Remorse spurs son to recover portrait
Perfectly coiffed hair, rosy lipstick and lace ball gowns was not how Sam Gorman knew his mother — now a 79year-old woman with Alzheimer’s disease. But the young woman in the decades-old painting was surely her.
After moving his mother to Austin, Gorman found the unsigned painting of Cheri Gorman — a near-match to her high school senior photo taken in 1961 in Denver — stashed away at her Museum District home.
He then parted ways with the portrait for a little cash at an estate sale and immediately regretted the decision. Now, he hopes whoever bought the priceless piece will give it back.
“My buddy of mine had encouraged me,” Gorman said. “He said, ‘Look, man, you’re going to have some regrets, but these things are going to sit.’ ”
The seller’s remorse on that particular item was overwhelming.
Gorman opened the doors to his childhood home on North Boulevard, near Bissonnet Street, for the Jan. 22 sale and sold the portrait first thing that morning. He didn’t think anyone would show up, let alone be interested in a painting of his
mother. The portrait was stacked against a wall with other pictures.
The buyers were among a steady stream of people who spent that day and the next combing through his mother’s trove of belongings, which included art, music and household goods. Among his many other regrets, though, was selling off an antique desk organizer that his mother used over the years to store correspondence. The painting had more sentimental value.
“This older couple, they bounced through the house,” he said. “They were really nice. They wanted to know more about it.”
But he didn’t know, and because of his mother’s failing mind, asking for her insight was not possible.
“It’s a huge problem, with Alzheimer’s disease,” he said. “Your parents get it and then it’s too late.”
Preparing the sale — the liquidation of an estate — was emotional, he said. He saved some prized items for himself. He hastily sorted through years of letters and photographs — some of which pre-dated his birth — and kept wondering about her early life. Photographs he found suggest she may have been happier then, he said. She moved to Houston from Colorado and spent the next 40 years at the house near Rice University, raising two sons on her own.
He vaguely recalled seeing the portrait either in the attic or closet while growing up, but knew nothing more. Why did she keep a portrait she never intended to hang? he wondered. He may never find out.
“That’s the mystery of it,” Gorman said. “That’s why (the painting’s) more valuable and why I regret this.”
He also wonders what kind of woman she was then. Unlike the portrait’s portrayal, she was no dainty debutante. She was far from materialistic, he said.
“She’s so young in this painting,” Gorman said. “She probably hadn’t developed as a person.”
The woman he knew raised him as a single parent in the North Boulevard home, which she fixed up on her own. She, a retired biologist and accountant, was hardworking and rallied around social injustices and protecting the environment, he said.
“She wasn’t afraid to get dirty,” he continued.
Days following the sale, with no luck finding the portrait after posting a plea for its return on Facebook and Craigslist, Gorman started losing hope.
“I do find comfort in knowing it’s not getting trashed or something,” Gorman said. “I think it’s being appreciated somewhere.”
If the couple comes forward, he will make space for the portrait on a wall. Not in a closet.