Unlike many mothers of American servicemen posted overseas during World War II, Rebecca Feder wouldn’t send her son food packages. Instead, she sent him something more vital to a budding artist.
“She figured the Army would know how to feed him,” said Phyllis Rich Feder, widow of the serviceman, Ben Feder. “So she sent him art supplies to feed his talent.”
Armed with plenty of paints and brushes during his U.S. Army Air Forces stint in what was known as the China-Burma-India Theater, the Bronx-born airman created watercolor images of his surroundings, most of them depicting airfield buildings and bamboo huts known as “bashas” that served as living quarters for many American GIs posted to remote jungle areas of Southeast Asia.
Now, nearly 80 years later, Ben Feder’s artwork is being donated to a Veterans Affairs nursing home in his hometown borough. Phyllis Feder said donating 11 framed paintings is not only a gesture of gratitude for the services the VA provides; it’s also the fulfillment of a running joke her late husband had with a fellow WWII veteran from the Bronx.
“He had a friend who always said, ‘We’ll probably both wind up in the VA home in the Bronx,’” said Phyllis, herself a Bronx native who, at 86, still operates Clinton Vineyards, the pioneering wine business Ben started in Dutchess County in the 1970s.
“These pictures are so lovely,” Phyllis said. “Ben would love for them to be in the VA residence.”
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‘Ben was willing to take chances’
Ben Feder (pronounced FAY-der) was 86 when he died of cancer on Sept. 24, 2009, at his home in Clinton Corners. A graphic artist who started his own book design firm in Manhattan before venturing into real estate development, Feder got into the wine trade after buying a former dairy farm in the town of Clinton in 1969.
After a few years of owning a herd of cows that came with the property, Feder realized the farm life wasn’t for him, so he sold off the cattle. He then got the idea to start a vineyard, hearkening back to his post-war days when, while enrolled in the Parsons School of Design thanks to the GI Bill, he went to Paris to study art and ventured into the French countryside.
“He became enamored of everything French,” Phyllis said.
In the 1970s, he began researching the vineyard business, touring California’s Napa Valley and talking to viticulture experts. He became a friend and confidant of Hermann Wiemer, the German-born pioneer of the Finger Lakes region’s now-thriving wine industry. It was from his talks with Wiemer that Feder…
Read More: Ben Feder’s WWII watercolors to be donated to VA hospital