Recovered and Restored: Painting borrowed in 1937 finally finds its way home

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Patricia Hagerstrand never imagined that she possessed something that could give a stranger a part of their childhood back.

But she did. Though she was unaware of it, the Rome resident had been saving a very special piece of artwork that a 93-year-old woman in Massachusetts has been seeking for years.

“Dorothy Roche called me in 2007,” Hagerstrand said. “She had been searching for my family and me for years. She had been looking for my father. They found me.”

What Dorothy Roche would relate to Pat was a strange story. In 1937, Pat’s dad, John Beebe, was living in Pittsville, Massachusetts. From time to time he would visit friends in Pittston, Pennsylvania. One of those friends was 17-year-old Dorothy Roche. This particular year, he visited as usual, but brought his fiancé, Pat’s mother. During the visit, John saw a painting done by the teenager and insisted on borrowing it.

“I don’t know why my dad wanted to borrow the painting,” Pat said. “Maybe because Dorothy was a good friend and she painted it when she was just 17. I really don’t know. And Dorothy didn’t know either. She just knew that my dad had borrowed it and promised to bring it back on the next visit. But there was never another visit and he never returned it to her.”

The painting, obviously important to Dorothy, was a colorful scene of the inside of a home (presumably Dorothy’s). The focal point is a birddog pointing to a pheasant mounted above the fireplace while a full moon can be seen through the window.

“It was obviously very important to Dorothy,” Pat said. “Maybe because she had painted it so long ago or maybe it was the inside of her own home and is a reminder of her childhood. I could tell from the way she spoke about it that it was very important for her to have it back.”

But Pat no good news for Dorothy. She remembered it being in her possession. She remembered the painting from Dorothy’s description and knew that at some point she had it, but being a military family, she and her husband had moved 20 times or so over the years.

“I honestly just believe I had thrown it out years ago,” Pat said. “At the time my dad was alive and I asked him about it but he had no idea where it was. And my brother also knew nothing about it. I hated to disappoint Dorothy but I really had no clue where it was.”

So Dorothy, now 93, was left disappointed and as the years passed, she and Pat kept corresponding. They wrote to each other, exchanged cards during the holidays and kept up a long-distance friendship.

But coming up on her 50th anniversary with her husband Allan, Pat was going through her hope chest a few weeks ago. She wanted to retrieve her wedding dress that she kept in the chest. As she carefully drew the dress from the chest, she was amazed to see something flattened underneath it.

It was Dorothy’s painting.

“I could not believe it,” she said. “Then it came back to me. At some point I had rolled the painting up into a scroll and put it in the chest. I guess over the years it had gotten flattened, but there it was, exactly as Dorothy had described it.”

And as if she needed further proof, Pat saw on the back of the painting, written in her mother’s handwriting “Dorothy Roche, 17 years old.”

Pat tried to contact Dorothy immediate and finally got in touch with her caretaker. She arranged to mail the painting to Dorothy and even sent a photo of herself holding the painting. Several days later she got a call from Dorothy who was thrilled to receive it.

“Dorothy still doesn’t remember why my dad borrowed the painting except that’s what her own father told her and that my dad was trustworthy and would return it,” Pat said. “She no longer remembers what is represented in the painting but I know it was closely tied to memories of her own father.

“Dorothy sounded frail,” Pat said. “But she said her niece was holding up the painting for her to look at while she talked to me.”

Source: Rome News

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