Sumner Winebaum was a Portsmouth boy to the core. In a privately printed memoir, the popular Seacoast sculptor recalls devouring stacks of comic books, listening to radio shows on the old family Philco, walking home from Hebrew school through the 1938 hurricane, duking it out with neighborhood bullies and struggling to master the clarinet. Despite the Great Depression, he had a lively childhood amid exciting times. Sumner was, after all, the son of Harry Winebaum, the man who distributed all the newspapers in town. And everyone loved Harry.
As a teen, too young for a driver’s license, Sumner and his brother Bernie drove delivery trucks for Winebaum News in the early hours before school. The police never interfered. Irrepressibly independent, young Sumner loved jazz, fine art and pretty girls. But he never forgot his father, Harry’s, mantra: “You show up every morning and you go to work.”
Winebaum divides his 89 years into four overlapping careers. The first began fresh out of college when he landed a job at the prestigious New York advertising firm of Young & Rubicam (now Y&R). This was the fashion-forward, three-martini lunch, “Mad Men” era of the Swinging Sixties. Sumner quickly found himself at the top of his game, managing satellite offices in London, Milan and Paris. His clients in Europe included Procter & Gamble, Xerox, Bristol Myers, Playtex and Winston cigarettes.
With his wife, actress Helen Auerbach, Sumner experienced the high life – parties, expense accounts, maids, cooks, golf and travel – but he never lost his Yankee work ethic. After a successful advertising career, according to his memoir, the Winebaums returned to New Hampshire from Europe in 1967 with two sons, Sam and Jake, plus his beloved Jaguar and 300 smuggled bottles of wine.
Sumner’s second career, taking over his father’s business, lasted 14 years. The offices of Winebaum News were then located in a once-stately Colonial mansion in Portsmouth’s North End. The 1770-era Joshua Wentworth House would have been razed like hundreds of other North End buildings. Instead, as the bulldozers of urban renewal approached, the Winebaums moved the mansion by barge down the Piscataqua River. It was floated beneath the Memorial Bridge and donated to Strawbery Banke Museum. Now in private hands, it survives to this day. For the next decade, Winebaum News was headquartered in Dover. The family renovated a 1735 farm in Exeter. But Sumner’s creative spirit was itching to break free.
Exactly when he began career number three, Sumner the sculptor, is difficult to pin down. Without formal training in art (he was an English major at the University of Michigan), he had dabbled with clay from his days in New York City. In Europe he tried to find time for sculpting at least once a week. He built a studio in a barn when the family lived in Exeter and began hiring models.
He never considered his creative work simply as a pastime. He was, he knew, training for his next career. By 1981, the second president of Winebaum News was ready to move to his next job. He sold the business and the Winebaums built their dream house near the ocean in York, Maine, where he had summered as a boy.
Their grand new home, of course, includes a professional artist’s studio. With a nod to sculptor Rodin, his spiritual guide, and with the voice of his father still in his ear, Sumner Winebaum now rose each day as a full-time sculptor. Still a writer at heart and a businessman by training, he has created a large body of work – most of it in praise of the human form. When a model did not show up one day, he looked at his own strong hands, modeled them in clay and cast them in bronze – a theme he would return to often. His work has been the focus of shows across New England and in New York, and can be seen at the Currier Museum of Art, York Hospital, Temple Israel and atop Mount Agamenticus in York.
Sumner and Helen Winebaum are partners in the fourth career. They are co-philanthropists, having given their talent and resources to countless groups including the Greater Piscataqua Community Foundation, Bow Street Theater, Strawbery Banke Museum, York Land Trust, the Nature Conservancy in Maine, Portsmouth Historical Society and more. They are passionate about supporting adult literacy programs, gundalows, their synagogue, local history, the environment, the arts, local theater and a host of nonprofit causes.
Among the toughest parts of growing older, Sumner confesses in a memoir written only for family and friends, is not being able to ski. And if you know his history, that says a lot. Although he admittedly faints at the sight of blood, this man of many careers is unafraid of falling. He has skied down frozen slopes from New Hampshire to Jackson Hole, Alta to Stowe, Sun Valley to the Swiss Alps. In a lifetime of tumbles he has dislocated shoulders, shattered a knee, cracked a sternum and come back for more.
A slick advertising agency might sum up the four careers of Sumner Winebaum with a slogan like communicate, produce, create and give back. It’s not about being unbreakable, the sculptor teaches us. The secret of life is to get up, show up and keep working.
Copyright J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved. Note, Helen Winebaum passed away in 2018 and Summer died the following year at age 91.
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