CHARLES “HUGH” MOORE 
Sept. 21, 1947- March 10, 2015
When Hugh Moore passed away this past March, the Springfield area lost a writer, painter, radio host and general bon vivant. He was also president of Springfield Poets and Writers and on the board of the Route 66 Film Festival. His absence has left a gaping hole in the arts community, where his creative contributions are missed as much as his unique energy and wry, larger-than life personality, which could make even the smallest gathering feel like an event.
Moore left behind a large archive of work, which his widow, Lana Wildman, continues to sort through. “If I had to pick a word, I guess I would describe Hugh as prolific,” she says. “I’m finding all kinds of stuff, manuscripts of his poetry and things like that. But he was also quite a collector of other people’s work. I have come across some unframed art that he had picked up over the years by other people he admired.”
In May, a memorial “HughFest for his Hughness” was held in Williamsville. “It was really nice, a lot of people came,” says Wildman. “A couple of the performers wanted to do versions of Hugh’s songs so I gave them tapes and words so they could practice.”
During the 1970s, Moore had attended the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and later worked at the Harvard law library in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a few years before moving back to Williamsville in 1980 when his grandfather died to take care of his grandmother and make good on his promise to her that she would never be put in a nursing home.
For the people closest to him, his creativity often took other forms. His niece, Dulcinea Gillman – who describes her relationship with her uncle as embodying aspects of both sibling rivalry and parental authority – remembers him as a great spinner of tall tales. “He would have me completely sucked in,” she remembers. “When I was little, Uncle Hugh – probably in an effort to get me out of his hair – would send me out to look for buried treasure in the lilac bushes – and he stuck with that story, he never let go, he never admitted that he lied to me, and he had me out there for years. It was convincing – maybe he thought there actually was treasure!” Moore clearly had a mischievous aspect to his personality. “It was some years ago at the Fourth of July parade in Champaign-Urbana,” Wildman recalls. “The band went by and Hugh just started walking with them. There was this big white Cadillac convertible that the parade marshals were supposed to be sitting in but it was empty. So Hugh just jumped up and sat on the back of the car – he was sitting there like he owned the parade. He took great delight in watching the people trying to figure out, who is this guy? He must be an important person! It was typical Hugh.”
Moore’s presence still manages to be felt in town. Wildman has kept his weekly WQNA radio variety show “Flyover Zone” on the air as “Flyover Zone from the Archival Zone” and there are plans for long-lost material to be digitized and edited for future broadcast. He also maintains a lively if posthumous online presence at hughmoorezone.com, where his poetry and music can be enjoyed and his original paintings are available for purchase.
“People keep saying that he was a force of nature, which is why he leaves such an empty spot,” Wildman says.
Contact Scott Faingold at [email protected].
