More than a hundred people jammed the International Poetry Room at the Carnegie Library in Oakland to hear me babble and rant about my Ray Sprigle book on Thursday July 6.

I showed about 30 slides of Sprigle, his guide John Wesley Dobbs and various co-stars of my book.

In the crowd was the amazingly youthful Jean Roberts, 98, who met Sprigle in early 1948 when he was trying to find some medically safe dye to stain his skin black.

Roberts, a nurse at Allegheny General Hospital at the time, later put Sprigle in touch with a wheelchair-bound indigent young man who wanted to become a watchmaker.

Sprigle’s article in the Post-Gazette generated contributions from readers and one of Sprigle’s pals helped the man find a decent place to stay while he completed his studies.

Classic Lines book store of Squirrel Hill sold about a dozen of my books and I signed most of them.

 

 

 

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