Help us find the story of Irena Wiley
Greetings from R2 Studios! Here in the DC area, the cherry blossoms are past peak, GMU’s spring break is over, and we are barreling toward the end of the semester. Please consider becoming a member of R2 Studios. If you were on the fence about becoming a member previously, now is the time to join. Our Consolation Prize t-shirts finally came in, and we’d love to send you one.
This week we have some special news. For Women’s History Month, Consolation Prize featured the story of a truly remarkable woman, Irena Wiley. Wiley was the wife of a U.S. diplomat, whom she married in 1934. Over the next twenty years, John and Irena Wiley traveled to more than a dozen different posts all around the world.
Irena Wiley was an artist, classically trained at schools like the Sorbonne. Over the course of her husband’s diplomatic career, she made art wherever they went. By chance or intention, the Wileys ended up in a number of places undergoing significant political upheaval, like Austria during the moment of Hitler’s invasion (listen to the episode to hear an amusing story about Sigmund Freud!), Estonia and Latvia during the takeover by the USSR, and many more. In each place, Irena Wiley drew portraits of the people affected by this upheaval.
After her husband died, Irena traveled with the USO to visit soldiers fighting in Vietnam. She traveled to Vietnam itself, as well as Hawaii, Guam, and Okinawa, at least three times from 1968 to 1970.
This is where we need your help. On each of her USO trips, Irena Wiley went to hospitals and drew portraits of wounded soldiers that she then gave them to send back to their families. It’s impossible to know how many of these portraits she created. But we firmly believe that some of these portraits still exist out there, maybe in an attic or letterbox in the closet. We want to find these portraits.
Most of our stories are one-offs–we don’t ever return to the same subject after we’ve done an episode about it. But this is different. We’re currently exploring doing much more work with Irena Wiley’s story, so we want to track down as many people as possible who may have encountered her.
Will you help us? You can help us by doing two things: (a) listen to the episode itself, and tell your friends and people you know about it and about our search, and (b) if you have connections with any communities of Vietnam veterans, please share this newsletter or the episode with them.
And if you do know anything about Irena Wiley, or you’ve encountered her in her Vietnam work or elsewhere, will you please get in touch? You can reach us at consolationprizepod@gmail.com, or on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, or you can even leave us a voicemail at our website, consolationprize.rrchnm.org.
In honor of Foo Fighters drummer, Taylor Hawkins, who passed away this week we thought we’d share a music podcast that we have been listening to: A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. While this podcast doesn’t cover the Foo Fighters, it does cover everything from Fats Domino to Captain Beefheart. Enjoy!
This portrait drawn by Irena Wiley is of a mother and child who were waiting in the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, hoping to get out of Austria ahead of Hitler. Irena drew many such portraits while assisting her husband in stamping passports and trying to get as many Jewish people out of Austria as possible. Her great-nephew estimates that she and John Wiley saved hundreds or even thousands of people.
For just a few dollars a month, you can help us make amazing audio stories. Your money goes to helping us make our space better, hiring voice actors, paying for music and archival tape, and so much more.
Plus, if you become a member, you could get a super cool tumbler or a cool t-shirt! There’s really no downside here.
And that’s it for this edition of “Good Tape!” Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next time.
You just read issue #13 of Good Tape. You can also browse the full archives of this newsletter.