not even his wife knew his secret ~
Rich Maloney's anonymous editorial cartoons sparked controversy at his own dinner table
BY MARLI GUZZETTA
In the early 1970s, controversial editorial cartoons satirizing the Beinecke plan for Nantucket redevelopment began appearing in the Inquirer and Mirror under the byline "Atropos." No other information was given about the artist. At the time, no one - not even the artist's wife - knew who penned the cartoons. The paper received them anonymously.

In these cartoons, the potential ravages of the developer's crane were exaggerated. Often, a stoic Quaker would look out over Main Street at a gaggle of high rises, or sift through a small convoy of summer cars, bumper to bumper on Main Street. These cartoons depicted the author's "Nantucket Nightmare" - the worst possible outcome of rapid redevelopment.

This week, the detailed sketchings make their triumphant, confessional appearance on the walls of the Nantucket Historical Association's Whitney Gallery, where the work of Richard Maloney will be revealed for the first time on island with the name of their creator attributed. The exhibit, entitled "Nantucket Nightmare," opens at the Whitney Gallery on Feb. 1 and will stay up through April.

Richard Maloney (top right) saw historic Nantucket as the backdrop for his family history. His"Three Bricks in Snow" shows his two eldest children outside The Three Bricks. His wife, Marguerite (top left), learned of his political cartooning upon his death.

"When I brought these items to the archives to see if they were interested, Georgen Charnes looked at me and said, 'I don't know if anyone knew who Atropos was," said Maloney's granddaughter, Catherine Maloney, who has become her grandfather's "archivist of record." (Maloney has donated these editorial cartoons, which are now acquisitions of the Peter Foulger Gallery.)

"The funny thing was, my mother, Marguerite, would see these cartoons and get furious," said Richard C. Maloney, Jr., the artist's son. "She would say that Nantucket needs to be developed, that we need more business, and they'd argue back and forth across the dinner table. She had no idea he was doing them."

She didn't know until Richard Sr. died in 1975, after having retired in 1970 on the island he had loved as a young man.

A Boston boy, Maloney moved here in 1926,

after securing an art degree from Dartmouth College. For his first job, he worked as an art teacher at Cyrus Peirce, where his future wife was also a teacher working with special needs students. The two met, fell in love, married "and lived happily ever after," said Maloney, Jr. - who survives his brother and sister, two Nantucket natives who passed last decade.

Maloney worked his way up to principal of Cyrus Peirce. The couple did the Nantucket shuffle, living in small quarters during the summer and in large, prominent homes during the off season.

"He used to tell me stories of how fortunate they were to be living on Nantucket during the Great Depression," Maloney, Jr. said. "He and my mother never had two cents to rub together as teachers, but they both had jobs. After moving twice a year for so many years, they'd probably lived in 20 or 30 homes. …When we were in town, we'd go for a walk, and he'd say, "In 1939 we lived here, and in 1934 we were here…'"

Maloney's best friend on Nantucket was Edouard Stackpole, according to Maloney, Jr. "The two of them were collaborators and troublemakers of all sorts," he said. Maloney was also quite active in the schools; he worked with students on theater productions and helped them to create their own literary magazine.

The couple had their first two children on Nantucket, before World War II broke out.

Maloney wanted his family to stay on the island while he went into the service, but a deal to secure a home mortgage loan fell through at the last minute.

The Maloneys moved back to the mainland. Richard Maloney served as an aviation officer in the U.S. Navy. After the war, he took advantage of the G.I. Bill and secured a master's degree from Kansas State College in Shakespearean literature. From there, he (and the family) moved to Pennsylvania; Maloney had gotten a job at Penn State, where he worked on the faculty and administration for 20 years before finally returning to Nantucket in 1970.

"They had been away from Nantucket for 30 years, and my mother was very anxious of going back to Nantucket, because she didn't think they would know anyone there," Maloney, Jr. said. "They were in the Downyflake having breakfast one morning soon after they came back. They still hadn't run into anyone they knew, and suddenly my mother hears this shriek coming from a woman in the back working as a dishwasher. She had been one of my mother's students, and she'd recognized her, even after all those years. What this represented, and what they had forgotten, was that in the intervening years since they were gone, the kids they had taught in the schools were now adults all over Nantucket. It turns out they had remembered a lot of people, and were well remembered."

Preservation, for the Maloneys, was more than just an architectural interest, it was the reason they could return to Nantucket after 30 years away and still feel at home. From the houses the couple had rented when they were just starting out to the kids who recognized them around town, Nantucket was a sweet dream that never seemed to change. They stayed involved in their retirrement. Mrs. Maloney tutored in the schools. Mr. Maloney started Nantucket's AARP chapter. Always an artist, he also designed calendars, and even created the icon for the Chamber of Commerce in 1971, for which he received $50.

But something rankled Maloney's vision of his island Utopia. "When he got back, the Beinecke movement was in full swing, and everything was changing rapidly," Maloney, Jr. said. "He didn't like that. He wanted the island as it was in the 1930s."

What is a man to do when he sees the place he has loved his entire adult life redefined by development?

Anonymous editorial cartoons - sent regularly and without recompense - is a lot more than most of us do now when we're irked, and yet it must have seemed like a feeble gesture to him at times. Especially when his own wife argued against them from the other side of the meatloaf.

But the cartoons did get people talking, if for no other reason than their novelty and mystery.

"It was so unusual for that publication - they were giving a lot of coverage to the issue at the time, but they weren't publishing editorial cartoons," Maloney, Jr. said. "And then these cartoons just kind of popped up blatantly. They looked so out of character to the paper's format that they jumped out and became points of discussion, especially regarding who was doing them."

Maloney's voice - masked though it was - participated in the public discourse on preservation at a pivotal time, according to NHA curator Ben Simons.

"That was the time when the future of Nantucket was really in the balance. Beinecke had his vision for how downtown would look and was starting to implement that, and it was controversial," Simons said. "At that time, the HDC came in time to prevent a lot more from happening. So he was part of that original movement of awareness and preservation,

and in that sense, he was effective." I

The exhibition is open at the Whitney Gallery, 7 Fair Street, Monday, Thursday and Friday (10 a.m.- 4 p.m.) and Tuesday (11 a.m. - 4 p.m.). Admission is free.