Reeves van Hettinga papers

Reeves Hamilton van Hettinga was born on November 18, 1933 in Muscatine, Iowa, to Henry and Virginia Ruth Jones van Hettinga. He had two brothers, William Lance and John Quincy van Hettinga. van Hettinga spent most of his childhood in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and his family moved to La Grange, Illinois, when he was in high school. After graduating from high school, he attended Yale University from 1951 to 1955. He was in the U.S. Army from 1956 to 1957, stationed in West Germany. After his honorable discharge, he lived in New York City. In the 1960s van Hettinga began working as a chef in Greenwich Village, later opening his own restaurant called Reeves. He continued to work as a chef in the 1970s after closing his restaurant, and transitioned to working primarily as an artist by the 1980s, specializing in trompe l’oeil painting. He retired to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1992, where he continued to create trompe l’oeil works. He died on April 28, 2018.

Reeves’ brother William Lance van Hettinga was born on February 8, 1938 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After graduating from Duke University with an M.A. in English Literature in 1961, van Hettinga worked as college English teacher for ten years. His research on writing and printing led him to become an artist, specializing in calligraphic and abstract art. He eventually moved to Charleston, where he worked at the Tradd Street Press. He founded the free weekly newspaper Poor William’s Omnibus, which ran from 1985 to 1994. He died on September 18, 1989, and was one of the first public victims of AIDS in Charleston.