Constance and Pope COLEMANbestmagazinecincinnati.com/Our_Stories_files/Best 9.11...And especially when they are still so active, their minds so sharp, their thoughts so clearly articulated,

U R B A N L I V I N G 87B E S T M A G A Z I N E86

COLEMAN

P R O S P E C T H I L L

Constance and Pope

BEST 9.11 Urban Living_final:Best 9.11 Urban Living 7/28/11 4:59 PM Page 86

B E S T M A G A Z I N E88

It is rare that we start a Best Magazine interview reading our subjects’ obituaries. Especially when they are still living.And especially when they are still so active, their minds so sharp, their thoughts so clearly articulated, and they open the front

door with a glass of scotch or a great wine.Constance (Connie) and Pope Coleman are a study of gentleness, peppered with spunk. They live perched on Milton Street in

Prospect Hill, in one of the more than a dozen shot-gun style homes where the fronts are not particularly of note, but the backsoften include a spectacular view of downtown Cincinnati. Here they’ve lived the last decade, a place daughter Amanda suggestedthey move after living in Carmel and Santa Barbara, California the prior 17 years, a place where the small patch of green grass andterraced garden would suit this couple even in the afterlife. The dogs, Andrew and Genevieve, like it here too. They know Connielikes dogs, and that other dog lovers, like Oprah and George W., like Connie.

Connie is a painter; Pope an activist.Pope tells me that he understands the British government is studying a way to measure happiness. That interests him because

he once thought there might be a way to study livability (like within a certain neighborhood), an idea he later abandoned because,he says, like pornography, you only know it when you see it.

We can certainly see happiness in this place, cocktail time in particular.Yes, they’re getting older and there were some instances during our interview when one voice wanted to interrupt the other,

and times when they remembered things a bit differently, but Pope shed genuine U.S. of A tears on several occasions when hetalked about his bride of 60 years and the adventures they’ve shared along the way.

•Funny that we started with the living obituaries. But they provided documented passions Connie and Pope have shared with so

many in their combined 170 years since birth. Like Pope said, most obituaries say you were born, that you got married, and thenyou died. But their obituaries list the stories in-between, the ones that could be fodder for a good book, the ones where you can’twait to hear the ending to Pope’s sidebar that because of him, a Geisha-like woman, and Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Grand CentralStation in New York City was NOT torn down. The ones about how and why they rode the train from Cincinnati to D.C. to the 1963March on Washington.

Or the one where Connie rolled around on the floor of the Diplomatic Room in the White House to better know two friends ofthe President (W) and Mrs. Bush.

STORY BY DOUGLAS EDWARD SANDHAGE

PHOTOS BY HELEN ADAMS

To Connie and Pope Coleman, the courtyardis their little bit of heaven, their oasis, on his-toric Prospect Hill. Built by Germans around1860, in a Greek Revival style, the homeswere perfect for the long narrow lots onCincinnati’s hillsides. And perfect they were,says Pope, “because they’re still standing.”At one time, he adds, it was a six-unit tene-ment; each floor had its own entry, as can beseen in the photo. Connie and Pope pur-chased the home from Condy Beaver, a de-veloper and art dealer. Pope says thatCondy painstakingly restored the buildingmeaning that when the Colemans moved in,all they needed to add was their furniture.Connie says the three-tier verandas on thisside of the home reminds her of New Or-leans-style architecture.

The stone wall in the garden was there whenthey purchased the home, says Pope. “Allwe’ve added are the soft things.” They, andtheir gardener Craig Schultz, “nurture thegarden” on a regular basis. “Craig is notyour basic landscape gardener,” adds Pope.“He is more of an artist. He doesn’t comewith plans for the garden; he creates it as hegoes along.” The garden includes a sculp-ture by Patricia Renick.

As for favorite plants, Pope says he won’tname any because “if you can name some-thing, you can control it. It is not a controlledgarden, which is part of its charm. You loseall sense of control once you’re married toConstance,” he says, to which she replied,“It takes one to know one.”


U R B A N L I V I N G 91

SOMEWHAT THE BEGINNINGIn the beginning they were born, Connie in Illinois, the only childof football All American John Depler (in later life the founderand coach of the football team, the Brooklyn Dodgers) and Margaret her Mom. As a result of her father’s professional involvement in post-college football, young Connie experienceda somewhat peripatetic childhood before settling in California.At one point the family moved to a home across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Big Apple.

She attended Berkeley (California) High School and studied atthe Elizabeth Holloway School of Theatre, Dominican Collegeand the California School of Fine Arts where she was exposed toabstract expressionism and studied with painters Mark Rothko(in later years, she adds, he became a “good drinking buddy”)and David Park. Life took lots of turns after that.

Connie helped sell war bonds in San Francisco; found hous-

ing for the wives of pilots during the war; and during her Los Angeles years (for her, much of life is divided into the Carmel,the Berkeley, the Los Angeles, the Santa Barbara, and theCincinnati years) she worked as a decorator for socialites. Shewas even considered to act in the movie National Velvet but lostthe role to Elizabeth Taylor.

She was in her mid 20s when a sightseeing gentleman by the name of Pope Coleman, the son of high-society types in Lexington, Kentucky, happened to pass through Carmel. Shecaught his attention at a fashion show, and Connie, being theadventurous type, took him up on his offer to continue the triptogether to San Francisco. He says she was “glamorous.” In1951, Pope asked Connie for her hand in marriage and not longafter that they moved to Lexington, where the couple lived withPope’s parents, and Pope was named plant superintendent forthe Big Run Coal & Company. Connie flourished with a freelance


Right: While modern in her ways of thinking, Connie still likessome old things, like her hand-carved 1860s-era maple bed thatwas once owned by her great grandmother, Rose Ann AsherWheat. “I’ve used it ever since I was a child,” she says. The nudeMarcel Vertes drawing above the bed Pope bought years ago.“It reminded him of me,” she adds, “a dog, and my boobs andeverything.”

Above: The quilt now draped over the sofa was “made for thebed,” and is more than 100-years-old, says Connie. It has sincebeen restored. This photo is of the other end of Connie’s bedroom,and is where she sits in the mornings to write in her journal. The fireplace is one of three working wood-burners in the house. Mostof the books are about dogs, and many of the objects, includingthe dog-faced candelabra, are canine-oriented.


U R B A N L I V I N G 93

career painting and doing illustrations.Two years later Pope, offered a job as a benefits plan con-

sultant for a national insurance agency in Cincinnati, took thedeal and he and Connie took up residence in Mt. Adams. “Thisis when we fell in love with Cincinnati,” says Pope, citing the hill-sides in particular. Connie decided to practice what she studiedin school and what she learned as a young girl walking the hallsof the Metropolitan in NYC. In the latter she loved staring at what remains her favorite animal painting of all time, RosaBonheur’s The Horse Fair.

It was also time for Connie to be a Mom, they both reasoned.Connie could continue to do freelance work, which included de-signing greeting cards, gift-wraps, packaging and lots more forfirms like Gibson Greetings, based in Cincinnati.

The couple bore three children: John, today an industrial de-signer who lives in Philadelphia; Pope Jr., a Cincinnati-based big-rig truck driver; and Amanda Voss, a realtor with RobinsonSotheby’s International Realty. She lives in Cincinnati with herhusband Allan, and their two children, Lydia and Annalise.

In 1955 the young family moved to a rentedfarmhouse on the Peterloon estate of IndianHill, where Connie says the children had theopportunity to play on its many acres. Whilein Cincinnati’s fabled neighborhood, Conniesaid she created the primary grades arts program at Cincinnati CountryDay School. Later she served onthe founding committee thatbrought Montessori schoolsto Cincinnati, and help-ed found the first giftshop at the CincinnatiZoo, run entirely by vol-unteers. She later served onthe Zoo board for 17 years.

LONG LIVE THE POPEPope, officially Edwin PopeColeman III, was born in 1927 inLexington, the son of motherDora Hoge and prominent business-man and civic leader Caruthers AskewColeman Sr. He graduated high schoolfrom Woodberry-Forest PreparatorySchool in Virginia, then, rather than gothe traditional college route, he enlistedin the military to live his dream, to be aNavy pilot. But World War II ended before he could complete his trainingand thus ending his flyboy days. Upon

discharge he studied for a time at Jefferson’s school in Char-lottesville before transferring to Harvard and earning a bachelorsdegree in liberal arts. Later be became president of Cincinnati’sHarvard Club. While in Los Angeles and while Connie was establishing her art career, he supervised a factory that madecanvas chairs.

It’s hard not to have some fun with a first name like Pope.While we didn’t ask him for his favorite stories about having thename, he did say that when he enters Judgment Day, for surehe’ll be given “a second hearing,” should that be necessary. Atthe time of this interview, a Cincinnati sculptor was finishing abust of Pope’s head for an exhibition. “There is nothing so extraordinary as seeing your head sitting on a table,” he says.

His living obituary states he be best defined an “urban activistand Cincinnati futurist.” From 1971 to 1980 he was the founder, director and often sole employee for the Cincinnati Institute, wherehe devised dozens of ways to turn his civic activism into comfort-able self-employment, without, he says, compromising either theintegrity of his work or his own sense of ethics.

Some of the Institute’s projects for which it can claim successinclude having tree-lined and shady streets within the city, hillside preservation (Pope founded The Hillside Trust), the

preservation of The Palace Theater, and serving as aconsultant for the City Manager’s office, the city’sDepartment of Development, the city’s PlanningCommission, and UC. He remembers well a womanwho made an impression upon him regarding

Cincinnati’s hillsides: “God made ‘em, leave‘em alone.”

Pope says that former Cincin-nati city manager Bill Donald-

son, once wrote him to say:“The Cincinnati Instituteand its director are two ofthe things that makeCincinnati a city with moreurban opportunity thatany other I know.”

In ’71, he accepted anappointment as interim

director of the Contemporary Arts Center.And, in 1976, he served as interim director of the School of Art in the College

of Art, Architecture and Planning at UC, andwas active in the process that founded theCincinnati Playhouse in the Park.

Let’s now jump to 1984. The Colemansmissed California and decided to moveback, to Santa Barbara. While they likedthis city of 80,000-plus known as the


Connie & Pope Coleman, late 1960s

story continues on page 96

The main floor of the Colemans’ home is primarily used to greet and talk with guests. Connie says that interior designer John Harrison, coordinating with the original taupe wall color, arranged the artwork; he is a“genius” says Connie. The marble, wood-burning fireplace is perfect for reading any of the hundreds of titles in the Coleman library; on this floor, the topics are mostly literature, “the ones that make you think,” says Connie. Other bookshelves in the home featuremostly books on dogs, decorating and travel. The flooring is the original pinewood planks.

Want to hear more from Connie and Pope Coleman, in their own words? Go to www.bestmagazinecincinnati.com andclick on the Best Story Tellers link. Hear how the couple lived with a raccoon for 15 years; about how Pope helped saveGrand Central Station with some help from Jackie Kennedy Onassis and a geisha girl; how Connie rolled around in theDiplomat Room of the White House with two of George W's best friends; and of their participation in the 1963 Marchon Washington.



“American Riviera,” Connie had Carmel more so in her heart. One day while visit-ing Carmel, about 250 miles north, Pope and Connie were enjoying drinks at therenowned Mission Ranch when Connie, at least according to Pope, nearly wenthysterical announcing to everyone present how much she liked Carmel. “The bar-tender,” says Pope, “finally said, ‘if you love it so damned much, why don’t you justlive here?’” For Connie, it meant she simply wanted to “come home,” to a city sheloved so dearly before meeting Pope.

Connie again entered her formative years as an accomplished artist and Popestayed the activist, serving as a member of that city’s planning commission. (Ofnote: Carmel is the city that once elected Clint Eastwood as its mayor. While Popesays that Eastwood did a lot of “environmentally good things” for the city, devel-opment took center stage, unfortunately, and over time the darling art communitybecame less darling.)

The unwelcome changes in Carmel became overwhelming to Pope and Connieand so they decided, after 12 years, to come back to their other home, Cincinnati,to be among family and friends.

Daughter Amanda, a realtor, was on the lookout for quarters to make the home-coming easier and came upon an 1860’s era ready-to-move-into, mint condition,Greek Revival Style home on Milton Street. It had promise, thought Amanda, andshe shared it with Connie during one of her visits. Connie said yes to buying andPope, still in California, asked if he could see it. “At the closing,” Connie told him,not leaving anything else up for discussion. However, when Pope first set eyes onthe place, he seconded the decision as a coup d’état.

That was 2002 and they’ve stayed in place since. Connie has her art studio in afirst-floor condo that adjoins their three-story home, and Pope got into the people’sbusiness again, becoming an active member with the Over-the-Rhine Foundation andother projects. Currently he is working on the reclaiming, “greening” and re-openingof the historic 100-plus-years-old four-story Rothenberg School. One of the school’snew features, when it opens in 2013, will be to convert the rooftop, originally the play-ground, to a rooftop garden and, more specifically says Pope, a new classroom. Thegreen roof won’t be of the passive kind. Pope and others involved in the project en-vision permanently planted areas, but also some planting beds where students can ac-tually grow things. For many children, it would be their first exposure to a garden. Itis changes such as this, says Pope, that will turn Cincinnati’s oldest neighborhood intoa more welcoming space.

Pope seems amused by our questioning regarding his motivation to lead an activistlife. He muses philosophic with one answer: “When I look out this window what I seeis my own. I’ve got to do my part to take care of it. There aren’t no them, it’s only us.”And in another, he answers matter-of-factly: “Why do I plant flowers? It seems to methat a flower needed to be planted and I was able to arrange to get it done.” And stillanother: “I grew up with a sense of place, a place of order. I never paid any attentionto what anyone thinks, except when it comes to getting things done.” And finally, onwhy he and Connie were among a minority of whites who melded with 300,000 AfricanAmericans on the 1963 march on Washington (the one where Martin Luther King Jr.delivered his I Have A Dream speech): “Because it was necessary.”

IT ’S NOT YET TIMEWhile their obits may be up-to-date, they’ve got a lot of living yet to do. Conniestill yearns to paint more dogs and return to Tibet (see sidebar story); Pope stillhas his causes; and together they have to decide each year what to plant in their

While the Coleman’s place is three floors, there still wasn’t enough space for Connie to do what is most important to her: paint without interruption. She neededa private studio. Just so happens the building that adjoins theirs, in which there are several condos, the one on the lower level was available so Connie boughtit. Because it also includes a bedroom, bath and kitchen, it doubles as a guest suite.


flower garden. Oh yeah, and they have to fix drinks for visitorswho stop in (one being Candace Klein, also featured in this issueof Best Magazine), and install an elevator in their three-story sothat getting from their kitchen on the ground floor, to their bed-room on the third floor, will be easier.

Connie says she has led a “very peculiar life.” Intriguing iswhat I’d call it, for both of them. They’ve both had jobs of allkinds, yet most not in the way many of us think of a job, exceptfor maybe that one Pope had as a coal mine operator. Theyseem to be multifaceted, more opportunistic, and more pas-sionate in their way of thinking.

They gave us, in addition to their life highlights, a number ofarticles that have been written about them over the years. In manyways, those articles are like this one, except they are like previouschapters. We’ve kind of put them together, without the ending.

If we had one regret, it’s that Connie would not let us see orphotograph her writing in her journal. “(The journal) gives meperspective on where I’ve been and why I am at this point,” shesays. “Going back to your journal you can see the reality of themoment, and not just your memory of it.”

After she writes in her journal each day, lets the dogs out,

enjoys a cup of coffee, and reads the obits in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Connie says she starts her “to-do list.”

Connie will talk to you for hours if you say the word “aging.”It is not something she dwells on, but instead it’s a word thathelps her evolve. “My secret is to keep evolving. I never stoppedto be happy. You have a purpose in life.”

At the end of the day, certainly prior to cocktail time, we suspect Connie’s to-do list, and Pope’s, will be done. Plus a fewthings more.

WHO DID IT?The following businesses were identified by the Colemans ashaving been significantly involved in the home’s architecture,design and/or landscaping in recent years:Developer / Art Dealer: Condy Beavers Interior Design: John Harrison Landscape and Gardening: Craig Schultz of Signature Landscapes Housekeeping: Thelma Weaver of Showplace Cleaners Garden Sculptures: Patricia Renick andMark Schlacter


Genevieve and Andrew got ready for their parts in the photo shoot by spending time with Anna Fein,a groomer at Red Dog Pet Resort. Genevieve is a Norfolk terrier so she got extra attention on her coat.

The Colemans’ shot-gun style home on Milton Street in Prospect Hill has three floors: the kitchen is on the first floor, the living and sitting rooms on the main floor(street level) and the bedrooms are on the third. “Everything about it has been perfect” since they moved in, says Connie. Even some of the terra cotta floor tilesin the kitchen, seconds from Mexico, have dog paw prints pressed into them (where dogs walked across them before they were fully dry). “We spend most ofour time in here,” says Pope, particularly since the room opens into their courtyard, and allows Connie access to her adjoining condo artist studio. The pine tableonce belonged to William Wordsworth, the famous 18th century English poet. A day bed across from the table was found in a New Orleans orphanage and recovered in fabric from Pierre Deux.


They are the gentlest people with a wonderful sense of humor. Dogs

pick up on the personality of their owners . . . they seem at peace with

themselves.” Connie’s Dogs of Tibet series was exhibited in 2008 at the

AKC Museum of the Dog in St. Louis; in William Secord Gallery in

New York in 2009; and in late summer of this year at the prestigious

Carmel Art Association, the city’s oldest of its 90 galleries.

BEFORE THE FIRST BRUSH STROKEFirst, says Connie, she has to understand the relationship between the

dog and its owner, in particular how they have come to reflect each

other’s personality, a process she calls “anthropomorphizing, identifying

an owner’s traits in an animal,” then using her perceptions to make each

portrait distinctive. If the owner is not available, Connie says “I can just

sort of read a dog.”

Connie says that one trick is not to treat dogs as though they are

people. “Dogs are dogs, we are humans and we are on this earth to live

together and be companions. I learn from my dogs, they learn from me.

Someone said to me that I protect the integrity of the dog.”

Ideal clients for her portraits, says Connie, are “people who share

their lives with animals and value the relationship in subtle ways.” They

are not, she adds, the sort of people who put “sunglasses on the dog and

make it do stupid tricks.”

Clients have included Abercrombie & Fitch, Gibson Greeting

Card Co., The Toy Works, Wildlife International, the Cincinnati Zoo,

and more than a hundred other notables. In addition, she has been

featured in many galleries and exhibitions in the U.S., London and

Toronto, and interviewed by dozens of newspapers and magazines. She

has appeared on the Entertainment and the Disney Channels, as well as

Animal Planet.

Connie estimates that she has painted more than 300 portraits and

plans to do a lot more. She also hopes to return to Tibet to do more

paintings there.

Want Connie to do your dog? Oils start at $5,500 and pastels at

$750. More info: go to www.cdcstore.com.

Connie Depler Coleman has stared down the eyes of many a

dog whose best friends are notables. Friends like Oprah

Winfrey, George W. Bush, T. Boone Pickens, Oscar de la

Renta, Mrs. Andrew Carnegie Rose, Michael McDonald, and Brad and

S. Craig Lindner. They all paid her to paint portraits, after she got to

know the dogs by talking to them first.

Connie’s dog portraits are not of the dime-a-dozen variety. The dogs

all look like they’ve been asked and are happy to sit for their painting.

The faces show character, their body positions are like dogs lay when

content, their backgrounds appropriate for what their owners have given

them. Connie remembers their names — such as Timbuktu, Pieta

Kingfish, Lady Blossom, Squatty Body, Edith Gorme, Arrowhead

and Sir Francis Chesterfield, and the full day she spent on Oprah’s

northern Indiana farm talking with and photographing her 11 dogs to

be included in the painting (later she would add two more dogs that

Oprah acquired).

The George W. assignment was commissioned by the American

Kennel Club as part of a series on presidential dogs. Connie and daugh-

ter Amanda got to “roll around on the floor” in the Diplomatic Room

with Barney and Miss Beasley, the Bush’s Scotties, to shoot photos to

begin the paintings. While a staunch Democrat, Connie says she was

pleased that she got a “nice note” from the Bushs complimenting her

on her work.

Connie’s career, now preceded by her being known as one of

America’s premier animal portraitists, didn’t start auspiciously. “Actually,

I was a pathetic little girl,” she says. “My family was never settled enough

to have a dog.” But today she has two, Andrew, and Genevieve, and once

owned a raccoon for 13 years, Stripes, but that’s a “long story,” she adds.

Over the years Connie has painted dog and human portraits;

illustrated goods from greeting cards, to napkins to purses; painted

murals that are still found in homes, bars and businesses around the U.S.;

and has enjoyed top billing in shows of her work.

Her more recent work includes a series of pastels and oil paintings

titled the Dogs of Tibet. In 2006 and 2007, she traveled to Tibet as part

of a National Geographic sponsored trip and, while there, took quick

notice of how different Tibet dogs are from what she calls the urban

and pampered pets in the U.S. She called the Tibetan dogs the “spiritual

soul mates of the gentle people who live at the top of the world.”

In an article about the trip that Connie penned for the AmericanKennel Club Gazette, she says: “I was struck with how mellow the dogs

are, and the self-confidence they have. They weren’t trained dogs, they

were just going along with their people. The Tibetans are Buddhists.

Seeing Eye-to-Eye Dog

Chances are pretty good that you’ve seen this painting before, and chances are it was Connie Coleman’s original, or a modified version that someone else tookfrom the original. Titled Bar Hounds, Connie first created it in 1953 when she was pregnant with son John. The idea behind the scene is what Connie calls “anthropomorphizing, identifying an owner’s traits in an animal,” then using her perceptions to make each one distinctive. Connie was also once commissionedby Barber Shop Quarterly magazine to draw its covers. In those she filled shops with dogs “satirizing all the things barbers and customers do.” Millions of customers saw the covers as they were frequently framed and hung on the walls of shops nationwide.



Documents

Constance and Pope COLEMANbestmagazinecincinnati.com/Our_Stories_files/Best 9.11...And especially when they are still so active, their minds so sharp, their thoughts so clearly articulated,