Let it be understood that Florence (my mother) was an artist as a messenger, she was not the message...that no matter what her achievements, her high energy and drive, created reflections of Whom she trusted and she used her God-given talents to the best of her ability. In retrospect, her gifts glorify GOD. Bursting with life's wonders, her inner spirit understood the call to a Higher Ground.
Genealogy:
Florence Elizabeth Riefle was the maternal great granddaughter of Benjamin Horn and Regina Reppert, as well as of the paternal Henry Ferdinand Riefle and Jacobina Rohrbacher [see memorials]. She was the maternal granddaughter of Jacob Conrad Shafer and Hannah Filmore Horn Shafer, as well as Henry Francis Riefle and Jane Coulson.
Florence was the eldest daughter of James Henry ("Harry") Riefle and Florence (nee Shafer) Riefle], and sister of five other siblings: Conrad Shafer Riefle, James H. Riefle Jr., Katherine Shafer Riefle Worthington, Caroline Amelia Riefle Beatty and Jane Coulson Riefle Reilly. The children lived in the Forest Park/Liberty Heights neighborhood and then moved to Homeland where they grew to adulthood.
Creativity and Education:
Though more visually creative, Florence also played the piano in a musically talented family. Otherwise, in her youth and young adulthood, she designed & sewed clothes, hooked rugs, wrote / illustrated books for children & memory books, and illustrated her high school & college yearbooks.
Florence graduated from Forest Park HS in 1927, studied at Dickinson College in 1927-28, and then at the Maryland Institute of Art (now "MICA")(in Day and Night Schools) - graduating in 1930 with a diploma in Costume Design.
As a Maryland Institute post-graduate in 1931, she continued her studies and received a diploma in Fine Arts, won the James Young Memorial Prize Award and traveled to Europe aboard the "Acquatania." She made many sketches throughout the trip, and described the sights in a diary. Among the notables she met were Scotsman James McGrary, a winner at soccer in the Celtic Football League, and, according to her diary, had a night on the town in Paris with Baron George Wrangell [see memorial], a Russian aristocrat who, years later, posed with an eye patch for the original ad of the "Man in the Hathaway Shirt."
Marriage and Family:
From her other diaries beginning in 1929, she took note of and dated her Maryland Institute painting instructor and co-student, Leonard Marion Bahr. In May, 1934, they married and settled in a row house apartment on Park Heights Ave. in Baltimore City. Being upcoming artists, they participated in joint art shows, and their first exhibition together in 1936 had Mae West and Dick Powell as surprise visitors, who wrote comments about the art in their guest book ! Also, Florence and Leonard often took walking trips together, sketching the places they went.
She always carried a sketchbook to record the life around her. Using varied mediums in her drawings and paintings, she also made woodcut and linoleum blocks designs, either on commission or as gifts, for signs and invitations, book plates and greeting cards.
During the "Great Depression," she worked for the Works Progress Administration and, among other things, painted a mural for the "Harriet Lane Home for Children" in Baltimore.
One of her first oil portraits was exhibited by the Nat'l Assoc. of Women Painters and Sculptors in New York and was a portrait of her mother's cook [see Lillie Mary Curtis Bailey].
By 1937, they lived on Reisterstown Rd, where Leonard had a basement studio. Florence painted and sketched. They both continued exhibiting their art at local galleries and at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
In 1943, Leonard went to the Naval OTS in Ohio, and later rose in rank to a Lieutenant Commander. He was stationed in Hollywood and Jacksonville, FL by mid 1943, where he was later joined by Flo and by then their two children. Out of the war by 1946 (see group photo of her Riefle parents and married sister siblings), they returned to their Baltimore home.
By the 1950's, the family had moved from Baltimore City to a large, historic home (Edgewood Cottage) on Old Lawyers Hill Rd. in Elkridge. The family grew to three and Leonard retired from the Naval Reserves.
An Odd Duck and Black Sheep:
In these years, she taught art at Roxeter-on-Severn and locally established herself painting portraits of children. She was not afraid of being her own woman, charting her own opinions and discarding conventions For instance, the wearing of white gloves as defined by etiquette of the day. My mother stopped doing a lot of things other people thought proper.
Looking back in family history shows a cultured German family of traditional thinking and some prejudices. With five daughters, communications with their mother was based on protected approval. But for Florence, being the oldest daughter, changes for her arrived faster than expected. As a teenager, Florence felt the odd duck. As much as they both tried, she and her mother (both named Florence) couldn't seem to understand each other. Because of this process, daughter Florence would be transformed later from some inner prejudices linked to family expectations and to question some hypocrisy she had been led to believe. On many levels, she would not and could not participate with "old orders" in the blossoming new society she would enter.
On her maternal side, her mothers grandparents kept slaves. The mentality of racial superiority proceeded to the next generation and so typical of the well-to-do, her mother required the cook to enter through the back door of the house. Florence finally woke up to rebel against the bias. Raised a Christian, her faith had to be activated outside the four walls of her home to pursue God's truth - then brought back into her family to change theirs. Yes, Florence was an odd duck and a black sheep, independent of her relatives and all the more so as her time and activities flourished - though it was said she was always her father's favorite.
Flash Forward:
In the mid-1950's, Flo attended Koininia, a Christian-based fellowship, where she was active in multinational groups and praying for reconciliation between people. She was also reading about Morris Dees' concept for new towns to be built based on principles of integration, and she took her two youngest children to civil rights demonstrations at Gywn Oak Park (a fairground). And she read about and supported Habitat for Humanity, and the work of Albert Schweitzer & Tom Dooley. Florence not only removed her white gloves but was throwing off her shackles.
In retrospect, what must her mother have thought about those changing times and of her daughter, who was changing herself to challenge old values? So even though her children and grandchildren visited her and devotedly attended to her needs, my grandmother must have felt very alone in a shifting society.
"The times, they are a-changing":
In 1960, new opportunities found Florence enrolled in Catonsville Community College to learn German. In 1961 she took on Botony, Biology and Child Art Education. At the same time, she was studying for a BFA in Contemporary Art at MICA, to learn new fields and broaden her creative experiments. She graduated in 1962. In 1967, she graduated again with an MFA degree in printmaking.
Activist and Collector:
At that same time, she was already a social justice activist on different fronts. Not only fighting anti nuclear war, but also in the anti-Vietnam war, she rallied in protest demonstrations in Washington, D.C. One family remembrance is that my male cousin from NY was protesting in a May Day rally at the Pentagon (along with thousands of others). Caught and temporarily detained at a stadium, he called his parents in N.Y. to tell them he was alright. They worried and told him to contact his "auntie Flo" and stay with her in Maryland when he was released. He told them he couldn't because SHE WAS IN THERE WITH HIM!
Against apartheid in Africa, she held membership in several African organizations that fought it. Since she was a letter writer, she wrote numerously to senators, congressmen and even to Presidents Kennedy and Carter, etc. She was supportive of the civil rights work of Congressman Parren Mitchell and they encouraged each other often. One of her letters (and its responses), was published in 1970 in "Africa Today," an association to the Center for International Studies at the Univ. of Denver. Her letter of protest questioned the U.S. Navy as to why were they going to build a Naval base in Northern Mozambique? She got immediate attention from the Senate (which said they hadn't heard of the plan), and the Senate got an immediate denial from the Navy!
Florence, an avid reader, collected an estimated 3,000 books in her personal library, and their children grew up to be avid readers. She loved family history and saved all the letters, photos, maps and genealogical data she could. She also collected antiques, including dolls -- some of which belonged to her mother and great aunts from Germany. She gave them names and painted them, creating stories and vignettes. I believe she collected dolls not only to save history, but to save childhood "innocence." About 1984 Florence opened the "Humpty Dumpty Doll Museum" in Ellicott City. In 1994, she was filmed in a segment of "Maryland, By George" about her historical dolls -- some later given to the Howard Co. Hist. Soc'y, and those remaining at her museum. She also was an antique vendor at the Antique Depot in Ellicott City.
Her artistic creativity with woodcuts, etchings, drawings and paintings was life-long and prolific -- and her work was exhibited, bought, and discussed. Aside from commissions, some of her art from estate sales has been sold on eBay. Before 1997, she gave over 300 sketchbooks of drawing to the Maryland Archives. In 2020, her watercolors of Baltimore City in stages of historical demolition, city scene sketchbooks, and a few paintings were acquired by the Maryland Historical Society.
Compassion and Faithfulness:
Florence was "bold" and, because of her basic honesty and fearlessness, could be a force to be reckoned with -- but at the same time, was extremely sensitive to the world's heartbreak. Life effected her very deeply and, at times, she sorrowed over world burdens more than she had the emotional ability to bear. Her compassion flowed and, in the spirit of Christ, I sometimes reminded her that she was not called to solve all the hurtfulness of a fallen world, but turn it over to God in trust. In her own writing, she said:
"God's Will prevails over man's wishes and desires and plans. Do you understand what I am trying to say? I feel deeply about such matters but have difficulty expressing myself in words, and that, of course, is my weakness. This Life Force which we call God is so overwhelming that one cannot begin to describe it and yet each one of us feels it because it is part of us. I agree with you that who knows if we are moving towards a better state? Man's will seems to prevail at all times and yet I must believe that God's Will will be the ultimate solution."
Before she married, she had encouraged her future husband that they were to endeavor to follow St. Paul's treatise on "love" without the tinkling cymbal. She bore witness of Jesus to the family in many ways, including gifting Bibles to each of her children. When at a loss for words, she would encourage her children to seek Jesus for themselves. Over the decades, she was also greatly inspired by the faithful actions of missionaries E. Stanley Jones and, as mentioned before, Albert Schweitzer, social justice ministries of activist Dorothy Day, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Daniel & Philip Berrigan.
With her faith she marched in "non-violent" activism. She joined like causes in Howard County and also supported foreign church missionaries, prisoner's rights, child education, and environmental causes. Her sketchbooks noted the strikes, speeches, and other activities. She supported the inner-city breakfast programs run by the Black Panthers, and attended them to help feed the children. My father would stand in the middle of the road, watching her drive away in her little blue VW bug. He had posted a sign in one of her car windows that read "SOUL SISTER" -- which was his way of making sure she would blend in with any city neighborhood (in case they wondered) & at the same time was extremely proud of her. Against state criminals, she was the court artist for the trial of Maryland governor Marvin Mandel.
To sum up, she was anti-war in the "ideal" of the word, and effectively documented national upheaval on local fronts, i.e., illustrating pamphlets for The Baltimore Interfaith Peace Mission and sketching the March on Washington. A woodcut of embers burning beneath wood ashes is her "Homage to Martin Luther King" and is owned by the Baltimore NAACP.
In a letter (1/6/62) to her sister Jane, Florence states:
"But isn't this the most marvelous age of all to be in -- its golden opportunities! May we be given the insight to make the most of what we have available to all."
Florence was posthumously inducted in 1999 into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame as their first artist as "Woman of the Year." Her bio is included in the book "Women of Achievement in Maryland History" (2002), and "Women of Courage in Maryland History" (2010) [although there are factual mistakes in both books].
She tragically perished in a house fire at her studio home, but more importantly -- Florence is on Higher Ground.
________________________________
For further info on her life and art see:
DeadFred.com; mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/speccol"; mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/educ/..."; mdwomensheritagecenter.org; "Maryland at a Glance," "Women of Achievement in Maryland History" by Carolyn B. Stegman, 2002, p. 281-2; "Women of Courage in Maryland History," 2010; wikipedia.org; and various Baltimore magazines and periodicals, including the "Sunday Sun Magazine," Jan. 1982 and "The Sun, Howard Co. Ed." Jan. 13, 1998. Information is also on file at the Md. Historical Soc'y, Enoch Pratt Library, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Elkridge Heritage Soc'y, and the Howard Co. Historical Soc'y.
Genealogy:
Florence Elizabeth Riefle was the maternal great granddaughter of Benjamin Horn and Regina Reppert, as well as of the paternal Henry Ferdinand Riefle and Jacobina Rohrbacher [see memorials]. She was the maternal granddaughter of Jacob Conrad Shafer and Hannah Filmore Horn Shafer, as well as Henry Francis Riefle and Jane Coulson.
Florence was the eldest daughter of James Henry ("Harry") Riefle and Florence (nee Shafer) Riefle], and sister of five other siblings: Conrad Shafer Riefle, James H. Riefle Jr., Katherine Shafer Riefle Worthington, Caroline Amelia Riefle Beatty and Jane Coulson Riefle Reilly. The children lived in the Forest Park/Liberty Heights neighborhood and then moved to Homeland where they grew to adulthood.
Creativity and Education:
Though more visually creative, Florence also played the piano in a musically talented family. Otherwise, in her youth and young adulthood, she designed & sewed clothes, hooked rugs, wrote / illustrated books for children & memory books, and illustrated her high school & college yearbooks.
Florence graduated from Forest Park HS in 1927, studied at Dickinson College in 1927-28, and then at the Maryland Institute of Art (now "MICA")(in Day and Night Schools) - graduating in 1930 with a diploma in Costume Design.
As a Maryland Institute post-graduate in 1931, she continued her studies and received a diploma in Fine Arts, won the James Young Memorial Prize Award and traveled to Europe aboard the "Acquatania." She made many sketches throughout the trip, and described the sights in a diary. Among the notables she met were Scotsman James McGrary, a winner at soccer in the Celtic Football League, and, according to her diary, had a night on the town in Paris with Baron George Wrangell [see memorial], a Russian aristocrat who, years later, posed with an eye patch for the original ad of the "Man in the Hathaway Shirt."
Marriage and Family:
From her other diaries beginning in 1929, she took note of and dated her Maryland Institute painting instructor and co-student, Leonard Marion Bahr. In May, 1934, they married and settled in a row house apartment on Park Heights Ave. in Baltimore City. Being upcoming artists, they participated in joint art shows, and their first exhibition together in 1936 had Mae West and Dick Powell as surprise visitors, who wrote comments about the art in their guest book ! Also, Florence and Leonard often took walking trips together, sketching the places they went.
She always carried a sketchbook to record the life around her. Using varied mediums in her drawings and paintings, she also made woodcut and linoleum blocks designs, either on commission or as gifts, for signs and invitations, book plates and greeting cards.
During the "Great Depression," she worked for the Works Progress Administration and, among other things, painted a mural for the "Harriet Lane Home for Children" in Baltimore.
One of her first oil portraits was exhibited by the Nat'l Assoc. of Women Painters and Sculptors in New York and was a portrait of her mother's cook [see Lillie Mary Curtis Bailey].
By 1937, they lived on Reisterstown Rd, where Leonard had a basement studio. Florence painted and sketched. They both continued exhibiting their art at local galleries and at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
In 1943, Leonard went to the Naval OTS in Ohio, and later rose in rank to a Lieutenant Commander. He was stationed in Hollywood and Jacksonville, FL by mid 1943, where he was later joined by Flo and by then their two children. Out of the war by 1946 (see group photo of her Riefle parents and married sister siblings), they returned to their Baltimore home.
By the 1950's, the family had moved from Baltimore City to a large, historic home (Edgewood Cottage) on Old Lawyers Hill Rd. in Elkridge. The family grew to three and Leonard retired from the Naval Reserves.
An Odd Duck and Black Sheep:
In these years, she taught art at Roxeter-on-Severn and locally established herself painting portraits of children. She was not afraid of being her own woman, charting her own opinions and discarding conventions For instance, the wearing of white gloves as defined by etiquette of the day. My mother stopped doing a lot of things other people thought proper.
Looking back in family history shows a cultured German family of traditional thinking and some prejudices. With five daughters, communications with their mother was based on protected approval. But for Florence, being the oldest daughter, changes for her arrived faster than expected. As a teenager, Florence felt the odd duck. As much as they both tried, she and her mother (both named Florence) couldn't seem to understand each other. Because of this process, daughter Florence would be transformed later from some inner prejudices linked to family expectations and to question some hypocrisy she had been led to believe. On many levels, she would not and could not participate with "old orders" in the blossoming new society she would enter.
On her maternal side, her mothers grandparents kept slaves. The mentality of racial superiority proceeded to the next generation and so typical of the well-to-do, her mother required the cook to enter through the back door of the house. Florence finally woke up to rebel against the bias. Raised a Christian, her faith had to be activated outside the four walls of her home to pursue God's truth - then brought back into her family to change theirs. Yes, Florence was an odd duck and a black sheep, independent of her relatives and all the more so as her time and activities flourished - though it was said she was always her father's favorite.
Flash Forward:
In the mid-1950's, Flo attended Koininia, a Christian-based fellowship, where she was active in multinational groups and praying for reconciliation between people. She was also reading about Morris Dees' concept for new towns to be built based on principles of integration, and she took her two youngest children to civil rights demonstrations at Gywn Oak Park (a fairground). And she read about and supported Habitat for Humanity, and the work of Albert Schweitzer & Tom Dooley. Florence not only removed her white gloves but was throwing off her shackles.
In retrospect, what must her mother have thought about those changing times and of her daughter, who was changing herself to challenge old values? So even though her children and grandchildren visited her and devotedly attended to her needs, my grandmother must have felt very alone in a shifting society.
"The times, they are a-changing":
In 1960, new opportunities found Florence enrolled in Catonsville Community College to learn German. In 1961 she took on Botony, Biology and Child Art Education. At the same time, she was studying for a BFA in Contemporary Art at MICA, to learn new fields and broaden her creative experiments. She graduated in 1962. In 1967, she graduated again with an MFA degree in printmaking.
Activist and Collector:
At that same time, she was already a social justice activist on different fronts. Not only fighting anti nuclear war, but also in the anti-Vietnam war, she rallied in protest demonstrations in Washington, D.C. One family remembrance is that my male cousin from NY was protesting in a May Day rally at the Pentagon (along with thousands of others). Caught and temporarily detained at a stadium, he called his parents in N.Y. to tell them he was alright. They worried and told him to contact his "auntie Flo" and stay with her in Maryland when he was released. He told them he couldn't because SHE WAS IN THERE WITH HIM!
Against apartheid in Africa, she held membership in several African organizations that fought it. Since she was a letter writer, she wrote numerously to senators, congressmen and even to Presidents Kennedy and Carter, etc. She was supportive of the civil rights work of Congressman Parren Mitchell and they encouraged each other often. One of her letters (and its responses), was published in 1970 in "Africa Today," an association to the Center for International Studies at the Univ. of Denver. Her letter of protest questioned the U.S. Navy as to why were they going to build a Naval base in Northern Mozambique? She got immediate attention from the Senate (which said they hadn't heard of the plan), and the Senate got an immediate denial from the Navy!
Florence, an avid reader, collected an estimated 3,000 books in her personal library, and their children grew up to be avid readers. She loved family history and saved all the letters, photos, maps and genealogical data she could. She also collected antiques, including dolls -- some of which belonged to her mother and great aunts from Germany. She gave them names and painted them, creating stories and vignettes. I believe she collected dolls not only to save history, but to save childhood "innocence." About 1984 Florence opened the "Humpty Dumpty Doll Museum" in Ellicott City. In 1994, she was filmed in a segment of "Maryland, By George" about her historical dolls -- some later given to the Howard Co. Hist. Soc'y, and those remaining at her museum. She also was an antique vendor at the Antique Depot in Ellicott City.
Her artistic creativity with woodcuts, etchings, drawings and paintings was life-long and prolific -- and her work was exhibited, bought, and discussed. Aside from commissions, some of her art from estate sales has been sold on eBay. Before 1997, she gave over 300 sketchbooks of drawing to the Maryland Archives. In 2020, her watercolors of Baltimore City in stages of historical demolition, city scene sketchbooks, and a few paintings were acquired by the Maryland Historical Society.
Compassion and Faithfulness:
Florence was "bold" and, because of her basic honesty and fearlessness, could be a force to be reckoned with -- but at the same time, was extremely sensitive to the world's heartbreak. Life effected her very deeply and, at times, she sorrowed over world burdens more than she had the emotional ability to bear. Her compassion flowed and, in the spirit of Christ, I sometimes reminded her that she was not called to solve all the hurtfulness of a fallen world, but turn it over to God in trust. In her own writing, she said:
"God's Will prevails over man's wishes and desires and plans. Do you understand what I am trying to say? I feel deeply about such matters but have difficulty expressing myself in words, and that, of course, is my weakness. This Life Force which we call God is so overwhelming that one cannot begin to describe it and yet each one of us feels it because it is part of us. I agree with you that who knows if we are moving towards a better state? Man's will seems to prevail at all times and yet I must believe that God's Will will be the ultimate solution."
Before she married, she had encouraged her future husband that they were to endeavor to follow St. Paul's treatise on "love" without the tinkling cymbal. She bore witness of Jesus to the family in many ways, including gifting Bibles to each of her children. When at a loss for words, she would encourage her children to seek Jesus for themselves. Over the decades, she was also greatly inspired by the faithful actions of missionaries E. Stanley Jones and, as mentioned before, Albert Schweitzer, social justice ministries of activist Dorothy Day, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Daniel & Philip Berrigan.
With her faith she marched in "non-violent" activism. She joined like causes in Howard County and also supported foreign church missionaries, prisoner's rights, child education, and environmental causes. Her sketchbooks noted the strikes, speeches, and other activities. She supported the inner-city breakfast programs run by the Black Panthers, and attended them to help feed the children. My father would stand in the middle of the road, watching her drive away in her little blue VW bug. He had posted a sign in one of her car windows that read "SOUL SISTER" -- which was his way of making sure she would blend in with any city neighborhood (in case they wondered) & at the same time was extremely proud of her. Against state criminals, she was the court artist for the trial of Maryland governor Marvin Mandel.
To sum up, she was anti-war in the "ideal" of the word, and effectively documented national upheaval on local fronts, i.e., illustrating pamphlets for The Baltimore Interfaith Peace Mission and sketching the March on Washington. A woodcut of embers burning beneath wood ashes is her "Homage to Martin Luther King" and is owned by the Baltimore NAACP.
In a letter (1/6/62) to her sister Jane, Florence states:
"But isn't this the most marvelous age of all to be in -- its golden opportunities! May we be given the insight to make the most of what we have available to all."
Florence was posthumously inducted in 1999 into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame as their first artist as "Woman of the Year." Her bio is included in the book "Women of Achievement in Maryland History" (2002), and "Women of Courage in Maryland History" (2010) [although there are factual mistakes in both books].
She tragically perished in a house fire at her studio home, but more importantly -- Florence is on Higher Ground.
________________________________
For further info on her life and art see:
DeadFred.com; mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/speccol"; mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/educ/..."; mdwomensheritagecenter.org; "Maryland at a Glance," "Women of Achievement in Maryland History" by Carolyn B. Stegman, 2002, p. 281-2; "Women of Courage in Maryland History," 2010; wikipedia.org; and various Baltimore magazines and periodicals, including the "Sunday Sun Magazine," Jan. 1982 and "The Sun, Howard Co. Ed." Jan. 13, 1998. Information is also on file at the Md. Historical Soc'y, Enoch Pratt Library, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Elkridge Heritage Soc'y, and the Howard Co. Historical Soc'y.
Let it be understood that Florence (my mother) was an artist as a messenger, she was not the message...that no matter what her achievements, her high energy and drive, created reflections of Whom she trusted and she used her God-given talents to the best of her ability. In retrospect, her gifts glorify GOD. Bursting with life's wonders, her inner spirit understood the call to a Higher Ground.
Genealogy:
Florence Elizabeth Riefle was the maternal great granddaughter of Benjamin Horn and Regina Reppert, as well as of the paternal Henry Ferdinand Riefle and Jacobina Rohrbacher [see memorials]. She was the maternal granddaughter of Jacob Conrad Shafer and Hannah Filmore Horn Shafer, as well as Henry Francis Riefle and Jane Coulson.
Florence was the eldest daughter of James Henry ("Harry") Riefle and Florence (nee Shafer) Riefle], and sister of five other siblings: Conrad Shafer Riefle, James H. Riefle Jr., Katherine Shafer Riefle Worthington, Caroline Amelia Riefle Beatty and Jane Coulson Riefle Reilly. The children lived in the Forest Park/Liberty Heights neighborhood and then moved to Homeland where they grew to adulthood.
Creativity and Education:
Though more visually creative, Florence also played the piano in a musically talented family. Otherwise, in her youth and young adulthood, she designed & sewed clothes, hooked rugs, wrote / illustrated books for children & memory books, and illustrated her high school & college yearbooks.
Florence graduated from Forest Park HS in 1927, studied at Dickinson College in 1927-28, and then at the Maryland Institute of Art (now "MICA")(in Day and Night Schools) - graduating in 1930 with a diploma in Costume Design.
As a Maryland Institute post-graduate in 1931, she continued her studies and received a diploma in Fine Arts, won the James Young Memorial Prize Award and traveled to Europe aboard the "Acquatania." She made many sketches throughout the trip, and described the sights in a diary. Among the notables she met were Scotsman James McGrary, a winner at soccer in the Celtic Football League, and, according to her diary, had a night on the town in Paris with Baron George Wrangell [see memorial], a Russian aristocrat who, years later, posed with an eye patch for the original ad of the "Man in the Hathaway Shirt."
Marriage and Family:
From her other diaries beginning in 1929, she took note of and dated her Maryland Institute painting instructor and co-student, Leonard Marion Bahr. In May, 1934, they married and settled in a row house apartment on Park Heights Ave. in Baltimore City. Being upcoming artists, they participated in joint art shows, and their first exhibition together in 1936 had Mae West and Dick Powell as surprise visitors, who wrote comments about the art in their guest book ! Also, Florence and Leonard often took walking trips together, sketching the places they went.
She always carried a sketchbook to record the life around her. Using varied mediums in her drawings and paintings, she also made woodcut and linoleum blocks designs, either on commission or as gifts, for signs and invitations, book plates and greeting cards.
During the "Great Depression," she worked for the Works Progress Administration and, among other things, painted a mural for the "Harriet Lane Home for Children" in Baltimore.
One of her first oil portraits was exhibited by the Nat'l Assoc. of Women Painters and Sculptors in New York and was a portrait of her mother's cook [see Lillie Mary Curtis Bailey].
By 1937, they lived on Reisterstown Rd, where Leonard had a basement studio. Florence painted and sketched. They both continued exhibiting their art at local galleries and at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
In 1943, Leonard went to the Naval OTS in Ohio, and later rose in rank to a Lieutenant Commander. He was stationed in Hollywood and Jacksonville, FL by mid 1943, where he was later joined by Flo and by then their two children. Out of the war by 1946 (see group photo of her Riefle parents and married sister siblings), they returned to their Baltimore home.
By the 1950's, the family had moved from Baltimore City to a large, historic home (Edgewood Cottage) on Old Lawyers Hill Rd. in Elkridge. The family grew to three and Leonard retired from the Naval Reserves.
An Odd Duck and Black Sheep:
In these years, she taught art at Roxeter-on-Severn and locally established herself painting portraits of children. She was not afraid of being her own woman, charting her own opinions and discarding conventions For instance, the wearing of white gloves as defined by etiquette of the day. My mother stopped doing a lot of things other people thought proper.
Looking back in family history shows a cultured German family of traditional thinking and some prejudices. With five daughters, communications with their mother was based on protected approval. But for Florence, being the oldest daughter, changes for her arrived faster than expected. As a teenager, Florence felt the odd duck. As much as they both tried, she and her mother (both named Florence) couldn't seem to understand each other. Because of this process, daughter Florence would be transformed later from some inner prejudices linked to family expectations and to question some hypocrisy she had been led to believe. On many levels, she would not and could not participate with "old orders" in the blossoming new society she would enter.
On her maternal side, her mothers grandparents kept slaves. The mentality of racial superiority proceeded to the next generation and so typical of the well-to-do, her mother required the cook to enter through the back door of the house. Florence finally woke up to rebel against the bias. Raised a Christian, her faith had to be activated outside the four walls of her home to pursue God's truth - then brought back into her family to change theirs. Yes, Florence was an odd duck and a black sheep, independent of her relatives and all the more so as her time and activities flourished - though it was said she was always her father's favorite.
Flash Forward:
In the mid-1950's, Flo attended Koininia, a Christian-based fellowship, where she was active in multinational groups and praying for reconciliation between people. She was also reading about Morris Dees' concept for new towns to be built based on principles of integration, and she took her two youngest children to civil rights demonstrations at Gywn Oak Park (a fairground). And she read about and supported Habitat for Humanity, and the work of Albert Schweitzer & Tom Dooley. Florence not only removed her white gloves but was throwing off her shackles.
In retrospect, what must her mother have thought about those changing times and of her daughter, who was changing herself to challenge old values? So even though her children and grandchildren visited her and devotedly attended to her needs, my grandmother must have felt very alone in a shifting society.
"The times, they are a-changing":
In 1960, new opportunities found Florence enrolled in Catonsville Community College to learn German. In 1961 she took on Botony, Biology and Child Art Education. At the same time, she was studying for a BFA in Contemporary Art at MICA, to learn new fields and broaden her creative experiments. She graduated in 1962. In 1967, she graduated again with an MFA degree in printmaking.
Activist and Collector:
At that same time, she was already a social justice activist on different fronts. Not only fighting anti nuclear war, but also in the anti-Vietnam war, she rallied in protest demonstrations in Washington, D.C. One family remembrance is that my male cousin from NY was protesting in a May Day rally at the Pentagon (along with thousands of others). Caught and temporarily detained at a stadium, he called his parents in N.Y. to tell them he was alright. They worried and told him to contact his "auntie Flo" and stay with her in Maryland when he was released. He told them he couldn't because SHE WAS IN THERE WITH HIM!
Against apartheid in Africa, she held membership in several African organizations that fought it. Since she was a letter writer, she wrote numerously to senators, congressmen and even to Presidents Kennedy and Carter, etc. She was supportive of the civil rights work of Congressman Parren Mitchell and they encouraged each other often. One of her letters (and its responses), was published in 1970 in "Africa Today," an association to the Center for International Studies at the Univ. of Denver. Her letter of protest questioned the U.S. Navy as to why were they going to build a Naval base in Northern Mozambique? She got immediate attention from the Senate (which said they hadn't heard of the plan), and the Senate got an immediate denial from the Navy!
Florence, an avid reader, collected an estimated 3,000 books in her personal library, and their children grew up to be avid readers. She loved family history and saved all the letters, photos, maps and genealogical data she could. She also collected antiques, including dolls -- some of which belonged to her mother and great aunts from Germany. She gave them names and painted them, creating stories and vignettes. I believe she collected dolls not only to save history, but to save childhood "innocence." About 1984 Florence opened the "Humpty Dumpty Doll Museum" in Ellicott City. In 1994, she was filmed in a segment of "Maryland, By George" about her historical dolls -- some later given to the Howard Co. Hist. Soc'y, and those remaining at her museum. She also was an antique vendor at the Antique Depot in Ellicott City.
Her artistic creativity with woodcuts, etchings, drawings and paintings was life-long and prolific -- and her work was exhibited, bought, and discussed. Aside from commissions, some of her art from estate sales has been sold on eBay. Before 1997, she gave over 300 sketchbooks of drawing to the Maryland Archives. In 2020, her watercolors of Baltimore City in stages of historical demolition, city scene sketchbooks, and a few paintings were acquired by the Maryland Historical Society.
Compassion and Faithfulness:
Florence was "bold" and, because of her basic honesty and fearlessness, could be a force to be reckoned with -- but at the same time, was extremely sensitive to the world's heartbreak. Life effected her very deeply and, at times, she sorrowed over world burdens more than she had the emotional ability to bear. Her compassion flowed and, in the spirit of Christ, I sometimes reminded her that she was not called to solve all the hurtfulness of a fallen world, but turn it over to God in trust. In her own writing, she said:
"God's Will prevails over man's wishes and desires and plans. Do you understand what I am trying to say? I feel deeply about such matters but have difficulty expressing myself in words, and that, of course, is my weakness. This Life Force which we call God is so overwhelming that one cannot begin to describe it and yet each one of us feels it because it is part of us. I agree with you that who knows if we are moving towards a better state? Man's will seems to prevail at all times and yet I must believe that God's Will will be the ultimate solution."
Before she married, she had encouraged her future husband that they were to endeavor to follow St. Paul's treatise on "love" without the tinkling cymbal. She bore witness of Jesus to the family in many ways, including gifting Bibles to each of her children. When at a loss for words, she would encourage her children to seek Jesus for themselves. Over the decades, she was also greatly inspired by the faithful actions of missionaries E. Stanley Jones and, as mentioned before, Albert Schweitzer, social justice ministries of activist Dorothy Day, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Daniel & Philip Berrigan.
With her faith she marched in "non-violent" activism. She joined like causes in Howard County and also supported foreign church missionaries, prisoner's rights, child education, and environmental causes. Her sketchbooks noted the strikes, speeches, and other activities. She supported the inner-city breakfast programs run by the Black Panthers, and attended them to help feed the children. My father would stand in the middle of the road, watching her drive away in her little blue VW bug. He had posted a sign in one of her car windows that read "SOUL SISTER" -- which was his way of making sure she would blend in with any city neighborhood (in case they wondered) & at the same time was extremely proud of her. Against state criminals, she was the court artist for the trial of Maryland governor Marvin Mandel.
To sum up, she was anti-war in the "ideal" of the word, and effectively documented national upheaval on local fronts, i.e., illustrating pamphlets for The Baltimore Interfaith Peace Mission and sketching the March on Washington. A woodcut of embers burning beneath wood ashes is her "Homage to Martin Luther King" and is owned by the Baltimore NAACP.
In a letter (1/6/62) to her sister Jane, Florence states:
"But isn't this the most marvelous age of all to be in -- its golden opportunities! May we be given the insight to make the most of what we have available to all."
Florence was posthumously inducted in 1999 into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame as their first artist as "Woman of the Year." Her bio is included in the book "Women of Achievement in Maryland History" (2002), and "Women of Courage in Maryland History" (2010) [although there are factual mistakes in both books].
She tragically perished in a house fire at her studio home, but more importantly -- Florence is on Higher Ground.
________________________________
For further info on her life and art see:
DeadFred.com; mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/speccol"; mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/educ/..."; mdwomensheritagecenter.org; "Maryland at a Glance," "Women of Achievement in Maryland History" by Carolyn B. Stegman, 2002, p. 281-2; "Women of Courage in Maryland History," 2010; wikipedia.org; and various Baltimore magazines and periodicals, including the "Sunday Sun Magazine," Jan. 1982 and "The Sun, Howard Co. Ed." Jan. 13, 1998. Information is also on file at the Md. Historical Soc'y, Enoch Pratt Library, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Elkridge Heritage Soc'y, and the Howard Co. Historical Soc'y.
Genealogy:
Florence Elizabeth Riefle was the maternal great granddaughter of Benjamin Horn and Regina Reppert, as well as of the paternal Henry Ferdinand Riefle and Jacobina Rohrbacher [see memorials]. She was the maternal granddaughter of Jacob Conrad Shafer and Hannah Filmore Horn Shafer, as well as Henry Francis Riefle and Jane Coulson.
Florence was the eldest daughter of James Henry ("Harry") Riefle and Florence (nee Shafer) Riefle], and sister of five other siblings: Conrad Shafer Riefle, James H. Riefle Jr., Katherine Shafer Riefle Worthington, Caroline Amelia Riefle Beatty and Jane Coulson Riefle Reilly. The children lived in the Forest Park/Liberty Heights neighborhood and then moved to Homeland where they grew to adulthood.
Creativity and Education:
Though more visually creative, Florence also played the piano in a musically talented family. Otherwise, in her youth and young adulthood, she designed & sewed clothes, hooked rugs, wrote / illustrated books for children & memory books, and illustrated her high school & college yearbooks.
Florence graduated from Forest Park HS in 1927, studied at Dickinson College in 1927-28, and then at the Maryland Institute of Art (now "MICA")(in Day and Night Schools) - graduating in 1930 with a diploma in Costume Design.
As a Maryland Institute post-graduate in 1931, she continued her studies and received a diploma in Fine Arts, won the James Young Memorial Prize Award and traveled to Europe aboard the "Acquatania." She made many sketches throughout the trip, and described the sights in a diary. Among the notables she met were Scotsman James McGrary, a winner at soccer in the Celtic Football League, and, according to her diary, had a night on the town in Paris with Baron George Wrangell [see memorial], a Russian aristocrat who, years later, posed with an eye patch for the original ad of the "Man in the Hathaway Shirt."
Marriage and Family:
From her other diaries beginning in 1929, she took note of and dated her Maryland Institute painting instructor and co-student, Leonard Marion Bahr. In May, 1934, they married and settled in a row house apartment on Park Heights Ave. in Baltimore City. Being upcoming artists, they participated in joint art shows, and their first exhibition together in 1936 had Mae West and Dick Powell as surprise visitors, who wrote comments about the art in their guest book ! Also, Florence and Leonard often took walking trips together, sketching the places they went.
She always carried a sketchbook to record the life around her. Using varied mediums in her drawings and paintings, she also made woodcut and linoleum blocks designs, either on commission or as gifts, for signs and invitations, book plates and greeting cards.
During the "Great Depression," she worked for the Works Progress Administration and, among other things, painted a mural for the "Harriet Lane Home for Children" in Baltimore.
One of her first oil portraits was exhibited by the Nat'l Assoc. of Women Painters and Sculptors in New York and was a portrait of her mother's cook [see Lillie Mary Curtis Bailey].
By 1937, they lived on Reisterstown Rd, where Leonard had a basement studio. Florence painted and sketched. They both continued exhibiting their art at local galleries and at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
In 1943, Leonard went to the Naval OTS in Ohio, and later rose in rank to a Lieutenant Commander. He was stationed in Hollywood and Jacksonville, FL by mid 1943, where he was later joined by Flo and by then their two children. Out of the war by 1946 (see group photo of her Riefle parents and married sister siblings), they returned to their Baltimore home.
By the 1950's, the family had moved from Baltimore City to a large, historic home (Edgewood Cottage) on Old Lawyers Hill Rd. in Elkridge. The family grew to three and Leonard retired from the Naval Reserves.
An Odd Duck and Black Sheep:
In these years, she taught art at Roxeter-on-Severn and locally established herself painting portraits of children. She was not afraid of being her own woman, charting her own opinions and discarding conventions For instance, the wearing of white gloves as defined by etiquette of the day. My mother stopped doing a lot of things other people thought proper.
Looking back in family history shows a cultured German family of traditional thinking and some prejudices. With five daughters, communications with their mother was based on protected approval. But for Florence, being the oldest daughter, changes for her arrived faster than expected. As a teenager, Florence felt the odd duck. As much as they both tried, she and her mother (both named Florence) couldn't seem to understand each other. Because of this process, daughter Florence would be transformed later from some inner prejudices linked to family expectations and to question some hypocrisy she had been led to believe. On many levels, she would not and could not participate with "old orders" in the blossoming new society she would enter.
On her maternal side, her mothers grandparents kept slaves. The mentality of racial superiority proceeded to the next generation and so typical of the well-to-do, her mother required the cook to enter through the back door of the house. Florence finally woke up to rebel against the bias. Raised a Christian, her faith had to be activated outside the four walls of her home to pursue God's truth - then brought back into her family to change theirs. Yes, Florence was an odd duck and a black sheep, independent of her relatives and all the more so as her time and activities flourished - though it was said she was always her father's favorite.
Flash Forward:
In the mid-1950's, Flo attended Koininia, a Christian-based fellowship, where she was active in multinational groups and praying for reconciliation between people. She was also reading about Morris Dees' concept for new towns to be built based on principles of integration, and she took her two youngest children to civil rights demonstrations at Gywn Oak Park (a fairground). And she read about and supported Habitat for Humanity, and the work of Albert Schweitzer & Tom Dooley. Florence not only removed her white gloves but was throwing off her shackles.
In retrospect, what must her mother have thought about those changing times and of her daughter, who was changing herself to challenge old values? So even though her children and grandchildren visited her and devotedly attended to her needs, my grandmother must have felt very alone in a shifting society.
"The times, they are a-changing":
In 1960, new opportunities found Florence enrolled in Catonsville Community College to learn German. In 1961 she took on Botony, Biology and Child Art Education. At the same time, she was studying for a BFA in Contemporary Art at MICA, to learn new fields and broaden her creative experiments. She graduated in 1962. In 1967, she graduated again with an MFA degree in printmaking.
Activist and Collector:
At that same time, she was already a social justice activist on different fronts. Not only fighting anti nuclear war, but also in the anti-Vietnam war, she rallied in protest demonstrations in Washington, D.C. One family remembrance is that my male cousin from NY was protesting in a May Day rally at the Pentagon (along with thousands of others). Caught and temporarily detained at a stadium, he called his parents in N.Y. to tell them he was alright. They worried and told him to contact his "auntie Flo" and stay with her in Maryland when he was released. He told them he couldn't because SHE WAS IN THERE WITH HIM!
Against apartheid in Africa, she held membership in several African organizations that fought it. Since she was a letter writer, she wrote numerously to senators, congressmen and even to Presidents Kennedy and Carter, etc. She was supportive of the civil rights work of Congressman Parren Mitchell and they encouraged each other often. One of her letters (and its responses), was published in 1970 in "Africa Today," an association to the Center for International Studies at the Univ. of Denver. Her letter of protest questioned the U.S. Navy as to why were they going to build a Naval base in Northern Mozambique? She got immediate attention from the Senate (which said they hadn't heard of the plan), and the Senate got an immediate denial from the Navy!
Florence, an avid reader, collected an estimated 3,000 books in her personal library, and their children grew up to be avid readers. She loved family history and saved all the letters, photos, maps and genealogical data she could. She also collected antiques, including dolls -- some of which belonged to her mother and great aunts from Germany. She gave them names and painted them, creating stories and vignettes. I believe she collected dolls not only to save history, but to save childhood "innocence." About 1984 Florence opened the "Humpty Dumpty Doll Museum" in Ellicott City. In 1994, she was filmed in a segment of "Maryland, By George" about her historical dolls -- some later given to the Howard Co. Hist. Soc'y, and those remaining at her museum. She also was an antique vendor at the Antique Depot in Ellicott City.
Her artistic creativity with woodcuts, etchings, drawings and paintings was life-long and prolific -- and her work was exhibited, bought, and discussed. Aside from commissions, some of her art from estate sales has been sold on eBay. Before 1997, she gave over 300 sketchbooks of drawing to the Maryland Archives. In 2020, her watercolors of Baltimore City in stages of historical demolition, city scene sketchbooks, and a few paintings were acquired by the Maryland Historical Society.
Compassion and Faithfulness:
Florence was "bold" and, because of her basic honesty and fearlessness, could be a force to be reckoned with -- but at the same time, was extremely sensitive to the world's heartbreak. Life effected her very deeply and, at times, she sorrowed over world burdens more than she had the emotional ability to bear. Her compassion flowed and, in the spirit of Christ, I sometimes reminded her that she was not called to solve all the hurtfulness of a fallen world, but turn it over to God in trust. In her own writing, she said:
"God's Will prevails over man's wishes and desires and plans. Do you understand what I am trying to say? I feel deeply about such matters but have difficulty expressing myself in words, and that, of course, is my weakness. This Life Force which we call God is so overwhelming that one cannot begin to describe it and yet each one of us feels it because it is part of us. I agree with you that who knows if we are moving towards a better state? Man's will seems to prevail at all times and yet I must believe that God's Will will be the ultimate solution."
Before she married, she had encouraged her future husband that they were to endeavor to follow St. Paul's treatise on "love" without the tinkling cymbal. She bore witness of Jesus to the family in many ways, including gifting Bibles to each of her children. When at a loss for words, she would encourage her children to seek Jesus for themselves. Over the decades, she was also greatly inspired by the faithful actions of missionaries E. Stanley Jones and, as mentioned before, Albert Schweitzer, social justice ministries of activist Dorothy Day, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Daniel & Philip Berrigan.
With her faith she marched in "non-violent" activism. She joined like causes in Howard County and also supported foreign church missionaries, prisoner's rights, child education, and environmental causes. Her sketchbooks noted the strikes, speeches, and other activities. She supported the inner-city breakfast programs run by the Black Panthers, and attended them to help feed the children. My father would stand in the middle of the road, watching her drive away in her little blue VW bug. He had posted a sign in one of her car windows that read "SOUL SISTER" -- which was his way of making sure she would blend in with any city neighborhood (in case they wondered) & at the same time was extremely proud of her. Against state criminals, she was the court artist for the trial of Maryland governor Marvin Mandel.
To sum up, she was anti-war in the "ideal" of the word, and effectively documented national upheaval on local fronts, i.e., illustrating pamphlets for The Baltimore Interfaith Peace Mission and sketching the March on Washington. A woodcut of embers burning beneath wood ashes is her "Homage to Martin Luther King" and is owned by the Baltimore NAACP.
In a letter (1/6/62) to her sister Jane, Florence states:
"But isn't this the most marvelous age of all to be in -- its golden opportunities! May we be given the insight to make the most of what we have available to all."
Florence was posthumously inducted in 1999 into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame as their first artist as "Woman of the Year." Her bio is included in the book "Women of Achievement in Maryland History" (2002), and "Women of Courage in Maryland History" (2010) [although there are factual mistakes in both books].
She tragically perished in a house fire at her studio home, but more importantly -- Florence is on Higher Ground.
________________________________
For further info on her life and art see:
DeadFred.com; mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/speccol"; mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/educ/..."; mdwomensheritagecenter.org; "Maryland at a Glance," "Women of Achievement in Maryland History" by Carolyn B. Stegman, 2002, p. 281-2; "Women of Courage in Maryland History," 2010; wikipedia.org; and various Baltimore magazines and periodicals, including the "Sunday Sun Magazine," Jan. 1982 and "The Sun, Howard Co. Ed." Jan. 13, 1998. Information is also on file at the Md. Historical Soc'y, Enoch Pratt Library, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Elkridge Heritage Soc'y, and the Howard Co. Historical Soc'y.
