The legacy & Memory of the 3 Wise-Men Tableau

A recollection by Joe Abramo

 This is the story of how this Holiday project came into existence.  During the fall of 1981, the Moderator of  Deacons, Arlene Levine, commissioned Earl V King, Deacon - my father-in-law,  a project geared to the December activities and holiday meaning.    Earl King is also Jeanette & Ross's father, Brian's Grandfather.

Earl King, the “hardware man”, came to me to advise what he intended to make.  He gathered a composition board, built a frame and took it all down to his basement.  …. showed me a black and white coloring book and  the 3 Wise men and the intention to use house paint and ideas to construct this work of art.

He also had a desk type contraption that had the ability to “trace” a smaller object to make it larger in another area of your drawing space. I transferred the desired pictures on to a manila-file folder for stiffer paper. But first, we had use house paint and proceed to paint the sky black...and when we got towards the middle, Earl gave ideas of where the hills and valleys should go with “greens and browns”.  I recall, the addition of the white cloudy “mist” over the hills took someattention & care. The stars were added last but after 10-15 years they faded and this was repaired.

I completed the outline of the 3 Wise men, used artist paint and-randomly- picked colors that I thought were applicable for the times. And then used a black marker for the detail to make them come alive.  The camel ropes and fringes were all 3-D. The final items, the glittered star and particularly the city of Bethlehem were free handed and colored. The items were all Modge Podged to this composition board.

The final touch by Earl was adding the planet “Mars”, the red planet about the size of a  button to the top of the tableau and then adding of our “initials”.  His project and vision complete.

This tableau has been active each Holiday Season, since 1981, first at Prentice for the following 7 plus years, and not up at the time at Ft. Ben, and  then each year since at  C P C for a total of 40 years and presided over by  Pastors Don Hastings, Frank Bean at Prentice, Dave Comstock, Nancy Howard, Gretchen Schneider and now Wally Wilson at C P C.

Printed this story to preserve the memory.

Joe Abramo, December 2021 and in memory of Earl V King