William Walton (painter)
[9] When Walton received permission to parachute into Normandy on D-Day and was training for the jump, Welsh invited him to a May 24 party at the London apartment of Robert Capa, the Hungarian war photographer.
[11] Hemingway, Capa, and Walton also spent a week at newly liberated Mont Saint-Michel in August 1944, drinking and eating as much as they could.
Hemingway recognized the sound of an oncoming German plane, and threw Walton out of the jeep they were riding in just moments before it was strafed.
In the early hours of the next morning, Hemingway stripped to his underwear, put a bucket on his head, and banged on Gellhorn's door with a mop, demanding to be let in.
Walton used his connections with President John F. Kennedy to help Mary Hemingway obtain a passport to Cuba to retrieve her husband's effects and papers.
Later, Walton convinced Mary Hemingway that her husband's papers should be deposited at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
[28] Walton's organizational skills allowed him to rise quickly within the Kennedy organization, and he was given election assignments in Maine and California.
Kennedy suffered from back problems, a deteriorating left knee, Addison's disease, and a possible addiction to amphetamines (which led to withdrawal effects).
During this dinner, Walton unsuccessfully pressed Kennedy to fire J. Edgar Hoover as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Walton advised Jacqueline Kennedy on the building's decor,[10] and helped redecorate the Oval Office with sculpture and paintings.
[36] Although Walton differed with the president on political issues−he was an early opponent of the Vietnam War[37]−the Kennedys enjoyed his company immensely.
Jacqueline Kennedy vaguely remembered an engraving of the catafalque on which President Abraham Lincoln's coffin had rested while he lay in repose.
[39] Military carpenters, unaware that the original Lincoln catafalque was stored in the Capitol building and that a replica was also available, began constructing one from Walton's sketches.
[40] During the early hours of November 23, Walton assembled a decorating staff out of presidential aides, military officers, White House butlers, and others, and began draping the East Room windows and chandeliers in black crepe.
The White House had a large supply on hand to reupholster furniture, and additional material was quickly obtained from a local fabric shop.
[42] While Sargent Shriver and others removed the grand piano from the room at about 1:40 A.M., Walton helped assemble the catafalque, which had been arriving in pieces since midnight.
To make the catafalque look less barren, he ordered staff to cut magnolia leaves and branches from trees on the White House grounds and fill one of the East Room's flower urns with it.
Walton also rejected silver candlesticks from the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, but accepted two wooden ones from Saint Stephen Martyr Catholic Church.
[43] Walton also ordered the storm door at the entrance to the White House beneath the North Portico removed so that the coffin would pass more easily through the portal.
Walton gave General Godfrey McHugh, Kennedy's chief military aide, a spray of flowers to place at the long base of the catafalque.
Kennedy privately criticized the Eisenhower commission for "spread[ing] a mantle of mediocrity and middle age over the city",[18] and he was now determined to remake the CFA into a body that would promote modern ideas of art and architecture.
[57] Mrs. Kennedy enlisted her architect friend, John Carl Warnecke, to design new buildings that would preserve and integrate the historic structures.
D.C. residents were strongly opposed to both inner loops, upset that the freeways required the demolition of large numbers of houses and would greatly affect many city neighborhoods.
[63] Although Walton was not opposed to improving traffic flow and patterns in the city, he did not like the idea of a freeway less than a mile from the White House.
For example, Walton approved the construction of a six-lane freeway tunnel under the Tidal Basin and Jefferson Memorial because it freed up many acres of land aboveground.
He also appointed John Walker, the director of the National Gallery of Art, and Chloethiel Woodard Smith, a prominent local architect.
An exasperated Gordon Bunshaft rose, and—in front of a shocked Weese—began sketching out on a large easel what came to be the Brutalist design for Washington's Metro stations.
At the same time, Walton himself became a trusted advisor to Lady Bird Johnson, helping strengthen her city beautification efforts and giving them a political boost.
[7] Walton continued to write articles about art and architecture during this period for magazines like House and Garden and Town and Country.
[82] Walton was well known as a "beard" and "safe" date, and was frequently asked to escort married and unmarried women to White House and government functions.
