Stained Glass Artist Rowan LeCompte, RIP

There aren't too many people around the station any more to remember Rowan. He was a beautiful human being and a great friend of WHQR. (Among other things, he designed the beautiful original WHQR Celtic logo.) All of us who ran the classical board in the afternoon were accustomed to Rowan calling in to chat about the piece that was playing - he kept the station on all the time while he was in his studio. The [Post] article doesn't mention it but in addition to executing the stained glass windows in the Washington National Cathedral, he also did the stained glass windows at Wilmington's Episcopal Church of the Servant. He and Peggy lived in beautiful little old Waynesboro VA since moving from Wilmington, at the south end of the Shenandoah Valley. But they sometimes visited Wilmington.

I remember well the reaction of an English colleague of mine after he had visited the National Cathedral. He was struck by how different the light was compared to that in all the European cathedrals. The giant rose window was especially remarkable. It was “lighter,” “more colorful,” and had “more vibrancy and life.” LeCompte had developed or mastered a very different way of doing stained glass. And he was indeed a very generous and warm human being, as Pat points out.