Riding Free Continues to Communicate With Future Generations—Artist and His Wife Reached Out to People and the Influence Is Still Felt Today

One night a few years ago right around Thanksgiving I was working at night on a newspaper copy desk in New England.

It figured to be a long and boring late evening, early morning, editing poorly written story material from inexperienced local correspondents.

I kept thinking this was about the least enjoyable duty I’d ever had in the newspaper business and, even with time-and-a-half special pay, this was a pretty lackluster way to spend part of a holiday period.

In the middle of muddling through this uninspiring copy, my cell phone rang.

A woman, identifying herself as Susan Magsamen, was calling from Baltimore and said she had a question for me.

“Can I have permission to use an image of the oil painting Riding Free by your father in my new book Childhood Wonders, about to be published by National Geographic.

I answered that it would probably be OK. But I needed more information about the book and I wanted to know why that painting was so important for her to include.

She explained the book was going to include important positive images and themes that were significant to her that she thought would be important for children.

That sounded like an acceptable theme but I still needed to understand why Magsamen wanted Riding Free in the book.

The large (56" X 40") vertical oil, painted in 1979, is one of my father’s most popular paintings. The subject matter is a child on a rocking horse in a spacious but secure outdoor area near a barn. In 1982, My mother, Esta Maril, decided it would make a quality art poster and, out of her own income as a children’s psychiatric social worker, she had it produced. The poster was widely circulated throughout Maryland and, to this day, hangs in many children’s rooms, offices and even restaurants.

It has a very peaceful feeling and I was told by one friend of my parents , who was a prominent psychiatrist, that it has very interesting aspects to it with the theme of childhood innocence while conveying a feeling of security in the outside world.

With or without this clinical analysis, it is a peaceful painting with rich and vibrant colors. When commemorating what would have been my father’s 100th birthday, we were able to borrow the painting, which had been sold to a collector in California, for exhibitions at the Provincetown Art Association and the Walters Art Museum.

Magsamen’s explanation of why Riding Free is important to her reveals a lot about my parents.

“When I was a college student and used to earn money as a waitress at the Mount Washington Tavern, your parents used to eat lunch there often and I waited on their table quite a bit,” Mansamen recalled. “Of all the customers I waited on, they were ones who were interested in me as a person and asked me what I was studying and what I wanted to do. When I told them I wanted to be a writer, they both said that’s what I should do. And every time I saw them, they asked me how my studies were going and kept encouraging me to pursue my idea of becoming a writer. “

She told me their encouragement was a major reason she had the confidence to follow this path.

“One day your parents gave me a poster of Riding Free and I have had that with me ever since,” she explained. “It is very important to me and I would like to have it in the book.” As I listened to her explanation, it no longer seemed to be such a dreary late work night.

My father had died in 1986 and my mother had died earlier in this particular year (2009). And yet the effect of their influence of reaching out to someone several decades ago was still having an impact. Just when you think you know everything about your parents it’s nice to learn another positive aspect of something they did quite often behind the scenes.

Susan H. Magsamen went on to be an award-winning writer, educator and advocate for family and children’s issues. Among her many accomplishments, she’s is the founder of FamilyStories and has served as Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins University School of Education Nuero Initiative.

The book Childhood Wonders, published in 2010, has enjoyed an enthusiastic reception and been required reading in to the Baltimore public school system.

I am certain Herman and Esta Maril would be pleased, but not surprised, by Susan H. Magsamen’s success. They were pretty good judges of character, But more importantly, they so often went out of their way to be reach out and be supportive of people.

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