The Greatest Story
Our lives are woven from stories—those we hear, read, and tell ourselves, shaping our future and potential. Often, just one story can pivot us from a downward spiral to a transformative paradigm shift.
Our struggles are rooted in the stories we choose to believe. It's a delicate balance between being realistic and maintaining hope. Unfortunately, many people end up abandoning their dreams.
"The Greatest Story" exists to bring to light the untold stories that energize individuals, families, and communities. Our podcast delivers empowering messages, urging you to discover your purpose and unlock your potential, inspiring you to craft your own success story. Welcome to "The Greatest Story Podcast."
The Greatest Story
#21 – Doug Van Howd – Legendary White House Artist from Auburn, CA
In this episode, I got the chance to sit down with Doug Van Howd, a renowned sculptor and painter whose incredible journey took him from Nevada to becoming a celebrated artist known worldwide. Based in his studio in Auburn, CA, Doug’s lifelike wildlife and western creations have earned him a place of honor, with his works displayed in prestigious locations such as the White House, the office of the Secretary of the Interior, and the Reagan Library.
Doug shares the fascinating story of how a prophecy, foretelling that his work would be seen by kings, queens, and presidents, came to pass over the course of his career. His dedication to honing his craft opened doors to remarkable opportunities, including being appointed as a White House artist under President Ronald Reagan. Every piece Doug creates tells a unique story, reflecting his love for art and his ability to capture the essence of his subjects.
Doug’s journey is ongoing, and he believes his best work is still to come, demonstrating his endless passion and commitment to his craft. Join us as we explore the life and art of Doug Van Howd, an artist whose works continue to inspire and captivate audiences around the world.
Connect with Doug: https://tinyurl.com/Douglas-Van-Howd
Somebody prophesied about what you would be doing in your life.
Speaker 2:Yes, that was amazing. Well, this lady in the church once a year she would pick somebody and fast and pray for them for a week and she saw me modeling little statues and that my work would go before presidents and kings and queens. Well, that was like impossible. Yeah, come on. The limo comes with the flags on the fender. I mean, this is like a movie. Take me to the Oval Office. I walk in President Reagan's there, ed Meese, the Attorney General, and he says, doug, I want you to be White House artist. What? This is a dream man. I pitched myself In the beginning years when we were really struggling to make everything work. I didn't care what they wanted, I would do it. In those days I couldn't choose. I'm grateful for what has taken place, but I'm also grateful that God has given me the talent. If you don't pedal hard, he can't steer you the right way.
Speaker 1:Well, doug, I want to thank you sincerely. Thank you for this opportunity, and also I should thank Tom Jones, our mutual friend, for introducing us. I've heard great things about you from Don Whitaker, bob Litchfield, other people here in Auburn, and you know, when I walked in here with Tom Jones and I'm just walking around here looking at all of the work that you have done this art, these statues I mean it's just amazing. And so I really like interviewing people who have a certain experience, who are doing something that's unique. I think this is very, very unique and special. I think from you know a population. There's not a big percentage of people who have that kind of artistic talent. So for some of our audience who do not know who Doug Van Hout is, if you can please, from the start, just provide a little bit of background of who you are, where you were born and raised, all right, well.
Speaker 2:I grew up in Reno, nevada. As a boy my father was in the Air Force at Stead Air Force Base and then, when I was about 10, we moved to Lake Tahoe and grew up Kings Beach at Lake Tahoe and they had a Hell's Drugs, sporting good fountain grill and drugstore all in one at State Line. So I grew up there in the hills and later on in life we moved to Los Angeles because my grandparents lived there, and luckily we did that because I met my wife there at 14. At 14, wow, so we've been together 71 years now, if you can imagine. Anyway, that was lucky for me. And then I went to art center school in Los Angeles and then from there I was an art director for aerospace and in the Los Angeles area, nancy, my wife taught at Pepperdine and we had a great life there and a great career.
Speaker 2:But it just didn't work out for us. And she said why don't you just quit and do what you really want to do? And I, I, I love painting, and so I I told them I was going to quit and paint. They said you can't make a living at it. And they were right. I quit and I couldn't make. It was hard for the first three or four years. But we had her income and so I was able to get through that.
Speaker 2:And then finally, we moved down to Redlands and it was so smoggy down there it was affecting our little boy.
Speaker 2:So we decided to move somewhere and I didn't know about Auburn at the time.
Speaker 2:But we took off three months and we traveled all the western states this side of the Rockies and I went to every town and I had a criteria I wanted to be by a fairly large airport, international airport, because I had to get out and fly a lot, and I wanted the right schools, the right churches, the right weather had a big point and at the end of the trip we were over in Reno.
Speaker 2:We came this way I came down Highway 49, went into Nevada City and Grass Valley, drove on into Auburn and there was a lady going in a real estate office on a Sunday and I said really like the area, how it looks here, and she gave me the spill, you know, above the fog and below the snow, and I'd lived at Tahoe and I didn't want a lot of snow and I really liked the area and I said, you know this, I was close to an international airport, close to San Francisco, close to Reno. At the time, my parents were living in Reno, so this worked out for me and I made that decision, and this has been the best decision. I'll tell you, I've been fortunate to travel the world and there's nothing like this area. Believe me, you're around.
Speaker 1:That's true, yeah, around. That's true, yeah, um, but how old were you when you, when you had, you know, this sort of pull towards art, painting or sculpting? How do you remember how old were you?
Speaker 2:yes, I was uh eight years old when I uh started doing my drawings and I I could draw and I was drawing all the time and it was just in me. My grandmother was the first woman to be admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts in Europe, and that was like in 1910 or something, and she was a sculptor and a painter. On my mother's side, on my father's side, my uh great-grandfather was an artist, he was a painter, and so we had these two different sides. Those genes came down to me thank god, that's so.
Speaker 2:I was just able to do it. You know, and all my life I've been just working in art and I love it and you never get enough of it.
Speaker 1:Has there been somebody who you were influenced by, like some well-known artists?
Speaker 2:Yes, I wanted to study under an old master. I mean, that was my dream and I heard of Leos Marcos. He lived in Houston, Texas, and he had painted the Kennedy family and he was just an incredible artist. And it just so happened through another attorney friend who helped him come to this country from Hungary, set it up so that I could study under him and even though going through art school you only learn so much, I wanted to learn from really an old master and I studied under him and he took me in. He said I had a potential and that was amazing. That happened.
Speaker 2:And then after that was Brownell McGrew. Brownell McGrew is probably the number one Western Indian painter in the nation. In the 60s he was commanding $200,000, $300,000 a painting Incredible artist and I just marveled at his paintings and through circumstances again, I was able to get with him and he took me in and so I had these two old masters. That really helped me along and it, uh, it made a big difference in my career. That's in the painting, end of it yeah, that's, that's great.
Speaker 1:I think that mentorship is so important in life. It is, it is, it is I. So I read on VIE magazine, v-i-e magazine. There is a story and I think the story is being told by your granddaughter about you. Oh, yeah, and I read some of it. Oh, did you? Yes, yeah, she wrote an article and there was this interesting part that I kind of wanted to ask you about. So it was about during the 1970s. You guys moved here, is that correct? Yes, we moved here in 1972. Okay, and she wrote there, or she said that there was some kind of prophecy that happened, where somebody prophesied about what you would be doing in your life.
Speaker 2:Yes, that was amazing. That was really amazing. When we first moved here there was a first of all, there was a pastor in Medivis that had a little Methodist church there. He was a six foot seven really impressive guy and he was pastoring two churches, one in the area by where we lived. And one day after we'd moved there, here'd come this great big guy walking down my driveway and he invited us to his little church and so we went. It was in Medellin and it was about 75 people and I was really taken with it because it was so genuine.
Speaker 2:I remember this lady had trouble with her septic system and, boy, the men went over there and dug it up and fixed it and everything. And another person had a roof problem and all the guys went over and fixed their roof. And one day I happened to mention I said you know where I can buy some firewood? And the next thing I know I had three pickup up loads of firewood show up at my house. I mean, these people were for real and I was very impressed with that.
Speaker 2:Well, this lady in the church, once a year she would pick somebody and fast and pray for them for a week and this one week she'd pick me and she fasted and prayed for me. At the end of the time she called my wife and told her what the Lord had given her. My wife started to tell me when it started off it was you're going to have trouble with your paintings. It was sort of negative and I stopped her and I said look, first of all, I don't believe in this number one. Number two if the Lord's going to tell me something, he's not going to tell it through some little old lady at church. He's going to tell me. Okay, I mean, that's my attitude. So, being a good wife, that was it. She didn't say any more Okay, well, at the same time we had been traveling and I'd been to the Louvre in Paris and saw the old masters and we had been to the National Gallery in London and seen the great masters. And what happened was I started comparing my work to these great masters and I would get a vision in my mind of something to paint and it wasn't coming up to what I was expecting. So I was very distraught over that.
Speaker 2:At the same time, a friend of mine in Southern California had a big, beautiful home and he put it on the market for sale In three months he couldn't sell it and it was $285,000. And I happened to go down and see him and he said he couldn't sell it and it was $285,000. And I happened to go down and see him and he said he couldn't sell his house. It was coming off the market. I said well, that's crazy, jim. I said this house is magnificent. You know, I know somebody. I could sell this house for $500,000 for sure. He says, if you sell it for $500,000, I'll give you a $50,000 commission. Well, in the 70s that was a lot of money, a lot of money in the 70s. So I made a phone call to my friend. He went over and looked at the house and he bought it for $500,000. So I get a check for $50,000.
Speaker 2:The next thing that happened another friend of mine had some property up near Lake of the Pines. He had 50 acres. He was trying to sell it for $3,000 an acre and he couldn't sell it. I said well, chris, that's crazy, I can get you more than that for it. I made another phone call. The people came over from Mammoth and they bought it for $3,500 an acre and he gave me. So I came in on a Friday night and I said to my wife you know I'm really struggling with the painting. I think I'll go get a real estate license because you know it's easy for me.
Speaker 1:So you sold that real estate without even license.
Speaker 2:No, no license really. And you know, I just did it and they responded. But I realized if you're going to do this, you need a license. This is Friday night. She says let me tell you what Betty said. This is the lady with the prophecy. All right, so now I sit down and listen. It was that I was having trouble. But then she said the Lord was going to give me another dimension and she saw me modeling little statues and that he was going to give me a material that no one else had and that my work would go before presidents and kings and queens. Well, that was like impossible. I mean, yeah, come on. But it was such a positive thing. I listened. I said, well, little statues, that sounds like I'd read Remington and Russell's book on the Old West. They were painting the West and Russell's book on the Old West. They were painting the West. And then they got into sculptures later in life and I thought, well, maybe I would get into that later in life also. I said, well, that sounds like doing little sculptures.
Speaker 2:The very next morning I got a call from the president of Missouri Foundation. It's spelled M-Z-U-R-I and that's an African word, that means good in Swahili, and it's an organization out of San Francisco area, very wealthy people, and they raise money for the preservation of wildlife, mainly in Africa. And they called me and they said we've had a board meeting and we've chosen you to give a sculpture of a lion to be given out to speakers and our presidents and the different speakers that we have. And I said, well, I've never done a sculpture before. He says you haven't. And I said no, he says well, you can do it. We don't have time for another board meeting. So I'm thinking of what Nancy said just the night before. So I said, all right, I'll try it.
Speaker 2:I flew down to Los Angeles Roman Bronze was the only bronze company in California at that time that I knew of and I flew down there and I went in and I said I want to do a sculpture, what do I do? And they gave me a block of wax. They said go ahead and carve it into the lion, bring it back and we'll pull a mole and cast it. So I took it home. Now when I paint, I couldn't even have the phone ring. I have to concentrate so hard. You've got color, you've got composition, you've got everything you're working on, and it just takes a big effort. I was working on this lion, watching a football game, talking to people and sculpturing it. I couldn't believe it and so I did this lion. I took it back to them. I'll never forget.
Speaker 2:The owner said this your first piece. I said yes, he says it won't be your last. I never even said that. And then I got. They sent me five names. They wanted five castings Bing Crosby, the Duke of Wellington and two congressmen and the outgoing president. Well, I got those names and they wanted me to put them on each one of the different bronzes. So I gave them to them and they cast them and put their names on them.
Speaker 2:And then they had a black-tie dinner at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco and they invited me to come. My wife was taking care of kids. She couldn't go and I'd never had a tux on in my life. I had to go rent a tux. I go to San Francisco and they had a big crowd, 300 people or so. Bing Crosby got up and sang. They presented him with my sculpture. He was the first recipient of one of my pieces Bing Crosby, bing Crosby, wow. And then Duke of Welling got up and got a talk and they gave him a piece. And then it was the congressmen and they each got a piece, and then the outgoing president. At the end they had me stand as the artist.
Speaker 2:Well, when I did afterwards, all these people came up to me and said, gee, I'd like one of your pieces. Well, that's the only thing I ever did. So I had to think fast. I thought well, I did one lion, I'll do a group of lions, a pride. I said, well, I'm going to be working on a pride of lions. They all handed me their card and they said well, when you finish, send me a picture.
Speaker 2:So I went back to the foundry and I said I need some more of that wax. I've got another project to do. They said, well, that company went out of business, but I will give you some other wax. So they gave me this other wax. I took it home. I'm trying to work with it. I couldn't work with it. It wasn't the same.
Speaker 2:I called them up and I said I can't work with this wax. It's different than the other one. They said, yeah, that company doesn't make it anymore and they said we'll send you some other wax. So they sent some other wax and they said we'll send you some other wax. So they sent some other wax. I worked with that. I couldn't make it work.
Speaker 2:So finally I called them up and I said look, I need that same wax. Where did you get that? And they said, well, it's a company in Chicago. Give me their phone number. I called them in Chicago. I said do you have this XYZ wax? I forgot what it was now they said, well, we don't manufacture that anymore. I said you mean, you don't have any of it.
Speaker 2:And he says well, let me go look and see. So he comes back. He says well, I see we still have a thousand pounds. I said how much is? He says two dollars. I said I'll take the whole thousand pounds. So I have a wax that no one has, a material. Just like she said. I have this material. No, I mean, this is over 50 years ago. I still have 900 pounds of it because I can do a sculpture and melt it down again and keep using it. I keep it in special metal cans in different areas in case there's a fire. I don't want to lose it, but it works for me.
Speaker 2:I kid people, I can put an eyelash on a duck. I kid people, I can put an eyelash on a duck. Ducks don't have eyelashes, so I can do the detail that most people, even if they have the same talent as me, they don't have the right material, they can't do it. And I was able to do that, and so that was a real blessing. Then, at another date, when Reagan was governor, they invited him. He spoke, they presented him with one of my pieces. They still do it today. They still hand my pieces out today.
Speaker 2:He got one. He invited me to the Capitol. He found out that I do portraits, I do paintings, sculptures, and through a long story short, he said a representative up here. He invited me to be White House artist. I mean unbelievable. They called me. I thought it was a prank call. They said you know, I want you to come to White House. Oh yeah, right, if it had been a man calling me I'd have probably hung up or said you know all of that, but it was a lady, so I listened.
Speaker 2:And then I got first-class tickets to go to Washington. So I flew to Washington. They picked me up in a limo take me to a hotel. Next morning the limo comes with the flags on the fender. I mean, this is like a movie. Take me to the Oval Office. I walk in President Reagan's there, ed Meese, the Attorney General, and his personal secretary and attorney, herb Ellingwood, and he says, doug, I want you to be a White House artist. And I said, yes, mr President, it's such an honor. And then Ed Meese said you can do anything you want to do here in the White House. Well, that was amazing. And then, herb Ellingwood, he says, I'll be your servant here in the White House. I was like what? This is a dream man? I pitched myself my servant in the White House. I couldn't believe my ears.
Speaker 1:So when all this was happening, were you going back to that prophecy?
Speaker 2:Well, you don't think about it at the time. It's all happening, you know. And then, all of a sudden, like my first piece was for the Queen of the Netherlands we're celebrating 200 years of friendship with the Netherlands and he calls me in to do the piece for her. Well, all of a sudden, there it is, you know, there it is. And then I did heads of countries all over the world in eight years, and all these gifts and the prophecy came to pass, even with the material I didn't have. And that was the beginning stages.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've had things happen all along the way. So to me, I'm grateful for what has taken place, but I'm also grateful that God has given me the talent and I've worked hard at it. My wife and I have worked really hard. God is the rudder in a boat. If you don't paddle, and if you don't paddle hard, he can't steer you the right way. And we've paddled hard and we've made that boat go. But God's gift to me is my talent. My gift to him is doing it, and that's why I'm still doing it today.
Speaker 1:How was President Reagan like.
Speaker 2:President Reagan was so delightful and he loved art and of course I'm a breath of fresh air because I don't have political bone in my body. I'm not there for any political reason. He gets a clip chart every day. The president does of at 10 minutes to 10, you're to meet with somebody about some problem that you're going to solve, and at 10, 20, you leave there and you might get a backroom break for three minutes and then you've got another schedule.
Speaker 2:They were scheduling me about like at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and he was blowing all the rest of the day's schedules because I was a breath of fresh air. It was like we talked about horses and about saddles and things that he loved and I wasn't there for any political reason and we talked about the artwork and all that and he kept blowing his other schedules. I remember one time we were there and my wife, nancy, was with me and the guy with the clipboard said Mr President, we have to go, we had another meeting and we have to go, we have to go and he kept initiating new conversation with me and he says to my wife he says tell the president that he's got to go. She says I'm not going to tell the president anything I'm not going to tell him. He's got to go.
Speaker 2:So they started scheduling me, the last person of the day, and then I could talk to him. We could talk for a half hour or an hour, you know, and we did. And so he was really good to me, really friendly. He was always joking around. Completely opposite of what I see today. Complete opposite.
Speaker 1:I remember my grandpa, my father's dad, was telling me a story when, obviously you know, we're from Ukraine and during the right before the USSR collapsed, there was this communism regime. You know they did not want Christianity to spread in the country, right. So they were persecuting people who were preaching, who were gathering people, and my grandpa he actually went to prison for- his faith.
Speaker 1:So he told me a story when one time he was listening to the radio and it was President Reagan was saying something and at the end he said God bless America. And when he heard this obviously it was a translation yeah, he like it was so comforting for him to hear that because it gave him this hope that there is a very big, successful country and they, they respect god. A president says god bless because you. You would never hear this in former soviet union right.
Speaker 1:So, um, and that that was the time, because he was the president in the 80s. Obviously I was born during during the that decade, that period of time. Yeah, and it was because of him a lot of us came here, a lot of people who were Christians. Obviously we were persecuted. People could not go into higher education, they could not get higher education Universities. Those opportunities didn't really exist if you came from a family of believers. So because of him, we saw this migration, and I'm talking about like late 80s, early 90s. My family came here in the early 90s.
Speaker 2:We came in 1993.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of respect that my family and I have to President Ronald Reagan. He was a great president. I also read in that magazine about John Wayne that you also were around John Wayne and if I read that correctly, you have what? Nine hours of footage with john wayne is that true?
Speaker 2:a lot of footage with john wayne, you know. Over the years, uh, we became friends. How that happened was I did a portrait of a man elgin gates was his name, and he was a big. Uh, he was that outboard mercury outboard motor distributor for the nation. He was a very wealthy man and he had a home at Newport Beach and he had the only dock that was big enough for John Wayne's yacht and John Wayne was buying his house and he saw the portrait that I did, his family did, of Elgin Gates and I was then commissioned to do a portrait of John Wayne and so I did the portrait and he invited me on the set in 1972 when he was doing making the film the cowboy.
Speaker 2:It was all with these kids and I went on the set and Got to know him really well and he liked artists very much and so then I was commissioned more work and then he started inviting me. Every time he made his own film he would invite me on the set to spend three or four days with him and it was quite interesting You're at night reading the other man's line and then he would be memorizing his own with a tall glass of tequila and a smoke of cigar so that was real it was real, real.
Speaker 2:I mean, you're seeing him anyway, we, we became really good friends and I saw him just before he passed away. Oh, yeah, yeah, I went to see him where did he live, john wayne? Was he in la he was in uh la area, uh down in the pomona area and uh, that's where he was in the hospital there but, yeah, I never went to his house.
Speaker 2:I went to his house one time in when he lived in north hollywood. He had a home in north hollywood. I went to his house. I went to his house one time when he lived in North Hollywood. He had a home in North Hollywood. I went to that house once and it was a brick home. I've seen some films later that I think was his house as I remembered it at the time.
Speaker 2:But anyway, I just mainly saw him on set and, like I say, we became friends. He's great big guy, six foot five, you know so whenever he photographed with me, he'd bend his knees. He's very conscious of the the film so what is the?
Speaker 1:the plans with the footage? Are you gonna do anything with it?
Speaker 2:well that, uh, that all that footage was actually a film was being made on me by Gene Autry. Gene Autry was doing the film and involved John Wayne was going to narrate it. And Gene Autry says, oh, if John Wayne narrated it it's going to be a winner. It was called a four-wall film and it was a wildlife film and I was the thread for the wildlife film. I was an artist out there studying wildlife. We went to Alaska and Canada and all over they filmed all over and had all these experiences with animals for it. Well, unfortunately Gene Autry died and so did John Wayne, so it never did get produced. They got it in the can and there's a company now working with me, with us filming, and they want to see all that. It's all on 16. Well, it's all on 32 millimeters for a movie, so it's larger format and so I have all that. They sent me the footage after that. I have it all Interesting, tell them what to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, I want to touch on the creative process of your work. So, from conception to completion, how is that process like?
Speaker 2:Well, every piece evolves from either me being out in nature and seeing is something that I think is unusual, and boy, I'd like to sculpture that, or a particular animal or whatever or it's a commission where they're allowing me to express myself and where they're allowing me to express myself. And in the beginning years, when we were really struggling to make everything work, I didn't care what they wanted, I would do it. I mean, they came in. I had a man come in one time and he wanted a big painting of iguanas from the Galapagos Island. He'd been there. Well, if he didn't take the painting, nobody's going to buy that painting of lizards. So I made him pay in advance. I think I did anyway, but anyway, the painting turned out pretty nice, you know, but it's.
Speaker 2:I did a lot of things that I probably wouldn't do today. I mean, today I'm only doing things that really interest me and what I want to do, and I have the luxury of being able to choose today. In those days I couldn't choose. If I didn't work, money didn't come in and you couldn't send your kids to school. You're like everybody else You're buying it, you're paying payments on a car, you're paying payments on a house, you're doing everything, and so you have to have that income coming in when you work for yourself. The harder you work, the better it is, and so we work six days a week, and we did that, and we did it for years and so with all the work that you have done, can you remember, recall a certain challenge, maybe a project that was really challenging and you had to overcome?
Speaker 2:um, well, some of the projects. Uh, when I did the the dinosaurs for the los Angeles County Museum, they're life-size. The T-Rex is 20 feet tall and 40 feet long and the Triceratops is enormous and that was a real challenge I had to work with a paleontologist. We got fossilized skin patterns from the dinosaurs and everything. I wanted to make it as authentic as I possibly could, and so it was a real challenge. I didn't want to do the dinosaurs, but all my workers that worked for me said I didn't grow up involving dinosaurs and that type of thing. I didn't grow up with it so it wasn't an interest to me. But all my work is oh yeah, we got to do that. We got to do that and so I ended up, through some circumstances, doing it. But as I got into it, it was a challenge and it got more interesting and more interesting because of getting these patterns from all over the world and talking to other paleontologists and the things that evolved and all this stuff in that period of time. So we sent the pattern down to the city. First of all, when you do anything for a city, everything has to be engineered, everything perfect, I mean. Mean you can't just go put a piece out. So you have to do all this, and so I um, in the process, we sent the footprint which had to be placed in steel, and the museum had the people and they were going to do that, and they misplaced it and it had 11 inches off. So when you take the dinosaur there, this dinosaur, I couldn't deliver it in one piece. It was so large. So the legs were off and everything and we were going to put it together on site and they were having a convention where all the museums from the world were coming on May 8th I'll never forget the date because it was my wife's birthday, may 8th and so we wanted to make sure we got there two weeks ahead of time to get everything done so that the opening for this big convention it would be finished. We get there, the feet won't hit that pattern. So it means that the crane that's holding this dinosaur is $480 an hour and we're only going to have it there for three or four hours.
Speaker 2:Now. It's days and nights just holding this thing and we have to cut the leg off and move it 11 inches and fill all that in and make it be right, and it was raining besides. So we had a big build, a big tent over thing, because you can't weld in the rain. Boy, I'll tell you what we, our whole crew, we worked, um, we would, we would work, start at uh seven in the morning and work till two in the morning. Oh my, every day you actually had. And I was there doing it. And the other thing that happened was and I never caught it the teeth on a T-Rex are serrated and my wax girl thought that that was a mistake in the wax, so she cleaned them off and made them smooth and I never caught it. So when we were putting it up I happened to notice that the teeth were not serrated and they're supposed to be. So I'm up there on a big ladder cutting serrated teeth In the bronze.
Speaker 2:I'm doing the dental work up there in the bronze right there on site. So I'm doing all that. Oh my gosh, I had one man walk off the job. He couldn't handle it. He walked off. I'd never seen him this day. He just walked off the job. That was the end of him, of him, and the last night we never went to bed at all. We worked all night long. We finished at seven in the morning, cleaned up. They opened at nine o'clock. We just crashed. We were, we, we were so exhausted, we just crashed. We didn't even go to the opening and we, we had, you know, it was open like nothing happened, everything was wonderful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but those are the things you get into. You know, and that's pretty rare that was a very big piece but, uh, in time, uh, we've been able to. What would you say? We've been able to correct a lot of those things. I have a project right now. It's a life-size elephant going to arusha in tanzania, africa. Well, the logistics of getting it there is more complicated and then putting it back together there than it is doing the piece. So I'm a little concerned about all that that's coming up and those are the things you get into. How big is that elephant? He's 13 and a half feet at the shoulders, but people don't realize an elephant grows his entire life. So when you get an elephant that's 80 years old or 85 years old, he's 12 to 13 and a half feet. Wow, enormous.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's what I'm doing, because there's a big story on elephants. You know, I've seen them. I've made 53 trips to africa over the years for the last 50 something years and I've seen them diminish from uh 10 million in the 70s downward, less than we had about 400 000. So nine and a half million elephants have been killed for the ivory and all of that and it's going on all the time and I'm very concerned about it.
Speaker 2:It's another reason I'm doing this big elephant life size I want to have one here as a representative that someday I feel that I am painting and sculpturing the last of Africa, like Remington and Russell painted and sculptured the last of the West. That's what I see. In 1970, to give you an example there was a little less than 5 million people in Tanzania Today, 61 million Just since 1970. So that gives you an idea of what's taking place. And so I'm really concerned about the elephants. They're a magnificent animal. They're intelligent. I've had a lot of experiences with them and it's one of my pet projects that I want to do.
Speaker 1:Do you think it's possible that eventually, sometime, the human population is just going to grow so much that there's a possibility that these big animals are going to be gone?
Speaker 2:Well, especially when you get a poverty country Africa is the. They produce the most children than anybody else in the world 5.7 per family kids. So it's escalating. And when you start having that population and everybody has to eat and also the wildlife infringes on your farm or your gardens or whatever. So you just see a problem arising that I see I don't see any way out. I mean it really. And then you have the famines over there. You have droughts and all these things that we have also, but we're able to overcome it. We have so much here in america. When you go to I you know, I've been to 14 countries in africa and you see the poverty. It's incredible. If you have a pair of shoes, you're a wealthy guy, you're a wealthy person. I mean, I've seen children's that have a t-shirt on. The only thing is is one sleeve in the little neck piece. The rest of the shirt's gone, but they'll still wear that.
Speaker 1:You know your heart goes on to them, you know how does it affect you when you go out there, you travel and you see this and then you come back to this country where you know we have everything and a lot of people are still complaining. Some things are, it's difficult.
Speaker 2:That's what I see more than anything. I see, you know, oh my gosh, look at the price of gasoline. I remember us when I was first married, gas was 18 cents a gallon. Okay, on our honeymoon they raised it to 23 cents. Oh my gosh, it's a disaster. 23 cents, that was 1959.
Speaker 2:So it's all relative, you know, and we complain about it. But fuel in Europe is like $9, $10 a gallon and Africa is $15. And here you have one person driving a car and you're bumper to bumper with one person driving a car. In Europe you'll have three or four people in the car. In Africa you have every single person you can get in the car and on top of the car You'll have 15 people on one car going somewhere because the fuel is so expensive. I remember pulling into a service station in Africa and a motorcycle came up beside me with five people on the motorcycle. Five people. Five people on the motorcycle and people, five people on the motorcycle. And I looked at that and I thought, wow, you know, it really gets to you. And so we've just got to be so grateful for what we have. And America is the richest company in the world. Believe me, I've been all over the world. I've never seen anything like America, and we've got to be grateful for what we have. I agree with that. We are so grateful.
Speaker 1:From all of the work that you have done, all of the paintings, the sculptures is there something that you are most proud of?
Speaker 2:My pat answer is my next one. My pat answer is my next one Because I get excited about that. Each new piece I'm doing. I'm excited about it at the time, but I've had experiences with animals, that spiritual experiences, where you know it was very meaningful. I did.
Speaker 2:Ahmed was a big elephant in Tanzania or in Kenya and I went to study him and this was in the late 60s and he was a huge elephant, just you know, 10 feet long, great big elephant, and I went and stayed with him three weeks. First of all I would find him. He was in the Marsabit Forest and I found him. A native had come running out and said I know where the big elephant is in his language and my guide I had could speak the language Took us to the elephant and then I hired two natives, one to drag a stick all night to stay with him and then the other one would pick up the track and we would track it the next day. So I stayed with this elephant for over two weeks. The elephant was getting more irritated with me. Here's this little guy every day, every day with him and he had two guard elephants I call them scarys. One had a broken tusk on the left side and the other one had a broken tusk on the left side and the other one had a broken tusk on the right side. And so I just was always with him and I wanted to do something special, and it was like my third piece I'd ever done. And so I and I only had one tool, a dental tool. I wasn't really into it that I didn't know what to use, and so I was trying to figure out just how I was going to do him. I never saw him near water. I camped on a little lake called Lake Paradise, but all the time he was in brush up to here and everything, and I never did see him. And so in the night, one night, I had this vision and it was a sculpture of Almond finished walking out in the water, which I'd never seen him near water, and he's raking the water up with his tusks. And I woke up and I said, oh, that's what I'm going to do. I even saw the patina that I wasn't familiar with. I said that's incredible, I'm going to do that.
Speaker 2:The next morning I went to my mailbox and I had met a guy in Africa. His name was Chuck Ennis. I met him one time at the New Stanley Hotel and we got talking and he was a photographer and he had gone back to africa and he took a picture of what ahmed walking out in the water. And that morning I went to my post or my mailbox and there was that photograph. Eight by ten. He sent it to me. Just what I saw. Here's a picture of ahmed walking out in the water. I went whoa. And so I said I've got to do this. So I sculptured it. I had the wax finished and now I'm just getting started in the sculpture.
Speaker 2:And they invited me to a show in San Antonio, texas. It was an international show for wildlife artists all over the world. And I'm being invited and I thought, oh my, that's something. Well, I didn't know what to take. I had the wax but I couldn't take it to San Antonio because it's hot in the summer and everything. So I got a call.
Speaker 2:I was showing my work at a gallery in Beverly Hills and they said you know, we have a truck going to San Antonio. Is there something you'd like to take to the show? And I said is it refrigerated? He says yes, it is. I said I do, I have this wax sculpture. I said I do I have this wax sculpture? So I box it up. Got it to LA, they sent it in the truck, in a refrigerator truck. I'm setting it up on on my table. I just took it out of the box, a man walks up and he said did you do do this?
Speaker 2:I said yeah.
Speaker 2:He said I only buy old master bronzes.
Speaker 2:I've never bought a contemporary artist bronze but I really like this. This is the wax. He said how many are you going to do in the edition? Well, the other ones that I just had done. I only did like 12. And I thought I'll do 16. So I said, well, I think I'm going to do 16. He says no. He said I would do 24, and I'll buy two. I said, oh, okay. So I wrote that's a pretty good deal. So I wrote a little sign 24 in the edition.
Speaker 2:It was just the wax. It was the number one piece in the show. It sold out. I sold all 24. I had six on a waiting list and it was the number one piece on the show. And I also had the number one painting that I'd also seen in a vision and it made me overnight. It was like they had me on television. They, you know it was this international show and to this day there's still some of the people that collected that very first still collect their number on every piece. I do. But that piece with all those miracles happened, and so I look that's a very meaningful piece to me. That piece with all those miracles happened, and so I look, that's, that's a very meaningful piece to me. That piece, wow, and I and it. At the time it sold for, uh, fifty five hundred dollars. Today they run around thirty six thousand if you can get one on the secondary market do you have a piece like this here?
Speaker 1:I don't have that piece.
Speaker 2:I have one in my home, I have my artist copy at my house, but I don't have that piece, but that piece. And then, of course, reagan then signed an elephant. I did an elephant for him and he signed it. It says Congratulations to a great artist, ronald Reagan, and that piece sells for over $30,000. If you can get one, you know, if you can find one, I mean, they're all sold out. And then he told me he said, doug, why aren't you doing 24? Why don't you do 50, one for each state? I thought, well, that's an idea. So I started doing 50. I sold the same amount. They also love, yeah, the more you do it.
Speaker 1:These are still.
Speaker 2:He was the one to tell me to do it. He said why are you only doing 24? Do 50, one for each state. That isn't many, and you're right, it isn't. He was great that way, but that piece is uh, uh amazing. But see, I've had all these miracles happen along the way and that.
Speaker 1:That's such a beautiful story. Yeah, I, I heard that you. You just recently celebrated 65 year anniversary with yeah, just last friday was our 65 anniversary.
Speaker 2:We went together six years because we were kids, we did our homework together and I was head of Nancy, so I was working for Aerospace Out of School. She was still a student at Pepperdine. I put her through the last two years at Pepperdine and then she became a teacher at Pepperdine. I put her through the last two years at Pepperdine and then she became a teacher at Pepperdine and we lived on campus and that's when I turned the garage into a studio and that's when she said you ought to quit and do what you really want to do. And I did.
Speaker 1:When I was here with Tom Jones, we were walking out and he said that, like you might notice, but you know that they're still in love, oh, yeah. And can you talk briefly about what is the secret of staying in love all these?
Speaker 2:years, I think, and there's a lot of temptations in life, especially for men Tremendous, I would go to shows on my own and things, and I'm telling you what it was something. But if you keep your marriage God-centered and that's what it's about and you just obey the Ten Commandments, you're not going to go wrong. And that's where it is. He wrote a book for us to all live by and if you live by that book, you're going to have a great marriage and God honors that. He makes your marriage special and our marriage has been special. I tell people we don't have arguments. You know people have arguments on it. We've just seen eye to eye and we're still working away and doing everything.
Speaker 2:But we grew up together too. We had the same interests. When I started flying an airplane, she says well, I'm going to learn to take off and land if you're going to fly. Fly in an airplane. She says well, I'm going to learn to take off and land if you're going to fly. So she learns to take off and land. Well, let me tell you what she went on to. She loved it. She went on and got on instrument rating, everything, and she'd have been an astronaut if it would have started earlier in life, I mean, and so we had that common. You know, we, we would take two airplanes and meet somewhere and have lunch and then fly.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's an adventure, take two airplanes and in those days, you know, fuel was cheap and we'd say, well, let's have dinner in Redding. Okay, well, I'll meet you in Redding, fly up to Redding and have a. They had a beautiful Chinese restaurant up there. You know, today it's a little different because your fuel price is so high and now, at the age we are, we're not flying anymore. We had a wonderful life with the aviation. That's one reason I'm at the Auburn Airport, because we had our planes here and big hangar and everything and we wanted to be here.
Speaker 1:So what do you do in your free time, your spare time? Um I know you're still very active um my spare time yes, I don't have a lot of spare time.
Speaker 2:To begin with why not? But I re. But I enjoy what I'm doing so much I'll come to work on a Saturday and be working on a sculpture just because I have no interruptions and I enjoy it. I wouldn't still be doing it if I didn't really enjoy it. I love doing what I do. It's a little harder for my wife because she has the hard part. She has to keep the books and all the things that the irs, everything you're dealing with. It's very hard for her and she has a hard time. And then she gets older. That's really difficult but we get help. We have tracy that is wonderful and been with us 20 years, and so it's uh, that part it.
Speaker 2:I like building things. It's another creation. I'm sitting here with a paintbrush or just doing something. I like to do something physical. So I'm always working on my house. I'm always creating a. I'm building an outdoor water feature right now. Wow, instead of hiring somebody you know, I'm out there laying the concrete and laying the stone and and I like it all these columns and the fences out here. I did a lot wow all that rock work.
Speaker 2:I enjoyed doing it and I remember I was out here doing when I was building this place and people would stop and say, you know, we're, I need you to come and build our entrance. I like what you're doing here. I said, no, this is my building, this is for myself. And then I had this one man. He kept coming, like what you're doing here? I said, no, this is my building, this is for myself. And then I had this one man. He kept coming oh no, you're going to do my entrance, you're going to do my entrance. And he drove up in about $150,000 Mercedes you know one of the big ones and I told him this the worker that was mixing the concrete for me. Maybe we will be doing his in-person About that time. He never showed up, but I like doing physical things and I still ride horses.
Speaker 1:We have horses and we ride. Wow, that's amazing. Earlier you were telling about these two men that kind of took you under their wing and they mentored you. Has there been someone who came to you?
Speaker 2:Yes, I had a boy in Florida. I knew his grandparents and he was very talented. So I had him come and live with us in the summer, lived with us and worked with me, taught him sculpture and all that. And I've had different situations like that. I had the most unusual one. I had a doctor come to me from Sacramento. He said I want to go to work for you for nothing. I said what? He was a surgeon. And then he showed me his fingers. He'd cut them off in his long bar and he couldn't do the operations anymore. And so I said well, listen, I can't do that. You have to be covered by a worker's comp and all of that. So what I'll do is I'll hire you at minimum wage and you can come to work for me, worked for me two years, got so he could do it. All the girls, everybody loved him. He learned to make molds and did his own casting. Then he moved to Coeur d'Alene. It was a very unusual situation.
Speaker 1:Sounds like you had an amazing life. I have had an incredible life.
Speaker 2:Still today I have things come in as a result of me being white house artist and doing something in china or doing something in wherever in korea or whatever, and they still come in today. I did two art pieces for the presidents of Taiwan. John Tsing-Kuo was the first one. He collected seagulls, so I did a 999 pure silver seagull flying over a jade wave that I carved from Wyoming and he loved it. He couldn't speak English so I had to interpret it.
Speaker 2:David Mao, and we were the first one he had been sick and we were the first one he had seen in a lot of months and he thought it was an omen that he was going to get well and all that and he was really thrilled with the piece. And then he did pass away a couple years later, thrilled with a piece. And then he did pass away a couple years later and president lee became a president. Big, tall, good-looking chinese man, educated in at the university in texas, spoke perfect english, did a piece for him of an eric and bald eagle and they sent me there and of course they you have dinners and you have. They gave us a whole week tour of of taiwan and you know it's wonderful and, uh, see their museums meet with their artists, do all that change. I exchange ideas and, um, again, david Mao was there, the interpreter, but I didn't need him. But he took care of our daughter, who didn't really care for banana slug soup or what they're serving, so he was taking her to the McDonald's. And so, just a few years ago, david Mao became president.
Speaker 2:Well, they sent a representative. Where's my piece? So I did this tiger was for him, and what it represents is a tiger. The two tigers are together and when they separate, they separate for a period of time. The female wants to go back and be with the male, so she turns into a human and then goes back and be with the male, and that's the idea. So they told me that. So that's what I did for him. Wow, and that's why I have that piece. So each piece has a meaning behind it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know. We came to America in 1993. We've seen a lot of different changes take place, even within the last 30 years. We're in 2024 right now, election year. Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of America?
Speaker 2:Being White House artist under one of the greatest presidents I think that ever existed. I mean, when you look at it, he won every state but two in his second term. I mean he was a great president and he was able to handle Russia and everything else and bring down the Berlin Wall and everything that he did and I just I could be really distraught. I could be, but everything that's happened in my life it's sort of this is a God country and I think if we just stick with that, I think that everything is in God's hands It'll turn out the way it's supposed to. Now today we're really divided. I get people in and they are absolutely one way, and I get people in, they're absolutely the other way. It's so strong it's too bad to me. I just feel bad about that and I've seen everything sort of fall apart over the last few years. What I would consider being wholesome and all of that I mean it's just it's a different story. But being an artist and doing work for all walks of life, I have collectors who are one way, I have collectors who are the other way and I have the ability to be friends and to be neutral with all of them. I think that's real important. They all see something in nancy and I that they sort of wish they had. And because we get that all the time, I've had extremely wealthy people that have hundreds of millions of dollars come up and go I want what you have, you know, because they're even though they have all that, they're not satisfied and they're not happy. And I think that's the thing that when you really realize there is a creator and the creator cares about you and if you just, if you will, I will, type of thing, I've had to say okay, I will, and then he did. You know, it makes a difference and I just I don't understand why people don't see that when I first realized that when I had a show in, I was really struggling at that time I had a show in Houston, texas. No, in Dallas, I was in Dallas. I really needed it to be successful.
Speaker 2:That show was a key for me to be successful at the time and I had a friend went with me. He actually loaned me money to be able to get there and I was doing nothing. A five-day show in four days. I hadn't sold one thing in four days and it was all my reproductions. That's all it was. It was a furniture stationary-type show for wholesalers and the highest-priced picture I had was $32. It was a print in a frame 32 bucks that was the highest price picture. Most of them were $16, $10. And I had to raise. I was equivalent. Today I looked it up, I was $17,000 in debt, but today I'd be $175,000 in debt. Like you wake up one morning, you're $175,000 in debt. Like you wake up one morning, you're $175,000 in debt. That you didn't realize. All of a sudden boom, because I had a partner that put everything in. I didn't know what was going to happen. So I had to make something happen in that show. This partner, this guy that went to help me fill out orders, that loaned me the money. He went with me and he had a restaurant and they were big on the weekend. Well, we're approaching the weekend and I hadn't sold anything. So he says I better fly home to my restaurant. You obviously don't need me. So we were leaving the show and I'm pretty down now because I'm not selling it.
Speaker 2:We're walking across a divided highway and in the middle of the highway he grabs his side and he falls on the ground. He's rolling around on the ground. Oh, he's in pain. I said what's wrong, bob? What's wrong? He said I'm having a kidney stone attack. He had them before. So I got him to the room. He's rolling around. He had to get to a certain medicine. I didn't have a car. I had to call a pharmacy. I had to get a taxi. I had to get to the pharmacy. I had to get it to him by midnight. We hadn't eaten anything by midnight. He's laying in bed. He hadn't eaten anything by midnight. He's laying in bed.
Speaker 2:And I went over and looked at him. He was gray, his eyes were rolled back in the head and I thought he died. And I put my head on his chest and he was. I could hear his heart beating but he looked like he had passed away and I went, wow, and I went outside.
Speaker 2:Now here I was falling apart. I thought my friend had died. I hadn't eaten anything. I mean, I was really low. I looked up at the sky and it was millions of stars. It was a crystal clear night and I looked at that and I realized for the first time I'm looking at eternity, there's no end, and all these millions of stars. And when I looked at that I thought we shut that out of our mind, but it's there. There's a form of eternity we don't understand. And so I said, god, if you're there, I need help. And I don't know if you help me or not, but you know what? I'm going to leave everything up to you because I've failed and I'm talking like that. And I had that little prayer, like, and I went in and went to bed.
Speaker 2:Next morning, got up and he was better and I said well, I'll get you to the airport so you can get. He said no, no, I might have another attack. I want to stay with you. I said are you sure? He says yeah, so we go over. I just stood there. I wasn't trying to sell anything.
Speaker 2:Fellow walked up and he said no, I like those frame pictures. Uh, how much. I told him what they were. He says well, I'll take two dozen of those. Oh, first time. So I got the pad. We had had these pads printed out. I wrote on there, wrote his order. Another guy walked up. He started writing orders. We wrote orders as fast as we could write. The entire day, didn't even go to lunch. We wrote orders. It paid that entire bill off, which would be a cool $175 a day the whole day and I picked up four national salesmen that handled our work all around the country.
Speaker 2:From that on it started me. I mean, we came home, we couldn't fill all the orders. We were printing and building frames. I was building 125 frames a week. We built our own frames and shipping them every week going out and all these other print orders all over the nation, all these other print orders all over the nation I picked. When it got all through, I had 400 stores handling my work Wow, 400. And then it got so big I could hardly handle it. And then I was bought out by Peterson Publishing Company, which was another wonderful thing. They bought me out and they kept reproducing my work and I got a commission on everything that was sold and then the owner was buying the originals besides a very, you know, multimillionaire guy. And so that's when I was able to move to Auburn because I could live anywhere in the world. So I've had all these miracles happen, you know. So my perspective of things is a little different than most people, because I've had these happen to me and when it's real and it happens to you, it's very real.
Speaker 2:And so it's also made it very comforting for me, because when things do go haywire, I'll give you an example. I was in Washington, I was getting ready to go home and Herb Ellingwood I'll tell you about they drove me to the airport in a limo. I'm in the airport and here comes Herb Ellingwood. He's the head of 160 attorneys in the White House. He's the head guy and he comes and I could see he had a funny look on his face, very distraught, and he said let's go in the red room. That's where it lounges for. So we go in there and I could see something was wrong. I said, herb, how was your day? He said, well, it started off this way and this way. And then I got a phone call your son, lane, has been killed in a car accident. And I go why would this man ahead of 160 attorneys tell me such a thing? That can't be true. That couldn't happen in my life. I mean, I couldn't accept it. And then, finally, it came around. But life is not all easy and if it wasn't for my faith and everything, that would have been very hard. But I also had something happen that led up to that. That's prepared me. I had a situation take place that prepared me for that. So you know, life is full of unknowns and we have to take it a day at a time and I'm just grateful that at my age I'm still here.
Speaker 2:I lost a close friend this morning. I got a call this morning. One of my closest friends in school, he, passed away this morning. We've been keeping track of our friends not acquaintances, our friends since we've been married 65 years. His was number 273. Wow, of our friend. So we're hearing news weekly. Of course we know a lot of people In my world I meet a lot of people, but still it's a reality.
Speaker 1:That's such an amazing story, Doug. I just want to thank you very much for taking the time to do this. It's been amazing. I enjoyed your story and I'm sure the audience will appreciate this as well. Thank you so much.
