Vera Gold
1940-2004
Vera Gold, 64; her artistic talents included a gift for supporting other artists

By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff, 3/11/2004

Vera Gold, artist and mentor to other Boston artists, died of leukemia yesterday in Massachusetts General Hospital. She was 64.

Since arriving in Boston in 1974, Mrs. Gold had been active as a playwright, actress, director, editor, publisher, educator, volunteer, and arts administrator -- often simultaneously, and always with a smile.

She held positions with two of Boston's most prestigious institutions, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Wang Center for the Performing Arts, but was equally at home working with inexperienced writers and performers and helping them find their own voices.

"The cultural community of Boston suffered a major loss today," said Mayor Thomas M. Menino. "Vera Gold was . . . one of the people who really got me interested in the arts back when I was on the City Council. She did so many things: She was committed to the arts and to artists in every discipline; a pillar of the community who cared about the individuals in it. She was always bubbling . . . someone you wanted to be with."

She was assistant director of promotion for the BSO for eight years, and between 1988 and 1992 she was director of marketing and public relations for the Wang Center, where she developed an educational outreach program, "Young at Arts," that won a national award from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

In 1992 she founded 96 Inc., a grass-roots artists' collaborative that also publishes a magazine. That same year, she was playwright-in-residence at West Virginia University, where her play "Lady M" was presented by the Stagewright Theatre Company, family members said.

She loved working below and above the radar of publicity as well as within it, and considered nurturing other talents as important a responsibility as developing her own.

Over the last decade she wrote many short plays for young people centered on the issues of their lives -- "Bending," "Falling," "Grieving," "Helping," "Shuffling," "Standing Still," "Wanting."

These emerged from her attentive and compassionate listening to those around her, especially young people. The plays have been performed in many unconventional settings and have been used as the basis for more than 1,000 workshops in churches, schools, detention facilities, youth centers, and at Bridge Over Troubled Waters, which provides services to homeless and runaway youths.

Mrs. Gold was born Verline Cochran in an isolated hollow in Kentucky, 17 miles from the nearest town. She knew how to work a telephone better than anyone, maybe because she grew up without one, or electricity, for that matter; her warm speaking voice could persuade people to do anything and convince anyone of his own worth.

In 1960 she migrated to New York, studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors' Studio at the same time as Marilyn Monroe, appeared in "Midnight Cowboy" in a scene that wound up on the cutting room floor, produced the American premiere of a play by French writer Boris Vian that was favorably reviewed in Time magazine, wrote a novel and taught quilting. She supported herself by working in the publishing business. In 1968 she married the writer Ivan Gold, whose first book of short stories she had recently described for Publishers Weekly.

Nancy Mehegan, Mrs. Gold's codirector at 96 Inc., said yesterday, "She was a great friend not only to me but to everyone she came in touch with; she was an inclusive person who didn't want to leave anybody out. She treated everybody with the same respect, teenagers and adults.

"So many people condescend to teenagers, but her work with them was sophisticated and unsentimental, the way they are, and they responded to those same qualities in her," Mehegan said. "She never gave up, and we produced the last couple of issues of the magazine from her room in Mass. General."

Wendy Jordan, a Bridge Over Troubled Waters resident at the time she met Mrs. Gold and now a board member of 96 Inc., said, "Her stories and plays make it so others can understand you. She gives them pictures of your life. She supports and accepts you and makes you feel special."

In addition to her husband, Mrs. Gold leaves a son, Ian; a sister, Dorothy Holderby of Salyersville, Ky.; two brothers, Curtis Cochran of Colorado Springs, and Cletis Cochran of Lockland, Ohio; a daughter-in-law, Maria; and a granddaughter, Gabriela.

A memorial service will be held March 27 at 1 p.m. in First and Second Church in Boston.