Unraveling the Mystery of the Woman in Red

by Linda Abbott

Arriving at our vacation rental in the beautiful Green Hills area of Nashville on a crisp October evening, it was clear that in addition to finding comfortable accommodations, we’d stumbled into a treasure trove of memories.

Jeanne Bachrach Kimball

In a large bookcase spanning the entire wall were dozens of scrapbooks, several very old, looking like they should be under glass in a historical society or museum. In the dining room, a stunning almost life-size gilt-edged portrait of a young woman hung on the wall. Wearing a beautiful red dress and elegant corsage, she was young, dark-haired and beautiful, and apparently from a family with the means to immortalize her on canvas. I immediately wanted to know more about her.

I found out her name is Jeanne Bachrach Kimball and she lived in this comfortable duplex—an addition to her daughter’s home—for several years before her death at age 96 in 2010. Her daughter, Holly, who with her husband, Barry, and son, Daniel, are talented and accomplished musicians, told me that her mother came from a family of well-known photographers.

Bachrach Studios, established in 1868 by Jeanne’s grandfather David Bachrach Jr., would go on to enjoy great success and photograph every U.S. president for the next 120 years. Bachrach took the only photo of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which lasted 90 seconds, just long enough for his boxy wooden camera to make one exposure. Jeanne’s brother Louis Fabian Bachrach Jr., who passed away in 2010, had a storied career as a photographer of presidents, politicians, and celebrities. He is perhaps best known for an iconic portrait of a young Senator John F. Kennedy. A graduate of Harvard who served in the Navy during World War II, Fabian Bachrach photographed Richard Nixon, Indira Gandhi, Joe DiMaggio, Robert Frost, and the infamous Haitian dictator, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier.

But what of this young woman whose picture dominated the dining room and occupied my thoughts every morning over breakfast. What was her life journey? More than two dozen scrapbooks opened a window into Jeanne’s life, passions, and travels. They revealed a young woman traveling the world: off to Jamaica in December 1937; earlier that year, a trip to England visiting Windsor Castle, Oxford, and Selworthy Somerset, a village of picturesque thatched cottages.

The books, their pages amber and frail with age, showcase a 1935 tour of beautiful landscapes in the U.S.: Jenny Lake in Grand Teton National Park, a sheep pasture in Michigan, mountain ranges in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and the Susquehanna Valley in Pennsylvania.

Looking at hundreds of photos, I couldn’t help but be amazed and intrigued by all of the past that had been recorded, preserved, and obviously treasured. On a 1937 postcard showing a beautiful English cottage, Jeanne wrote of the joy of seeing Canterbury “in the evening and early morning light,” just as one would expect of the daughter of a world-famous photographer.

A playbill promotes a performance of Jeanne Kimball, soprano, at the prestigious Jordan Hall in Boston. The playbill mentions that Kimball, who graduated with honors in music from Radcliffe in 1936, studied under some of the most prominent musicians in the country at the time, including Walter Piston and Edward Burlingame Hill. A 1948 newspaper announcing a performance by Mrs. Kimball mentions that she studied voice in England for a year with Gregory Haft, a pupil of Brahms, yes, the classical musician.

Loving wife and mother, a lifelong passion for music

The Internet gives me glimpses into the rest of her life. Though she was born and raised in West Newton, Massachusetts, Jeanne moved to Westport, Connecticut, in 1953 with her husband, Fred, who she met at a church camp when they were seventeen. “For sixty-plus years they were best friends,” her daughter, Joy, recalls in an online tribute. Jeanne devoted herself to her husband and family—raising three daughters—and her lifelong passion of music. In the 1950s, she founded the Westport Madrigal Singers and the Unitarian Church choir, directing both groups for more than 30 years. In 1998, Westport honored her with the Arts Heritage Award for her contribution to the community’s cultural life. She was an avid gardener, flower arranger, cook, seamstress, and enjoyed sailing with her husband on Long Island Sound.

Friends remember her as “one of the most gracious, loving, wholesome, and giving persons I have ever known” and “as delightful as she was talented.” She never lost her love of singing and teaching. Even in her 90s she did daily vocal warm-ups at the piano. “Mom always had ideas on how to make the most of the music her students or choral groups were singing. Right to the end,” Joy wrote. Shortly before she passed away, when her grandsons were singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” she weakly waved her hand. “Not ‘happy new YEAR,’ ” she whispered. “It’s ‘happy NEW year.’ Emphasize what’s most important.”

So on this trip to Nashville, where I was busy creating memories with my own family, I was honored and privileged to learn about this woman who meant so much to so many people and left behind such an unforgettable legacy. It occurs to me that it is no small irony that she departed from this life in Music City, in a city of kindred spirits.