Johnson: Passer-by, brother return sketches, joy to artist

By Bill Johnson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published July 22, 2006 at midnight

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The old woman met the younger one almost before she walked into the backyard through the sliding glass door. She threw her arms open wide, and the two embraced.

"Are you the one who found my sketches?" Wenona Casedy whispered softly, tightly clutching the young woman, who began nodding and hugging her back.

"This is such a miracle," the 86-year-old woman said, looking to the sky. "I never thought I would ever see them again."

I'd written of Wenona Casedy a week ago here, of her desperate search for some 40 elaborate pencil sketches of Depression-era film and opera stars she had drawn nearly 70 years ago, sketches she'd lost after driving away with them still on the trunk of her car.

"They were my whole youth," she said a week ago during an interview inside her south Denver townhouse. "They are everything to me."

The column generated numerous suspected sightings. None panned out. And then Mike Ramos called.

He wasn't certain, but he believed he had Wenona Casedy's drawings.

Actually, his sister, Ruth, had rescued them from the middle of the intersection of Raleigh Street and Yale Avenue a couple of Mondays ago.

Well, at least the date jibed.

And they were all carefully drawn and shaded portraits of movie stars - few of whom he recognized - and most of them dated 1938.

I rushed over to his south Denver home.

It was Wenona Casedy's portfolio.

Inside were portrait sketches of, among others, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Charles Boyer, Robert Taylor, Gary Cooper and, of course, Nelson Eddy, whom Wenona Casedy simply adored and had drawn more than a dozen times.

Virtually every portrait, nearly 30 of them, had been personally autographed by the subject. (Indeed, Tyrone Power had excellent penmanship.)

I called Wenona Casedy. She rushed right over.

For more than a week, Mike Ramos and his sister had attempted to discover who drew, and likely owned, the portraits.

Mike Ramos, 57, a retired Denver firefighter, spent the bulk of two days researching public records for Wenona Cordner, Wenona's maiden name.

"All I had was a name, 1938 and a 3-cent postage stamp," Mike Ramos said. "I was ready to give up but decided at the last minute to look in the lost-and-found notices in the newspaper. There was nothing. And then, I flipped back through, and there was the column. I felt kinda silly."

Ruth Ramos, 46, left her job to finally meet Wenona.

The black three-ring binder was sitting straight up in the middle of the intersection, Ruth Ramos told the woman. Paper was flying everywhere. No one was stopping.

"I saw the pictures as I drove by," Ruth Ramos explained. "I'm a graphic artist, so they intrigued me."

She pulled over and waded into traffic, dodging cars to fetch the binder and scattered sketches.

She looked at them and knew that whoever lost them definitely wanted them back. She keeps a similar sketchbook.

She had to find the artist.

Wenona Casedy tells Ruth and Mike Ramos of how she drew the pictures and then sought to have them signed.

She drew them from photographs in weekly magazines such as Look or Photoplay.

The more she liked the subject, the larger the portrait became. The image of Tyrone Power is huge, meticulously drawn and shaded.

"What can I tell you?" Wenona Casedy says as she touches the drawing. "The man was just beautiful."

She was 16 years old when she drew most of them. At first, she signed them and dropped them in the mail.

As she grew older, she would simply hijack her subjects when they came to town. It is how she cornered Bette Davis at the old Elitch Gardens and got her to sign.

"I must tell you, I just loved drawing," she said. "In that day and age, we couldn't afford paint, which is why they are all done in pencil."

It was earlier this week that a man returned the other notebook of sketches he'd found on the curbside not far from the same intersection.

Wenona Casedy is convinced now she had left them on the trunk of her car and drove off, after having shown them to the two men with whom she walks around Harvey Park every day. It was the first time in decades she'd taken them from her home.

The man was paid half of the $200 reward Wenona Casedy had offered.

So now she eagerly pulled from her purse a checkbook to reward Ruth Ramos.

No, no, the woman said, waving Wenona Casedy off.

"It is enough that you got them back," she explained.

Wenona Casedy embraced her yet again.

"You don't know how grateful I am. Bless your heart. I thought that I would never see them again."

As I departed, the two women were flipping through Ruth Ramos' sketchbook, filled with drawings of lions, cats, assorted other animals and bowls of fruit.

"I can't do people, just can't get it right," Ruth Ramos lamented.

Wenona Casedy patted her on the back, threw her head back and chuckled.

"What a joyous day."

Bill Johnson's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Call him at 303-892-2763 or e-mail him at johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com.

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