The collection is comprised of a bound memorial service program for Graves Gladney; an issue of Illustration magazine; newspaper clippings; and a small number of letters, documents, photographs, and membership cards. Materials range in date from 1932 to 2009 with a large gap between 1977 and 2008. The twenty-seven diaries written by Graves Gladney comprise the bulk of the collection and date from January 1961 to April 1973. The first box is arranged alphabetically by topic. The diaries are arranged chronologically in the final seven boxes. An index to the diaries accompanies the finding aid. The Spring 2009 issue of Illustration magazine contains a biographical article about Graves Gladney (B1/f.2). It focuses on his years as an illustrator for pulp magazines and also discusses his personal life and war service. There are many color reproductions of his pulp illustrations and of Graves’s work throughout his life. Memorial Service for Graves Gladney was privately printed and bound in cloth (B1/f.3). The service was held on March 27, 1976. The volume includes the readings read by his children, songs, eulogies by artist Gilbert “Chic” Gordon Early and nephew John Franklin Ross, the graveside reading by Rev. Emil Wachter, a list of pallbearers, and a poem by his sister, Katch Wells (K.G.W.). There are also plates of Graves’s artwork that were displayed during the memorial service, which Chic Early described in his eulogy. The first folder in the collection contains various items. The earliest documents in the collection date from 1932 and 1941, a check and a postcard from Silex, Missouri, in relation to the estate of Frank Gladney’s sister, Emma Duwelius (d.1939). The remainder of the documents are from Graves Gladney. There are two photographs of Graves and an unidentified man marked “ROUGH PROOF,” which date circa 1940. The Illustration article explains that Graves and his artist friends in New Rochelle learned to use photography as a replacement for models when working. The photos might be examples of this practice. Other notable items include two brief letters from his uncle, James Washington Graves (1877-1957); the 1962 real estate statement for Graves’s purchase of the home at 934 Audubon Drive, a 1962 letter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch asking Graves to consider doing editorial cartoons when Bill Mauldin left the paper, and a 1965 letter addressed to Ben Wells from Bellerive Country Club announcing its acceptance of Graves’s membership proposal. The twenty-seven diaries begin in January 1961 and end in April 1973. The first twenty-six volumes hold entries from cover to cover. However, only ninety-six pages comprise Volume 27. Volumes 2 through 27 are printed journals that include page numbers; only Volume 1 does not have page numbers. Graves wrote almost daily from Volume 1 through Volume 24. By the time he started Volume 25, Graves knew that his wife Nancy read his diaries whenever he left their home. He began to write less frequently and without the same candor (Vol.25, 21 Feb 1971). Graves tucked various ephemeral items into his diaries. These were most often newspaper clippings, but there were also various notes, postcards, letters, receipts, business cards, shoot scorecards, and a few photographs. There are photostatic copies of two checks for over $2 million received by Graves when he sold 50,000 shares of 7-Up common stock on two separate occasions (Vol. 24, 26) The loose items were removed from the volumes, volume and page number notations added to each item, and items were placed in chronological order into two folders. Notes are included on the inventory that match the volumes to the folders with the corresponding removed items. Graves documented every facet of his life in his diaries. He wrote his frank and honest opinions about family, friends, acquaintances, and business associates. Graves discussed his relationships and reminisced about a multitude of topics from the past, about growing up in St. Louis and about the changes in the city since his youth. He shared his opinions on many subjects including politics, civil rights, and contemporary news stories. He also used his diaries as a log for daily activities; for recording his financial and business investments; and for keeping details concerning his shooting hobby, his firearms, and his quest for the perfect golf swing. Graves was candid about his sexual desires and habits, past and present. He was not faithful to any of his wives. Many of Graves’s recollections throughout all twenty-seven diaries included detailed descriptions of marital relations and trysts with paramours in high school, in college, in Europe while studying art, and with mistresses in New Rochelle and St. Louis, including a weekend trip in November 1968 (Vol.20, 19 Nov). Graves included one lengthy entry concerning his experiences with homosexual men. The earliest was abuse by a teamster near his Garfield Avenue home and North Market Street in St. Louis when he was a young boy. Other encounters involved Fred Conway, an Amherst college classmate, and a military man (Vol.20, 13 Oct 1968). The diaries that Graves kept when he was in Europe, he burned, deciding they were too blunt (Vol.8, 11 Oct 1963). He did not write between 1935 and 1961. Graves read The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell and often mentioned these as an influence upon writing his later diaries. He read often, and several times he mentioned his dislike of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. About the contents of his later diaries, Graves wrote, “I am in no wise disturbed at the idea that someday, sometime, my children or grandchildren may read my own words” (Vol.2, p.108). In the front cover of Volume 18, Graves described his diaries as “The continued factual account of my life – Graves Gladney, simple, even crude, but TRUE.” Throughout the volumes, Graves sporadically recalled his service in the Second World War. He provided details about landing in a Horsa glider in France on D-Day and immediate subsequent events. Graves described the glider landing in Norway and mentioned the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge. However, he did not provide any details of his missions after these key events. In late March 1966, Graves visited his friend Renee Marcou, also a WWII veteran, in Paris. They traveled to Ste. Mere Eglise and visited its Airborne Museum, the Normandy American Cemetery over Omaha Beach, the field in which he landed, and the farmhouse where he asked for directions in 1944 (Vol.14). [See index for more WWII entries.] Graves began his diaries during a trip to Boston to see his son, Frankie, in January 1961. In April, he resigned as an instructor at Washington University’s School of Art. He was disgusted with academic politics and with the growing emphasis his colleagues and the St. Louis art community put on modern art, ignoring the fundamentals essential for an artist. Graves wrote his very honest, negative opinions about the university, the School of Art specifically, and its dean, Ken Hudson. This intense dislike for the School of Art and for modern art in general recurred throughout the volumes and impacted his own painting, of which he did very little between 1965 and 1973. Graves also expressed his opinions of various instructors such as Sigfreid Reinhardt and Werner Drewes. In 1963, he lamented, “Since I came back to St. Louis in 1949, I have met no single person associated with painting who is even self respecting or moderately honest and/or sincere” (Vol.8, Nov 16). While Fred Conway was a longtime friend, Graves was often ruthless in his assessment of Conway’s art and character. The two men lunched together often from 1961 to 1964, until Fred married his third wife. Graves discussed the breakup of Fred’s second marriage in detail, as he was Fred’s confidant at the time. He felt that Fred was a successful self-promotor, and Graves distanced himself from St. Louis’s art world, disgusted by what he perceived as its disregard for the quality of work. The men had little contact until Fred’s cancer diagnosis in 1971, then Graves visited with Fred often. In April 1972, they drove to the University of New Hampshire for a weekend coordinated by Graves’s niece, Katie Wells, and her husband, who was on the faculty. When Graves started the diaries, his father, Frank Y. Gladney, was very ill. He recorded his own grief and the steps taken to settle his father’s estate and its worth. Graves and his brother-in-law, Ben Wells, were appointed executors of the estate, but both sisters were very involved in decision-making. Frank Gladney had accumulated a vast and diversified portfolio in addition to cash reserves and his 7-Up stock, which in 1961 was not being publicly traded. Warren Maichel and Bill Ward helped the family settle the estate, and Graves sought their advice in his own later financial and business affairs. The estate’s affairs were not finalized until July 1964 with more than $1 million paid in taxes. (See Vol.2, Nov. 9, 1961; Vol.10, July 21, 1964.) Graves asked his father questions about their family and his early life, some of which he recorded in his first diary. Soon after Frank Gladney’s death, Graves started reading the journals his father had written for many years (Vol.2, 8 Nov 1961). He recounted several events mentioned in his father’s diaries, such as the lawsuit against General Electric and the births of his sisters. Graves often expressed the high esteem in which he held his father. On December 1, 1964, Graves recorded that Katch took the diaries to have them “copied photostatically,” but he did not mention receiving either a copy or the originals (Vol.11, 1 Dec 1964). Graves had few medical ailments and often remarked upon how much he valued his health and enjoyed being physically active. Gout in his feet was a recuring problem. On one occasion in April 1964, Graves had inflammation in his elbow and was hospitalized while doctors determined the diagnosis was once again gout. While in the hospital, he had a visit from a former mistress, Annabelle Tiffin. Graves enjoyed excellent food and drink, both of which contributed to gout, so he often mentioned his desire for restraint in his diet and drinking. Wives were a constant theme in the diaries. Graves discussed the various issues he had with his three wives. In several entries, he recalled the early years with Janka and explained his abhorrence to her devotion to the Roman Catholic faith. About organized religion he wrote, “True charity and tolerance are rarely found in churches, which are businesses without the open frankness of real enterprises” (Vol.22, 4 Jan 1970.) However, he continued to help Janka financially, paying for car repairs, home repairs, and even contributing to food expenses incurred when the children and grandchildren visited. Graves explained how and why he became involved with his last two wives, first Ruth Jenkins Proffitt and then Nancy Meeks. [See index.] Due to the acrimony in his marriage to Nancy, Graves used his diaries to process his reactions to what he saw as her indiscriminate outbursts of anger at him and their children. He did not have a favorable view on the institution of marriage and expressed the sentiment often. The intense arguments with Nancy, particularly about his traveling, left him regretful, feeling that they wasted time fighting when they should have been enjoying their wealth. The quarrels became more frequent the longer they were married, and therefore consumed more of Graves’s thoughts in his diaries. On two occasions in 1972, he inquired about the financial ramifications of divorce and looked for apartments to rent (Vol.26: 24 Feb, 15 Nov). The three Gladney siblings seemed to have an average relationship with ups and downs. Both Katch and Lucianna became irritated with Graves during their father’s illness (Vol.1, 3 July 1961). Katch threatened to have Graves blackballed when he first inquired about becoming a member of Bellerive Country Club in 1962 (Vol.2, 5 Mar). However, by June 1965, Ben and Katch Wells helped Graves become a member at Bellerive (Vol.12, B1/f.1) where he took part in musical revues written by Katch (Vol.14, 26 Feb). Being closer in age and having younger children at the Community School, Graves talked more often with Lucianna and tried to support her through her divorce. The relationship between Graves and his older children was very different from that with his younger children. He adored Hope and Andy and delighted in watching them grow, recording many of their milestones. They were Graves’s primary concern when he contemplated divorce from Nancy. When the children were very young, he purchased cameras for photography and for home movies and an audiotape recorder. In 1973, when the diaries ended, Hope and Andy were 12 and 10, respectively. Graves lamented not having a closer relationship with his oldest daughters, Duska Nihonek and Nacia Kekeisen. He admitted in his diaries that while they were young, he was working to support the family and left the children’s care to Janka. Graves often blamed Janka and the Roman Catholic influence for their life choices and circumstances. Duska had seven children. Nacia had five children but had had several losses, including twins in 1962 (Vol.4, 17 Apr). It was also clear that his divorce and third marriage caused tension with his daughters. Graves reported that Nacia and Duska did not explain his divorce and new family to their children until 1965, when his grandchildren met Hope and Andy for the first time (Vol.13, 26 Nov). On several occasions, he bought new cars for his daughters, took them shopping for birthday and Christmas gifts, and gave them money. In 1971, he bought houses for Duska and Frank. When Janka retired and moved in with Nacia’s family, Graves financed an addition to Nacia’s home. The Graves Gladneys spent a lot of time with the Frank Gladneys. Frankie, as Graves referred to his oldest son, visited St. Louis often, both on his own and with his wife and children. Graves spent more time with Frankie than he did with his other older children. In June 1968, the two families vacationed together in New York. Graves proudly supported Frankie’s post-graduate trips abroad. He mentioned several times his relief that Frankie had forged his own path, free of his mother’s religious influence. The Meeks family, which included Nancy’s mother (“Mrs. Meeks”), brothers, and sister, is also mentioned often in the diaries. The Gladney’s spent most holidays with them. Graves consistently referred to Nancy’s sister, Emma Jane Ross, as “Imogene” throughout the volumes. Nancy was the oldest of her siblings, and she and Graves often supported them by buying cars and paying various bills, such as school tuition. When the Gladneys moved from 934 Audubon Drive to 10 Brentmoor Park in late 1972, they let the Bob Meeks family live in the home they vacated. Tommy Meeks spent the most time with the Gladneys, often babysitting. John Meeks was in jail for unspecified reasons, and Graves recorded some of his other indiscretions. Graves rarely mentioned Jim Meeks but remarked upon an October 1966 visit that Jim was recovering from injuries received while riding in an elevator that fell in a downtown St. Louis building. Another frequent visitor to the Gladney home was Vinnie Boisaubin, Graves’s childhood friend. Graves explained that Vinnie returned to St. Louis when he lost his job as a pilot; he had been a pilot in WWII. Vinnie often spent evenings with the Gladneys watching television or helping Graves load ammunition. Local businesses often benefitted from Graves’s loyalty as a customer. He mentioned trips to Bill Eirls’s jewelry business downtown and to Goodman’s, where he purchased many firearms. He also frequented Doubleday bookstore and purchased furs for Nancy at Leppert Roos Fur Company. Graves dined out often for lunch and dinner at places such as the Schniethorst’s, the Three Fountains in Gaslight Square, Lombardos, the Gatesworth, and various clubs around town, particularly Bellerive Country Club and the St. Louis Club. Graves became a member of the St. Louis Club in the Pierre Laclede Building in Clayton in April 1968. He and Nancy dined there often and also hosted dinner parties at the club. Graves and Nancy dined with friends on two occasions at the Playboy Club, a venue he did not like. Graves enjoyed buying and driving the latest models of automobiles and motorcycles. He patronized several local dealers over a twelve-year period and drove an Aston Martin, Jaguars, Porsches, Buicks, Fords, Cadillacs, Chryslers, and Plymouths, and he purchased a Rolls Royce for Nancy from Gruet Motor Car Company. In July 1967, Graves loaned money to Tom Patterson of the Patterson Service Company. This was where he purchased motorcycles and financed the customization of two motorcycles for drag racing in May and June 1967. Graves remained invested in Patterson Service Company as the business sold various motorcycles, dune buggy kits (Meyers Manx), Volvos, and Subaru cars. Graves, Lucianna, and Katch continued with their father’s oil investments and formed their own corporation for that purpose. He also invested in oil on his own. Graves wished to avoid paying large sums in income tax and invested regularly in Treasury bills. He also purchased a variety of certificates of deposits from three area banks and kept these, along with the Treasury bills and cash in large bills, in his safety deposit boxes. When 7-Up stock started trading at $50 per share, Graves decided to liquidate a small fraction of his stock so he might increase the diversification of his investments, much to the chagrin of company president Ben Wells. On two occasions, January 1971 and June 1972, he sold over $4 million worth of stock through A.G. Edwards Company. As a wealthy man, Graves was approached by several people looking for financial assistance or was given the opportunity to invest in various business ventures. He considered investing in plans to open new gun clubs. His shooting friend from Texas, Larry Gravestock, was a gunsmith with a shop in Wichita Falls. Graves loaned him money but eventually realized he would not see it returned. His sons-in-law, Bill Nohinek and Jim Kekeisen, wished to open a Ramada Inn franchise, which Graves backed initially. He decided that without a firm business plan, the venture was too costly and risky to support. Another opportunity came from his architect, Ted Christner, to invest in condominiums being built in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. This investment, like the Patterson Service Company deal, was taken to attorney Warren Maichel, who drew up legal papers with safeguards put in place to protect Graves monetarily. The partnership was officially known as the Routt Development Corporation. Graves extensively discussed two hobbies throughout the diaries: golf and shooting. With golf, he practiced his swing but did not play often. After Graves became a member of Bellerive Country Club, he played more often, but most spring and summer days found him at the practice tees. He recorded details in his diaries about techniques that he employed in his search for the perfect swing and the golf pros who helped him. Graves did not travel to play golf like he did with shooting and hunting. Also at Bellerive, Graves began to play bridge recreationally. It took some time for him to be invited to play with a core group of bridge players, which included, among others, A.B. Lansing, Charley McAlpin, and Art Feuerbacher. The men were all older than Graves, and he often felt singled out for scrutiny and quit playing on several occasions. He finally quit the daily game, which also caused friction with Nancy at home, in June 1971. Most of Graves’ travel took him to trapshooting and pigeon shooting events in Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Nevada via car and plane. During this time, the interstate system was still under construction, and Graves often commented on the changes it brought to auto travel. He also traveled to Canada, Texas, and Oregon for hunting, but he hunted much less frequently than he attended shooting competitions. In 1970, he paid for an African safari but did not go due to marital disagreements. At shooting competitions Graves became acquainted with highly ranked shooters such as Gene Sears, Larry Gravestock, and Randy Hapgood. Gravestock and Hapgood both visited Graves in St. Louis. The events in Texas and Nevada attracted other well-known people such as Eric Hilton, son of Conrad Hilton, and Buck Blaine, owner of the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas. Graves wrote about his performances in the competitions, gambling, social activities that took place around the events, and the people he met. Graves saved items relating to his shooting activities such as entry cards, membership cards, a hunting riddle/problem, and Jennings Gun Club correspondence (B1/f.5). A check stub from Harold’s Trapshooting Club in Reno shows Graves’s winnings in November 1967. He also carried a Sahara Gun Club membership card for events sponsored by the Hotel Sahara. For a time, Graves enjoyed gambling and drinking at the Jennings Gun Club, but this soon caused strife for him at home, and the drinking was frowned upon by many club members (Vol.7, 25 Apr 1963). Firearms were of great interest to Graves. In his diaries, he recorded what types of ammunition he loaded for shooting and the customizations he had done by gunsmiths in the St. Louis area, which included Richard Buel, Bill Muenz, and Hunt Turner. He also shipped guns for customization. Graves often noted the value of some of his firearms. In 1973, he inventoried his firearms (pistols, revolvers, files, shotguns) with serial numbers (B1/f.5). Prominent national events on which Graves commented in his diaries include the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. He saved the front pages of both the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reporting the Kennedy assassination (Vol.8). He also discussed the shooting of George Wallace. These events also called for gun control legislation, which Graves opposed. He mentioned many other contemporary news stories relating to crime, local and national; his thoughts on Vietnam and its effect on the U.S. economy; student war protests; and presidential elections and his opinions of politicians. Graves also reported on sporting events such as the Clay-Liston fight and football, college and professional. The Gladneys had St. Louis Cardinals box seats in 1968 when the team reached the World Series and saved three ticket stubs (B1/f.1). Given the diaries span from 1961 to 1973, civil rights and segregation was a topic often mentioned as national news stories. Graves was cognizant of the limitations placed on freedom for African Americans but was generally put off by demonstrations and riots. He did not approve of discrimination in St. Louis, feeling safe in the thought that his city was a better place than other cities in the South (Vol.7, 17 June 1963; Vol.8, 9 Oct 1964.) Graves mentioned only one or two African American friends. He and Nancy invited Bogie, a waiter from the Schneithorst, and his wife Katherine to their home for drinks (Vol.8, 7 Oct). On three separate occasions, Graves mentioned meeting Mary Hullaby; however, it is unclear how the two became acquainted. In 1963, he explained, “Her problem is acute since she tends to be only partially accepted by whites and her own negro race” (Vol.7, 17 June.) The next year, he ran into Mary downtown and invited her to lunch and had “some inner misgivings because any trouble being served would have been embarrassing to all but no such trouble arose” (Vol.8, 9 Jan). By this time, Mary had left St. Louis and worked in Mexico City. Space exploration was another topic in the news during this time. Graves often mentioned the latest missions as reported on television, radio, and newspapers. In 1969, he observed, “30 odd years ago I illustrated Science-Fiction stories dealing with various trips out of this world, but I never actually believed them possible” (Vol.21, 24 July). On May 15, 1970, Harry Imster, a thermodynamicist who designed heat shields for early space craft, arranged a tour of the McDonnell Douglas space center for Graves (Vol.23). Occasionally, Graves reminisced about his time in New Rochelle and the people he knew there. He rarely spoke to friends from that time, such as Emery Clarke and John Falter. Graves routinely sent money to Margaret Buell Wilder in California, with whom he had had an affair when they both lived in New York. In 1943, her book, Since You Went Away: Letters to a Soldier from His Wife, was published, and she wrote the screenplay for the movie Since You Went Away , which was nominated for Best Picture in 1944. By the 1960s, Wilder had fallen on hard times, and Graves invited to her to St. Louis on two occasions. Graves lamented her liberal views on society as his own views were quite the opposite. In 1972, Graves briefly discussed his appearance at the first Pulpcon, a convention celebrating the pulp fiction genre. It was held at the Colonial Motor Hotel in Clayton, Missouri. Ed Kessel coordinated the convention and visited Graves, who was not very interested. Nils Hardin sold original magazines to Graves that bore his cover illustrations. Ernest and Teddy Trova brought people interested in pulp fiction art to Graves’s home to view his paintings and to speak with him on three occasions. Volumes 10 and 21 contain ink sketches inside the front covers. There are nude ink sketches on the front cover of Volume 15.