John Lear's art might have saved him from harm's way during World War II.
A niece, Susan MacBride, recalled that when he was assigned
to Fort Riley, Kansas, "the generals and the officers found out he was an
artist [and] diverted his talents to doing portraits of the officers
and their families."
Later, she said, he was assigned to illustrate military manuals, booklets and charts for service-wide distribution.
On Wednesday, John Brock Lear Jr., 98, artist and teacher, died of pneumonia at Chestnut Hill Hospital. He lived in Wyndmoor.
His work is in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of
Art, the Florida Gulf Coast Art Center in Clearwater, the Reading
Museum, and the Woodmere Art Museu
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