It is with a profound sense of loss that we mark the sudden passing of Chase Viele, one of the founding spirits of the Western New York Heritage Magazine. He died of a heart attack on July 6, 2002 at age 76. Chase was on the Board of Directors and authored several articles on history and art beginning with the Prince Melodeon story in our first issue. He worked enthusiastically with the editorial staff for whom he stood without peer as a source of information not otherwise available. The always affable Chase Viele was a tenacious and exacting researcher. Essential information on the Fargo story in the Summer 2002 issue of the Heritage Magazine simply would never have come to light without him.
Chase lived in a world that reverberated with manifold allusion. Much of the history of our area was interwoven with his own family history. He was a direct descendent of Benjamin Barton who built the famous Frontier House in Lewiston in 1824. Chase was the great great grandson of Sheldon Thompson, a giant figure in the development of Buffalo, who in 1840 was its first "popularly" elected Mayor. Chase's great grandfather Henry K. Viele of Buffalo was the son of Katherine Schuyler Knickerbocker, in whose parlor at Schaghticoke, Washington Irving began writing his "Knickerbocker History of New York."
Chase Viele had a lifelong interest in local art history. In 1961 he published an essay on four 19th century artists, "Buffalo's Contribution to American Romantic Painting." He wished to reprint the essay for today's audience in the WNY Heritage Magazine. We hope to do so in the near future, and provide one more opportunity for his work to appear in this his forum.
J. H. Conlin