Berta and Elmer Hader

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The below information, except where otherwise noted, has been summarized from an article by Elaine and Edward Kemp in Imprint: Oregon, volume 3, 1977 spring-fall, pages 5-11. Amongst other research, the Kemps gained information through correspondence with several friends of the Haders, such as J. J. Marquis, Jane Terrill Barrow, Ruth and Latrobe Carroll, and Doris Patee.

Berta Hoerner (1891–1976 February 06) and Elmer Stanley Hader (1889 September 07-1973 September 07) were a husband-and-wife team that illustrated more than 70 children's books, about half of which they also wrote. Their most notable contribution to children's literature was in 1949, when they won the Caldecott Medal for The Big Snow.

Berta was born in San Pedro, Coahuila, Mexico, where her parents Albert and Adelaide unsuccessfully tried to grow cotton with Albert's brother. The family moved 100km to the east, to the resort town of Parras, Mexico, when Berta was three, then soon-after to Amarillo, Texas, where her father ran a grocery store. Her father died when Berta was five, and the family soon moved to the northeast of the United States (probably to New York). Berta, perhaps inspired by her mother's colorful sketches of Mexican life, took art classes and read intensively while still in elementary school, winning literary and artistic prizes for her work. The family again moved in 1917, this time to Seattle, Washington. While Berta's mother worked for Charity Organization Society and Washington's Home, Berta continued painting and reading, and eventually attended the University of Washington School of Journalism (1909-1912). She also apprenticed at Western Engraving Company, where she learned printing design, fashion design, illustration, and printing skills. Berta's supervisor, Eva Shepherd, moved to San Francisco, handing over her fashion work in Seattle to Berta. When Ms. Shepherd then took a position in New York, Ms. Shepherd asked Berta to take over her free-lance fashion illustratration business in San Francisco. Berta agreed and, to further her training, she spent 1915 summer in Carmel and attended the California School of Design in San Francisco from 1915-1918. While in San Francisco, Berta befriended Rose Wilder Lane (daughter of then-unknown writer Laura Ingalls Wilder), with whom she later rented a Telegraph Hill studio (1413 Montgomery Street). Berta first met her future husband Elmer at this studio, who was merely looking for a place to store his easel and paints after his return from Paris. Berta had also befriended Bessie "Mother" Beatty during her time in San Francisco. After Ms. Beatty's adventures covering the Russian Revolution (The Red Heart of Russia, 1918), she invited Berta to New York City to do fashion design illustration for McCall's, where Ms. Beatty had become an editor.

Elmer was born in Pajaro, California, but spent much of his youth in San Francisco. At the age of 16, as a member of the National Guard, he helped restore order to San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. He worked briefly in a survey party up the American River (near Sacramento, California), then returned to San Francisco to work as a firefighter on the State Belt Railroad (a dock-side railroad that acted as a shuttle for goods and people^[1]), where his father worked as an engineer. Elmer used his earnings from this job to pay for his first term at California School of Design. He then obtained scholarships to finish at the school (1907-1910). Elmer was also involved in theatre, and was supported by two theatrical groups, including his time in Paris at the Academie Julian from 1912-1914. He was so successful at a vaudeville-like schtick in France and the US (on the Pantages circuit), in which he would do a "Painting a Minute" act and, later, a living statue routine (in which individuals were made up to appear to be statues), that he considered dropping his long-term goal of becoming an artist. Hader returned to France in 1918 as a member of the Camouflage Corps, just at the time that Berta was asked by Ms. Beatty to come to New York to work in fashion design illustration at McCalls.

When Elmer and Berta met in San Francisco, they had both been part of a broad network of artists and intellectuals in the area. They became good friends, and, rather than return to San Francisco, Elmer went directly to New York when he was demobilized, where Berta was working for McCall's. The two quickly married, then lived briefly in Greenwich Village. Seeking a more rustic setting, they left the city to rent the Lyle Cottage in Grand-View-on-Hudson, a small town in rural Rockland County on the west bank of the Hudson River. This would become the area they would spend the rest of their lives in, eventually building their home on a 1,5 hectare plot a mere 500 meters from the Lyle Cottage. This home, which took more than twenty years to build and was largely done by Hader and his friends, became an art project in its own right. Elmer went so far as to extract the stones used to build the house from the earth himself. The Haders had a boy in the early 1920s, Hamilton (named after the author Hamilton Williamson), who died from meningitis not long before he turned three. The death of their son, according to their friend J. J. Marquis, turned both of them into agnostics, though they recovered enough to avoid becoming embittered or cynical.

The two used their talents and Berta's connections to prepare children's sections for Good Housekeeping, McCall's, Pictorial Review, Asia, Century, and The Christian Science Monitor. They did pictures and cut-outs, often featuring children dressed in national costumes. In Berta and Elmer Hader's Picture Book of Mother Goose, the couple collated pen-and-ink and color drawings they had done for Monitor and Good Housekeeping to great acclaim. When the US Postal Service dis-allowed the sending of magazines with cut-out segments in 1926, the Haders switched gears, gaining a contract with MacMillan for a series of children's books. They began writing the stories for some of the books in this period. Demand for their product soared, and they worked incessantly from 1927-1931, illustrating, in some cases writing, producing, and helping to sell thirty-four titles. They stayed busy for the rest of their lives, producing another seventy or so books before they retired in 1964. One book in particular, Billy Butter (1936), so impressed writer John Steinbeck that he requested Elmer Hader do the cover to The Grapes of Wrath (1939), Steinbeck's most important work. Hader eventually did covers for two other Steinbeck works, East of Eden (1952) and The Winter of Our Discontent (1961).

The Haders were early champions of conservation, animal protection, and pacifism. This made its way into their work, particularly with titles such as The Runaways (1956) and Two Is Company, Three's a Crowd (1965?), as well as into their lives. In the early 1950s, Berta became a community activist, ignited by the seemingly lost cause of having the location of the proposed Tappan Zee Bridge moved to a less sensitive area than its planned path through her village. Though The New York Times accused her of "blocking progress," the New York State Thruway Authority eventually relented (though Hader's protests were not given as the stated reason^[2]), and the massive 4,88km-long bridge was built several kilometers to the north at Nyack, where the bridge still stands today.

Berta and Elmer travelled extensively in Mexico, Jamaica, and the far northeast of the United States, some of which made its way into their work. 'The Story of Pancho and the Bull with the Crooked Tail" (1942), Jamaica Johnny (1943), and Tommy Thatcher Goes to Sea (1950) are all informed by their travels. Elmer died on his 84th birthday at his home in Grand-View-on-Hudson. Berta remained at the home until shortly before she died 1976 February 06 at the age of 85.