Editor’s Note: As part of a regular West Side Rag series, artist Michelle Hill will interview and paint/draw an Upper West Sider. This is the fourth in that series. To see the full series, click here.

Ray Willingham, born in 1937 in Atlanta, and raised in a small place outside the city called Panthersville.

When did you move to the Upper West Side?
I moved here in 1963 after serving in the Army and spending 9 months at home in Atlanta. I actually came at the behest of a friend on a visit and never left. I had just spent 3-1/2 years in the Army and was looking for a place to call home.

My reason for joining the Army was to learn a foreign language. It was 1958, and my intention was to learn Russian: Sputnik was all the rage, having gone into orbit in October of 1957. It certainly caught my attention. After Basic Training in 1959, imagine my surprise to find out that all Russian openings had been filled for at least five months! I then chose German which turned out to be a very fortunate choice, given my interest in music and German literature. After completing 6 months / 6 hours a day of German drilling at the Army Language School in Monterey, California, I was sent to Berlin to a security outfit where I spent the next 2-1/2 years. During this time, a number of important events took place: among others, the Wall went up, and Gary Powers was returned to the U.S. authorities in a “spy” swap for Rudolph Abel.

Once I arrived in New York, I really felt at home. My first room at $65/month was at 171 West 71st., an address of some fame, since it is reported that Al Pacino had breakfast there at the beginning of the filming of “Panic in Needle Park.” Needle Park was just around the corner but is no longer called that. There was a diner in that building on the corner called “Ham and Eggs” with a nefarious reputation, but I’ll leave that to your imagination. With the exception of a year here and there, at least forty-five of the last fifty years I have spent right here in the same physical block, first on the 71^st Street side, then on the 72^nd Street side.

The last tenant to live in my present apartment, a Mrs. Richmond, was reported to have moved into this apartment in 1923. It was also asserted to me that Mrs. Richmond was the second tenant. Thus, I am the third tenant, having moved in in 1976 upon Mrs. Richmond’s death.

Why always on the Upper West Side?
As cliché as it might sound, it is the sort of ‘real’ that grows out of the hardscrabble condition the West Side was in during the years before the ‘renaissance’ began. One must point out that ours is not the only such neighborhood that went through such a transformation, but it is simply where I happily wound up.

The building of Lincoln Center, replacing a rundown area, turned the West Side around to become a more upscale place, to be sure. I am often asked which of the two, the former or present, West Side I prefer. And the only answer I can come up with is that I’ve always loved being here, no matter what. I am often reminded of a lovely Schubert song, Der Wanderer, in which the poet can never, despite all his wanderings, find happiness. He ultimately calls upon a far-off voice and asks just where happiness is. To which the voice replies: ‘There where you are not, there is happiness.’ I like to think that the West Side took care of that problem for me.

What have you been doing here?
Mine is a purely good luck story. Needing to pay bills from school, I took a typing job in a large and rapidly-growing law firm. Promotions followed over the next 27 years, then retirement. That the positions I filled had nothing to to do with any of my prior academic work was a strange quirk.. Not that this is the recommended approach to job seeking, but it did happen in my case.

What about government?
NYC government has certainly been hit or miss over the past fifty years. I would like to stay away from genuinely controversial topics like the present traffic-related rearrangements, etc. Rather, I would like to point out that, mayors like Giuliani, Koch, and Bloomberg have been courageous and tackled some of the underlying ills of a big city like New York. However, in my view, we need a mayor who is a visionary and goes after a grander set of plans to make New York a better city. Yet, if asked, I couldn’t even make a single suggestion to that end, since the problems are so wide-ranging. It’s just my gut feeling, however, that a continuation of piecemeal solutions will lead to a city that will never reach its potential.

What do you miss about the old Upper West Side?
In short, the ability to find a reasonably-priced and simple meal, to wit, as a simple example: meatloaf, mashed potatoes and a sinfully greasy portion of collards – or any greens with actual flavor. Oh yeah, breakfast with grits wouldn’t hurt either.