Taking Part in the Art : Valley Couple Find Work Was Worth It

It was a true test of marital togetherness and stamina--five days of pre-dawn breakfasts and long, hot days in a meadow on the Christo umbrella project.

But Bill and Charlotte Lyle, a Granada Hills couple in their 70s, weathered the experience on Crew 106 with the same enthusiasm and humor that has kept them together all this time.

“We both worked all our lives, so we didn’t really get to be together much,” said Charlotte, 71, a former teacher. “There have been times when we haven’t gotten along, but it was all worth it when the umbrellas went up.”

The Lyles, who met 54 years ago on a blind date, were among the oldest of 750 workers who earned minimum wage to erect and finally open the golden yellow umbrellas in near 90-degree heat Wednesday morning. Like the other 67 crews, theirs was an eclectic mix that included Latino farm workers, retirees, students, architects and Christo groupies.

There were the Lyles, both of whom taught in San Fernando Valley schools before retiring. They heard about the project a year ago through an art class Charlotte Lyle was taking at Mission College and had been looking forward to it since then, they said.

There was the captain of the eight-member group, Anshula Kedar, 20, a Brown University student who said she ran the crew like a Marine sergeant because “I’ve never had this much responsibility before.”

There was Bill Scott, 73, also a retired teacher. He ran his first marathon when he was 70 and joined the project despite a recent operation to separate some bones in his left ear.

There was architecture student Chris Wong, who willingly trudged through brush and weeds despite a fighting a bad case of hay fever. And there was Jose Guadelupe, a Latino farm worker who chopped off a rattlesnake’s head Sunday when it approached one of the crew’s 23 umbrellas.

The crew spent three days erecting its umbrellas in a sloping meadow just south of Gorman. Horses cantered in a nearby corral and crickets chirped incessantly. But the hum of trucks and cars on the Golden State Freeway on the western border of the field was a constant reminder that their crew’s work would be viewed by millions.

On Wednesday, crew members met at a construction site at 6:30 a.m. and were bused to their umbrella patch. As ordained by Christo, they cranked open their first umbrella at 7:30.

Two crew members at a time used long yellow poles with hooks on the ends to pull the gray cover off the nearly two-story-tall, folded umbrella. Others folded the covers before helping to slip off a second, clear plastic cover.

Then each person took a turn cranking the first umbrella open. Prodded by Kedar, the group moved quickly, not lingering long to savor the accomplishment.

“It’s perfectly engineered,” Bill Lyle said, taking note of the design that made the process easy.

Scott, a quiet man who kept to himself most of the time, said he was looking forward to sitting under an umbrella and meditating. “This is the most unconventional thing I’ve ever done,” Scott said. “You don’t get to help put up umbrellas in wonderful patterns every day.”

“It’s a photogenic little line,” said Anne Zimmerman, 37, a Venice architect on the crew. “I just love it.”

The opening had been postponed until Wednesday because it was raining in Japan, but the delay did not dampen the crews’ spirits. One group of workers serenaded their fellow crews with an adapted version of “This Land Is Your Land,” ending with the refrain, “This umbrella opens for you and me.”

The Christo organization also threw a lavish barbecue for the workers Tuesday night.

But for the Lyles, the high point came Wednesday. ‘It kind of reminds me of springtime when the poppies are in bloom,” said Bill Lyle, wrapping his arm affectionately around his wife while standing in the shadow of an umbrella.