Born in the pre-depression years at a time before private charities were displaced by relief organization, with a mother whose job as a stewardess on cruise ships, and an absentee father, it was only after starting high school that I got to know my mother. The decision to attend the High School of Music and Art was not my own.  The long established American Female Guardian Society’s Home for the Friendless had decided that for me.  I attended the High School of Music and Art in NYC until I graduated in 1939. 

After a stint of outdoor work in the Civilian Conservation Corps I’d enlisted impulsively in the Coast Guard in 1940, never guessing that we would be drawn into the war in Europe!  After six years of service I’d checked into the Boston Naval Hospital to have what I felt was minor surgery for an injured leg and found that I was considered disabled…  I’d enjoyed knowing I’d been part of history and had volunteered for diver training in addition to engine room work that would make me more valuable.  Well I had felt I would be able to retire after 20 years with a pension of $150.00 a month.  But in reality the only record of my service that I left was the painting of a near-naked Eskimo girl in fur boots and red muffler astride a polar bear that was painted on both sides of a helicopter that had flown over the North and South Poles. I then studied to be a Fine Arts teacher at NYU and after graduation took a job teaching drafting at an all boy high school.  I taught there through the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

I had enjoyed knowing that the Math and Science departments had started the drafting class during WWII to provide draftsmen for war essential industries, allowing only the very serious students of Math and Physics to apply for classes.

I had found out about Mr. Reilly’s program after having signed up for an anatomy class at Belleview Hospital that was established by the father of President Kennedy who encouraged the starting of the school of Physical Rehabilitation.  The Art departments of NYU seemed to hold anatomy and realism in contempt.  Once I had heard one lecture by Mr. Reilly I had determined that I’d prove that anyone could be taught to draw.  I had also found that Reilly students were eager volunteers for donating Art to the military.  They were involved in numerous competitions for book publications of “pocket-book” covers through their years in his class.

Where technical drawing classes generally required that students produce one or two “plates” a week.  I’d found that by applying rules for sheet metal pattern making I could have the boys produce paper models of the 3 view problems they solved, along with isometric drawings that “proved” the measurements were correct.  When architectural drawings were taught I had the principles of perspective worked into the program along with proper models.

All through the years I had also found that students had relatives drafted for Korea and Vietnam who would end up in VA Hospitals. I’d be spending weekends at hospitals along with artists from the Society of Illustrators.

In early January of 1967 Mr. Reilly was buried after an undiagnosed brain tumor took his life.  As many of his former students had done in the years after World War II, this writer volunteered as a Combat artist in Viet-Nam during 1967 and 1968, as a memorial of sorts to the program’s effectiveness. In those last years of Mr. Reilly’s life this writer had driven him home after the evening classes, and came to appreciate the man’s attitude toward teaching and what the teacher’s responsibilities were. 

After Viet-Nam I continued teaching in New York until retiring in 1978, I then moved to Tucson, AZ where I put together “Values for Pictures Worth a Thousand Words”.  Apollo Dorian lived in Tucson until his passing at the age of 89.

October 2nd, 1922 - January 25th, 2012