Arthur Berry’s sons his greatest artwork

ALBANY — Seeing things through the eyes of the artist, Arthur Berry would famously take any discarded object — a piece of metal, an oddly shaped rock, random pieces of flotsam and jetsam — and incorporate it into his latest work, creating beauty where others saw none.

And while friends and admirers have described Berry’s home, where he displayed many of his unique creations, as “its own art museum,” few who knew the visionary artist will argue that his greatest creations are his sons — Kevin and Keith.

Kevin Berry, a public media relations consultant who lives in Manhattan, and Keith Berry, a professor of history at Tampa’s Hillsborough Community College, came home to Albany last week to bury their father. And while the brothers admit that they’re “still processing the grief,” they spent a couple of hours the Saturday before Arthur Berry’s funeral remembering their days growing up in Albany.

“I remember leaving Tallahassee, driving into this sleepy little town; it was like being in a time warp,” Kevin Berry, who was 12 when his mother, Sylvia, and baby brother Keith came to Albany to join dad Arthur. Arthur Berry was enticed to come to Albany State College by then-President Thomas Miller Jenkins to create a Fine Arts department.

“One of the things I’ll never forget was seeing this sign etched into the facade of the Albany Theatre that said, ‘colored entrance only.’ Man, we were blubbering when we came here.”

Arthur Berry, a World War II veteran who was born in Tulsa, Okla., in 1923 and had settled comfortably into his role as a faculty member at Tallahassee’s Florida A&M University, had uprooted his family, leaving behind a new home and a sense of place, so that he could create his own arts program at Albany State.

“Dad felt that he’d been given the opportunity of a lifetime,” Keith Berry, now 50, said of the move to Southwest Georgia. “He did things that were revolutionary for Albany State University.”

The brothers’ adjustment to Albany was not without painful memories. That happens when your parents refuse to accept the “gentlemen’s agreements” that divided what in 1968 was still a mostly racially segregated community.

“Visiting Albany now, there are still very clearly defined racial and class divides,” Keith Berry said. “But in 1968, the city seemed to have a mentality that if you were from here, you had automatic entree into some kind of unnamed club. If you weren’t, you were considered an outsider. And it was often difficult to navigate the social mores that existed.

“And it wasn’t just a black/white thing. Often when we were asked what our father did and we said he taught art, the person who asked the question — black or white — would stare as if we’d said something outrageous.”

Kevin Berry, now 59, said he was always made to feel like an “other” in Albany.

“I remember being in band class at McIntosh (Middle School) and the instructor asked each of us what we wanted to do in life,” the elder Berry sibling said. “I said I wanted to graduate from Harvard, Princeton or Yale and become a corporate lawyer. The instructor’s eyes got wide, he threw back his head and laughed until he literally cried.

“I was usually either the only black student or one of two black students in advanced classes — the schools were, through busing, at a 60-40 black-to-white ratio then — and I remember walking by a group one time and someone saying, ‘Oooh, something stinks. It smells like a n—–.’ I was scared to death.”

The brothers pause as Kevin Berry’s words sink in. His younger brother says, “I was never called a n—– here, but I was treated like one.”

The Berry brothers experienced a new kind of ostracism when their parents bought a home in the then-whites-only Country Club Estates neighborhood.

“We moved in before our neighbors knew it was happening, and when we were going around the neighborhood, you’d see them go into an almost cataclysmic heart attack,” Kevin Berry said. “It was sad but funny; the neighbors would call meetings to talk about us. There was a lady from the north who was one of the only people to come by and welcome us to the neighborhood. She became our spy. She’d tell us when they called meetings and what they said at the meetings.

“We’d apparently crossed some kind of invisible line where real estate agents agreed not to show blacks homes in certain neighborhoods. Apparently, some of our neighbors were so upset, they wanted to talk to city leaders about changing the city charter to keep us out.”

Keith Berry remembers playing with the white friends he made in the neighborhood and one of them telling him his family planned to move. As kids do, the younger Berry sibling asked his young friend why.

“The kid said his parents told him they were moving because black people bring drugs and crime into a neighborhood,” Keith Berry said. “We kind of talked that out. I said, ‘Well, none of my family does drugs, and we’re not criminals.’ So we just went back to playing.

“But on Sundays you’d see cars drive slowly by as people stared at us. Kevin said he always wanted to put up a sign saying, ‘Negroes in their natural habitat.’”

While the Berry brothers, their mother and others in the family obviously feel the loss of patriarch Arthur Berry most deeply, the entire community grieved with them.

“On a personal level, the Berrys are as close a friends as I’ve had since I moved to Albany 11 years ago,” Marcia Hood, the chairwoman of Albany State University’s Department of Fine Arts, said. “They took me under their wing, and it’s there I have stayed. Arthur and Sylvia are very warm-hearted, gentle spirits.

“Their house was such a wonderful place; it was its own art gallery. I just loved dancing there with Arthur. The loss of one so eloquent is an enormous loss that this entire community will feel.”

Officials with the Albany Museum of Art, who hurriedly set up a display of Berry’s work when they learned of his death, said the arts community would grieve the loss from its midst of such an influential figure.

“Arthur Berry contributed so much to the arts community in general, and he was a loyal supporter of the museum,” AMA Board of Trustees President Kirk Rouse said. “He had graciously bestowed the museum with two of his prized works that are on permanent display, and we will be displaying a collection of his works through April.

“Arthur and Sylvia were just a cool couple. We danced and drank Arthur’s favorite drink — bourbon — in his honor at the museum after his funeral service.”

Berry’s sons, while celebrating their father’s life with stories both humorous and tragic, admitted Saturday that they were still processing their grief as they prepared for his funeral.

“I almost don’t have the words to describe what this is like,” Kevin Berry said. “I can only describe it as if our parents are prisms, and Keith and I are like what happens when the light shines through. The planes, angles and complexities of that beam is what my parents are, and I’m a variation on that theme.

“I’m my own person, but I wouldn’t be the person I am if I hadn’t lived in the house with my parents.”

His younger brother offers a similar appraisal.

“There’s an emptiness that I just can’t explain,” Keith Berry said. “I can’t imagine not being able to pick up the phone and call dad. I find myself using him and my mother in many of the lectures I give. They both had such an impact on mine and my brother’s lives.

“My father, by being the man he was — and, it’s so strange to talk of him in the past tense — has made me a better husband. My father will always be my model.”