Middlebury Magazine

  • Recent Stories
  • Menu
    • Features
    • Pursuits
    • Q&A
    • Podcasts
    • Review
    • Essays
    • Old Chapel
    • Videos
    • How Did You Get Here Series
    • About
    • Advertising
    • Contact
    • Support
    • Writers’ Guidelines
  • Search

Spring 2017 Pursuits

A Life Story

Since the death of her photographer husband, writer Barbara Cummiskey Villet ’52 has endeavored to preserve his legacy.

By Sara Thurber Marshall
Photography by Brett Simison
March 25, 2017
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • Email icon

The first time journalist Barbara Cummiskey ’52 met Grey Villet, it was in the lobby of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. He’d been assigned to photograph a story she was developing and was seated on a couch, surrounded by cameras and wearing old jeans, sneakers, and a wrinkled denim shirt. After she sat down next to him, he stood up to his full six-foot, four-inch height and, peering down his nose, said in a rich South African accent, “I suppose you want a martini?” Inwardly she groaned. She was going to have to put up with this attitude for the next several weeks?

Thus began their love story. The year was 1961 and Barbara was among a small number of women reporter-writers at Life magazine. She had pitched a series of three stories about what it meant to strive for the American dreams of fame, wealth, and success—goals that too often ruin lives. She had the perfect subject for success: Victor Sabatino, the owner of a national line of foam-rubber-furniture stores. Sabatino was developing stores in California. As a “natural” for such a story, Grey, then Life’s bureau photographer in Los Angeles, was assigned to it. “After he ordered that martini for me and a pot of tea for himself (the second put-down!), I explained what I hoped we might accomplish with Victor. We spent a day with Sabatino, and I could see from the way Grey began shooting the story that he totally understood its essence. That night, when we got back to the hotel, he walked me to my door, kissed me lightly, and told me I was going to marry him. After three more days of working together, I agreed.”

Barbara and Grey were the perfect collaborators, sharing an almost electric sympathy. They recognized that to get to the truth of any essay, they had to be low-key in their approach in order to let people tell their own stories. They chased stories that were intensely human, showing what makes people tick and what drives them to follow a life’s passion. Working together until Life folded in 1972, they produced some of the finest photographic essays to appear in the magazine. Their first, the Sabatino essay, appears in Life’s Great Essays.

Everything changed after 1972. “The years after Life ended were hard,” Barbara says. “I sold real estate, he built houses. Slowly the importance of Grey’s work to photojournalism was fading.” When Grey died in 2000, Barbara had a new goal. “It became my raison d’être to make sure his legacy stayed alive and to preserve at least its essence.” Her first stop was the Life archives, to see what photographs she wanted to preserve for books and exhibitions.

Then in 2012, Nancy Buirski did a documentary on Richard and Mildred Loving, the interracial Virginia couple behind the Supreme Court decision that invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Grey had done a photo shoot with the Lovings in 1965 for a Life story. He had eventually given many of the photos to the couple, and their daughter shared them with Buirski, who, knowing Grey was dead, hadn’t bothered to get permissions to use them. “When I learned about the documentary and the photos, I hired a lawyer and informed Buirski that if she didn’t credit Grey BIG, I’d sue,” Barbara says. Buirski complied. Once director Jeff Nichols saw the documentary and Grey’s stills, he was inspired to create the movie Loving, which came out in 2016.

At that time, Barbara was completing a 2016 retrospective of Grey’s work at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, located at the site of the famous 1969 Woodstock concert. She acted as cocurator and author for the exhibit. Barbara was also completing a book combining Grey’s Loving photos with her own text, as she had done so many times before.

After 16 years, Barbara feels she has accomplished what she set out to do. Through her perseverance, Grey’s artistic legacy has been saved.

Parallels

Diverted Career Path

Barbara did not set out to be a journalist when she left Middlebury with a degree in American literature. She meant to be a teacher and earned a Ford Foundation scholarship to attend Harvard. She earned her MAT but was heavily influenced by one of her professors, Albert Guerard, who was in the French Resistance during World War II. His German counterpart was Conrad Kellen, head of Radio Free Europe (RFE) in New York City. Guerard suggested she go to work for Kellen. At 23 years old, she was working the Czech and Hungarian desks and had the side assignment of being RFE’s reporter at the UN.

Continuing Collaboration

After Life folded, Barbara and Grey produced several books together, including this one on South African history and its grief, which was named a Time Notable Book of the  Year in 1980 and nominated for a Pulitzer.

On the Way

One of Barbara’s first tasks in preserving Grey’s legacy was to sit in the basement of the Time-Life Building in NYC, going through Grey’s assignments for Life. The search yielded  thousands of images of historic and aesthetic importance, which she has archived in print and digital form. Thousands more ranging over a full spectrum of the final decades of the 20th century remain to be digitally preserved.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent Stories

Features

More Than a Game

In a critically acclaimed work of nonfiction, Abe Streep '04 introduces readers to the Arlee Warriors, a high school basketball team on a Native American reservation in Montana, where life's challenges are abundant.

By Alexander Wolff
Photograph by Devin Yalkin
October 21, 2022

Munya Munyati Has A Few Stories to Tell

Catching up with a young filmmaker who is rapidly making a name for himself at Vice.

By Mara Dolan
Film stills by Munya Munyati
September 16, 2022

Reverberations

A transcontinental move, a career discovered, a landmark speech studied and translated—and an identity reshaped.

By Clara Clymer, MA Translation '22
Illustration by Anna Gusella
April 2, 2022

The Road(s)

A little over a year ago, a writing student headed south to Florida for no other reason than J-Term was forced to go remote. She soon found herself reporting on an environmental justice battle that was roiling the state.

By Alexandra Burns '21.5
Illustrations by Yevgenia Nayberg
March 2, 2022

Dispatches

Japan Wants to Dump Water from a Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean

Middlebury's Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress thinks that's a terrible idea.

By Sierra Abukins
August 11, 2023

When Mini Golf Meets Reproductive Justice

A summertime staple becomes a first-of-its-kind teaching tool.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Photographs by Todd Balfour
June 30, 2023

Welcome to All Things Scottish

Toward the end of the academic year, a group of Midd students turned Battell Beach into a setting that more closely resembled a Scottish moor.

By Caroline Crawford
Photograph by Brian MacDonald
June 30, 2023

Let’s Dance

How can one's digital experiences be interpreted through performance art? Choreographer Maia Sauer ’22 and a troupe of recent Midd grads attempt to find out.

By Alexandra Jhamb Burns '21.5
Photographs by Alexis Welch '22
June 2, 2023

The Repatriation

The Leopard Head Hip Ornament returns to Africa.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Courtesy Middlebury Museum of Art
February 16, 2023

Adventures in Filmmaking

Two professors and an alum have embarked on a journey to take a screenplay from its creation to the end product of a full-length feature film.

By Sara Thurber Marshall
Still Photograph from The Swim Lesson Proof of Concept
February 14, 2023

A Night Out

For one evening in December, Atwater dining hall hosted a student-dining experience unlike any other.

By Caroline Crawford
Photographs by Paul Dahm
January 20, 2023

Finding His Way

What happens when your identity is stolen—not by another person but by your own body?

By Sara Thurber Marshall
December 15, 2022

A Natural Selection

For more than a quarter century, Stephen Trombulak— now an emeritus professor of biology and environmental studies—guided students in avian research on a parcel of College land hard by Otter Creek. This preserved area now bears his name.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Photography by Paul Dahm
November 18, 2022
View All

Pursuits

Public Defender

On becoming one of the country's foremost cybersecurity experts.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Illustration by Neil Webb
April 14, 2022

Q&A

The Making of a Teacher

Hebrew Professor Michal Strier reflects on her life an education—in Israel and the States—a journey that led the Language School instructor to the undergraduate College for the first time this year.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Photograph by Paul Dahm
May 19, 2022

Editor’s Note

A Brilliant Fogg

Saying goodbye to a dear colleague and friend.

By Matt Jennings
Illustration by Jody Hewgill
February 25, 2020

Old Chapel

Making Democracy Real

An Update on Our Conflict Transformation Initiative

By Laurie L. Patton
Illustration by Brian Staufer
January 20, 2023

Road Taken

What to Wear Now

Through accrued life experiences, a writer discovers that a common question has become a statement of identity.

By Samantha Hubbard Shanley ’99
Illustration by Naomi Clarke
March 11, 2021

Quotation

A summer immersed in a language can do wonders, as veterans of Middlebury College’s famous language-learning program can attest. The lockdown is clearly going to amount to the equivalent of about two summers, and there are mini-Middleburys happening in millions of houses worldwide.”

—John McWhorter, writing “The Coronavirus Generation Will Use Language Differently” in the Atlantic.

Podcasts

Old Stories Being Told Differently, Part 1, featuring Carolyn Finney

Our guest for episode three of season three is Carolyn Finney, who is a storyteller, author, cultural geographer, and self-described “accidental environmentalist” whose work explores the intersection of identity, privilege, and our natural surroundings. In part one of this two-part interview, Carolyn joins host and president of Middlebury, Laurie Patton, to discuss how her upbringing and family history in Westchester County, New York became the foundation of her life’s work.

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
September 18, 2023

Every Book You Write Is a Mystery, feat. Rebecca Makkai, MA English ’04

Our guest for episode two of season three is Rebecca Makkai, MA English '04, a critically acclaimed novelist and short story writer. She joins Laurie Patton to discuss her teaching career, overcoming writer's block, her time at Bread Loaf, dabbling in other genres or mediums for inspiration, and her deep personal roots to Vermont.

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
May 30, 2023

The Virus Hunter, feat. Anne Rimoin ’92

Our guest for episode one of season three of this podcast is an epidemiologist who is an internationally recognized expert on global health, disease surveillance, and immunization. Anne Rimoin '92 joins Laurie Patton to discuss what it takes to be on the front lines as an emerging infectious disease researcher.

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
April 17, 2023

Review

Editors’ Picks for July and August

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
August 11, 2023

How Did You Get Here?

Megan Job

By Alexandra Burns '21
February 15, 2021

Leif Taranta

By Alexandra Burns '21
February 15, 2021

Mikayla Haefele

By Alexandra Burns '21
February 15, 2021

Videos

Creating Community Through Hip Hop

For three days in March, the sounds, styles, and fashions of global hip hop converged on Middlebury for an electric symposium.

By Jordan Saint-Louis '24
April 17, 2023

Pomp and Unusual Circumstances

As viewed from above.

By Chris Spencer
June 1, 2021

Davis the Owl Returns Home

Having recovered from life-threatening injuries, a beautiful winged creature is released to its natural habitat.

By Andrew Cassell
April 22, 2021
Middlebury College
  • Alumni
  • Newsroom
  • Contact Us
  • icon-instagram

The views presented are not necessarily those of the editors or the official policies of the College.

© 2023 Middlebury College Publications.