Blind Willie Johnson. He loved his collection of traditional blues records but also was in the vanguard cranking up Jimi Hendrix and Cream very loud on his powerful stereo system. He profoundly distrusted authority and was a staunch war opponent.

His daughter remarks that, in photos, Billie often is glancing to the side. This was typical of Billie when pondering how to tell the truth without being misunderstood, discomforting other people (unless he intended to), or compromising his sure understanding about the order of things. He knew what was important and, above all, valued honesty and expected and demanded it in his person-to-person interactions.

Billie was a true friend and comrade and is still missed.

From Amazon.com books: Georgia Quilts by Anita Zaleski Weinraub, William C. L. Weinraub. Paperback Book, 300 pages

“This abundantly illustrated volume arises out of the painstaking work of the Georgia Quilt Project, the most authoritative survey of quilts and quiltmakers ever undertaken in the state. Georgia Quilts showcases the diversity of quilting materials, methods, and patterns used in the state from the nineteenth century to the present and reveals how quilts serve as conduits of history and culture. From plain bed coverings of fabric scraps to exquisitely wrought pieces made for the “best bed,” each of the 120 examples featured in the book tells its own story of abundance or want, peace or war, tradition or novelty. Instead of the usual chronological approach taken by many quilt histories, Georgia Quilts looks at a number of themes through which the common story of the state, its people, and its quilting legacy can be told. Chapters follow various threads of the craft, including Civil War-era quilts, the cotton economy, quilting groups, feed sack quilts, everyday and fine-craft quilts, and special-occasion quilts, including those made as gifts to honor athletes at the 1996 Olympic Games.

“The volume’s contributors have a deep knowledge of, and strong personal ties to, quilt history and quiltmaking in Georgia. The Georgia Quilt Project, beginning in 1990, has documented more than 9,000 quilts. Volunteers conducted dozens of Quilt History Days around the state, interviewing quilt owners and examining and photographing their quilts. The 120 quilts included in this book have been chosen from the thousands seen by the Project. Some are notable for their beauty, rarity, or workmanship; others are simple, functional objects that have been cherished for their ties to family history. All have their own stories to tell about family, community, and the desire to leave something tangible behind.”