By Rick Vacek | October 3, 2024
Even cancer struggled to limit the seemingly boundless energy of Dr. Richard “Rick” Brettell.
Despite the pain, despite the treatments, he continued to talk almost daily and meet regularly with Dr. Michael Thomas, his successor as director of the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at The University of Texas at Dallas.
Until one day when Thomas received an email from Brettell.
“Going to hospice,” it read matter-of-factly. “We have a lot to do.”
“OK, just let me know when you feel up to talking,” Thomas responded.
He never heard from him again. To this day, Thomas wonders what Brettell would be working on if cancer hadn’t taken him four years ago.
“He never stopped thinking about the future,” Thomas said.
That future became the present in September when the Brettell Reading Room opened in the Edith and Peter O’Donnell Jr. Athenaeum, the massive project that kept Brettell going right up to his death.
UT Dallas administrators were joined by state and local dignitaries and other friends of Brettell to celebrate the man whose vigor was anything but a myth.
They told stories. They perused his book collection.
But, mostly, they had a few laughs as they fondly remembered this marvel of constant motion.
Pierrette Lacour was Brettell’s longtime assistant, both in Texas and during his time in France as they worked together on the French Regional American Museum Exchange (FRAME). She traveled all the way from her current home in South Burgundy – 1½-hour train ride to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, 10-hour flight to Dallas – just to be at the Reading Room event.
What was it like to work for him?
“It was an experience for which I was made,” she began. “I grew up in France. My father was in the army and had a very similar temperament to Dr. Brettell – somebody with lots of ideas but still very strict. It was a little stressful for other people to work with Dr. Brettell because they did not always understand that he had so much passion.
“When he would express those passions, he would sometimes get a little loud. But because I was used to it, it didn’t faze me. He would come at me with all those ideas, and I would say, ‘OK, this is what has to be done. We’ll find a way.’
“I’m very sensitive, but I’m also very grounded. I’ve been taught that when I have something to do, I find a way to do it.”
She laughed at the memory of his emails – he would capitalize many of the words for emphasis – and the way he would fret before giving a lecture.
“Everybody mentioned how wonderful a speaker he was, which is the truth. But before each of his lectures, he would say, ‘Nobody’s going to come. Things aren’t going to work.’ He would be very, very nervous.
“Just me being here and telling him, ‘It’s OK, Rick. Everything will be fine. Whatever happens, we’ll take care of it.’ I would sometimes even go on trips with him and be that presence that helped him stay grounded.”
Brettell valued her groundedness so much, he treated her with reverence. She smiled at the memory of him telling her, “If you have a minute, I’m on my knees.”
“I had the best job in the world,” she said. “I could not do anything wrong. For him, I could not make a mistake.”
During Brettell’s early days as a UT Dallas professor in what was then the School of Arts and Humanities, Dr. Dennis Kratz was the dean.
What was that like?
“There is a story that I told once in public that illustrates what it was like to be Rick Brettell’s boss,” said Kratz, now the director of the Center for Asian Studies.
“There once was a fella who got up every morning, 6, 6:30, got dressed, kissed his wife goodbye, drove to the airport, parked the car and watched the planes come and go. Then he would go back home. Did that almost every day. When everybody would ask him what he did for a living, he would say, ‘I’m an air traffic controller.’
“That’s what it was like being Rick Brettell’s boss. Not that I was his boss, really. We got him here and turned him loose.”
Pothos. It’s a Greek word, and it best describes Brettell, in Kratz’s view: “His pothos was, wherever he was, it was all about more art, more art, understanding art. He was joyfully relentless. Rick was fun. Rick was really fun.”
Just thinking about Brettell brought back memories of UT Dallas’ colorful history.
“It attracted people like that,” Kratz said. “That’s why I came. It was an unformed place where a lot was bubbling up. It’s a different place now. It’s more settled, more bureaucratically adult. But this was at the height of adolescence.”
Dr. Nils Roemer, dean of the Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology, knew Brettell as a colleague.
“My memories go back to 2006, when I was a junior professor and Rick was already Rick,” Roemer said. “What always impressed me was, regardless of status or otherwise, Rick always would find time for every one of us. He was the one who could make a difference.
“A few years into my time here, I wanted to do a conference, but getting the budget together was difficult until I had Rick on board. He said, ‘Sure, we can do this.’ Despite always being really busy and creative, he always was ready for something.”
His passion for helping didn’t stop there.
“He was really passionate about his students,” Roemer said. “Rick was always there for the individual student.”
Roemer also admired the way Brettell could handle any social situation, such as a conference of scholars:
“One of his superpowers was that he was incredibly charming and poised and entertaining and funny. He was brilliant at it. There was something captivating about him.”
That was true right up to the end. Knowing that Brettell was finally slowing down, Thomas arranged to have him do one more lecture before he succumbed to the inevitable.
When the appointed day arrived, Thomas was stunned by the man’s determination. Watch the “Rick Brettell’s Last Lecture” video on this page and try to find any evidence that Brettell was suffering.
“He was in a lot of pain,” Thomas said. “The cancer had moved to his bones by then, but he just wouldn’t stop.
“He was so generous with his mind and with his time to this university.”
Cancer tends to win these battles, but Rick Brettell won the war. He will never be forgotten at UT Dallas.
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From News Center:
Next Chapter for Arts Begins with Brettell Reading Room Opening
UTD Celebrates Grand Opening of New Arts Cornerstone on Campus