A few nights ago I was visited by my old friend and mentor, Dr. John L. Creech. This might have been disturbing given that he died in 2009, but Dr. Creech came to me in a dream and he was in good spirits, smiling and with that twinkle in his eye that always made me wonder what kind of mischief he might be up to. It was great to see him again. I do not remember what went on in the dream, but I am fairly certain Dr. Creech's purpose in dropping by was to remind me of something that happened a long time ago in the month of April, an experience he arranged for me that had a profoundly positive effect on my life.

For those who do not know of him, Dr. Creech was a decorated veteran of World War II, a world famous plant explorer who traveled extensively in China and Japan, and the Director of the US National Arboretum from 1970 to 1980. His travels in Japan had introduced him to many bonsai professionals there, including Saburo Kato, who would years later become Director of the Nippon Bonsai Association. Those contacts, and particularly his friendship with Mr. Kato, were later instrumental in Dr. Creech's orchestration of the 1976 donation of 53 bonsai from the Nippon Bonsai Association to the people of the United States in honor of our country's bicentennial year. Those trees were the beginning of what we now know as the US National Bonsai and Penjing Museum, the finest bonsai collection in the United States and one of the premier public bonsai collections in the world.

When Dr. Creech retired he relocated to Hendersonville, North Carolina and soon became involved with a startup entity then known as the Western North Carolina Arboretum. At that time the Arboretum was little more than some big plans and a small donated trailer set up as a temporary headquarters in a corner of the Bent Creek Experimental Forest. Dr. Creech agreed to be the Interim Director, lending his name and prestige to the fledgling institution while a nationwide search was conducted for the person who would become the first full time Executive Director. Once George Briggs was hired for that job, Dr. Creech stepped down from his honorary position but continued his service as a member of The North Carolina Arboretum Board of Directors. When the Arboretum's production greenhouse opened in 1992 Dr. Creech and his wife Elaine signed on as volunteers. This world famous horticulturist was a volunteer when I first met him and I had no idea who he was, because I was new to horticulture and he was never one to act like he was somebody special. I figured he was a retired medical doctor, because it seems many medical professionals pursue horticulture as a pastime. My ignorance allowed us to strike up a lively relationship full of good humor and wide-ranging casual conversation. Once I learned of his status in the horticultural world I was never again able to be so informal around him, although he continued to be the same good natured, unassuming friend to me he always had been.

When a donation of bonsai was proposed to the Arboretum in early 90s, Dr. Creech pushed for its acceptance. When the Arboretum ultimately decided to accept the donation and become involved with bonsai and Executive Director Briggs looked among the staff for someone to take on this new responsibility, Dr. Creech advocated for the job to be given to me. When it ultimately was, and I was faced with the daunting prospect of measuring up to this new responsibility without having even the faintest clue of how to take care of a bonsai tree, let alone a collection of them, it was Dr. Creech who arranged my first formal bonsai education. "Don't worry," he told me. "I have some friends in Washington, DC who can help!"

Back when Dr. Creech negotiated the donation of bonsai from Japan to the United States, he was faced with the decision of how the priceless gift was to be managed and who was to be responsible for it. As you can imagine, there was a great deal of excitement in the American bonsai community at the prospect of these venerable trees coming to our country, and Dr. Creech was deluged with suggestions as to how they should be handled. There were several big-name bonsai authorities in the country who each felt they were naturally most qualified to be named curator. There were influential bonsai organizations in the DC area who felt their members should of course have a hand in maintaining the collection. Dr. Creech upset many of these people, and horrified the rest, by selecting someone from the ranks of the National Arboretum staff to be curator and announcing that the collection would be managed in house. To make matters worse, the person selected to be curator had no prior bonsai experience; he was nothing more than a common horticulturist. Predictions of gloom and doom swiftly followed.

The man chosen by Dr. Creech to handle the awesome responsibility for the bonsai collection from Japan was Robert F. "Bob" Drechsler. Bob was already an expert plant professional, and he applied himself to this new challenge with humility, dedication and a peerless work ethic. He meticulously studied the trees and kept detailed records of each of them throughout his tenure. He went to Japan to further his bonsai knowledge, studying with top experts from the Nippon Bonsai Association, and in America sought counsel from people like Yuji Yoshimura, John Naka and Chase Rosade. He learned on the job and quietly went about making himself an accomplished bonsai authority. Far from the disaster that was predicted, Bob Drechsler proved to be the perfect person for the task and the trees prospered under his care. When a contingent of the original donors from Japan came to the National Arboretum for the 10-year anniversary of the bicentennial gift, they announced that the bonsai they had given were better than they were at the time of their donation. When additions were made to the collection — a large donation of Penjing from China and many great works from the leading bonsai artists in North America — Bob took them into the fold, learned how to care for them and never missed a beat. His 20-year career as curator was marked by integrity, competence, dependability and success. Many, many people contributed significantly to the development of the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum, but for 20 years Bob Drechsler was the one great constant in the unfolding narrative, the steady hand on the tiller that kept the ship on course. I should add that Bob himself would have scoffed at all this I am writing about him. Among his other attributes, he was also one of the most self-effacing people you could ever hope to meet.

I think Bob was always conscious of the faith Dr. Creech had shown in him when he selected him to be curator, and did everything in his power to live up to it. And I know that Dr. Creech was always proud of the way Bob Drechsler stepped up to the challenge and handled the responsibility with impeccable professionalism.

In April of 1993 Dr. Creech made a few telephone calls. He arranged for me to go to the US National Arboretum and study bonsai at the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum with Bob Drechsler. He asked his old friend Skip March, chief horticulturist at the National Arboretum, if he would mind having me as a house guest. I do not think very many people ever said "no" to Dr. Creech. He was so well liked and respected, people would go out of their way to make things happen if he asked them to help. When I went to Washington, DC that April I was a complete unknown, yet everyone I met there, upon hearing I was in Dr. Creech's good graces, treated me as if I were an honored guest of the first order. For me, knowing these people were Dr. Creech's friends made me want to do everything I could to have them think well of him for sending me.

I went to the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum as someone who was not even certain that bonsai was a worthwhile pursuit. Care for a neglected collection of strange and stunted plants had been thrust upon me and I was having a hard time convincing myself that there was any real promise in the prospect, but I was young and hungry and searching for some kind of purpose. Back home I had left behind my wife with our two sons, one of whom was three years old and the other three months. I keenly felt it was time for me to have some idea of what I was going to do with my life. There in Washington, DC I saw for the first time what bonsai were supposed to look like. These were not the straggly, abused-looking plants we had in our collection, but beautiful, healthy, living works of horticultural art. And the people who took care of these great treasures, Bob Drechsler and his assistant Dan Chiplis, treated me as a colleague, a peer, as they patiently explained basic information to me and helped me understand the fundamentals of developing and maintaining a bonsai collection. They most certainly understood how much I didn't know at that point, and they knew when they looked at the photographs I brought of the trees in our collection that I was so far behind the curve the chances of my ever catching up were laughable, but they did not laugh. They encouraged. They told me I could do it and made me believe it was so.

Everyone I met there — Bob and Dan, Skip March and his wife Marlese, Janet Lanman and all the other volunteers at the Museum — went out of their way to be kind and positive and encouraging. Out of this nurturing experience a vast horizon opened up to me. By the time I left Washington I had a new idea about bonsai and a new vision of what bonsai could be at The North Carolina Arboretum.

I had conversations with Bob Drechsler back then in which he gave me advice regarding situations I would encounter as the curator of a public collection. Some of these things I did not fully comprehend at the time, but over the years again and again Bob's words of wisdom have come back to me and helped guide my thinking. For example, when he repeatedly referred to the bonsai in the Arboretum's collection as "your trees," and I corrected him by pointing out that the trees belonged to the Arboretum and not to me personally, Bob smiled and told me this: "Of course the bonsai belong to the Arboretum, but until the day comes when you walk out the door for the last time they are your trees. You have to think of them that way." That is exactly how I’ve come to think of them. Bob also explained to me the reason he kept no bonsai of his own. He felt it was of primary importance to maintain a distinct line of separation between his professional life and his personal life, so he would never be tempted to the ethical pitfall of blending the two. This made such clear sense to me that I have ever since followed his example. There are not so many people in this country who curate, or have curated, public bonsai collections, and this line of work is completely different from being a bonsai professional for hire or having a personal collection, no matter how superior that collection might be. It was my great good fortune to have the opportunity to learn from the man who set the standard for people in my profession.

Bob Drechsler and Arthur Joura, April 1993

When I think back on that time in Washington so long ago the memory is golden to me, an experience that positively changed my life. Connections made there that April led to other important learning experiences in the years to come, eventually taking me all the way to the other side of the world and back again. It has always been a point of pride for me to say my bonsai education began at the US National Bonsai and Penjing Museum, just as Dr. Creech insisted it should. "Learn from whomever else you can," he said to me, "but first go to Washington and study with Bob Drechsler. He will get you off to the right start." From where I stand now I can look back on my bonsai career and see an unbroken line of interconnected people and events, seemingly following an almost predetermined path of good fortune, and it feels to me as if none of it could have happened the way it did were it not for striking up a friendship with that impish old fellow who volunteered in the greenhouse way back when.

Captain John L. Creech, US Army
Attribution: The University of Rhode Island (https://web.uri.edu/rotc/meet/john-l-creech/)

Dr. Creech will turn up again in several key entries yet to come in this Journal, because the story I am here to tell could never have happened without him.

Memories of a Distant April