Ozols Eulogy

Eulogy for Auseklis Ozols given by Kenneth Nelson

October 9, 2025 at St. Charles Avenue Presbyterian Church in New Orleans

Perhaps very few people here today know how lucky we were to have been able to know Auseklis. It is a series of small miracles that he survived to be here with us. In the midst of World War II, a friend approached his father and said “I know a cabin far in the woods where we can go and be safe until this war is over.” His father packed their suitcases for the journey, but on the appointed day of departure, he had a premonition so strong that he physically could not pick up the suitcases to leave, so the family stayed put. They later heard that a bomber airplane had either missed its target or jettisoned a bomb, and it landed squarely on the cabin where they would have been staying. If the family had gone, he would not have survived, and none of us would have known him. At another point in the war, Auseklis’ family were taken as displaced persons on a train to destinations unknown. In the middle of the night the train stopped, and the troops in charge of the train told everyone to get out and lie down in the ditches along the train tracks. It turned out they were on the outskirts of Dresden, and moments later the firebombing of Dresden began. Auseklis told me of the impression it made on him as such a small child. He said wave after wave of bombers passed over the city dropping incendiary bombs, and the night sky lit up like it was daytime. When the planes passed, they got back on the train and proceeded. If the train had made a stop in Dresden instead of on the outskirts, he would not have survived, and none of us would have known him. Eventually, Auseklis’ family ended up briefly in a concentration camp, but his father managed to get them out, and again, if this escape had not succeeded, none of us would ever have known him. This series of fateful events seemed guided by some divine hand, and it thankfully led to our coming to know this remarkable man.

After the war the Ozols family settled in Trenton, New Jersey, where a whole new and happier chapter began. Auseklis recounted their father taking them on a weekend drive and enjoying a basket of fresh fruit from a roadside market, such a marked contrast to the horrors of war they had recently escaped. Auseklis eventually attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and won the prestigious Cresson Prize, which coincidentally had been won by Walter Anderson, an artist from the Gulf Coast where Auseklis would eventually settle. While at the Pennsylvania Academy, Auseklis met Magtillt Laan, an art major who also won the Cresson Prize, and whose family had settled on the Gulf Coast after World War II. They became friends, and another thread of the remarkable series of events that led to us knowing Auseklis was sewn. This same Cresson Prize was later won by Auseklis’ daughter Saskia, continuing a tradition of nationally recognized artistic excellence in their family. Studying at the Pennsylvania Academy, Auseklis was exposed to the work of some of the most famous American artists of the northeast and he met several of them who were still alive at the time. Working in the art world of the northeastern US, he met an amazing cast of characters whose roots stretched far back into the history of New England, and he had interesting stories to tell of visiting these folks. Wherever he went, he seemed to gather such acquaintances like iron filings to a magnet.

The family of Auseklis’s Academy friend Magtillt Laan had settled in New Orleans after the war, and with never more than one degree of separation in a small city like ours, Magtillt’s sister Yvonne had married Shaun Viguerie, who was a longtime friend of our family and a neighbor of ours in Pearlington, Mississippi. This happy coincidence led to Auseklis spending much time in Pearlington and his eventual purchase of his “mosquito plantation”, where he raised prodigious buzzing herds each summer and made sure they were well fed, demonstrating his generous spirit towards all of God’s creatures.

The first time we met Auseklis was around 1970 when he was in town visiting the Laan family, and he got a job curating an art exhibit. This required carrying sheets of plywood to an upper floor studio in the Newcomb art school, a task that he was busy trying to do by himself when a young art student offered to help maneuver the sheets up the stairs. That student was my sister Ginger, again proving there is never more than one degree of separation in New Orleans. They managed to get the wood up the treacherous steps, and a friendship ensued that was reinforced when they found out they had mutual friends in the city. Ginger told of going on a ride with Auseklis shortly after they met and his stopping to buy watermelons from a roadside truck. He bought quite a number of watermelons, enthused over the abundance that was available and wanting to support the local farmer selling his produce. They drove away and realized there were a lot more watermelons than they could possibly use, so they made several stops that afternoon and gave them away to random people they saw on the road, spreading joy in the process. At the end of the ride, Auseklis told Ginger “We got so much done today!” She was puzzled and asked what he meant, since it seemed to her they had just gone on a lark. But he answered seriously “I mean in the eyes of God we got so much done today because we made that farmer happy to sell his produce, and we made a lot of other people happy when we gave them those beautiful watermelons!” That was not an insignificant thing to say for a man as young as he was at the time. It sometimes takes people decades to come to such a profound realization of the holiness of the natural world and the importance of doing simple acts of kindness when we can. But Auseklis always had a spiritual, mystical, appreciation for nature and the miracle of our existence in the universe. His sketches of living things were reminiscent ofLeonardo Da Vinci’s studies and showed the same awe of seeing into the divine mechanics of life.

From the moment I met Auseklis, it was apparent he was a unique human being and a force of nature. We proceeded to discuss all manner of geometry, philosophy, and art. He was one of very few people I have known who instantly became a lifelong friend from the first meeting, like siblings from some other life or dimension. Conversations with him were always wide ranging and touched on every subject a Renaissance man like him would bring up. He was extraordinarily well educated and curious about all fields of human endeavor. His lectures on the golden proportion and sacred geometry were legendary, and it was always a good idea to have pencil and paper at hand when he started discussing these topics so you could get an illustrated lesson. His construction of geometric figures with just a straight edge and compass were not parlor tricks, but insights into the divine architecture of the universe. The spiral of the nautilus shell, the fractal geometry of trees, the design of a single leaf or branch would all be revealed to onlookers as reflective of some grand design. His paintings and drawings reflected that grand design in many forms.

When he was visiting the Laan family in New Orleans in the early 1970’s, he understandably became enamored of their beautiful and loving daughter Gwendolyn, and not long afterwards they married. She was like Auseklis: a force of nature, an all-nurturing earth mother figure, an always cheerful smiling presence. They produced three beautiful daughters, Saskia, Aija, and Indra, fittingly like three muses of classical mythology. There were many wonderful times visiting around the Ozols kitchen table, listening to Gwendolyn play the guitar and sing and eating some of her wonderful homemade bread. It was a house full of love, life, creativity, wonder, and humor. The wonderful smells of cookingfrom the kitchen were interspersed with wafts of turpentine and oil paints coming from the studio. Their intelligent Dalmatian dog, who was fluent in Latvian, and their jet black cat 6B, named after the darkest shade of drawing pencils, wandered patiently about the kitchen waiting for a treat. Classical music or jazz would be on the record player, and occasionally they would pull out the conga drum or guitar for an impromptu performance. The circle of friends they built was wide, varied, and always welcoming, so it was sure to be a visit of unknown proportions and range anytime you dropped by. 

Sometimes a personality is described as “larger than life”, but Auseklis is one of a few people I have known who would more accurately be described as “larger than death” because his influence will live on among his family and friends. In the past, when one of these “larger than death” friends of mine has passed away, I keep finding myself thinking “I have to tell them about what I saw today because I know they would appreciate it.” Then I realize they are gone, at least from this world, but somehow their spirit lingers among us providing inspiration to continue seeing the world through their eyes. We are all here for just a brief flash of time, and the best we can hope for is to come to an understanding of the nature of our being in the universe. Auseklis achieved that, and I believe he helped many others achieve that understanding too. The things he appreciated are universal and timeless, and we were lucky to have gotten a glimpse of his insight. I hope that now Auseklis and Gwendolyn will be forever soaring together over some remote beach, among the clouds he loved to paint, and enjoying the sounds of surf and the laughter of children, and the resonance of the spinning spheres of the universe. So we say, just for the moment, “Ar Labu Nakti Teti”…. sleep well….but join us again tomorrow, and every morning when we see the sun rise, and paint the morning clouds for us with your magnificent palette.

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Postscript 1: Speaking with Auseklis’ sister Aija after the service, she told me that when the Dresden firebombing began, their father was sitting in the ditch alongside the railroad track with Auseklis in his lap. Auseklis looked up at his father and said “Don’t worry Teti, God will watch over us and keep us safe.” He then fell asleep in his father’s lap. What a comfort it must have been for his father to hear such innocent reassurance from his four or five year old child, and to know that his child was not fearful of their fate.

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Postscript 2: After the service, one of the attendees came to me and said she must have been within fifty miles of where Auseklis was during the firebombing of Dresden. She had been hiding in the countryside near Dresden and witnessed the conflagration from there. She had known Auseklis for years, but never realized until the day of the service they had shared that experience so long ago.