Van Wezel executive had a personal touch

SARASOTA - As director of the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, Curt Haug would drive to the airport in Tampa to pick up stars like Cary Grant and Lucille Ball.

He talked pets with Lucy, and Grant liked him so much that he presented Haug with two pair of horn-rimmed glasses — similar to ones Haug wore daily as he ran Sarasota’s biggest performing arts hall for 17 years.

Haug, who died Wednesday at age 91, was such a key figure at the hall that some speculated it would just fold after he retired in 1987. He helped make sure that did not happen when he founded the hall’s fundraising arm, the Van Wezel Foundation.

“It was more than a job for him,” said his stepdaughter, Sandy MacDonald. “He was proud of the Van Wezel. It was his baby, it really was.”

Haug had a hands-on approach to bringing stars to the hall, and would spend all day on the phone with agents trying to book the likes of opera singer Luciano Pavarotti, pianist Vladimir Horowitz and Bob Hope.

“These people never even heard of Sarasota,” said Haug’s stepson, Jon MacDonald. “He would say, ‘I see you guys are heading to Miami for a show. Why don’t you stop here for a day?’”

And after that first visit, the stars would come back.

Show nights, Haug and his wife, Fran, would stand in the lobby to greet audience members as they entered.

MacDonald recalled how Haug was especially proud after he booked Horowitz, a Russian pianist who rarely performed in concert at that late stage in his career.

Haug had his own piano delivered to the Van Wezel green room so Horowitz could practice on it, had darker drapes hung at Horowitz’s Longboat hotel and ordered a special fish dinner for him.

“He would make them feel so at home they would want to come back,” MacDonald said.

Gretchen Serrie worked with Haug when she was manager of the Sarasota Orchestra, which rented space in the hall.

“Without Curt Haug, our hall and our arts community would not have flourished and grown as they have,” Serrie said.

Serrie said Haug was attracting big names at a time when few popular and classical performing acts were venturing south of Atlanta.

Longtime friend Harvey Rothenberg put it this way: “He had a romance with the Van Wezel.”

He and his wife married in the Van Wezel grand foyer in 1971.

With Haug running the show, the Van Wezel stayed in the black and did not need a public subsidy.

When he was not at the hall, Haug loved to do crossword puzzles, play golf and spend time with “Muffy,” a dog the Haugs adopted after it was hit by a car.

Haug loved to tell stories, and one on his Top 5 list begins with Haug driving back from the airport with Grant, Sandy MacDonald said.

Grant and his wife came down the steel staircase from their plane. About halfway down, he said, “Mr. Haug you have white hair and wear dark horn-rimmed glasses, just like I do.”

The next day Grant told Haug he would pick him up a pair of the specially-designed glasses on his next trip to Italy. The store went out of business, and Grant ended up sending Haug two pairs of his old glasses.

Sarasota Mayor Lou Ann Palmer said she will prepare a resolution honoring the former hall director.

“It is a very sad, sad thing to see someone who was such a luminary leave the scene,” Palmer said.

Haug was born April 23, 1917, in New Britain, Pa. He graduated from high school in 1934, then attended the University of Richmond, in Virginia, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1938.

He aboard a freighter in the Merchant Marine during World War II.

He worked in management positions at YMCAs in Massachusetts and New York for two decades before he took the job of treasurer of the Chautauqua Institution, an arts and education facility in southwestern New York State, in 1960.

Haug later became president of the Chautauqua Institution, and worked there until 1970.

He met Fran there, and “they fell in love and came to Sarasota together,” said his stepson, Jon MacDonald.

Fran Haug died in 2005 at age 75.

Family members say they will hold a memorial for Curt Haug in January at a time and date to be determined.

He is survived by his four children: Peter Haug, Hildreth Cash, Betsy Gray and Marsha Haug; two stepchildren, Jon MacDonald and Sandy MacDonald; and nine grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.