The news of entrepreneur Avery Clayton’s sudden death on Thanksgiving Day struck me with unusual force, especially considering I only knew him marginally.
I felt deeply guilty for not aiding him in establishing the pride of his 62 years of life, a Culver City museum and library dedicated toAfrican American history, featuring his late mother’s extraordinary collection.
The three-year-old Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum, on the site of the old Courthouse, across the street from the Vets Auditorium, looks as retiring, as unobtrusive, as Mr. Clayton.
Quite without excuses, I could and should have done much more to trumpet this worthy and singular undertaking.
From the time we met, six or seven years ago, Mr. Clayton and his remarkably ambitious, noble project — spotlighting the pioneering collection his mother assembled as a patriotic sideline — were accorded minimal attention in this newspaper.
Difficult to pinpoint why.
We can start with the relevant fact that this kind, soft gentleman was the antithesis of pushy. Selling, himself or his dream, was not what he did.
He was a visionary.
Opposite of a Promoter
By training a teacher and an artist, by disposition hushingly quiet, intellectually persuasive in a most self-effacing manner, these are enviable assets for everyone on earth, except a salesman.
Noisy, pushy people get themselves and their clients into print. Kind men, especially those of middling age who are operating as lone rangers without large and impressive backing, face a tougher slog.
Mr. Clayton was one of the sweetest people I have met you ever encounter in a lifetime.
The setting for our first interview was storybook-style, the bachelor Mr. Clayton’s small, art-centric home in Pasadena around New Year’s Day, a hearth that shared the property with a larger family home.
Driving across town into Pasadena around Rose Bowl time would would elevateanyone’s mood into the stratosphere— even though Mr. Clayton’s vision was plumply meritorious on its own.
Single men or women of a certain age, who do not have children to follow, always strike me as uncommonly unfortunate types. I feel waves of sympathy for those who have missed all of the richest joys this life can yield.
That was my frame of mind entering Mr. Clayton’s home, and it never changed.
As it has more sunnily turned out, Mr. Clayton’s legacy is living and brearthing. Hopefully, the vibrant memorial to his beloved mother will prosper for decades.
