I was very distressed to learn today of the death of an old friend. I’m startled to realize that she was indeed that — I’ve known Kathleen Hulser for a quarter of a century.
Kathleen was the public historian at the New-York History Society during the years when I was first a fund-raiser, then the public relations officer. As such, she was a tremendous influence on me. There are several posts on this blog that owe a great deal to what I learned from Kathleen in a direct and literal way. Examples include my posts on The General Slocum Disaster and Germans in American Pop Culture, and on Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Harriet Beecher Stowe, both of which can trace their origins to exhibitions she curated and talks that she gave. Her commentary on UTC and the artist Kara Walker inform my own framing of topics like blackface minstrelsy. She also organized a revisionist take on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (hence, I brought her as I my plus-one to see Nancy Drewinsky in early 2020, which I believe is that last time I saw her). Kathleen’s apartment was a place of refuge for my son and I on September 11. It’s where we rested our feet for a few hours until the trains came back online and we could get home; her TV was where I saw my first pictures of the disaster.
Kathleen was a historical populist. She was interested in history as the movement and sweep of forces, not some sort of tag team relay race run by mighty (male) leaders. I was astonished when she survived the change of leadership there at N-YHS 2004, and managed to remain through 2011, in spite of an institutional shift in curatorial philosophy and priorities. She was mischievous and provocative, she was always tickled to death by the idea of stirring people up. But along with that went a relentlessly positive attitude. She was the type to roll with punches and muscle through. She was a pragmatist and a very hard worker.
It’s impossible to talk about Kathleen without mentioning her physical presence. When I first met her I don’t mind telling you I was appalled. She was built in the mold of a Marie Dressler or a Julia Child, with the shoulders of a lady football player, and she did not apologize for it. I recall sitting in the Society’s Gilded Age conference room, the customarily church-like refuge of Beekmans and Frelinghuysens, and she burst in for her first meeting, all sweaty and disshevelled and loud and bluntly honest, and spilling her coffee, and man, that was an unsubtle first impression. She was the proverbial bull in the China shop. I’d hesitate to go bovine in describing her, even in an idiomatic cliche, but even Kathleen knew this about herself — her Instagram handle was @historyonthehoof. Kathleen did not do “inside voice”. Which made it all the more fitting that she loved to give walking tours (often on progressive topics like “Uppity Women” and the Underground Railroad). She was a lot, but very quickly, I did not want less.
For a woman of that size to give off that much energy (I never ever saw her at rest) I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that the manner of death was a heart attack. It’s what I would have predicted 25 years ago. But it was still way too soon. I’m real sorry fate didn’t hand me just one more chance to kid around with her. She laughed like a Peanuts character, from the gut, and it made the roof jump up and down.
Kathleen is among the reasons I get pissed off when people call me a historian. Do you even know what a historian is? I’m a history communicator, an enthusiast, a writer on historical topics. But Kathleen Hulser — that was a historian.
I was surprised to learn that in her last years Kathleen did some work for another of my many mentors at the N-YHS Paul Gunther, at Gracie Mansion and at Oysterponds. Paul left us suddenly two years ago. It’s starting to feel lonely all up in here.