Publisher's Synopsis
BIOGRAPH Stephen Proper Gredler was born in Ithaca, New York in 1949. His father, Charles Rogers Gredler, joined the U.S. Army Airborne after attending Cornell University for two years. When he returned he took a degree in Slavic languages. He married Eloise Electa Proper, from New Jersey, who had waited for him to return. When Stephen was three months old, the family of four moved to Lexington, Massachusetts and his father took a degree from Simmons College and started as a cataloguer at Harvard University's Widener Library. His father became the Director of the Slavic Division, a silent architect of the Cold War, and built the library from 500 volumes to more than 7,000,000 volumes by the time of his retirement in 1979. During those thirty years, he was contracted by the Library of Congress to duplicate Widener's holdings. He passed away in 2011. His mother, Eloise Proper Gredler, first became a homemaker using a degree from Cornell to her best advantage, to care for four more children. In later years she started a second career-she developed a system for teaching remedial reading to children and adults, parents and teachers, with an accent on the treatment of dyslexia. She passed away in 2006. Mr. Gredler's parents retired to Nelson County, Virginia in 1979. He has four brothers and a sister residing in Virginia, five nephews and four nieces, two grandnephews, and three grandnieces. Stephen attended private schools all of his life, with brief experiences with public schools when curriculum requirements prevailed, including Bartlett Elementary, Manter Hall, Kalamazoo College, and Northeastern University. He attended the Kaji Aso' Studio Poetry Workshops in Haiku, and the Frost Place Workshop in 1992. He has written twelve books of poetry, several books of his photographs, and has started a textbook concerning the lives of pure poets and influential writers. His published books are listed and linked to amazon.com, searchword Stephen Proper Gredler. A tape recording of a Tufts University Radio Show is available at the Poet's Library in Washington D.C. He is an associate member of the New England Poetry Club and had an affiliation with the Copley Society of Art in Boston for fifteen years, leaving the Society after winning six juried shows and one award and Copley Artist status. His photography was featured in ZOOM Magazine in 1999. His poetry, prose, and photographs are available at amazon.com, kindle.com, cafepress.com, and fineartamerica.com. Mr. Gredler's grandparents have social notoriety. His father's parents were ministers for the Unitarian Universalist Church, holding churches in East and West Bridgewater, Massachusetts. After their divorce, his grandfather, Frank Seraf Gredler, worked as a chaplain for the YMCA in New London, Connecticut and as a supply minister for the UUA in New England. Hazel Rugg Rogers Gredler took the Norton Church, on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts. Eloise Gredler's father was the co-inventor of Snow-Proof leather dressing and sold his interest in the business to his partner in the early 1920's. He married Mina Shepard, who was employed as a researcher by Madame Curie in New York City. The sibling of Eloise, John Proper, was a successful veterinarian in Honeoye Falls, New York. The family is a direct descendant of the sporting artist, Lynn Bogue Hunt; and is also a direct descendant of Thomas Rogers by way of his first son, Joseph. Thomas and Joseph arrived at the new world, explored Cape Cod, and settled at Plymouth on December 18, 1620.