Robert Blegen visits the Blegen Library

Robert Blegen visits the Blegen Library and Ploutarchou 9

I have corresponded with Robert (Bob) D. Blegen for twenty years, as long as I am the Archivist of the School, but we had never met. Bob's last time in Greece was in 1966 and most of it was spent in Pylos. He remembers that during his visit to Pylos, his aunt Ann Blegen and Marion Rawson made sure that Bob's family "stayed out of Carl's way" wo was not only busy with the excavation but also took care of Libbie was was confined on a wheelchair and who passed away a little later. Bob, who is 90 years old, but in a great shape, had many stories to tell us about "uncle Carl" and the rest of the Blegen family. Bob was the "archivist" of the Blegen family for years and the one who edited and published three small volumes about Carl W. Blegen drawing information from Carl's letters to his family (Carl W. Blegen: His Letters Home. Book I - Life in Athens; Carl W. Blegen: His Letters Home. Book II - From Distant Fields; and Carl W. Blegen: True Stories). In 2010, Bob sent us a big box with all of Carl's letters to his brothers and sisters.

Before his arrival to Athens, Bob had asked me three things: to visit Ploutarchou 9, to go to the First Cemetery to pay his respects to the graves of Carl and Elizabeth Blegen, and to see the American School and the Blegen Library, which he did not have time to visit back in 1966. Jack L. Davis, the Carl W. Blegen professor at the University of Cinacinnati, and I made sure that Bob's three wishes. At Ploutarchou 9, the Director of the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation, Hector Verykios, was waiting for us. Bob was pleaseantly surprised to see the wonderful frescoes on the ceilings that the recent renovation of the house brought into light. At the end of his visit, we photographed Bob Blegen outside the heavy wooden door of the house, the way Carl Blegen had been photographed by Grace Goulder for the Cleveland Plain Dealer Pictorial Magazine in 1960. From Ploutarchou 9, we drove to the First Cemetery and took the long but pleasant walk to its Protestant part  where the Carl and Elizabeth are buried as well as their friends Bert and Ida Hill. By noon we were at the Blegen Library of the American School taking some rest in the confortable leather chairs by the fireplace of the Main Reading Roon and under the large portait of Carl W. Blegen, which Charles K. Williams, the long-time director of the Corinth Excavations had commissioned several years ago. Lunch followed at the Director's house in the company of Charles Williams, Nancy Bookidis, Jack Davis, Maria Georgopoulou, Ioulia Tzonou and Leda Costaki, around the dining table that once belonged to Carl and Elizabeth Blegen, and using the silverware that carried the Blegen monogram. That's when we also heard Bob's wonderful stories (because he is such an eloquent speaker) of his D-day experience as a navy officer in 1944 and his subsequent service in Japan as a commander of an small warship in 1946.

Next stop in Robert Blegen's Mediterranean journey is Troy tracing once again his uncle's footsteps, and then Kavala where Carl Blegen spent a few months in 1918-1919 as an officer of the American Red Cross organizing the repatriation of Greek refugees from Bulgaria after the end of WW I.