GRIFFIN November 24

November 2024 • CWEA GRIFFIN • 7 The family of Jon Dressel, noted CWE restaurateur and award-win- ning poet who died earlier this year, is planning a memorial service at Dressel’s Public House from 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 1. “Jon leaves us with a lifetime of his poetry and writings, friendships and storytell- ing that lovingly captured us all in his brilliant, kind, and clever way,” a family member said. In addition to his namesake restaurant, Dressel and his wife also co-founded another legendary CWE watering hole, Llywelyn’s Pub. Dressel was born in 1934 in St. Louis, and grew up in Granite City, Illinois, where his father ran the Dressel Dairy Co. He attended pub- lic schools and received a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from North- western University in 1956. He was the managing editor and editor- in-chief of the Daily Northwestern newspaper and worked summers on the sports staff at the old St. Louis Globe-Democrat . Following graduation, Jon Dres- sel served two years as an officer in the United States Navy. In 1959, he returned home to marry Barbara Nancy Marshman of Granite City. They had two children, Elisabeth and Benjamin. In 1962, his fa- ther passed away, and Jon became Restaurateur Jon Dressel remained a poet until the end president of the Dressel Dairy Co. Jon was inducted into the St. Louis chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization and served as chair- man from 1966 to 1967. He was the youngest person ever to hold that position. In 1965, Jon Dressel began to write poetry and won the Norma Lowery Poetry Prize at Washington University. When the family dairy business was sold, he returned briefly to journalism at the Globe- Democrat in 1967-68 and acquired a master of arts degree in English at Washington University in 1969. Immediately after graduation, Jon was appointed to the English faculty of Webster College (nowWebster University) and taught creative writ- ing. Being of Welsh ancestry, Dressel established the Wales Study Center for American students at Trinity College of the University of Wales in Carmarthen, Wales, in 1976, in cooperation with Trinity College and Central College of Iowa, a program he directed until 1995. Dressel’s poetry appears in a wide variety of American literary periodicals and has also won ma- jor prizes. In 1976, he received the First Award of Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards, Palo Alto, Califor- nia, for “the best poem published in Jon Dressel a periodical in 1975 in the English- speaking world.” He won the Dylan Thomas Memorial Poetry Competi- tion of 1978, commemorating the 25th anniversary of the poet’s death, and the British National Poetry Competition of the Poetry Society, London, in 1989. In Wales, he published six col- lections of poetry between 1977 and 2000. In 1979, a sequence of his poems, adapted in the Welsh language in collaboration with the Welsh poet T. James Jones, was awarded the Bardic Crown at the National Eisteddfod of Wales but was disqualified when the poets re- vealed their collaboration. In 1996, as delayed recognition of the Bardic Crown accomplishment, the Na- tional Eisteddfod of Wales inducted Dressel in the Order of the Bards of Wales (Yr Orsedd y Beirdd), the only poet not born in Wales ever to be so honored. In 1975, Jon and his wife, Bar- bara, partnered with their good friends Jack and Pat Brangles and founded Llywelyn’s Pub in the Central West End. The Dressels sold their interest in Llywelyn’s in 1976 because Jon was running the American students’ program at Trinity College in Wales, and he started “commuting” between St. Louis and Wales, which continued for 18 more years. In 1980, Jon and Barbara opened Dressel’s Pub at 419 N. Euclid Ave. They filled the walls with portraits of American poets and writers, clas- sical composers, jazz musicians, op- era posters and Welsh memorabilia. Soon, the Pub became a popular gathering place for the locals and attracted a diverse clientele from the artistic and cultural community. Composers’ birthday parties fea- tured live performances by string quartets, pianists and harpsichord- ists, including internationally renowned individuals such as musi- cians Michael Tilson-Thomas and Continued on Page 8