Cuesta Benberry transcended the limitations of place, career, gender, race, time, and intellectual prejudices.
.Before I ever laid eyes on this deceptively gentle woman, I had corresponded with her and talked with her about quilt patterns and about Scioto Danner's role in 20th-century quilt history. I soon learned that a question to Cuesta was almost always followed by a mailing that included copies of articles, bits of fabrics, or, on one occasion, a book of which she said she had an extra copy. Like Julia Zgliniek, I had seen her name listed among the acknowledgements in more books than I could count, and I had read a lot of
what she herself had written. I find it telling that none of this told me Cuesta was African-American. Her broad knowledge defied boundaries and specializations.
.Thus, when I first encountered Cuesta, I didn't recognize her. It was a hot day in Dallas during the AQSG seminar, and I had seen what I wanted to see at the exhibitions at the State Fair grounds. Nevertheless, I was dutifully heading to yet another building designated on our tour when I noticed a teacherly looking African-American woman sitting on a bench in the shade of a big crape myrtle tree. The edge of an AQSG badge showed from under a loose scarf. Looking for an excuse to sit out the rest of the park tour, I told myself this older woman might need a little company. I sat down beside her.
.We talked---of the heat, the seminar, teaching school, and finally, quilts. The conversation turned to the question of African-American retentions, a subject that interested me a great deal and about which she clearly had thought. Her notions--really, they were questions--were grounded in an understanding of brain physiology, genetics, and history, the grounds which had led to my own questions about the subject. At some point in that animated conversation, I quoted a remark Cuesta Benberry had made in an
introduction to a book I'd read. "What do you think of that?" I asked.
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The lady beside me said, "I'd say perhaps she needed to consider that conclusion a little more."
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Still unaware of who she was, I agreed, noting I too questioned the conclusion. But, I said, Cuesta Benberry had been so generous with me and had proved so knowledgeable that I had to believe there was some respectable grounding for her conclusion. As a Southerner, I said, I knew how tempting it often was to be goaded into a defensive position by those who had no understanding of matters southern but were not deterred from issuing pronouncements by that fact. And I had a friend who was a folklorist and worked with African-American folklife who, I thought, sometimes felt the same way about African-American quilters. Possibly Ms. Benberry had responded to a similar circumstance.
.In that quiet, unassuming voice I find so characteristic of her, my benchmate said, "Well, I think she should have thought a little longer."
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A long pause ensued. I was not about to say anything negative about a person who had been so kind to me, and my new associate seemed equally unwilling to cut Ms. Benberry any slack. For what seemed like a long time, we sat looking at the children playing in the near distance.
.Then, Cuesta introduced herself. I felt my face flush, but somehow Cuesta made me feel reasonably comfortable, and we soon resumed our discussion. The questions raised that afternoon are notes in a folder to which I often recur. They remain valid and intriguing and unanswered.
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What impressed me in that conversation was that Cuesta questioned herself, that her conclusions were tentative, that her mind was unlikely ever to be fully made up about anything---at least not to the point where it would resist conflicting evidence. Hers was a questioning and humble mind. The best sort.
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Meeting the REAL Cuesta impressed me mightily. That seminar, I was in awe of everybody. And I observed a few, I think, who were in awe of themselves. Yet here was this icon, sitting alone on a bench to catch her breath on that hot fall day in Dallas, who could have been and indeed seemed to be somebody's aunt, just along for the trip.
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I've never been able to explain why she did not tell me who she was earlier. I've wondered what she would have done if I had been ready to criticize Cuesta Benberry. I'm sure at first she thought I knew who she was. I suspect that once she learned I didn't recognize her, she was at a loss of how to respond without embarrassing me.
.But from that day forward, I knew this: Cuesta Benberry was a sincere seeker of truth and for all her gentleness and lack of pretension, she was an intellectual force to be reckoned with. She was still the teacher, gladly learning and as gladly teaching. A rarity in this world.
.Quilts and quilters and quiltmaking had been Cuesta's bliss, and she followed her bliss and was warmed by the knowledge the quest gave her, not by the eminence it conferred. All of us who were also warmed by Cuesta's fires find the chilly vacancy she leaves disconcerting, somehow unreal. I suspect we all know we will not experience the beneficence of that fire again soon.
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Those of us who knew Cuesta, briefly and in the closing years of her life, can count ourselves blessed. Those who knew her from the outset of AQSG are triply blessed.
.May she quilt and study in peace.
.Gaye Ingram is the editor of Blanket Statements,
the American Quilt Study Group (AQSG) newsletter
