Montara Artist Howard Gilligan & Mikie Benedict
Free lance writer/pianist Mikie Benedict lives in the historic Montara home that belonged to artist Howard Gilligan–one of the Artist’s Colony homes that in the 1920s was known as the Von Suppe Poet & Peasant Cottage.
(Howard Gilligan, self-portrait, 1945. Courtesy Mikie Benedict.)
Howard Gilligan by Mikie Benedict
Howard Gilligan was just about my best friend in the world, and I think I could tell you almost anything about him. After he died in 1988, I tried to make sense of his photographs…no dates, no names…and actually managed to put together an album.
He was a working artist to the very end. I delivered several commissioned works after Howard passed away and have many paintings he did for me. The Montara Post Office once had an exhibit of Howard’s StampArt.
(Photo: Howard Gilligan’s exhibit at the Montara Post Office.)
He did wonderful paintings on envelopes, incorporating the stamps, and for a long time the PO would send them that way. He even sent one of these to the actress Lillian Gish and she wrote a couple of letters to him. Finally, though, the PO said he had to put the paintings inside the envelope, not outside. I must have fifty of these little masterpieces which came through the mail, even though I only lived across the street.
Howard did album covers for Orion, which sent him lots of their new releases to get his feedback. He was terribly knowledgable about music and had very sophisticated taste ranging from ultra-modern right back to Bach, probably his favorite. He was the sweetest man, loyal, funny, dear, and he had a wonderful life in Montara without being sick a day in his life until his 50-year companion, Bob Esberger, died at the age of 97 in 1986.
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On January 16, 1973, Mikie Benedict’s five-year-old daughter, Anna
vanished from her Purisima* home. The child has never been seen or heard from again–but the case remains open. Can you help? For more information, click here
and here
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*Purisima Canyon: (The wooded canyon of Purissima creek above the Higgins road turnoff. The name apparently came into use about 1870. –Place Names of San Mateo County by Dr. Alan K. Brown (SMCHA, 1975)
**Purissima Creek: By 1786 the missionaries from San Francisco were calling the village “the place of ‘la Purma’ (Purissima, the Most Pure, or Immaculate); records of the following year mention the ‘arroyo de la Purissima’. Some records of the 1840s use a modernized Spanish spelling, Purisima.
Before 1870 the commonest American spelling was Purissimo. Since 1901, official maps have used the spelling Purisima, in accordance with a dictate of the US Geographic Board; but this has never gained much local currency, probably because it is likely to lead to mispronounciation.–Place Names of San Mateo County by Dr. Alan K. Brown (SMCHA, 1975)