STLCC-Meramec instructor Uldis Alks died Sunday at the age of 77. He is survived by his son Markus
Alks, 41.
Kurt Oberreither
-News Editor-
A larger-than-life painting with shades of pink and orange set on an easel at the far west wing of the BOPP Chapel Funeral Home. The waist-up of an elderly man with thick-rimmed glasses is depicted. More colors – yellow, blue and red – drape from a pedestal to the left of the canvas.
Uldis Alks’s self-portrait carries his legacy.
Yellow, blue and red are the colors of the subject of the painting’s division of the Latvian Student Fraternity and are only a few of the colors Alks wore close to his heart.
Alks, 77, died Monday, Nov. 28 after a heart attack. His memorial service and burial were held on Dec. 3.
“I was lucky enough to see him two days before [he died] at Thanksgiving,” his former wife Annabelle Alks said. “We were always close friends, best friends.”
Alks and Annabelle divorced in 2004. Nine years earlier, Alks retired from the National Geospatial-intelligence Agency (NGA) and in 1997, a coworker from the NGA, Roger Becker, contacted Alks.
“Roger called him up one day and asked him if he wanted a job,” Annabelle said. “He didn’t want to do nothing [after he retired].”
There was an open position in the geography department at STLCC-Meramec and he knew Alks was looking for something to do after retirement.
Alks signed on as an adjunct geography instructor and shared an office in what is now a classroom in Science West 105 with faculty members John Gribb, David Wamsley and Becker.
“He always told me I saved his life,” Becker said.
Wamsley said Alks would share stories of his childhood in Latvia and Germany and discuss the Soviet Union and geography.
As a token of appreciation, Wamsley bought Alks a map of Latvia which he used as a liaison for the U.S. military with Latvia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“He always wanted to take me to Latvia and show me the place he [lived],” Wamsley said.
Outside of school, Alks took Gribb and Wamsley out on day-long trips on the Mississippi River in his sail boat.
“He was going to teach me how to be a sailor. But he realized I wasn’t very good at it,” Gribb said. “He did realize I could fetch beer.”
In 2000, Alks began taking courses like drawing and painting at Meramec. He took watercolor painting and oil painting with Margaret Keller. She said Alks would use his own drawings and photographs to paint in class.
“He really liked painting people,” Keller said. “When he was in my watercolor class, it was during the time of the presidential elections. And he would sit in front of his TV at home with his drawing pad watching the news, and he would do incredible drawings of like Hilary Clinton and all these people. And then he would bring his drawing to class and he would make really wonderful watercolors with those.”
Annabelle said she first realized her husband’s artistic ability when she visited his family in Buffalo, NY, and saw the work he did when he was a student.
“I knew he had the talent because he had his artwork in his bedroom and he pursued that art actively after he retired,” Annabelle said.
Keller said Alks would also paint “European” images from his childhood like his Latvian relatives.
When Alks was 10, he and his family were forced to leave their homeland of Latvia for Germany, where they lived for five years before immigrating to the U.S. Uldis learned English. Wamsley said Alks’s accent was “subtle.”
Alks spent three years leading up to his death as a participating artist at the Crestwood Art Coop, a gallery for artists to display and sell their work. One member, Barbara Otterson, said Alks sold a number of paintings there.
“He had his own style,” Otterson said. “He used to love to pick your brain and always wanted to improve himself.”
Keller said Alks was “semi-stubborn” at times.
“He wanted comments,” Keller said. “And if I would tell him something that he needed to fix he would do that, but sometimes it took some convincing.”
One of his students, Kendall Ilko, said Alks’s stories brought the coursework to life.
“He’s the kind of professor you would have liked to go and have a drink with,” Ilko said.
