Brubaker

Ralph Maxwell, who was in the Army Air Force with my grandfather Amos Brubaker, wrote up his recollection of how he came to own the Brubaker painting “Dancing Figure”


On a delightful Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1945, I was happily basking in the sun on the Santa Monica beach. Next to me was Jenny. She was a young, glamorous blonde who worked as a civilian secretary at the 1030th AAFBU where your granddad and I were stationed.

Jenny was from Ohio. She had won a local beauty contest back there, and as was inevitable, she was showered with congratulations and suggestions that she should go to Hollywood and become a movie star. The idea appealed to her and she headed west.

The problem, she soon learned, was that Los Angeles was flooded with attractive young women who had come there with the same goal. And like practically all of them, even though Jenny had exceptional personal attributes, she had no acting background or any insider film-industry contacts. Her dreams of stardom soon faded, and facing up to reality, she settled for a job with the Air Force, where I got to know her.

We weren’t exactly on a date. The previous day I had suggested that we meet on the beach in front of the Grand Hotel to “soak up a few rays”.

Well, anyhow, there we were reclining side by side on the sand – me a dumb, skinny, buck sergeant from North Dakota, and she a pulchritudinous beauty queen. I was in seventh heaven.

Then an acquaintance of mine suddenly strides up and says to me, “Did you hear about Brubaker?”

I said, “No, what about him?”

He said, “He’s in the city jail.”

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