She was always known as “Ray” – a “ray” of sunshine? After
suffering the death of their first six children between 1865 and 1878, William
Cole Harrison and Mary Jane (“Mollie”) Lattner understandably would have given
their later children hopeful names. Of nine children born to this New Orleans
couple, only two survived into adulthood. We don’t know the cause of death for
five of them, but we do know that Claudia (age 8) and Stella May (age 10)
succumbed to yellow fever within 10 days of each other during the 1878 epidemic
that took more than 4,000 lives in New Orleans. William and Mollie named the
baby girl born a week later Stella Claudia, but she died at age seven. Ray’s
older sister, born in 1879, was named Hope Daisy and lived to age 94. Mildred
Ray was their last child, arriving Dec 17, 1886 when her mother was 45 years
old. Ray lived to be 93.
William’s training in medicine (he graduated from the
University of Louisiana’s Medical School) and pharmacology (he owned a New
Orleans drugstore) was useless in protecting his children from the unhealthy
conditions of that 19th century port city. The cause of yellow fever
(mosquitoes) wasn’t known until the 20th century. He must have
finally resigned himself to leaving his hometown for a healthier clime. In 1887
he, Mollie and their two surviving daughters left their two-story red brick
house where they ‘never saw a blade of grass,’[1] and settled in a house in
the countryside outside Los Angeles.
Williams set up his physician’s office in downtown Los Angeles (in a
building later replaced by the City Hall).
According to her two-page autobiography, Ray had decided to
become a professional artist by the time she entered high school. During her
senior year at Los Angeles High School, she painted a mural “Arts and Industries
of California” on the studio wall. (The watercolor study for the mural hangs in
Claudine and Chris’s barn home). After graduation in 1905, she studied art at
the College of Fine Arts, U.S.C and did illustrations for various publications
and magazines, including ‘Out West,’ Overland Monthly and the Los Angeles
Sunday Herald. We know that she planned to teach art for we have copies of
recommendations written in early 1912 in support of her application to teach in
the intermediate schools. One teacher
raved that she had “exceptional facility in the rendering of charcoal, pastel,
and india ink … and has a mental appreciation of the practical and philosophic
relations of art to life that is rarely seen in the studio.”[2]
Along the way, however, she met Edwin Radeker Stancliff
(“Rad,”) general manager of the LA branch of the Auto Car company. She fell for this personable and wealthy
young man who was an accomplished pianist and had interests in aviation and
automobiles and they were married on July 29, 1912 in Los Angeles. They first
stayed with his parents in Elmira, NY and also lived in New York City (The
Fairholm, 503 W. 121st St.). Ray continued her art studies at the
National Academy of Design there (1913-14) and socialized with artsy, liberal
friends (actress Edna Porter and Helen Keller among others). She was pregnant with her first daughter
Ramona when they moved back to Los Angeles in 1916.
After serving in the US Army’s Aviation Corps in Texas
(probably 1917 when the US entered WWI) Rad tried to enlist in the Navy but was
rejected because of ‘his physical condition.’ (Ray wrote that he had caught a
severe cold while working on some airplanes in San Diego and the doctor
prescribed a long rest.)[3] Rad’s mother insisted they return to Elmira
and Ray gave birth to Juanita there on April 1, 1918. Rad had worked for Glenn
Curtiss at Hammondsport, NY and around 1919 was transferred to Houston, Texas
to help the Curtiss Aeroplane Company open a new factory there. Ray wanted to
join him but as Juanita later indicated and Ray’s letters to Rad suggest[4] (she
explains how disappointed she was that he hadn’t sent for her) he had another
female interest in Texas. Ray returned to LA to help take care of her ailing
mother. Her third child, Elwood Radeker, was born at her parent’s home in 1919
a month after her mother died. She and the kids finally joined Rad in Houston
in 1920, but within a year the factory closed and they returned to California.
They settled in San Pedro where Rad set up a boatbuilding company to build a
speedboat he had designed.
Ray was a modern mother in the early 1920’s. She had cut her
long blond hair into a bob. In a news
article reporting that the Aetna Insurance Co had ruled that “all women in its
employ wearing short hair shall be dismissed,” she was quoted as saying, “I did
three things when I bobbed my hair, I pleased my husband, gained more time to
devote to my three babies and made my scalp much more comfortable.”[5]
She was also a member of the San Pedro Women’s Club. As part of
a club debate on whether mothers should be engaged in ‘outside duties,’ she was
quoted in a local newspaper as saying, “I believe the children of today are
receiving a better heritage and a more wholesome bringing up because their
mothers do go to clubs. Women who get away from the monotonous duties of the
household, who mingle with people who have a broad vision and progressive ideas
certainly go back to their children better fitted physically and mentally to
care for and train them.” [6]
Times were modern in many ways, but it was also the era of
Prohibition. Rad had a weakness for alcohol and his health deteriorated until
in 1924, he went outside in a windstorm to check flowers he had planted on the
roof of his garage that was built into an embankment. He was drunk, fell off
the roof and died, at age 34, of a brain concussion. Ray was left with three
children, ages three, six and eight.
The Stancliffs were a family of means. Ray’s father-in-law
bought her a house (probably the house on Murray Drive which she rented after
building a Hopi-style house that Ray lived in until the 1950s or the lot next
door where she built a rental house) and made sure she received a “living
income’ from the family trust. She raised her children there and indulged her
love of travel, taking them wherever she went. At some point she became
involved with the Church of Religious Science (established in 1927, also known
as the ‘Science of Mind’ and part of the New Thought movement). Juanita
remembered being admonished to not bother her mother while she meditated in a
room by herself.
In 1931 Ray rented out her home for the summer and took the
children to the Philippines via Honolulu, Japan and China, sailing aboard the
Taiyo Maru, a WWI German boat confiscated by the Japanese. In the detailed account she wrote of the
trip,[7] her
language is quaint (many references to ‘half-naked coolies’ and ‘our patient
rickshaw men’) but her open mind apparent, “Honolulu is the paradise of the
Eurasian, because no color line is drawn. Here they do not meet the cruel
ostracism which is even more relentless in the Orient than in the United
States.”
Finally in 1933 her ‘lust for travel’ led her to take her
children out of school and embark with them on a two-year world tour, her
theory being that they would learn more abroad then in a Los Angeles classroom.
They departed for Europe on the S.S. Wyoming on April 17, 1933. Their itinerary
began with France, England, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia
and Hungary. One of their favorite cities was Budapest, where Ramona met a
young Hungarian, Miklos Dora. After
leaving Budapest and arriving in Egypt, Ray found that not only was Ramona
pregnant but she had secretly married Miklos. Ray insisted they return to
Budapest so proper paperwork could be arranged and they rented a house for the
summer, delaying the remainder of their trip. Ray sent Rad home to stay with
friends and in September she and Juanita continued travelling, visiting
Singapore, Ceylon, Java, Bali, Manila, Saigon, Hong Kong and Shanghai. She
recorded many detailed observations in travel essays that she carefully typed
up and saved. They returned to Los Angeles in early 1935 and Juanita, now 17
and not caring for the classroom, soon married a classmate, William Merry and
moved out.
Once her children were on their own, Ray was able to travel
alone and return to her passion - art.
In 1937, she entered and won a writing contest held by United Artist’s
Studio to publicize their motion picture “The Garden of Allah.” First prize was
a five-week Mediterranean cruise, to which she added a month in France and
another in Italy. Upon her return to California she resumed her art studies and
exhibited her paintings at galleries and museums around Southern California.
She relished painting again after a 25-year hiatus, typically
painting four hours a day. Quoted as saying “I see no reason why I can’t live
to be 120. I have so much I want to do.
I’ve found that my 25-year layoff has given me greater understanding of
people so I can paint more than a flat picture.” She loved portraiture most of
all because “I like people, find them so interesting to study.”[8]
In 1949, what she called her ‘travel fever’ led her to Caracas,
Venezuela where she was commissioned to do several portraits for prominent
citizens; the paintings later hung at the National Museum of Venezuela. Between
1953 and 1955 she travelled in Spain, Mallorca, Morocco and Central Europe,
receiving more portrait commissions along the way. In 1960 she was commissioned
by the Department of Defense to paint an oil portrait of retired Admiral
William Hadley Standley for display in the Pentagon. She viewed this painting as the pinnacle of
her career.
In addition to painting, Ray was active on the local lecture
circuit. Touted as a “world traveler and lecturer’ and ‘painter and raconteuse’
she spoke often at ‘travel salons.’ She belonged to the Southern California
Women’s Press Club and the National League of American Pen Women and was a
regular speaker at their meetings. She spoke at the California Art Club and the
California Women of the Golden West among other groups. Fellow artist Charles
Bensco said of her, ‘ She speaks with the observation of an artist, the
understanding of a philosopher and a charm that is distinctly her own.’
Ray retired from portrait painting in 1960 at the age of 74.
After that she said ‘her creative expression manifested in words instead of
pigments.’ She lived in La Jolla until 1964 when she moved to Leisure World in
Seal Beach, California. There she was active in arts groups, joined the Leisure
World Art League and the Long Beach branch of the National League of Penwomen.
Finding the Leisure World lifestyle not to her liking however, she returned to
live in La Jolla.
In 1973 she was hospitalized for few days and was so put out by
the ordeal that she resolved never to consult with doctors again. She moved to
Washington DC in 1976 to be close to her daughter Juanita, and lived in an
assisted living facility called the Chevy Chase House. She died in the Carriage Hill Nursing Home in
1980 of a heart attack.
Claudine’s Draft 12/30/12
[1] ‘Daisy
Harrison Nicklin Watched Los Angeles Grow Up’, source unknown, WC Harrison
notebook]
[1]
[2] Letter
from Roger Sterret, Head of Dept of Drawing, Los Angeles High School, February
5, 1912
[3]
Physical Biography of Mildred Ray Stancliff, May 30, 1975
[4] letter
from Mrs. E. R. Stancliff to Mr. E. Radeker Stancliff, May 3 1920
[5]
Newspaper clipping, date unknown – black family scrapbook
[6]
Newspaper clipping, date unknown, ‘L.A. Clubwomen Deny Outside Duties Interfere
with Rearing of Babies’ – black family scrapbook
[7]
‘Impressions From An Oriental Voyage’ by Mildred Ray Stancliff
[8] Undated
newspaper clippings in her scrapbook
 |
| Ray and friend (?) and children Juanita, Elwood, and Ramona in front of the Hopi Indian-style house she had built on Michelterreno Drive in the present-day Los Angeles neighborhood of Silver Lake. The house still stands. |
