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D uring Albert Huffstickler's many decades as

poet-in-residence, he left a profound and lasting mark both through his personal relationships and through his prolific literary production. Even the casual visitor to Hyde Park stopping in for gas, food, or a cup of coffee can hardly avoid sensing Huff's presence, living on in the people and shops that shaped and were shaped by Huff for so long. However, the lack of institutionalization such as exists in the case of the Elisabet Ney Museum has already begun to threaten Huff's memory, as his works disperse, his friends move away, and stories, sometimes contradictory, about Huff proliferate. While the very informality and variety of memorials to him are a testament to how he lived his life, the future of Huff's memory demands an effort on the part of our community to hold the story of his life together as the years pass.
    The efforts to preserve both Ney's and Huff's memories were begun by those who knew them personally and therefore had, or have, some sort of personal rather than scholarly or academic stake in the work of cultural preservation. Ney's friends were organized in such a way as to create a formal institution, as Huff's friends thus far have not been. The will is there, but its expressions are scattershot. My inquiry into the Fresh Plus mural, with its "Long Live Huff" button, provides a clear example of the dangers of informal remembrance. I sought to learn exactly how this painting came to be as it is from a variety of people, including the cashiers working at the store and Nancy Taylor Day, poetry editor for the Pecan Press. Depending upon the person with whom I spoke, the mural's development occurred as it did due to the community at large, or to the artist, or to the owners of the store. One cashier asserted that, after the mural had been started, the store received numerous protests, which induced them to include the "Long Live Huff" button in answer to this outcry. Another cashier, however, stated that the owners themselves had insisted on this detail when negotiating with the film company. Another version of events came to me second-hand from Nancy Taylor Day: A friend of mine said that the artist who did the mural had a deep sense of preserving Huff's memory and that he intentionally painted in a likeness with the Long Live message. So, it wasn't the movie company