“The Flight Into Egypt” by John Hegnauer

This is a story that began small, as many of them typically do, and grew day by day as each new nugget of information was unearthed and polished. It begins with a small prayer card found several years ago, a bookmark in a book on the shelf in a guest room. The front of the card, for the School’s 2015-2016 Academic Year, had an image of a bas-relief, a low-relief stone carving, mounted on the wall of the St. Joseph Chapel, next to the altar in one of the four lower chapels in the Abbey Church. Drawing my attention to the work, and raising for me the question of the artist, eventually I was led to its creator, John Hegnauer.

Accentuating the significance of this story is the fact that the artwork had been commissioned by Abbot Emeritus Matthew Stark and his brother, Dennis, in memory of their mother, Mrs. Helen Stark. An article from The Current of May 2021, “Out of the Cloud: Discovering the Lower Chapels,” notes that the commission grew out of a desire to “address the anonymity which clouded the patronage of these eight adjunct spaces.” Fr. Peter Sidler, the abbey’s most prominent monk/artist at the time, orchestrated the commission several years after the Abbey Church was consecrated in 1960. Fr. Peter contacted Hegnauer, then a stone carver at the John Stevens Shop, founded in Newport in 1705. The Stark Family commission, entitled “The Flight Into Egypt,” is carved on a roughly triangular flat stone, approximately 34” wide x 22” high, sourced from Nova Scotia by Hegnauer. It pictures a prominent St. Joseph, carrying the Child Jesus upon his shoulders. Curiously, walking behind Mary, who rides on a donkey, is a fourth figure, representing a presumed elder son of Joseph, which in some ancient literature explains reference to a “brother of the Lord.” Engraved on either side of the images are the words: “JOSEPH TOOK THE CHILD AND HIS MOTHER”; “AND DEPARTED TO EGYPT”.

John Hegnauer’s life story, however, remained for me as clouded and enigmatic as his work. Some research revealed that after studying biology at Northwestern in Chicago, he had moved to Rhode Island in 1962 and became a friend and colleague at the Stevens Shop of John “Fud” Benson (1939-2024). Together they worked on the John F. Kennedy memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, as well as on other projects. After Hegnauer left the Stevens Shop to venture out on his own in 1979, he again worked in Arlington on the memorial for JFK’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy. After setting up his own stone shop in Portsmouth near the Sakonnet River, he produced carvings for the Dallas Museum of Art and the Virginia Museum of Art, the Massachusetts State House, Boston City Hall, and Harvard University. Hegnauer merited mention in last year’s New York Times obituary for his friend Fud Benson: “For the inscriptions for the East Building of the National Gallery in Washington, designed by I.M. Pei in the 1970s, [Benson] averaged an hour and a half carving each letter, some of which are nearly a foot tall. He and his team at the time, two young carvers named John Hegnauer and Brooke Roberts, spent months completing the painstaking work.”

John Hegnauer’s stone for ninth hole of Carnegie Abbey (now The Aquidneck Club)It remained a mystery to me as to why a local artist of such renown, even in his own lifetime, was not represented more widely on campus. Enter Br. Joseph Byron. He shared details and photos of a second carved stone which sits near the 9th hole on the golf course on our campus. Carved in 1999 with text only, unlike The Flight into Egypt which is both textual and figural, it reads, “O ye mountains and hills, praise the Lord,” taken from the canticle The Benedicite, recited by the monks at Lauds for Sundays and feasts. The passage echoes the familiar large banner in the Portsmouth Abbey Hockey Rink proclaiming, “O ye ice and snow, praise the Lord.” Still, with my deadline for this article looming, I did not even know if John R. Hegnauer was alive, and if so, where he lived. His trail seemed to end in Newfoundland, where he and his wife of forty years had moved at one point. As a last resort, I emailed Adam Heller in Connecticut, the current cutter of our gravestones, located by Br. Joseph when he needed to quickly find a new engraver of tombstones to succeed Hegnauer after his move. Adam responded to my inquiry the same day, offering personal insights into Hegnauer and his craft, expanding my awareness of Hegnauer’s opus here on the grounds:
John Hegnauer at work on stone commissioned by the monastery
for Carnegie Abbey (1999)Johnny (as he was referred to then), was just leaving the John Stevens Shop as I was entering. I know there are at least several other stones at the Abbey by John. If you go to the cemetery, there is a green slate marker in the monastic section (back row, right side?), that is John Hegnauer's. The letters are masterful. So strong, beautifully drawn and masterfully carved, such confidence – it glows – I have a rubbing of that stone here and I study it sometimes before drawing letters for other monks of the Abbey. The spacing, letter weights and relationships are of the highest order of skill. I have the utmost respect and admiration for John's work, he was a true master, a scholar, and a bit of a hermit. He was a huge presence and force of skill and energy in helping John (Fud) Benson and Brook Roberts bring the J.S.S. into the thriving shop it is today. Thank you for your interest in letters, marvelous mysterious, often overlooked wonders of human ingenuity.
John Hegnauer (2025)Prompted by Adam’s testimonial, I took the chance of combining two partial phone numbers from the internet, each having asterisks subbing for different numbers, and made a cold call. I was stunned to hear the answering machine’s voice: “You’ve reached John Hegnauer, please leave me a message.” I did, and within a few hours later, the artist himself called back to say that he is alive and well, at age 84. I was in seventh heaven and, after a brief back-and-forth, we agreed to a visit in his 1930’s ‘cottage’ in Warwick, near historic Pawtuxet Village. The next morning, we spent a wonderful hour-and-a-half conversing over coffee, and he was moved when I read him Adam’s email. He reminisced about carving gravestones for the monks, Newfoundland, his stone chisels, his son Jacob who is the technical director in URI’s theatre department, about the Benson’s, Pete Seeger, Fr. Peter, George Nakashima, and more, all while his dog Charlie rested at our feet. And maybe because it was St. Valentine’s Day, he spoke lovingly of his wife, Adele, who passed away in 2021. Another passage-of-life moment.

Our conversation was too personal to provide here all the notes and details. But before leaving, we made plans for John to visit Portsmouth Abbey in April, when Adam drives in from Connecticut to deliver and install the gravestone for Fr. Paschal Scotti. Hopefully, we will then be able to continue and supplement this ongoing and remarkable saga.

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