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First story

Richard Blois October 29, 1993

This afternoon about 3:00 as we drove home I told Alice that I wanted to visit Mr. Blois. I called his number on the telephone but there was no answer. Because of his health, he was basically house bound , so I felt that he should have answered. I decided to drive out to his place near Charleston to see where he was. This last winter he was in the hospital with pneumonia and I didn’t know it. I thought maybe he might be in the hospital again and even dead - but really hoping that he was sitting outside in the warm sunshine.

I drove into his drive way and parked. I wondered if I should go to his door and knock. The last time I went out I didn’t call on the telephone and when I knocked at his door, he yelled to come on in. I tried the door knob but it was locked. After several minutes he came to the door - all bent over walking with a cane. He had been ill. He went back to bed and we talked. He blamed his illness on his medication. He pointed out the cello top and back that he was making, wood for another cello, and invited me to get his last violin from the a little room. He offered to sell it to me for $5000. I chose not to buy it. We had a very good visit. He told me that he was writing a book - a mystery, I believe. I advised him to check into using a computer and told him why. A previous visit he told me that he wanted to leave the U. S. and go to Canada. This time he spoke of New Zealand. We talked about his violin wood and tools. I told him that I was interested in buying the wood and tools. He said, "That would please me very much" - that we could work something out someday.

He was British all the way . He told me that his mother was a concert pianists and expected much of him - that he had studied the piano but couldn’t be his own self so he came to the U. S. after the war to become a violin builder. This was something that would be unique to him and he could be himself and not evaluated by the family and compared to is mother.

I got out of the car having decided to first go to his door and if there were no answer I would go to the house next door and inquire. The people living there watched over him. As I walked to the gate a car slowed up and a young lady rolled the window down and asked, "Sir, who did you want to see?" I told her that I had come to see Mr. Blois. Her husband drove the car into the driveway beside me and she said, "Mr. Blois died last Monday."

I was very disappointed and saddened to hear that he had died. I wanted to have more visits with him. I felt that he was fond of me because I was interested in making violins. He had come to Charleston from southern California where he had lived for 40 years building and repairing violins. He couldn’t take the heat of southern California and wanted a cooler climate. Because of a stroke he had lost the use of his small muscles so he wanted to make boats -- which required just using the large muscle movements. This he had told me when I first met him several years ago.

Joe, the fellow that I bought the Amati from several years ago had met Richard Blois and gave me his name. I stopped by to see him one day and he was ill with a bad cold. I went in where we sat by the stove for a short visit - just getting acquainted. He was very pleased that he could talk violin building with someone. I was the first persons that he had met in this area who knew about bows and violins. He offered to take me on as a student. I was always going to go back but I just didn’t get around to it.

Bill Ping, I believe it was, thought that Mr. Blois had a clock and went to see him. Because of the violins, my name came up. Mr. Blois was excited. He had been trying to contact me for a couple of years. I went out to see him. He told me how he had felt despair because he had lost my name and had no way to contact me. He was a lonely little old man. He must have led a lonely life basically in one room - a garage converted to a living quarters. I believe that he had given up his house to the family that watched over him. A social worker came in every morning and cooked his breakfast and then left the other meals for him to warm up later in the day.

The lady, Melody Lood, told me that last Monday she was driving near Myrtle Point when a nearly new tire blew. It took several hours to get it repaired. When she got home she went to the answering machine and there was a message from Richard, as she called him. It was a desperate message asking for help -telling her to get over to his place right away. She went over and he was dead. She said that she took his body to the hospital.

She was very bitter -- the state had taken over everything. "They" had come out with a video camera and had taken pictures of the contents. She said that the state would not communicate with her, that they had no compassion for Richard, and that they would not cooperate with her at all. I believe her when she said that Richard had her listen one day when he said that the social worker could have everything. A verbal contract does not exist. It has to be in writing but Melody said that he was afraid to write anything down because the government might get his things.

The driver of the car asked me how well I knew Richard and if he had ever spoken of any relations. He hadn’t.

Although I didn’t really know him, I was interested in him. I must admit that I was also interested in his violin making tools and wood. I would liked to have had his cello wood. Melody said that he had told her that I wanted his tools and wood. But maybe it is too late. She said that there would be an auction someday. Perhaps I will have a chance at the things that I want.

Melody told me something that really concerned me. She was speaking in anger about the state and said that they had even put "her" on his death certificate "you know, that problem he had." I didn’t tell her that I did not know of "the problem that he had." I gave her may card and asked her to contact me someday if there was something comes up that I should know.

Lew Holt
October 28, 1993

Richard Blois (Coos Bay World)

Memorial services for Richard
Blois, 75, Coos Bay, will be held at
2 p.m. Friday, Nov. 5, at the Coos
Bay Chapel, Seventh and Anderson,
with Rev. Malcolm Turkington of
Charleston community Church
officiating.

Arrangements under the direction
of Coos Bay Chapel, Seventh and
Anderson, 267-3131.

Mr. Blois was born Feb. 18, 1918,
at New York City, N. Y., and died
Oct 25, 1993, at Coos Bay of
natural causes.

Mr. Blois had lived in Coos Bay
for the past two years, moving here
from California where he lived for
three years, having moved there
from England. His parents were
members of a theater group from
England and performing in New
York when he was born. He was
raised and lived most of his life in
England serving in the British Army
during World War II. Mr. Blois
was highly educated and a talented
artist, musician, and master crafts-
man for building cello and violin
musical instruments.

Mr. Blois loved his work music,
and his three cats, Nicki Poo, Percy
and Sir Lancelot, who are now in
the custody of two friends, Melody Lood
and Sharon Murray of Coos Bay.

November 5, 1993

Today I went to Richard Blois’s funeral service in Coos Bay. I arrived at 1:50 and went inside. Nobody was there. A lady came out and asked if she could help me. I said that I was there for Mr. Blois’s funeral and asked if I had the correct time. She said that I was. About 2:00 Rev. Malcolm Turkington and Mills Bryan came out.

We stood there not really knowing what to think. There was one preacher and one person to listen. Melody’s name was mentioned. We felt that she wanted to be there. The funeral director stepped into the other room and gave Melody a call. He came back out and said, "I think that I woke her up." He asked if we wanted to wait for her and we said that we did.

Her husband, 3 boys, and she came about 2:30. We went into the chapel. They sat in the front row and I sat in the 2nd row. The preacher gave his little sermon. He didn’t know Richard but said some pretty nice things. It was a sad service. Not sad because a man had died - rather because he only had 3 adults attend his funeral. Two who lived in his house probably for economic reasons but who were good care takers and I who had visited with him on perhaps 4 occasions, talked to him on the phone several times and had written him one letter.

At 3:00 we all shook hands and walked outside. I talked to Melody about his possessions. She said that "Larry" was coming down from Salem next week and that I ought to be there when he comes to tell him about the material and tools that Mr. Blois had said that he wanted me to have.

I enjoyed Mr. Blois. He was different. He was "British." Proud to be from England. Perhaps even feeling that he was "royalty." He like the British ways. He commented to me the first time that I visited him that people "up here" didn’t use last names but, rather, called him by his first name. I think that he would rather have had them call him by his last name. He had old pictures on the wall that no doubt made him feel that he was back in England - English land scapes. He was an artist in his own right. Some of his art work hung on the wall. He was proud of his three kittens that ate from dishes on the counter as he and I talked.

On two occasions he showed me a scroll for a violin that he had carved. It was very well done - balanced and finished very well. He had a cello top and back setting out for me to see - both beautifully done. He had the rough wood for a cello standing against the book shelf. These were fine pieces of wood - a maple back and a spruce top.

He asked me to go into a little side room to get his violin that he had built. I brought it out and opened the case. It was a custom made case by an acquaintance of his in California. He was very proud of the case and talked about it in detail. I took the violin and bow out of the case and pulled the bow across the strings. It is a nice sounding violin. Well built. A good finish. He offered to sell it to me.

Each visit we discussed rehairing bows. He asked me if I started with the frog or the tip of the bow. I told him that I started with the frog. He told me that was wrong that I should do the tip first. That is the way that he did it and he felt that was the most professional way of rehairing a bow.

Checking back in my latest journal I find that on July 22, 1993 Richard called me to ask me come out. Alice took the call and when I came home I called him back. I drove out and spent from 3:30 to 5:30 talking to him.

On August 18th we again visited for two hours.

On September 1 I wrote him a letter when we were camped at Williams.

On September 29 I called him from Pat’s to see if I could stop by. He told me that he had the flu and that it would be better if I didn’t. I told him that we were going to Klamath Falls/Merrill to a Potato Festival and on to Redding for a contest but that I would contact him when we got back. He had me verify, several times, that I would call him after we got back towards the end of October.

On October 29th I called and that is when I did not get an answer. I went out and was told that he had died on the previous Monday.

November 9, 1993

This morning I called Larry Larimar at the Division of State Lands in Salem. He handles the estates of people who have no next of kin. When I called I got his answering machine which had a message that he was working in N.E. Portland. Later that afternoon he called me. We had a pleasant chat. He said that he was hoping that when I called that I might have located a "next of kin." I explained to him why I had called, i.e. I knew Mr. Blois and that he and I had talked about me getting his violin wood and tools. Larry told me that the estate would be at a public oral auction at the armory in Salem at a later date. That the upcoming auction was too soon and that he would put my name on the list to be notified when the auction would be held. Right now I don’t have any idea what my chances are. They would be good if I want to spend the money but hopefully there won’t be bidding competition.

February 26, 1994

The day finally arrived for the auction at the National Guard Armory at the Fairgrounds in Salem. At 9:15 Alice, Bill, and I went over - less than a mile away. The preview of the items to be auctioned started at 9:30. The auction started at 11:00 with the guns and several cars at noon. The auctions for Mr. Blois’s items started about 1:00.

While I was previewing the items to be auctioned I saw and talked to Henry Stroebel, a professional violin luthier from Aumsville and Nancy Rohn a professional from Corvallis. Steve Fedorko from Salem was there, too, as were a number of others who were definitely interested. The four of us decided not to bid against each other but rather to work together.

I fidgeted all morning and the adrenaline was flowing. I had noted the items that I wanted and the top price that I was willing to pay. The first two items were two cellos. I was willing to pay $50 each or so. They sold for over $400. I thought that I saw a trend that I wasn’t going to be able to compete with. Several violins sold that I was interested in and finally they came to the one that I wanted - that Mr. Blois and I had discussed on two occasions. I had said that I would go to $300 but it was going slowly at that point so I stayed in for $350 and it was sold to me. I was pleased.

I bid on quite a few boxes of miscellaneous stuff but they all went above my limit. I set a limit of $100.00 on the one box of tools that I really wanted. At $50 the auctioneer said that it was sold to me. I was pleased. It contained 20 chisels and 4 reamers. I got a good buy of things that I really wanted.

The competition was too much for me to buy everything that I wanted. I bid $90 on the cello top and back. They went for $125 or so. The box of wood that I wanted that included wood for a back and front of a cello, bent sides and a carved scroll, several cello bows, etc. went for $525 - way out of my class.

I wanted more but as I left, I was pleased that I able to buy what I had. Now I had several things that represented Mr. Blois.

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