Arts Rescue Mission -Aid For Aging Artists
P u b l i s h e d W e e k l y, N e w s, A r t s, & S t o r i e s F r o m T e x a s
Vol. 1, Issue 2,
Oct. 22, 2025
page 2
Remembering Deb Grotefeldt
“I grew up with a little brother;we were the son and daughter of migrant workers in south Texas.” D. M, Allison, The Mission News, Volume 1, Issue 2, . Oct. 22, 2025
Deborah Grotfeldt was a visionary arts advocate whose sharp eye and deep commitment to community shaped Houston’s cultural identity. Beginning at DiverseWorks in the late 1980s, she helped pioneer innovative visual and performing arts programs before becoming the first Executive Director of Project Row Houses, where she considered the Young Mothers Residential Program her most meaningful achievement. Her collaborative work extended to cities nationwide, including Detroit, East St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. Later, she advanced public broadcasting as a development officer for KUHF. A true “artist’s artist,” Deborah embodied activism, creativity, and compassion throughout her life and career.
To me, Deb was one of the wittiest, most beautiful human beings I have ever met. She had a light within that she was easily willing to share, the epitome of a strong woman, a great friend, and a force to be reckoned with every single day, and had no problem letting you know it if you were unlucky enough to get on her wrong side. Always a champion of the downtrodden, it was always her first thought, a first concern, especially for women. She was a key element of Project Row Houses and an admired, feared, as well as a loved icon of Houston's cultural awakening throughout the 1980s, 90s, well, until now. I started calling her as we entered the pandemic if I needed a sardonic, knife-cutting, bloodletting, view of the god-awful politics we’ve been going through.
I’d gotten sweet on her, smart is sexy, and gladly raced through Houston’s nearly abandoned pandemic streets in my new hot-rod Acura, bringing Deb Asian cuisine and vodka as she would come out of reoccurring periods and horrible reactions to the experimental drugs the doctors were trying with pretty much uncurable cancer. The treatments for her “granular cancer” made her hallucinate and gain 30 lbs. in 10 days. She didn’t stop fighting. Funny? “Someone I know got a genius award and all I got was this fat ass and cancer” Yep .... and that's a quote. If you happen to know the backstory on that quote, you're rolling laughing right now.
One night I went over for dinner, she had gotten over another cancer treatment, and we were finishing dinner, I got through playing some bad guitar, and she started telling me a life story I didn't know. Where did this fight for rights and strength come from? I had known Deborah Grotfeldt and her husband Virgil, also a determined individual, for almost 40 years. Spoiler alert, it came from overcoming adversity and poverty. I was about to find out a little more.
“I grew up with a little brother; we’re the son and daughter of migrant workers in south Texas building the concrete grain silos you see all over the place. The system was that the men would finish the job in one Podunk little crap town and move to the next town find work and start building silos in the next and find some more shacks to live in.”
Debbie pantomimed the entire 30-minute story, drawing an imaginary room where all four were living within the parameters of where we had just had our home-cooked feast. Smaller than her dining room, that was the shack, which was the size of a home, with communal toilets outside, and groups living 4 to 6 people at a time in the shanty migrant shacks. So, one day, dad finished the job at hand, he joined the other man and went off to find work in the next town, and he never came back.
Deborah described the journey heading up north to Decatur Illinois as an unforgettable, arduous freezing journey. They only had the South Texas cut-off shots and shirts on their backs, and that was it.
At this point, in my mind, I had to snap back to reality. This wasn’t the “Great Depression,” it wasn’t John Steinbeck, not migrant workers in the 1930s. This was a story taking place in South Texas in the late 50s and early 1960s. After all these years, I didn’t know Deb and Virgil were not from somewhere just “up north.”
It is in my DNA to chronicle the journeys of my friends, and the older I get the more urgent it seems. I had to ask Deb and ask if she would let me record her story someday. She was already halfway through, it would have broken the spell, we went on together into the night, and regretfully “someday” would never come.
Photo credit 1, DiverseWorks, Art & Performance Space. Patty Shepherd (administrator); Sara Haynes (Development); Deborah Grotfeldt (Assistant Director ); Michael Peranteau (Co-Director); Jack Livingston (DiverseBooks Store); Caroline Huber (Co-Director); Laurent Bacarra (artist); Mary Hayslip (artist); and Rose the Boxer (beloved gallery dog) April 21, 1989, Houston Post. Photo by Bruce Bennett / HMRC RGD0006N-1989-1516, Pete Gershon posted to Facebook Oct. 2022.
This is how this chapter ends. An aunt had a job at an institution for the rich and infirmed. It was a place to live with the promise of a warm bed and employment. They could take charge of their futures in some small way. It would be more secure than they had before, and they were grateful. So, as They left Texas in their T-shirts and jeans and arrived in Decatur Illinois where the temperature was below freezing. The aunt had a room, and they had a place to stay and work.
At this point Deb Grotfeldt was out of her chair pantomiming the occasion of their arrival when the aunt and her mother joined arms huddled and surrounded two little children and told them that they were loved and that they all were together, and that they would always have each other. I rocked back in my chair as a witness. Deb arose, her long arms swanned out grouping the aunt, the mother, and two children in the kitchen of a Decatur Illinois rest home 60 years before as she closed the story and suggested we take her cat “Speck” for an after-dinner walk.
Deborah met Virgil Grotfeldt exceedingly early in life, I think, one time she said it was 13 - 14 years old. They had college adventures, and then they came to Texas, where they both made history in Houston. They were ready for us, and we were ready for them.