GRIFFIN November 24

8 • CWEA GRIFFIN • November 2024 Nicholas McGeegan, and Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Welsh rugby teams and male voice choirs, and the then-president of the Welsh Nationalist Party, Dafydd Elis-Th. Gentlemen’s Quarterly magazine ran an article on Dressel’s featuring the St. Louis novelist Stanley Elkin as part of a series on “famous writers’ favorite saloons.” In 1993, Jon Dressel was awarded a Ph.D. in American Studies at St. Louis University. His creative dissertation entitled “The Road to Shiloh” was published as a book with the support of the Welsh National Arts Council in 1994. Dressel’s poems are included in all the major modern anthologies of Anglo-Welsh poetry (poetry by Welsh writers in the English lan- guage), including an anthology of Welsh poetry in translation, and is the subject of a biographical article in the Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales. On Beethoven’s birthday (Dec. 16), 1996, National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” featured Jon Dressel reading his poem “Beethoven at the Alamo.” The poem is based on a dispute in the comic strip Peanuts between Char- lie Brown and Schroeder over who was the greater man, Beethoven or Davy Crockett. A copy of the poem hangs on a wall at Dressel’s Pub near a portrait of the composer. Jon and Barbara Dressel retired from the pub in the spring of 2004, selling it to their son, Ben, who had returned from Wales after several years of directing the American program at Trinity College. He continues to operate the pub today under the slightly revised name of Dressel’s Public House. Jon Dressel was a prolific writer; he continued to create and publish until his passing. Jon Lucian Dressel, April 12, 1934 – April 8, 2024, was preceded in death by his beloved wife, Bar- bara Marshman Dressel, and their faithful canine, Wolfie McGee. Jon is survived by his brothers, Lucian W. Dressel and Philip F. Dressel (Yvonne); his devoted children, daughter Elisabeth (Lance) Knowles and son Benjamin M. Dressel (Elizabeth Sharp); and his grand- children, Oscar Sharp Dressel, Genevieve Jones Dressel and Pascal Joseph Dressel. Dressel from Page 7 Warm and dry weather has limited fall foliage this year so far, but this tree is bright- ening the Tennesse condominium building at Westminster Place and Walton Avenue. Playwright Tennessee Williams lived here when he was growing up in the 1920s. Fall colors?