John O’Neil’s memory of Reynard Biemiller (1995):
I met Reynard Biemiller in the Spring of 1943 when we were both recruits in the 30th Engineer Topographic Battalion at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Although the training was not rigorous we sweated through the usual duties of pot-scrubbing and other army life indignities. A friendship developed and was solidified during a subsequent year spent overseas in an Algerian village making maps for the allied invasion of Italy. The battalion subsequently returned to America; illness prevented my following the army group to Hawaii; upon recovery I was sent to the Pentagon for additional cartographic work. At the end of the war I resumed teaching art courses at the University of Oklahoma and other Midwest and West Coast locations. Long years followed when Rey and I did not see each other but in the mid seventies…a wonderful correspondence began and lasted until Rey’s final letter to me on September 19th of last year. We had lived for twenty years in each others letter boxes. It was a joyous time of renewal of a mislaid friendship. Rey’s written observations about shared interests were always pungent and sent in his beautiful calligraphy. Unfortunately we never met again but there remains the lively memory of a highly gifted and splendid man.
John O’Neil
Art Professor Emeritus
Rice University, Houston
April 13, 1996 to Ruth Biemiller
