Cookbook Author, Artist Howard Mitcham Dies
Times Picayune 09-25-1996

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Howard Mitcham, an artist and poet who filled a nationally praised New Orleans
cookbook with recipes he tested on the stove of a friend's French Quarter
apartment, died Aug. 22 at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Mass., of a heart
attack and complications from diabetes. He was 79.

For many years, Mr. Mitcham spent six months a year in New Orleans and the
other six months in Provincetown, Mass., where he owned a restaurant and wrote
a newspaper food column.

In New Orleans, he was probably best known for his 1978 cookbook, "Creole
Gumbo and All That Jazz: A New Orleans Seafood Cookbook," which was
illustrated with his woodcuts and drawings. The book drew praise for its
recipes and its history of the city's Creole population.

Mr. Mitcham also wrote two other cookbooks, "Provincetown Seafood Cookbook"
and "Clams, Mussels, Oyster, Scallops and Snails," as well as "Tales from the
Byzantium," a collection of his own fairy tales illustrated with his woodcuts.

Mr. Mitcham had an apartment in the 600 block of St. Peter Street in the
French Quarter. His longtime friend, photographer Johnny Donnels, lived on the
floor below.

It was on the efficiency-size stove in Donnels' apartment that Mr. Mitcham
tried out his recipes on Friday nights, Donnels said. "If it didn't kill
anybody or make anybody sick, we put it in the book," he said. His recipes
leaned heavily on Tabasco sauce.

Donnels described Mr. Mitcham as "the quintessential bohemian."

At one point, Donnels said, Mr. Mitcham told him he'd like to be buried in a
Truro, Mass., cemetery beside an old clamdigger friend of his.

But another time, Donnels said, "We were sitting in Pat O'Brien's, and he said
if ever he died, he would like to be cremated and have his ashes scattered
through the ventilating fan of the ladies room at Pat O'Brien's."

Instead, his ashes were spread over the ocean in Cape Cod.

James Howard Mitcham was born in Winona, Miss., and graduated from Greenville
High School with writer Shelby Foote, a longtime friend. He earned a degree in
art and architecture at Louisiana State University. He moved to New York's
Greenwich Village, where he ran the Jane Street Gallery in the 1940s.

Mr. Mitcham became deaf at age 16 from spinal meningitis, but that didn't
stand in his way as he regaled friends with stories in a booming, Southern-
accented voice.

Many of Mr. Mitcham's friends, as well as his stepdaughter, Julia Turansky of
Cincinnati, learned sign language to converse with him. "I essentially grew up
sitting in bars with him, listening to heated adult discussions about art,
literature, food and politics," Turansky said.

For people who didn't know how to sign, Mr. Mitcham would carry notebooks and
pens so they could write him notes.

Jan Kelly, who wrote a food column for The Provincetown Advocate with Mr.
Mitcham for years, described him as "brilliant, a great art lover and so well-
read that there wasn't a literary or mythical reference that he didn't know.
He was an absolute genius, brilliant, terribly complicated at times, but never
boring."

He lived at the Cape End Manor in Provincetown for the past two years.

Besides Turansky, survivors include a daughter, Sabina Donnamario of Berwyn,
Ill.; two grandchildren; and a stepgrandchild.

A memorial service was held Saturday at the Old Colony Tap in Provincetown.
McHoul Funeral Home in Provincetown handled arrangements. A private memorial
service will be held in New Orleans next month.