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From Astronauts to Architects to her Own Art

Try as she might, it wasn’t easy for Cleo Northrop to settle down in one place. Originally from Buffalo, New York, Cleo spent much of her life between Connecticut and Florida, working all sorts of jobs in between.

“I was always in the art field. Art, music, whatever,” she says.

Cleo went to Florida when her first husband, Ron (then her boyfriend), got a job there as a drummer. After Ron was drafted to the Air Force, Cleo ended up working for Boeing at Cape Canaveral in the 1960s as a typist working with data processing machines.

She worked at Boeing during the day and as a cocktail waitress at night. Ron played at nightclubs in the evenings when he was off duty. That situation introduced her to the Mercury astronauts who would often frequent nightclubs after hours.

“They all wanted to play an instrument. They couldn’t play, but they wanted to play,” Cleo says. “Who’s going to tell one of the seven original astronauts that they can’t play drums? Nobody.”

After she and Ron separated, Cleo married her second husband, William Northrop, another musician.

“I marry musicians, what can I say?” Cleo says.

Sometimes, she played drums or bass for the band, and sang backup or lead when the band was between singers. Together, they played progressive jazz music in night clubs and even recorded and sold their own tapes.

“We traveled everywhere. I didn’t want to,” Cleo said.

For a few years, Cleo and William owned a restaurant next door to the fire department in Devon. William learned to be a chef from the previous owner and Cleo acted as the hostess and bartender. In the evening, they were the musical entertainment in the lounge.

“We bought it not knowing that every time there was a fire, the alarm went off and the volunteer firemen would run out of the restaurant and leave all their food on the bar,” Cleo says. “It was an experience.”

In her diverse work life, Cleo also taught high school for a year in Poughkeepsie, New York and then for four years in Ridgefield, Connecticut. She earned a master’s degree in history and political science from Western Connecticut State University.

“That was before my husband wanted to go back to Florida,” she says.

He moved south and she took a job with world-famous architect César Pelli in New Haven.

At the time, “the operation was running rough,” Cleo says.

“I went in to interview with him and he asked me what my experience was. I says, I’m a businessperson…You need somebody who can organize this and have it all moving together,” Cleo says. “They hired me for more money than I had ever made.”

Cleo says she worked harder at that firm than she did anywhere else, but it was difficult to control the expenses of 125 architects.

“Architects are a different species,” Cleo says. “They take their ties and throw them behind…I don’t know why. It’s not like their ties are going to get in their soup. Sometimes they take their glasses off and put them behind their heads. It’s an architect thing.”

Eventually, Cleo decided that she didn’t like the architecture business. She moved down to Florida with William again where they had a brief stint working as musicians on a cruise ship.

Soon after the cruise ship job, she and William split up. Cleo finally came to a stop when she moved to Apple Rehab in 2017 after a struggle with diabetes.

“I said, a friend of mine’s mother went to Apple and she said she loved it,” Cleo says.

Soon after she arrived, Cleo began to take art more seriously, working on acrylic paintings and pen and ink line drawings.

“I don’t know that I can ever say that I started painting. It was on and off all my life,” she says.

Cleo has shown her art in the Hagaman Memorial Library. Some of her work will appear in the library for the duration of September 2017 where they can be viewed and purchased by the public.

“Elephants, horses, tigers, and cats seem to be everybody’s favorite topic, so I do a lot of animals,” she says. “[Painting buildings] bores me after a while. I like living things.”

Her first painting was of a resting black panther. While she wouldn’t want to sell her first painting, Cleo says she received a few good offers for it and eventually sold some of her other pieces.

“I never learned, I never studied art. I just picked up a pencil and when there was a blank piece of paper, sketched something on it,” Cleo says.