Inside Sandzen Summer 06

INSIDE SANDZÉN

RESEARCH IN THE ARCHIVES

THE MECHEMS AND SANDZENS: FRIENDS THROUGH THE YEARS

Two cultural giants in Kansas knew and respected each other for decades; Birger Sandzén, visual artist, author, and teacher, and Kirke Field Mechem, literary artist and historian. Their wives, Alfrida Leksell and Katharine Lewis, both pianists, became close friends with professional as well as social interests.

The Spring 2006 issue of Gallery Notes, with its "Inside Sandzén" column, first printed evidence for these friendships, and the Summer 2006 issue amplified the evidence. Two letters, ten poems, and a note written on the outside of an envelope are now known to exist in the Sandzén Archives concerning the Mechems and the Sandzéns. The following letter comments on their first meeting and on the reason for sending the nine poems that accompany the letter.

LETTER FROM KIRKE FIELD MECHEM TO BIRGER SANDZÉN, with a typed address in Wichita, Kansas, but with no date (and without an envelope that might have had a postmark):

Dear Mr. Sandzén:
When you were kind enough to ask me to send you some of the verse I have written I am afraid you didn't bargain for so many as are enclosed. I am sending them, however, in the hope that you may find one or two that will appeal to you.
I want to tell you again how much my wife and I enjoyed meeting you and your wife at the meeting of the Question Club and how interested we were in hearing your talk. I hope you will find it possible to be with us again soon.
Sincerely yours,
[in bold handwriting] Kirke Mechem

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This letter was written between 1918 and 1930, probably in the earlier part of the period, according to the evidence and argument detailed in the Summer 2006 issue of Gallery Notes. The Question Club and its dates of existence remain unknown, and any information concerning it would be welcome

In any event, the Mechems left Wichita when Kirke Field Mechem became Executive Secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka in 1930, a position he held until 1951. Thereafter, "around 1953," according to his son Kirke Lewis Mechem, the Mechems moved to Lindsborg, Kansas. In 1964 they moved from Lindsborg to be closer to family. During their Lindsborg years Kirke Field Mechem wrote an impressive elegy in memory of Birger Sandzén (died June 19, 1954), and Mechem's wife Katharine Lewis wrote a letter of sympathy to Sandzén's daughter Margaret Sandzén Greenough, on the death of her mother Alfrida Sandzén (died March 13, 1961).