Mark Heyman Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Q: I luxw it's difficult to generalize on such mittem, kut hcw wald
yauccarrparetheappnticesyau~wimycrurgsneralaoquaintances
as to creativity, irrtelligence, -?
A: I can't do that. I wwld say a disthquishing dmracteristic was
that they were all devwted to m. Wright and his architecture. I
mean, that was a s h qua mn of be* there and lasting arrd being
interested in participathg. Okay, there wsre varicxzs degrees of this
aml variaus attitudes, bt that's the distbquim characteristic.
Other than that, there were all kimls of people and all kirds of
pamomlities and you had to be able to live in this kird of an
e r n r m , whidr wasn't easy for wnu; an3 IAxy didn't stay. It was
very glamorous by the way, yau knm. I don't knm, not the right
. There was a certain amxlnt of egwM1dir-q. You're working
with the world's -test amhi-. You're doing important thirrgs
for his etectxlre. It's going to shm up in Mldhqs. It's go*
to be forwer. Ard then not mly that, here he is. He treats
you like, you hm, ycru1re inrportant to him d then all of these
famcruspeclpleccane~andthesecliBlrts~arein~ofhim,
somtinuts the famcrus people, too, dan't knclw what to say to him. And
you have to tell than what to do. It's kind of a like a little bit of
that thing washes off. It's quite an epri8~b08.
Q: Were there wcial factions arru3llg the apprenti-?
A: Yes. Well, pop10 viem cloee to other pecple, hung araurd with
other pople. You &dnlt be equally associated with forty other
people, so there was scam canman interests, it U d change quite
rapidly based upn what was go- m. I nean, it wuldn't be cliquish
in that we'd nsdm that way. For -18, this fellaw I worm with
in do- that lavatory in the hsemnt of the theater, well he and I
got to be very god frierds. (law) m, I if we wre just
fri- do* #s jab, that wuuld be the esd of it. Ihe most
important thurg ws that rn were all there because of Mr. Wright.
Thatwa~iaurccaaanonhterest. Thatwerrodealutofdiff~
anmq Wviduals. Ycru rarely m aware of thoee &if femnces, I
man, pecple am fmn different parts of the cx#urtry. Had different
badqmunb arflvalues. We- tight and close because wewere all
Wright s slxf f-%pprmtices. It was his mmeck word,
Q: The reason I'm exploring this is, as you knuw, a lot of the
diagnoses of ammmal experiments, utqian or otbmise, have argued
that amtudly fell because of bickering and factionalism and
rivalrieswithinthegrmp. I'mtryirqto-the extentto
wMchthsrewassu&dhsensicolmmgthea~ces~whyit
a-y didn't damage Tbliesin W way it did other
=P=*?
A: Again, I'd have ta say that it [didnlt happen] was because so mch
of aur hterest hbeing IAxxews -toMr. Wright. As 1-
ashewasdoingwhathewantea.todo~~~involvadinit, the
cliff- amrmg people had to go by the wayside. Nm, whm it
dim1 t-I can't think of any hident [at the mcpnarrt] -it W d mean
that that persm or persrms CCUldn't fit in. So, we voluntarily
slrppressed arry possibility of dissension that U d be significant.