LOCKPORT — By Bill Wolcott

bill.wolcott@lockportjournal.com

The surnames of Rand and Penney have an illustrious connection to history in Western New York. Descendant Charles Rand Penney is just “Charlie” to his friends, but the Lockport resident is famous around the world and proud of his ancestors.

A philanthropist and patron of the arts, he has supported area artists for years and his donations dot galleries in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, Ogdensburg and worldwide. The gallery at Buffalo State was renamed “Burchfield Penney” in 1994 and the Charles Rand Penney Art Library was dedicated in 2000.

A lawyer and explorer, Charles Rand Penney, 86, is a member of the Lockport Walk of Fame. He is best known as a collector, with a huge collection of paintings, sculpture and craft art. He has given many of his collectibles away and plans are being made for him to make a major 5,000-piece donation to the historical society of his adopted blue-collar town at Lockport’s Erie Canal Discovery Center.

Penney’s collectibles include masks from Africa, Mr. Peanut, carnival chalk figurines and even pine cones the size of a bowling pin. He has a a number of works by noted local artist Raphael Beck and a large collection of Sutherland Sisters memorabilia.

Boost to Lockport

“I think the Discovery Center is a great boost to Lockport. It’s a visitors’ center and education center,” said Penney, who has more than 100 collections. “My Niagara County collection will add tremendously. There are people working very hard.”

Discovery Center Director Doug Farley calls the collection an incredible gift. “It’s all sorts of little treasures ... telling the story of Niagara County’s development from its earliest days,” he said.

Art is not just for rich people, Penney said. “They want to give it exposure. I’ve tried to do things across the state ... This is not New York City, London or San Francisco. The thing about Lockport is the history here.”

Charles Ephraim Burchfield’s paintings have had influence on succeeding generations of artists, and Penney was the visionary who collected his works and donated them to the Burchfield Art Center.

Kenan Center

Penney was one of the founders of the Kenan Center and the first exhibit at the Lockport center was of Burchfield’s works in 1966. Art exhibits became a mainstay of the Kenan Center.

“We were fortunate several years ago to be able to exhibit Penney’s Niagara Falls artwork,” said Susan Pryzbyl, executive director of the Kenan Center. “It was a wonderful exhibit.”

Dennis Stierer, a photographer who met Penney in 1994 while on assignment for the Union-Sun & Journal, is a friend. “Charlie will always talk to people. He’s wonderful to be around.”

Stierer is most impressed by the scope of Penney’s avocation. “His work is extremely well-organized, documented and catalogued. His collections are probably more documented than most museums. He’s given tremendously to everybody.”

Avis Townsend has been working with Penney on his biography. “He’s very dedicated to his collection,” she said. “He’s exuberant about them, as if they were children. He wants them placed in a perfect home.”

McKinley assassination

Penney was born in Buffalo in 1923. Thomas Penney, his grandfather, an immigrant, became the district attorney in Buffalo and was the prosecutor at the trial of Leon Czolgosz, the man who assassinated President McKinley.

“The District Attorney, Thomas Penney, needed only eight hours and 25 minutes to try the case and get his guilty verdict. The sentence, on Sept. 26, 1901, was a foregone conclusion,” according to Awesome Stories. Czolgosz was sentenced to death by electric chair and was executed Oct. 29, 1901.

Thomas Penney came to Buffalo when the Queen City of the Lakes was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. After the celebrity he gained in the Czolgosz trial, he was put in charge of the railroad that ran from Buffalo to Olcott. He put his three boys through Yale College and Harvard Law School, and his daughter graduated from Smith College.

Rand Family

The Rand family was prominent in Batavia and Charles F. Rand, a great-great uncle, is considered the nation’s first union volunteer in Civil War. When Abraham Lincoln put out a call for 75,000 volunteers in 1861, Rand was first to raise his hand. A private in the 12th New York Infantry, Rand earned the Congressional Medal of Honor, which was presented in 1897.

George F. Rand, Charlie’s maternal grandfather, was president and chairman of the board of directors of Marine Midland. He teamed up with Seymour Knox to start New York state’s first consolidated banking system.

Rand made a World War I memorial to soldiers who died in France, but was killed in a plane crash in England. George F. Rand, Jr. completed the home his father started at 1180 Delaware Ave. It is now the site of Canisius High School. The Rand Building on Lafayette Square was Buffalo's tallest building when it was opened in 1929.

Benjamin Long Rand was a mayor of North Tonawanda.

James Henry Rand was a founder of Remington Rand, famous for typewriters, guns and Univac, the first commercial computer produced in the United States.

Counterintelligence

Charles Rand Penney speaks Chinese, Japanese, French, German and English and has studied Russian and Spanish. He served as a counterintelligence officer during World War II in the China Burma India Theater and the Asian Pacific Theater. As a second lieutenant, he saw Five-Star Gen. Douglas MacArthur from a distance when Tokyo was in shambles.

When “Uncle Jim” hired the former Chief of Staff to promote Univac for Sperry Rand in the 1960s, Penney had the opportunity to spend a day with MacArthur.

Penney graduated from Yale and studied law at the University of Virginia. A working attorney, he practiced law and set up the first professional fundraiser for Children’s Hospital. He is a founder of the Kenan Center.

Sunday School start

Penney was about 11 years old when he was introduced to Robert N. Blair at Sunday School in Buffalo. Blair studied at the Albright Art School in Buffalo and became nationally known for his vigorous and sometimes tempestuous watercolors.

Blair gave Penney a watercolor, a painting he still treasures, and that became the start of the Penney Collection.

“I’ve been everywhere,” Penney said this week. “My journals fill several shelves.” His diaries are being scanned at Buffalo State and the Museum of Science.

“He’s flown to different places in Africa and South America and brings back African masks or tribal masks,” Stierer said. “He bought an extra airline seat just to put a mask on it because he didn’t want anything to happen to it. His collecting encompasses many different collections. It’s not just one thing he collects.”

Penney has given many lectures in colleges and employs students to help him catalogue his collection.

His wooden coat hanger collection might be the most unusual collections. “Hotels and motels and clubs used to have their names imprinted on coat hangers and people would send them to him from all over the world. It’s a fabulous collection,” Stierer said.

Supports local artists

As part of Penney’s endeavor to help local artists, he amassed the biggest Burchfield collection. He had the largest collection of Niagara Falls prints and donated many to Castellani Art Museum at Niagara University.

An African collection went to Rochester museum. Several dignitaries have viewed his collection and Australian film crew came to Lockport to make a movie.

To house Penney’s collection, the Discover Center is proposing to build a 1,500-square-foot mezzanine above the main floor and develop a 1,000-square-foot reading-and-research room in unused space on the lower level of 24 Church St., a 166-year-old canal stone building. The total estimated cost is $257,000; the Lockport-based Grigg-Lewis Foundation already pledged $105,600.

Penney Center construction is set to begin in winter 2010, with an expected opening in summer 2011.

“Charlie collected a lot of local artists,” Stierer said. “He supported local artists, buying their work and donating it to museums. It was wonderful of him to do that.”

Contact reporter Bill Wolcott

at 439-9222, ext. 6246.