STYLE : DESIGN : Special Delivery

Few things are as satisfying as solving a good mystery, so when I visited the Long Beach swap meet two years ago, I couldn’t rest until I knew more about who painted the colorful works of art that caught my eye that day. A dollar apiece, the 29 envelopes featured charming wilderness scenes--deer grazing in the snow or bears cavorting on a boulder--rendered in delicate ink and watercolor. The artist had taken pains to personalize each one, even incorporating address and stamp into the composition. But whodunit?

The envelopes were now nearly 30 years old, and the dealer who sold them to me knew little about them. Luckily, there was a return address in Compton and a name: Fred Lueders. I called everyone listed by that surname in the L.A. area, eventually finding a nephew in Orange County, who told me that Lueders’ son had been a Goodyear blimp pilot. I called the main station in Akron, Ohio, where a former co-worker led me to Lueders’ son in Miami. Through him, I found Lueders’ married daughter, still in Compton. The puzzle pieces began to drop into place.

From his three children, I learned that Frederic Henry William Lueders, the son of German immigrants who settled in Cincinnati, had ventured to California on vacation in 1902 when he was 26. It was during these travels that he first hastily sketched a scene on a handy envelope. When he mailed it to a friend, a decades-long hobby that would bring joy to many was born.

That summer, Lueders, an avid outdoorsman who attended the Cincinnati Art Academy, landed a job with a Santa Barbara design studio. The next year he married a fellow artist, and they later moved to Pasadena and then to Compton. For 35 years, Lueders taught art at Compton High School and then Compton Junior College. But teaching was only part of his life; he was also a coach and an administrator.

I tracked down a few of Lueders’ former students, many of whom remembered him fondly and some noteworthy in their own right: “He was very much loved, and on the level of the kids. He was not just a teacher but a father; he knew how to talk to children,” says animation producer Bill Hanna of Hanna-Barbera. Pete Rozelle, former commissioner of the National Football League, recalls “Pop” Lueders as a Compton legend: “I had to be one of the scores who received letters overseas during World War II with his painted scenes on the envelopes. My shipmates were nearly as anxious as I was for his letters to arrive.”

Widowed and remarried by 1933, Lueders retired in 1947 but stayed active in community affairs, serving on the Compton Parks and Recreation Commission. In 1961, the city dedicated Fred “Pop” Lueders Park and Lueders Park Community Center on East Rosecrans. He remained a voluminous letter-writer, each missive enclosed in one of his trademark envelopes. (His son has 1,200.) In 1965, he was even honored by the California Assembly, which passed a resolution recognizing his art. After 94 years and unknown thousands of envelopes, he died in 1970.

My stack of painted treasures is “Pop” Lueders’ legacy. I feel fortunate to have found them and to share in the delight that his artwork brought to so many during his lifetime.