Our town – Boulder – is a constantly evolving kaleidoscope of residents who come and go. If we scratch below the surface of each other’s lives we often discover wonderful surprises. One such moment was revealed this month.
Jan Kleinbord, who was married to the late beloved Swan Lake chiropractor David Mamolen, brought out a number of her family albums and shared with us the history of her grandmother, Amy Weil Wertheimer.
Amy met Thornton Wilder, who wrote Our Town, in the summer of 1925. Amy, then 36 years old, was vacationing at a cottage on Lake Sunapee NH with her two daughters and stockbroker husband. Wilder, 28, was working on his MA in French Literature from Princeton, and getting ready to publish his first novel, The Cabala. He was tutoring for a nearby family on the lake. Amy was tall, good-looking, and a graduate of Barnard College. The two struck up a friendship that would last the rest of their lives. Amy passed away in 1972; Thornton in 1975.
After Wilder left Lake Sunapee that summer, he wrote to Amy, “I am looking for a wise, intelligent, and fairly tranquil friend. I should like it to be a lady, somewhat older than myself who will understand me so well…that I can write her conceitedly and she will understand…do you know anyone who would like to receive letters from me?” And thus began a long history – sometimes at Sunapee summers, sometimes in letters – between the older woman and the younger man.
Amy was, in fact, the first person to see the manuscript for Our Town. Wilder sent her his drafts, including his novels as well as plays, for her feedback. Their correspondence is now part of the Wilder archive, housed at Yale University. Misogynist history’s assessment of their fruitful relationship is that Amy was Wilder’s “pen pal”.
Amy later divorced her husband and established community theaters in Connecticut, where she acted and directed in plays. Jan remembers her grandmother as a talented seamstress, a bookbinder, and a constant source of wonder and creativity. The formal portrait of Thornton Wilder rested on the piano. 
Amy always carried a small folder of photos: one young Thornton and one older Thornton.
If you Google “Amy Weil Wertheimer” you will find nothing of her life or enduring relationship with Wilder. Many people have claimed to be Wilder’s close friend, but the rare mementos of a genuine connection between two creative artists – Thornton and Amy – reside here in Boulder.
