Ansel Adams

by Mary Street Alinder

  An expanding list of ailments had been besieging Ansel for years, with accelerating frequency. While he was still in his twenties, his teeth plagued him so much, the pain especially severe on freezing High Sierra nights, that he had them all pulled. He was afflicted with arthritis and gout. His prostate had been removed, a hernia had been repaired, and his heart had a new valve and a triple coronary bypass. As a long-lasting side effect of the surgery, he suffered from vertigo.

  Most proud that his new heart valve was of direct porcine descent, Ansel occasionally allowed this new body part to announce itself with a brotherly hoglike snort, which sometimes proved quite startling to those unfamiliar with his love of a good joke.

  Undoubtedly my biggest failing as far as Ansel was concerned, even bigger than my inability to see the green flash, was my mental density when it came to jokes. Ansel had certain friends whom he would ring up almost daily to regale with his latest story and to coax a new one from. Since I was almost always with him, I was his closest audience. As with the green flash, he never gave up on me, but too many times, I just didn’t get it. Even worse, I could never remember or retell a joke told to me so AA (as we called Ansel) could add it to his repertoire.

  The one joke that he probably told more times than any other—including to President Ford’s wife, Betty—I wrote down one night so that I wouldn’t forget it. Props and sound effects were added bonuses when Ansel told a joke. At the end of dinner, Ansel took his napkin and plopped it on his head like a doily on the crown of a sweet old lady. Setting the stage, he explained that a hen had just fled across the yard, pursued by a randy rooster. Ansel then went into character and commenced rocking, his hands miming knitting motions. With just slightly crossed eyes, his first old woman exclaimed, “Dearie me, would you look at that!” A second old lady (who looked just like the first) responded, “Oh, my!” Our narrator returned to relate frantically that the hen, in her terror, had fled across the highway, been hit by a truck, and was now reduced to drumsticks. Rocking and knitting again, Ansel coyly demurred, “See? She’d rather die!” No matter how many times he told this joke, it always made him bellow with laughter, and everyone else, too. His great enjoyment was infectious.

  In September 1981, Ansel had an angiogram, one of the many tests he readily submitted himself to each year. This time it showed partial blockage in the arteries that had been operated on in 1979, although it was not yet serious enough to require them to be either replaced or reamed out. Perhaps because I am a registered nurse, all of Ansel’s physicians were unfailingly kind about including me in every consult, exam, and test. It reassured Ansel to have me with him; for the angiogram I even donned sterile clothing and accompanied him into surgery.

  Each year we seemed to spend more time in the hospital, but work always continued. We established a regular routine, and in fact, I chided him that the only time I could get him to work on the autobiography was when he was confined to bed. A portion of the book was written within the walls of the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, where Ansel was cared for by a bevy of top-notch doctors and spoiled by the nurses. He was extraordinarily lucky to have such a great hospital close by. Designed by Edward Durrell Stone, it is a model of patient-centered care, with each room graced by a balcony overlooking the forest and a huge fish pond at the hospital’s center. Ansel even enjoyed the food there, especially the lemon meringue pie.

  Ansel intended to live as long and as well as he could. In 1981, on the advice of Senator Alan Cranston, he embarked on an anti-aging program that prescribed large amounts of beta-carotene and vitamin E to go with Ansel’s usual pharmacy of pills. After a few days, Ansel looked like a six-foot carrot. He had turned orange from too much beta-carotene; his dosage was reduced.

  For my part, I wanted Ansel to see health specialist Nathan Pritikin. He was more than dubious, but I got them together once on the phone. Pritikin was critical of Ansel’s current vitamin therapy. Ansel’s morning note to me said that Pritikin had suggested he eat beans, veggies, and grains, have no butter or margarine and no alcohol, and drink rosebud or linden tea. Deprive Ansel of his martini and his hamburger? The name Pritikin did not cross my lips again.

  One Sunday afternoon in September 1982, I arrived at the house to help with a benefit reception for a young Democratic candidate and discovered Ansel still in bed. He clearly was not feeling well. I measured his blood pressure, checked his pulse and lungs, and monitored his heart with my stethoscope. I thought I could detect an irregularity; certainly I was hearing something other than what I usually heard. I called his doctor, who agreed to meet us at the hospital.

  I went upstairs and informed the candidate’s advance crew that Ansel would not be attending the party. They were keenly upset at the news and let me know it. They demanded to talk to Ansel, sure they could convince him to stay for the event. But I was even angrier and more outraged than they were, and I told them to clear out of the way and not say one word to Ansel when we came through. That was the last I heard out of them. I helped Ansel dress and pack a small suitcase, and then we went upstairs and got quietly into his car.

  In ER, it was determined that Ansel had a life-threatening arrhythmia. He was wheeled into surgery and almost as quickly wheeled back out with a pacemaker stitched into his chest. Crisis solved. Ansel described the feeling when the pacemaker would fire to be as if a mouse was hitting a punching bag.

  Ansel was soon home and back to a normal schedule. Within ten days of this incident, he participated in a book signing in Carmel and was filmed by the BBC, interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, and given an award by the Association of International Photographic Art Dealers.

  Playboy asked Ansel to be the subject of its monthly in-depth interview for May 1983. His first reaction was “No!” but I believed that the magazine’s huge audience had not heard his messages on photography and the environment, and that proved to be a convincing argument.

  Although he was willing to participate, Ansel as usual insisted on keeping his work day preserved, so the two interviewers were invited to come for cocktails every afternoon for two weeks to talk with him as he relaxed over drinks. The published interview was excellent, communicating Ansel’s humor as well as his serious concerns. While Adams photographs did not replace the centerfold, Playboy’s editors did run a multipage spread of Ansel’s work in black and white.

  Ansel received some criticism for the interview, or rather its venue, along the lines of “How could you?!”11 He replied that while he knew the magazine contained much trash, Playboy offered some of the best interviews around and was read by twelve million people, who might now understand a bit about the strengths of photography and the importance of environmental activism.12

  One morning in June 1983, I arrived at work to find Ansel quite lathered up. He reported that Michael Deaver, President Reagan’s majordomo, had called earlier to say that the president wanted to know why Ansel Adams did not like him. Reagan wanted to meet with Ansel to show him how much they had in common. I thought it must be a crank call.

  I found it bizarre that the Carter White House phone numbers on my Rolodex still worked in the Reagan administration, but they did, and I got right through to Michael Deaver. Everything Ansel had related was true. I later figured out that President Reagan must have read Ansel’s Playboy interview, a large portion of which centered on the disastrous performance of his government in the areas of the arts and the environment.13

  Neither Ansel nor Reagan wanted to be seen in enemy territory: Carmel or the White House. It was agreed that they would meet on neutral ground. The Presidential Suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles was designated the no-man’s-land.

  Deaver was adamant that we not conduct a news conference immediately following the meeting. He was surprised when we acquiesced. I was worried about Ansel’s health and concerned that this event would sap all his available energies; the pacemaker kept his heart steady, but the heart muscle itself was weakening, and Ansel’s doctors thought
it best that he not undergo the rigors of a press conference. Instead, much to the later ire of the White House, Ansel agreed to an exclusive post-meeting interview with a reporter from the president’s least favorite newspaper, the Washington Post.

  Deaver had a further demand: Ansel must not be accompanied by an environmental heavyweight. This disqualified Bill Turnage, who had hoped to accompany his old boss. Virginia, Jim, and I, deemed nonthreatening, were welcome to come along.

  We flew down to Los Angeles the night before, had a quiet dinner in our hotel, and all went to bed early. The next day, uncharacteristically, Ansel bore no gift of a photograph or book for the president. As the four of us were escorted down the hallway toward the Presidential Suite, Reagan’s photographer, Michael Evans, popped his head out of a doorway and commandeered Jim and me to look at his photographs. We couldn’t say no. I hoped he had only a few pictures; he had a whole portfolio.

  We had been briefed that the schedule allowed for only a fifteen-minute meeting. After we had been with Evans for half an hour, I began to fear we had missed it all, but at last he took us into the other room. Virginia was sitting off to one side, by herself. Ansel and the president were perched on opposite ends of a sofa, as far apart as they could get without falling on the floor. The gaping social distance between the two told me everything I needed to know about what had occurred. Ansel looked tense, though he visibly relaxed when I gave him a big smile.

  Their meeting lasted fifty minutes in all. Ansel had come prepared to discuss issues; he had even boned up. But Reagan talked nonstop for the first twenty minutes, determined to let the other know what a committed environmentalist he, Reagan, was. Ansel was both shocked by the president’s approach (never, ever would Ansel have classified Reagan as an environmentalist) and increasingly uneasy that his fifteen minutes had run out without his ever having been allowed to enter the fray.

  When Ansel finally did speak, he felt that Reagan listened but did not hear. As a leader of the Wilderness Society’s “Stop Watt” campaign, Ansel talked about the damage he believed James Watt was inflicting across the country, and touched on topics ranging from acid rain to the conduct of the Environmental Protection Agency to the plummeting morale in the National Park Service to his pet project, magnetic fusion technology. He later regretted not having had time to bring up the protection of the Big Sur coast.14

  Pictures were made of everyone assembled, and then there was time for small talk as we got ready to leave. Deaver proudly shared that he had purchased Ansel’s photograph Clearing Winter Storm a few years earlier for $250 and was very pleased to have later sold it for $6,000. I thought it in poor taste to tell an artist that one had 1) sold his work and 2) profited by it, but I bit my tongue. I knew that Deaver wasn’t so smart: Clearing Winter Storm now brought $10,000. (In 2014, the price for a sixteen-by-twenty-inch 1970s print of Clearing Winter Storm is about $45,000. A large mural of Clearing Winter Storm sold at an auction at Sotheby’s New York in June 2010 for $722,500, to date the most paid for an Adams photograph.)

  To the White House’s dismay, the Adams-Reagan meeting was front-page news in the Washington Post for Sunday, July 3. Ansel related to reporter Dale Russakoff that the president had caught him a bit unawares. Instead of the tall, commanding actor from the movies, he had found a small, slight man, comfortably dressed in slacks and a starched white shirt embellished with monogrammed double Rs. Ansel was shocked by Reagan’s surprisingly warm and human-size personality, as well as by his undivided attention, giving every indication that he listened to what Ansel said, although Ansel brushed that off as good acting. Each time Ansel would attempt to charge Watt with another serious transgression—“I told him Mr. Watt is the most dangerous element in the country today”—the president would rise to his defense. Ansel summarized his own performance, “I expressed myself as forcefully as I could . . . I was braver than I expected to be.”15 With great satisfaction, Ansel read the newspaper headlines proclaiming Watt’s resignation later that year.

  During the spring of 1983, a lesion on Ansel’s leg—legacy of the burn he had received while photographing a factory in 1945—flared up and refused to settle down again. Concerned, his dermatologist sent us on to a plastic surgeon. In March, a biopsy came back negative, but another, in September, showed a squamous-cell tumor. The doctors cut out the malignancy and put Ansel on complete bed rest for four weeks to allow his leg to heal.

  This was a tough month for me, too, since Jim had back surgery at about the same time that Ansel was hospitalized. They were each on bed rest at their respective homes. Whenever I was with one of them, I felt great guilt about not being with the other; though it was a no-win situation for me, they both recuperated fairly well.

  Ansel began to sense that his time was limited. Even though I was with him constantly, he wrote me long letters about the things he found too difficult to say out loud. He wanted assurance that there would be sufficient income for Virginia when he died. Knowing that his leg was threatened, he resolved that even if he lost it, he would still direct the printing of his negatives. And finally, if he should die he wanted me and his photographic assistant, Chris Rainier, to supervise the making of prints from “important” negatives that had never been printed, placing his confidence in our perception of his life’s work.16

  A lump developed high on Ansel’s leg, and a biopsy revealed that the cancer had spread. The positive lymph node was surgically removed in early March 1984, and radiation followed. Ansel was a champ throughout the ordeal, never complaining, not even once.

  Following the birthday concert in 1982, Vova Ashkenazy and Ansel had become friends. Whenever he was in San Francisco, Ashkenazy would drive down and pop in to practice gently on Ansel’s old Mason and Hamlin: he loved the acoustics of the house. Ansel felt compelled to photograph his friend at work, and the results became two of the pianist’s next album covers, a solemn portrait for Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” and a relaxed and cheerful one of Vova at the piano in Carmel surrounded by Ansel’s photographs for Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”17 Vova had brought his wife, Dody, and children to Carmel to visit and decided to buy a house just up the hill from Ansel’s.

  During the winter of 1983–1984, Vova called to suggest that it was time for another concert. We jumped on his gracious offer and set Easter Day, April 22, 1984, for his return performance. Vova said that his fee had gone up: he would like caviar and sushi. Agreed!

  On Friday, two days before the scheduled concert, Ansel began experiencing a feeling of pressure in his chest and shortness of breath. As so many times before, I called his doctor and was told to bring him in to the hospital. This time, though, Ansel did not get dressed but instead stayed in his pajamas and robe; that in itself was very unusual for him. Virginia packed him a small bag.

  As we drove to the hospital for what I believed would be just another few days’ stay for Ansel, I began to sense that he was looking at this very familiar countryside as if for the last time. This man, who had always checked into hospitals with great cheer as though checking into a fine resort, was subdued. There was an old dead tree on a hillside south of the Carmel River that he remarked on almost every time we passed it over the years, admiring the physical endurance it displayed even though, at least outwardly, it was no longer alive. Now he just looked at the tree bleakly. Ansel’s mood was pervasive; I felt a sharp pang of trepidation.

  He was admitted for observation and tests, but I remained optimistic that he would be released in time for Sunday’s concert. Ansel’s appetite had grown poor, so I added beer, an appetite stimulant, to my shopping list for him, along with all the new magazines on the newsstand that might interest him.

  The first tests to come back on Saturday indicated that Ansel was experiencing congestive heart failure, or CHF: when the heart is too weak to pump effectively, blood backs up and fluids begin to drown the lungs. Although Ansel’s circulation was compromised, his electrocardiogram showed no change from one made a few weeks earlie
r, meaning he had not had a heart attack. His blood gases—that is, the relative levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood—were OK, but an inflamed vein in his left leg caused concern about blood clots.

  New X-rays revealed lentil-size densities scattered across both lungs, perhaps small blood clots or pockets of dust, a consequence of all of those years on the shusty Sierra trails. (Shust was Ansel’s word for the odiferous, nature-made combination of mule shit and dust.) A battery of physicians analyzed all the data and agreed that Ansel’s primary problem was CHF.

  Later that afternoon, Ansel suffered a minor heart attack. It was not a painful episode; he felt only increased pressure in his chest. He was moved into the intensive-care unit so he could be constantly monitored.

  Vova called. He had arrived in town, but he did not want to proceed with the concert if Ansel could not attend. From his bed in the ICU, Ansel’s voice was strong and jovial. He apologized in advance for his absence and told Vova he hoped he would play anyway for his family and friends; he would be there in spirit, and after the performance I would bring the pianist and his wife, Dody, to visit him in the hospital. Vova acquiesced.

  More tests were ordered. That night, Saturday, April 21, Ansel’s doctor, Tom Kehl, pulled me aside and informed me that there had been a change in the reading of the X-rays. Ansel’s lungs were not full of blood clots or dust; they were riddled with cancer. I felt as if I had been dropped over the side of the Golden Gate Bridge. I knew what this meant: Ansel was almost dead. I ran to the sink and kept splashing cold water on my face until I could stop myself from crying.

  A whole platoon of gifted doctors applied themselves to figuring out some way to extend Ansel’s life. It was decided that he would not be told of his condition until they knew more. I could not let Ansel see that I had been crying. I went to a phone and called Michael Adams and asked him to tell his sister, Anne. Dr. Kehl called Virginia.