Ross Arkell

Ross Arkell passed away peacefully on Friday, April 22 ^nd 2022 in a memory care facility in Virginia.  He was 86 years old.

He lived an astonishing life that some of his friends and contemporaries compared to a “rags-to-riches” Horatio Alger story.  Born on the south side of Chicago on August 26, 1935, he entered a world gripped in the Great Depression.  The economic pressures of the times soon split apart his parents, Robert Arkell and Virginia Anderson.  Ross was left with his father, Bob in Chicago.  The two of them lived in countless apartments in the Chicago area as my grandfather sought temporary work as a plumber.  Often, he was unemployed and at the horse track.

Living at the poverty line and being itinerate, my father endured a chaotic and tumultuous childhood with few friends or close associates.  Often, he found himself without a place to sleep as my grandfather remarried several times and went to live with new, successive wives.

At age 17 my father went to the Navy recruiting office, lied about his age and was recruited into the service.  He soon found himself serving on the deck of U.S.S. Hornet an aircraft carrier that was providing support as part of the Korean conflict of the early 1950’s.  The Navy proved to be a transformative and positive experience for him.  He saw the world.  He experienced different people and cultures.  He had adventures.

As kids, he would regale my sister Emily and I with Naval shore leave stories about things like befriending movie star William Holden in the bar at Raffles in Singapore, or being mistaken for Tab Hunter by random girls in Times Square, or sitting in a club on leave in Chicago and drinking a beer between musical sets with Jazz great, Chet Baker.  During this time my Father realized his passion for music, literature and art.

After being honorably discharged from the Navy in 1955, my father decided to head to Detroit, “because it was smaller than Chicago and so much nicer”.  He was attracted to the Motor City by its prosperity, bestowed by an incredibly strong U.S. auto industry.  Another attraction was a school.  Backed by the G.I. Bill, my Father would soon enroll at the Center For Creative Studies in Detroit to pursue a fine arts degree.

Two situations would soon change my father’s life in Detroit.

First, he was hired by J.L. Hudson’s in downtown Detroit to decorate all the windows for shopper viewing.  This would prove to be crucial as his career in creativity moved forward.

Second, he met my Mother, Judy Reese a classmate at art school.  My Mother, a Cass Technical High School graduate already possessed formidable creative skills and art history knowledge and my Father was impressed.  Soon they were an item spending time at the Museum, the symphony and at places like the Rhinoceros Club on Jefferson Ave. seeing pianist Oscar Peterson, or at Baker’s Keyboard lounge listening to Dave Brubeck.

My mother’s world was very different from my Father’s.  It was calm, stable, predictable, kind, welcoming and warm.  In 1950, my mother and her parents had relocated from a east side neighborhood in Detroit near Grosse Pointe to Birmingham, Michigan.

My Father would drive slowly North on Woodward Avenue from Detroit to Birmingham to visit my Mother in his used Buick Roadmaster.  He did this to make every green light to save on gas.

Soon my Dad saw an opportunity to interview with General Motors Design Staff and used a portfolio that he’d assembled of all his window dressing work for Hudson’s and a degree from CCS to secure a job as a design studio clay modeler with Buick in Warren, Michigan.

My Mom and Dad married in May of 1960 at my Grandparents home in Birmingham, Michigan.  A small, modest yet elegant affair.

I came along first, followed 2 years later by my sister Emily.  My parents settled in a home on Hennrietta St. in Birmingham, Michigan.

My Dad thrived at General Motors.  He felt privileged to have contributed to some of the greatest cars of the 1960’s, 70’s and beyond.  We became a GM family and my Dad’s status at Design staff gave him security, stability, confidence, growing affluence.  All the while, he was quiet, humble and maintained a low profile.

He worked with and maintained relationships with some of the greatest and well-known automotive executives of the time.

At home, he painted and exhibited his works in galleries.  He played Miles Davis and Mozart’s Ein Kliene Nachtmusik at full volume.  He learned and then sang in Latin – around the house.  He read everything from Studs Terkel and Alexsander Solzhenitsyn.  He dressed in Brooks Brothers but wore Jack Purcell’s.  He loved Basketball and would beat all the neighborhood boys in pick-up games.  He was rigidly fiscally conservative, but was also a disciple of Bobby Kennedy.  He cried when Martin Luther King was shot.

He was a gentleman.  He was dignified and deferential.  And intelligent.  Very Intelligent.  In fact it took my Mom and sister and I awhile to figure out that we were really living with a guy who had a genius I.Q.   He could ramble on about the details of the colonial history of Cambodia and how that merged into their current economic status.  Not that we cared.

After working at GM for 35+ years with tours of duty at Buick, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile and Pontiac design studios, he retired in the 1990’s and he and my mom purchased a retirement home on Smith Mountain Lake about 35 miles outside of Roanoke, VA.

Retirement was a wonder for my Dad.  He and my Mom traveled several times to Europe on spectacular vacations.  My Father explored our family history originating in ancient Norway and and leading to the British Isles where the Arkell’s first appeared in the Domesday Book in the year 1066.  We were knights that protected the King of England and later noblemen.   My Dad would joke to my sister and I, “we’re aristocrats with no money”!  He loved that he could go to the U.K. and buy Arkell’s beer brewed by distant cousins or that our family were the founders of the Beech Nut company of New York.

He became a master gardener and skilled craftsman building decks and enclosures.  He loved animals, especially cats.  He was a curator of fine foods, skilled cooking, British TV series, Public TV, classical music, books, art galleries and parks.  He loved cars and car shows, especially the Concours’d’Elegance where he’d get excited about the shapes and forms of older exotic cars like the Delahaye and Talbot Lago’s.

During retirement he turned a great deal of energy into his creativity which was painting.  He was a prolific artist with work that reflected landscapes, portraits, still life’s, architecture and pop culture. He tirelessly exhibited at countless art galleries in the East.

He was authentic and genuine.  He was a bit eccentric.  He was humble.

It was a life well-lived.

He is survived by his wife Judy of 62 years, daughter Emily Duban (Robert Duban) of Mission Viejo, CA and son Christopher Arkell (Sandy Arkell) of Wilton, CT.  He was a Grandfather to Johnathan Arkell, Stefan Duban, Heather Duban and Mark Duban.

Donations may be made in his name to NPR and Public Television.