“As human beings, our real lives are our precious secret.”

From Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life by Ashley Bryan

My dear friend, writer and artist Ashley Bryan (1923–2022), nicknamed me Sheila of Oz. Soon after OZ Children’s Bookstore opened, in June 1982, one of Ashley’s Little Cranberry Island, Maine, neighbors accompanied him on the half-hour mail boat ride from his island home to Southwest Harbor. Ashley couldn’t wait to check out the new children’s bookstore in town.

“This is so wonderful!” he exclaimed upon entering OZ. The author/illustrator of more than seventy children’s books raised his long arms into the air like a preacher. His tall stature, topped by his close-cropped white hair, stood out in the field of customers.

“When would you like me to be your guest storyteller? Just let me know,” said Ashley, quickly adding, “How about next weekend?”

“Fantastic!” I replied.

“Uh-huh!” proclaimed Ashley, as he often did during our thirty-year friendship.

Ashley accompanied me to the first teacher workshop I ever presented, “Connecting History: Their Lives, Our Lives,” at the University of Maine in Orono, an hour and a half away. My presentation recommended that teachers use “real books” in their social studies classrooms. I was happy to have Ashley’s support. I was nervous. Ashley took a seat in the back of the room. As I recited “Things” from Honey, I Love by Eloise Greenfield, I tried to imitate Ashley’s cadence when he would recite the poem at library or school events around the world. When I finished, he clapped and called out, “Yay, Sheila of OZ!” He later told me whenever he took the stage in front of an audience that, “until I hold one of my books close to my heart, I’m nervous, too. Whether it’s an audience of ten or a thousand.”

Ashley’s heart became an open book whenever his thunderous voice reached out to others. I know because I felt that electricity in the air when he conducted his magic. Like in The Cat’s Purr, where Ashley retold the West Indian folktale: a bothersome cat swallowed a small drum, which was how the purr originated. Or in The Dancing Granny, when Ananse the trickster spider got Granny dancing so he could raid her garden. Or in the many other African folktales Ashley brought to life.

When he wasn’t performing at library or school events, or at national and international conferences, Ashley engaged in daily activities, as we all do. He made his favorite lunch of a grilled cheese sandwich. “I know the recipe!” He walked along his island shore to collect sea glass, humming to himself. His “inner child” remained close to the surface. He enjoyed all cookies and sweets. Island neighbors often stopped by with just-baked goodies to assist with his constant entertaining.

One of Ashley’s characteristics stood out: he exuded love, almost as an automatic response to all people he came in contact with. Black or white, young or old, Ashley seemed to treat everyone the same: with good cheer. He welcomed strangers into his Islesford home, his door opening for anyone who knocked, and greeted newcomers with, “Welcome, friend!”

First, he showed visitors his children’s museum shelves of whirligigs and wind-up wooden toys, which took up most of his downstairs living space. (One year he added an entire new room to expand the space.) “Go ahead, try them out,” he encouraged. Next, he led new friends to a small downstairs room that featured his stained-glass windows, constructed from the sea glass he gathered. Then to part of his living room, where he constructed papier-mâché puppets, also decorated with pieces of found sea glass.

As Ashley aged into his eighties, his house tour passed the dial-up telephone on a stool. “Just say no” appeared on a note attached to the phone. The idea was to limit his far and wide storytelling travels. More than once, I noticed how he waved the note away. I don’t think

Ashley had any intention of stopping.

On every visit to Ashley’s island home of fishermen and artists and summer residents, of raspberry bushes along the road, of eagles perched on tree branches — on this island that sparkled in the Atlantic — it was Ashley’s presence that revealed immeasurable joy and beauty. He reigned as the Pied Piper of Little Cranberry Island. In 1992, he swayed his year-round island community of a few hundred to vote for the Rev. Jesse Jackson in that year’s Democratic presidential primary. “Let’s get somebody different in office,” declared Ashley, “someone who cares about poor people, someone who cares about all people,” said the only Black person on the island.

Did Ashley ever constrain his emotions? I don’t think so. I wanted to be like him. I once asked, “How do you deal with so many people wanting to visit you all the time? And you’re always so cheerful!” “Well, I feel that people have given me so much love that it’s up to me to return it,” replied Ashley.

* * *

Ashley’s parents hailed from Antigua, an island in the West Indies. They settled in the Bronx, where Ashley grew up during the Depression. Always painting and drawing, but interrupted by World War II. WWII devastated Ashley. It directed the course of his life. Seeing so much suffering, he committed to creating beauty in the world.

The cargo ship on which Ashley was stationed laid anchor off the Normandy beach that was code-named Omaha in 1944. “It was when you saw bodies floating in the water that you truly understood what was happening,” wrote Ashley in his autobiography, Infinite Hope: A Black Artist’s Journey from World War II to Peace. “In my knapsack, in my gas mask, I kept paper, pens, and pencils,” he wrote. “I would draw whenever there was free time. I refused to sleep. I had to draw. It was the only way to keep my humanity.”

When Ashley returned home after WWII, he hoped to complete his college art studies at Cooper Union. “But I was so haunted and devastated by recurring images” of the tragedies he had seen, that he earned a degree in philosophy at Columbia University in 1950. “Why does man choose war?” he wondered.

Like many veterans, Ashley rarely spoke about his Army service, but after I closed OZ and returned to teaching at Mount Desert Island High School, he agreed to tell his harrowing story to one of my U.S. history classes. With my twenty high school students seated in a circle on the grass, I looked out at the ocean from Little Cranberry Island, at the incredible beauty of where we lived.

“I hear you’re studying World War II,” said Ashley to the teenage group. He explained that he had served in an all-Black Army unit. “I had tasks to do that were hard for me. Being at Normandy was the hardest. Incoming fire was so scary. I hid under overturned boats on the beach. My comrades were kind, often taking on my chores while I drew in a small notebook I carried everywhere. They calmed my nerves and helped me enormously.” His overwhelming fear became our fear, as we sat together. Tears rolled down Ashley’s face. And down ours, too.

* * *

Following his quest for beauty, following his Columbia graduation, Ashley attended a painting workshop at Maine’s Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. On a field trip up the coast, he visited Little Cranberry Island. It felt like home to Ashley, which it became — he was first a part-timer while teaching art at Dartmouth College from 1974 to 1988, then a year-rounder. He loved his island home:

“The morning sun jewels the dewdrops on the grass. Walk with me on this Maine

Island where I now live as I tell my story. Down the road is a sandy beach lined with

Boathouses. I have a sketch pad in hand.”

From Ashley Bryan: Words to My Life’s Song (2009)

* * *

The last time I visited Ashley, in 2016, he made me a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. He read his latest book aloud in manuscript form, Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life. The book was a phenomenal achievement, brought about by a slip of newspaper found in an old window casing, which a friend gave to Ashley. It announced a slave auction. That tiny slip of paper got him thinking: what if he wrote a book illuminating the humanity of enslaved people, those with individual personalities, hopes, and dreams?

What made Ashley run? I sometimes wondered. Was it faith, religion, or just being driven? He once told me it was about living a purposeful life. I’ve always remembered that. I’ve read the adage in books, but it was different when it came from Ashley, the most remarkable human being I’ve ever known.

He was so kind. He was one of a kind. I’ll never forget him, which I believe is true for anyone who ever met Ashley Bryan.

All of us must work hard on becoming who we want to be. Some fall by the wayside. Others do the work. Jumping in has been the ticket for me. I have always been too much of a thinker. A ruminator. Life’s imponderables dwelled in my head.

Once I came across a funky yard sale as I walked to Ashley’s house. Strewn across his neighbor’s lawn were vintage glasses, old photos, plastic sleds. A piece of local “Aht” (as true Mainers might say) caught my eye. I had to have it. It read: “Wake up every morning to love the world all over again. That’s what takes a real hero.”

“Ahh…that’s one of the imponderables,” Ashley said when I showed him my purchase. “I wake up every morning with imponderables.” Then he began quoting Rainer Maria Rilke:

“Life is heavier than the heaviness of all things.”

“For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so, because it serenely disdains to destroy us. Every anger is terrible.”

“I’m getting so much love,” Ashley told me in 2016, lamenting that he wasn’t giving as much in those days. He brought out the mockup of his forthcoming book, I Am Loved, which bore his illustrations of a poem by Nikki Giovanni. He was ninety-two.

“You’ve given so much of yourself over the years,” I told him. “I hope you get some rest this afternoon. I’m going to catch the ferry.”

“If you miss it, come back and rest here,” he said.

“Love you, Ashley.”

“Love you,” Sheila,” he said, as I closed the door behind me. That was the last time I saw him.

Ashley Bryan died on February 4, 2022. He was ninety-eight. I still miss him.

Ashley Bryan's birthday would have been this Sunday, July 13. For more by and about Ashley Bryan, click here.