In Memoriam 69: Richard Ortner
I recently turned 69, a prophetic age for me, as three dear friends of mine died at that age. This month, I am posting a memorial to each of them, as they are all still very much alive in my spirit.
Ryan Landry and the Gold Dust Orphans are a unique Boston phenomenon. For years, Gold Dust parodies of classic books, plays, and films were staged at Machine, in the basement of the leather bar Ramrod. ‘Nuff said. Gold Dust Orphan productions were high-culture events within Boston’s gay community. The challenge for me, in the early 00’s, was that, in addition to being a gay man about town, I was raising a pair of children. Sometimes, being a good parent conflicted with the scene.
On one particular Friday night I was hoping to see Who’s Afraid of the Virgin Mary? But I couldn’t do my gay thing until I served my children dinner and ferried them to their respective teenage events. By the time I arrived at Machine (curtain time 10 p.m. — the gay world runs late), the show was sold out. I put my name on a waiting list. In the event that folks didn’t show, they’d slip me in where they could. As if I were just another orphan.
Ten minutes before show time, I heard my name and was escorted to a prime seat: third row center; next to this very Newton-looking couple. A short, stocky, very Jewish and very put together man with a knock-out blonde wife. The show began. Hilarious. At intermission we chatted. I begin to doubt my preconceptions. Perhaps not a couple. He hedged about his work. Although she was definitely from Newton.
Act Two. Gold Dust Orphans loosened inhibitions. After a grand guffaw and much applause, I let my hand drop onto my neighbor’s knee. He leaned over and whispered, “You can just leave that there.” One thing you gotta give us credit for: gay men are efficient communicators.
End of play. Final Bows. Tremendous Applause. Ryan Landry silences the crowd. “I want to acknowledge a few very special people with us tonight. Richard Ortner, President of The Boston Conservatory.” Spotlight on my neighbor.
That is the true story of how I met Richard Ortner. From that point on, our friendship became deeper, and increasingly vanilla.
Richard Ortner was one savvy arts administrator. In 1998, After a long tenure with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Richard was tapped to be President of The Boston Conservatory (full obituary). During his nineteen-year tenure at TBC, Richard added two new buildings to an urban campus that had not been expanded in decades. He solidified the conservatory’s three principal arenas: theater, music, and dance, and engineered the unusual, yet successful, integration of The Boston Conservatory into its much larger neighbor, Berklee College of Music.
My relationship with Richard had nothing to do with TBC, directly, though we saw countless programs together, and he motivated my ongoing support for the school. Richard loved the full immersion into the world of the arts that TBC provided, but he also recognized the futility of trying to run an independent conservatory with only 650 students. He knew some sort of merger was inevitable, and crafted a plan, with President Roger Brown of Berklee, that holds a special status for the Conservatory to this day.
Richard was a gregarious extrovert who could easily have been a politician. When we attended an opening at The Conservatory, I marveled at how he worked the crowd, always including me as appropriate, although I have little stomach for cocktail events.
What I remember more dearly are our dinners together, evening meals at his condo with a city lights view, or weekends in the Berkshires, where he had a charming, humble, second home. We talked books and music and theater without end.
It was during one of those dinners that Richard mentioned, offhand, that he’d been having some chest pain and had an appointment to see a doctor the following week. That visit yielded a diagnosis of esophageal cancer. Richard battled it with his usual upbeat self. He signed on for every treatment, every surgery. He spent weeks on end in Mass General, sometimes planned in advance, too often emergency admissions. After a year of intensivity, he called it quits on aggressive treatment and retired to his apartment, surrounded by a healthy array of pain meds and a few good friends. My housemate and I spent Richard’s last night there together. Talking, laughing, watching a bad movie. Richard wasn’t eating, hardly even drinking. At the time, none of us knew it was our last night. It was just another good one.
