Chris and Sandy’s 40th Anniversary Script

Note: This is a little different than the video and has more photos

Chris: Hello everyone, thanks for sharing this stroll down memory lane with us.

Weʼre going to describe a little about what led up to our wedding as well as our travels in Europe and North Africa for the 9 months following our wedding.

Our daughter Camille told us we canʼt take longer than an hour and weʼll try to do that. In any case, donʼt feel you have to stay glued to your seats–get up if you want, get something else to drink. Bathrooms are…

We may have mis-led people into thinking today is our anniversary; actually, last March 28th was our 40th anniversary. But where were we? At a craft show of course! And anyway we just couldnʼt get this party together by then.

Our son Ivan contacted some of our friends and relatives and asked them for reminiscences of us and thatʼs what really gave us the idea to re-visit 1970

Sandy: The Viet Nam war overshadowed everything else going on in 1970. The first big demonstration we remember was October 21, 1967, organized by the Washington Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

We were both there although we had not yet met.

Chris: I was a senior at John F. Kennedy HS in Silver Spring, MD. At that protest, I carried a sign that said “JFK students to end the war in VietNam.” A clip of me was broadcast on the evening news, which did not make the principal of JFK happy. On Monday he told me I did not represent the student body and he suspended me. This was my first realization that it wasnʼt just hoods that got called to the principalʼs office.

Sandy: Had I known him then, I could have told him that, given my many run-ins with high school administrators. I was in 10th grade at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, a school which was a huge let-down after my 3 years at a very good junior high.

My friend Steve

had the foresight to transfer to JFK and told me about this peace march which we attended together. He also told me a lot about his new school and new friends which made me increasingly sorry I hadnʼt transferred also.

Chris: JFK was a very progressive school–no hall monitors–or bells
etc. Attendance in classes was optional and students were able to do just about anything.

I spent most of my senior year in the art room working with clay and metal–thatʼs when I made my first jewelry.

Sandy: In December 1967, Steve took me to a party at the house of one of his new friends: Chris Boothe. I was 15 and Chris was 17. We were soon spending a lot of time together.

Richard Montgomery became harder and harder for me to bear and I found many ways to be absent; sometimes I got caught

I had been editor of my junior high literary magazine but at Richard Montgomery, I detested my English teacher so vehemently that I avoided her class more than any other and ended up flunking her class.

Hereʼs a great picture of Richard Montgomery when they were tearing it down some years after I attended.

Chrisʼs school sounded way better, so several times I took the bus there and Chris told me which classes were particularly worthwhile. Of course he didnʼt go with me to classes cause he was in the art room working with ceramics and learning to solder metal.

Chris: I graduated that June

and got a job at C & P Telephone Co. in downtown Silver Spring

where I put my soldering skills to use and, among other things called Sandy from on top of a telephone pole. Then they learned I wasnʼt yet 18 and put me inside the frame room

In those days, long hair on males was a political statement and set some people on edge–those were the guys I worked with.

Sandy–In the summer of 1968, after taking summer school (in order to pass English,) my family moved to northwest DC so that my father would be closer to his new job at the US State Department. He had consulted with my younger brother Marshall and me about transferring to different schools and I was only too happy to leave Rockville and Richard Montgomery. Unfortunately my new school Calvin Coolidge although better in some ways, had its own problems, one of which was that it felt like a prison

Miserable high school experience #2–Calvin Coolidge, Washington, DC

So during my junior year there I hatched a plan to attend 12th grade at a nearby private school. Only problem was that sometime that year the Johnson Administration slashed Federal spending which cost my father his job and family finances were increasingly tough.

In the summer of 1969 I got a job at Globe Book Shop, one block from the White House where I worked for this man: Alex Roesell.

This is a recent picture of the building which has had various reincarnations, one of which was a restaurant which Mairi Ross of Jerome once worked in.

As summer ended it was clear I wasnʼt going to have enough money for school tuition so I begged my parents to let me keep working until I had earned enough and they agreed.

Chris–In the Fall of 1969 Sandy and I had a falling out and along with the misery of working at the phone company, I decided to take off and see a bit of the world.

First I hitchhiked to NYC and stayed with a friend at the Pratt Art Institute …

…and got a job assembling jewelry at a place called The Ball and Chain.

When I made some money, I hitchhiked to Boston and stayed in a friendʼs Frat House. I was sleeping on the couch when the Frat Boys came back. Theyʼd been in some kind of play and all had on gangster make up. They were really scary looking but were actually very nice.

The next day I left early and hitched a ride to the Canadian border at Chateaugay. I had very little money and was denied entry but thought I might get through on a bus. However customs pulled me off at the border and I was again denied entry. The next day I hitched down some little road and had the guy drop me off 500 yards before customs. I took a right and walked for a couple of hours and, like illegals today, crossed the border on foot.

In Montreal, I approached some friendly looking people who took me under their wing and let me stay in exchange for helping with painting and other jobs fixing up their house. They were interesting and exotic

and the whole experience really gave me the travel bug. I stayed there about 3 weeks.

Sandy–Initially I had every intention of finishing high school but when Chris got back, we made up and he was talking about traveling to Europe and that started to seem like a really good idea. Chris was a big fan of Donovan at the time

[Play music “Widow With a Shawl” (excerpt)]

and broached the idea of getting married in a Scottish castle.

That was our first plan but our mothers were really unhappy since they wouldnʼt be able to attend the wedding. They convinced us to get married before we left and, as I was underage and needed legal permission, that seemed like a good idea.

Chris–Our plan was always to get married outdoors. Sandyʼs family lived near a trail that led into Rock Creek Park in Washington and we just explored the trails in that part of the park until we found a good spot.

We tried to get permission from the Park Service but ran into so much bureaucracy we finally gave up. During the service a Park policeman on a horse approached Sandyʼs brother jeff and said we couldnʼt have a wedding there but Jeff just told him the ceremony was underway and the policeman left.

Sandy–We found a used band jacket for Chris in Georgetown–this was the Sergeant Pepper era after all! And a friend gave me 6 yards of velveteen which I used to make my dress, kind of like Scarlett OʼHara and the draperies she used.

Here we are with our mothers

Chris: Our friend Barry Michaelson made our wedding rings:

And this is the necklace I made for Sandy to wear:

Sandy: People told us we were too young and they were right–We didnʼt promise to stay together forever. We didnʼt know whether it could work but it didnʼt matter–we were going off together no matter what.

The unitarian minister we got was very pessimistic about our chances.
During his interviews with us it came out that he was recently divorced., which probably made his outlook for us even bleaker.

Chris: He was a nice guy and either decided we had a bit of glue or thought what the hell–let them see for themselves.

He asked us what we wanted him to do–that there were no requirements except the marriage license. We told him he could say whatever he wanted, that we would just let him know when it was time for him to speak.

We played a Leonard Cohen song on guitar and recorder called “Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye”

Over the years people have been bewildered by our choice because itʼs a sad song about a break-up but for us it was a symbol about our getting back together after we had broken up and, Hey, thatʼs no way to say good-bye.

“I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm, yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new, in city and in forest they smiled like me and you, but now it’s come to distances and both of us must try, your eyes are soft with sorrow, hey, that’s no way to say goodbye.”

Sandy: We also read poetry from Kenneth Patchen and Leonard Cohen and shared our thoughts and hopes about our marriage.

We donʼt remember exactly what the minister said when it was his turn,

but we remember what he did: he held up a white lily and said it represented all that is pure and beautiful in a marriage, and then he threw it on the ground and stepped on it, saying this is what can happen if a marriage is not cared for properly, or words to that effect.

Chris –I took our kids to see the spot last year and they were amazed that we made everyone walk so far but at the time it didnʼt seem like a big deal, except for the spectacle we created crossing 16th street with my father grumbling the whole way

We needed to keep the number of people relatively small at the wedding ceremony so the day after we had a party with our friends and the younger family members, out in the country at the house of some friends. It snowed that day so we were glad we hadnʼt planned the ceremony that day!

We had fun at the party; cousin Jan painted her face (or someone did)

Our friend Susan danced

and we admired wedding gifts

Sandy: We had booked passage on a freighter to Spain but it didnʼt leave right after our wedding so we kept working for about another month. We both quit our jobs, Chris for the second time and he made sure heʼd never work at the phone company again by submitting his resignation

Chris –in the form of a poem, “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock;” hereʼs an excerpt:

For I have known them all already, known them all; Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

Sandy: My boss Alex wrote me a great letter of recommendation; youʼll see how it came in handy later in this story.

Together we had saved about $1000 and we made our way to Red Hook in Brooklyn where the Yugoslavian freighter Goran Kovacic was delayed 3 more days until it finally left in April….

Chris: Along with varied cargo, there were 15 passengers including Lainie and Jeff who had also just gotten married, a single woman named Janet, a single man named Chris who was traveling with his very sociable grandmother to her villa in Tangier where he planned to paint all summer. His grandmother organized the board games each evening. When we got to know Chris a little better, he let us know he was the cousin of Sharon Tate–the infamous victim of the Manson murderers whose trial began in Los Angeles in 1970.

Sandy –We donʼt remember a lot about the other passengers except for a constantly complaining loudmouth who we called Mrs. Cornhauser; her face is pink because she got seriously sunburned.

We had a great time on the ship, hoping for a storm but had a smooth journey the whole way. At night in the pitch dark, we watched the phosphorescent plankton off the bow of the boat which left a glowing wake behind.

Chris–We had no plan for this trip except to visit Greece. Our tickets were to Valencia Spain with a short stop for unloading in Tangier. Originally we had planned to hitchhike as much as possible but Jeff and Lainie convinced us that their plan was better: buy a motorcylcle in Barcelona. Janet decided to do that too.

After 9 days, we arrived in the port of Tangier at night. The little transistor radio we had could finally pick up a signal.

[music]

Hereʼs the sight we saw in the morning

We watched from our porthole as the exotic dock workers in their djellabahs

unloaded bags of pet food and cereal and other cargo. We were able to disembark and spend about 3 hours wandering in the medina, or shopping area

where we heard many little boys saying “I am your friend.” We looked at a leather bag but thought it was much too expensive and, not understanding the bargaining ritual, just walked away with the shopkeeper in tow insisting we could get it for less. We eventually bought one finding out later that we had in fact, paid too much.

Sandy: Perhaps it was the lure of that exotic experience that made us decide to come back after we saw some of Spain and Portugal. The other Chris and his grandmother urged us to visit them when we returned.

The freighter arrived in Valencia later that day where we bought train tickets to Barcelona. While waiting for the train we went to a nearby university to eat in the cafeteria. Some students overheard us talking and came over with a newspaper, asking us what we thought about what was happening in the U.S. This was the first we knew about the Kent State shootings. It was a real shock and Chris felt like we got out just in time.

In Barcelona the five of us bought 3 Bultaco 250 motorcycles.

We had to wait a couple of days until they were ready; in the meantime we got rid of some of the stuff we had, giving some of it to a man we met who lived across the street from the pension where we were staying. We told him we were going to drive up the coast to Cadaques where we hoped to meed Salvador Dali. He told us he knew Dali and would give us a letter of introduction, which he did. Not knowing Spanish, we didnʼt know exactly what the letter said.

Chris–Neither of us had ever driven a motorcycle; Sandy hadnʼt even driven a car yet. I learned to drive the bike in the Pyrenees Mountains on the way to Daliʼs house. We found it with no problem; it was the only one with giant eggs on top

We knocked on the door and when the housekeeper opened it, we smiled at her and handed her our letter of introduction. She read it over, shrugged her shoulders and looked at us with disdain as she closed the door. so we left

Sandy: Over the next week or so we made our way to Madrid via several small roads. We had a trusty Michelin map and seeing a shortcut, we took it although it was marked unimproved. And boy did we pay–that 20 miles took hours

Near Zaragosa we camped in a field where it was very quiet and dark. Unlike a similar trip today, we were completely cut off–no phone, no computer, but we had our little radio. When we turned it on that evening we were startled to hear

[American Woman]

Chris: We spent 2 days in the Prado Art Museum in Madrid, Sandy got food poisoning, and when she recovered, we set off for Toledo,

and Portugal. We saw many ancient little towns with ox carts in the fields. Stopping for gas and bifsteaks, we gathered a crowd that stared at us for the short time we were there.

Sandy: After Lisbon we drove along the southern coast to Seville, with winds coming off the sea that were so hard it felt like we were leaning at a 45 degree angle in order to keep from getting blown over.

We tried to get a ferry from Algeciras to Tangier but we werenʼt allowed on. A policeman who watched what was happening came up to us and told us it was because of Chrisʼs hair and that we would have better luck if we took a ferry to Ceuta, which is a tiny part of Spain attached to the African continent. So thatʼs what we did, and drove to the Moroccan border where I took both of our passports up to the customs office. They opened Chrisʼs passport and said “where is this man?”

So I went back to the bike and told Chris he had to come with me. When he got there, the customs official motioned for him to take off his helmet. He studied his hair and then decided to let us in.

Chris: Wandering around Tangier, we saw some friendly looking people

and asked them about hotels. They laughed and said there was only one place we should stay–the Playa Hotel. This was a place that was full of kids who had been there too long and are probably there still. So of course we stayed there too.

Every night there was a party on the roof that went on into the wee hours, making it too late to leave once we got up. During the several days we were there we visited Chris and his grandmother and a friend of theirs, soaking up the exotic atmosphere.

We took a little drive and found a family living in an old castle

We set off to cross North Africa to Tunisia, with a total of $50 in our pockets. The first night we stayed in Chechaouen. When we came back to the hotel from dinner, the hotel proprietor named Fatima was extremely friendly and chatty, asking us lots of questions. When we got to our room we discovered that some of the cash we had stupidly left in our back pack was missing. Later, piecing it together we realized Fatima had been stalling us while her confederate robbed us.

Did we change our plans? No, we still had $35 and said, yeah, thatʼs enough to get to Tunisia. We did change our eating habits but decided we could get by on one meal a day, usually an orange or two, bread, cheese, and sardines. At the time it seemed pretty good but to this day Sandy will not let sardines pass her lips.

Sandy: When we finally got to Algiers, we couldnʼt find any inexpensive hotels. A man somehow realized our predicament and told us if we didnʼt mind sleeping outside, we could stay on the roof of a church. His name was Monsieur Bourgeois and he was a French physics professor and deacon of the church. The next day he fed us and took us swimming at a beach with his two young friends Didier and Hugues who had motorbikes.

In Constantine which we passed through at night, we got lost at the wharf which was infested with rats. The city was so spooky==a lot of different levels with many bridges connecting them.

We couldnʼt make it as far as we had hoped so stopped in a tiny place called Guelma which had no rooms available. We asked a policeman for assistance and he took us to the station and gave us a room to camp in. We tiptoed over drunks and followed him into a room that had pictures of freaked out children and unidentified cadavers. Spent a very hot night trying to sleep.

Naturally we got out of there as fast as we could the next morning and high-tailed it to Tunisia. At the border, the guards asked us how much money we had and we said “$15.” They searched everything we had, asking me about the box of tampons which apparently they had never seen before. When they finished they indicated they wanted to see our money so Chris pulls out $15 and they were incredulous that that was all we had.

Chris: We spent a couple of days at a youth hostel in Tunis and then went to the beach in front of the ruins of Carthage. With an ancient wall for shade and the jeweled sea in front of us, the ruins to explore in our backyard in the evening, in view of the house of President Habib Bouguiba whose toothy face was plastered all over the city.

We had an offer from a local who wanted to buy the motorcycle but could only pay us in Dinar. So we went to some government office to see if we would be able to change Dinar to dollars or Lira as we were going next to Italy. We followed some official who was taking us to another office where presumably we were going to get an answer. He lead us up and down creaky stairwells, through hallways, and even a bathroom before we arrived at the place where another official told us no, we could not exchange Dinar for anything and we couldnʼt take any of it out of Tunisia.

Meanwhile, as this Kafka-like experience was unfolding, the dwarf we had refused to pay to guard our motorcycle, was removing the gas lines so that when we came out and tried to turn on the bike, the gas started pouring on to the streeet. I went to a nearby hardware store and bought some replacement tubing.

So we couldnʼt sell the bike there and then with money so generously wired us by my father, we bought tickets on a ferry to Sicily.

Sandy: Made our way to Messina, stopping along the way to buy gelatos in celebration of my 18th birthday. Chris asked me what I wanted and, since we had no money, it felt like I could wish for anything, and I said “Leonard Cohen,”

That night we attempted to sleep in a churchyard that was filled with the intoxicating fragrance of flowering trees. The next day we took another ferry to the mainland and tried to make our way up the twisting, winding road but I kept falling asleep until Chris was so alarmed that he said we just had to pull off to sleep. So we crawled into some woods and slept for about 18 hours.

We spent a month in and around Naples,

staying in a youth hostel and camping in a pine forest on the beach north of the city. We had our camera stolen there which is why we donʼt have many of our own photographs after Morocco.

Chris: We tried to sell our motorcycle which was problematic because of tax issues which made it very unlikely we could sell it to an Italian. Luckily we met an Italian bike mechanic who did a lot of work for US servicemen. He even bought us a tank of gas so that we could ride with a whole pack of bikers up into the countryside. He introduced us to a couple who let us stay with them and eventually hooked us up with a buyer.

Then we hitched to the east coast of Italy to get a boat to Greece where we got a bus to Athens. We wandered among the ruins and the Plaka, went to a wine festival where we saw a bunch of drunken sailors from the US 6th fleet,

and got a ferry to the island of Hydra where we hoped to meet Leonard Cohen.

This is a stunningly beautiful island with no cars but lots of donkeys for transporting people and things up the steep walkways

Sandy– We had brought with us some suede skins we had purchased in Athens. With just scissors and an awl, we made all kinds of bags, some with beaded decoration that I had taught myself how to do. We were selling some of these things in the port area where all the tourists came from the big tour boats and from the many yachts that came to port.

At a cafe one day we looked across the way and saw Leonard sitting with someone. We were paralyzed–we didnʼt know what to do. We couldnʼt just sit there and grin at him all day, so we left! Later we composed a letter to him telling him how much his music and poetry had meant to us and we mailed to him general delivery. We didnʼt see him for a week or so and thought he had left the island or just couldn’t be bothered with a couple of kids.

And then one day, he came up to us at a cafe, sat down, and said, youʼre the couple that wrote me that letter. We were stunned again! He invited us up to his house the next morning for breakfast. When we went, it was a simple little house like many others and there was no housekeeper, just Leonard at the door introducing us to his lady friend, Astrid from Germany. He cooked us a big omelet and served it to us himself.

Chris: Another time, with a different lady friend, he took us to meet a Greek friend, George Lialios, who was quite gracious and generous himself. Leonard was interested in the leather goods we were making and told us he needed a valise. We werenʼt even sure what that was but he described what he wanted and when we told him we also did beadwork, he said he would like an image of a Phoenix rising from ashes. He offered us $100 and I said, Oh thatʼs too much! He sat me down and led me to understand that he was in a position to pay this money and I needed to be in a position to accept it. So we did. When we look at the one picture we have of that valise, it seems so incredibly crude but we did the best we could

Sandy: In the beadwork, I put a man inside the Phoenix. 12 Years later a friend got a book of his autographed for us and in it Leonard wrote “I still have the bag…all good things.”

He told us he would be leaving the island soon; later we figured out it was for a concert in England, the Fesitval at the Isle of Wight. He showed us where he kept the key to his house and told us we could come anytime to listen to records, read, or just hang out. He was so abundantly gracious.

Chris–In contrast, one day, a yacht of such epic proportions that it would not fit into the harbor arrived with many colorful people who came ashore in a dingy. They made a procession toward where we were selling our leather goods and perched upon a donkey was Donovan! I told him what a big fan I was and asked him if heʼd be interested in any of our leather goods and he claimed there was no more room on the yacht and that anyway, we should be giving these things away. The capper was the fact that he wouldnʼt get off the donkey, and seemed to want to make sure we knew who was the star.

Later, we got kicked out of the port area by the police who wanted us to produce a sellers permit which we did not have.

We spent another couple of months on Hydra until the money was getting low again. We considered going to Israel to work on a kibbutz but we didnʼt have enough money to get there. A friend from Munich–Martin Muller–convinced us weʼd have better luck getting jobs in Germany than we would in Athens. So we travelled with him in his VW bug, spending one night along the road in Yugoslavia and one night in a hostel in Zagreg, putting the car on the train that ran through the alps to Austria, and then on to Munich and Frankfurt.

Sandy–Martin advised us to go to the employment office at the Military base in Frankfurt, which we did, via thumb.

They had a job they said either of us could do. We conferred briefly and decided that since my shoes didnʼt have any holes in them, I would take the job. So my nice recommendation from Alex Roesell at the bookstore, saying how competent I was and that he had promoted me to assistant paperback buyer, didnʼt help much as I accepted the job of “kitchen help” in a GI diner on the autobahn.

Luckily for us one of my co-workers was an American woman named Fran Meulner. I told her I was a little worried because I wasnʼt going to get a paycheck before all the money ran out. She asked whether we might be willing to do some housework in exchange for room and/or board and that we should come visit her and her family that weekend.

We were amazed when we arrived that a fellow “kitchen helper” would live in such an expensive house. Turned out that she had the job only in order to get PX privileges in order to help with travel and food costs for her, her husband, and six children. Mr. Meulner asked Chris what kind of work he was seeking. Chris said, basically anything and Mr. Meulner told him to come by the plant Monday. When we both got to the house Monday evening, Chris reported ecstatically that the person he reported to hired him on the spot. The company was Sperry-Rand Univac and Chrisʼs first job was to build power supplies. Later, he got a cushier position that involved loading magnetic tape and sitting around for a minimum of 30 minutes at a time until the tape finished running. Eventually we discovered that Mr. Muelner was general manager of Univac in Europe, which helped explain the ease with which Chris was hired.

We had a deal with the Meuleners where we did housework in exchange for room and board. They had a virtual warehouse of food which we were welcome to, a startling contrast to the meager diet we had maintained for much of this trip. Our plan at this point was to work until we saved enough to buy a VW bus and take the hippie trail to India.

Chris: However, Uncle Sam intervened. While on Hydra, I received a letter from the draft board telling me I was to report for induction.

By the time I received the letter, I had one day to comply. When I didnʼt show up, my status became draft delinquent. I corresponded from Frankfurt with a draft counselor in D.C. who told me that there were some things I could do, but I needed to come back to the U.S.

We said good-by to a friend I worked with who had escaped Communist Czechoslavakia by carving a fake passport stamp with a potato. It was his dream to move to the United States as you can see from the sweater he wore:

Sandy: We prepared to leave Germany and visit some friends and relatives before returning to the D.C. area. I realized how ironic it was that my employment with the US Armed Forces meant we could save significant money and take a military flight to the US, even though Chris was draft delinquent. Fran advised me not to tell my boss I was leaving because he was a horrible ex-Nazi (I was convinced,) who would find a way to screw things up if he could. So I left him a note on my last work day, and we flew to New York the next day,

sweating it out as the customs officers looked up our names in a great big book. Not finding anything on us, we were cleared to re-enter the United States, ending our 9 month so-called honeymoon.

Chris: After consulting draft counselors, a lawyer, a couple of mental health professionals, taking some psychological tests, and two interviews by Military examiners, I was declared unfit for military service–4f. Many friends and relatives sent letters explaining why I was unfit but my favorite was from a high school English teacher:

[2020: Cannot find that letter]
And now comes a summary of the rest of our lives up until now

Sandy: I was hired by Margo and Dan Figgins to babysit for their wonderful baby boy, Scott, who is here today with Margo, our friend for 39 years. We spent significant time living with them in the Dominican Republic and Argentina, and traveled through much of S. American with Scott and Margo in their VW bus.

Chris: I started making and selling jewelry in Argentina and selling it to the Foreign Service community, then, after our return to the U.S., became partners with my friend Barry Michaelson and we opened a shop called the Wedding Ring Store in Washington DC. After a couple of years, I was shot in a hold-up and 3 1/2 years later, we were held

up again and two police officers were shot. Shortly after that we closed the store and I started working in titanium and doing craft shows.

Sandy: I got my GED, went to community college, and graduated from Barnard College in New York in 1979. I worked for a publishing company for 5 years where I ended up editing the Index to the Code of Federal Regulations.

Ivan–and then I was born
Chris: Business was booming and I needed a partner

Sandy: And I decided I was missing too much of Ivanʼs childhood so I quit my job and became Chrisʼs business partner.

Camille: And then I was born

Chris: And we travelled all over the US doing craft shows. After a visit to our metal supplier in Clarkdale–Bill Seeley at Reactive Metals Studio, also here today–we fell in love with the Verde Valley and moved here the last day of 1989.

And twenty years later, here we are with all you wonderful people. ———————————-

Now weʼll read some of the memories of 1970 that some of you have sent us. Apparently many of you cannot remember 1970; or perhaps you donʼt WANT to remember. Anyway, here are a few things that we received; we edited a little, as you might notice. Some people are will remain unidentified….

John and Ruth Waddell, who could not be here tonight, moved to the Verde Valley from Tempe in 1970 and, with the help of many visitors and hangers-on, built the first structure at the studio where they still live. John began work for his sculpture “Dance” which took 4 1/2 years to finish and is now installed at the Herberger Theater in Phoenix.

Ruth said, “Bands of ʻhippiesʼ came through, seeking meaning in their lives; seeking something to believe in, to dedicate themselves to.
———————————–
Jim Rome lived right here in Jerome and was 5 years into an art career.

———————————-

Birgitta Lapides was studying art history in Sweden
——————————-
This person ran away from home in New York and moved to a commune in Big Sur, CA: the year for her was notable for flower children, free love, and great highs.

———————————
Camille: Another person was imbibing all sorts, waitressing at a Country Club, modeling for figure drawing classes and PARTYING. Culture shock every day from working at community college, then living & playing with druggies, hippies, artists, students & bikers.

—————————————–

Barry Lynn, a friend in D.C. told us that after the
 Kent
 State
 and
 Jackson 
State 
shooting, 
he
 and
 Joanne
, 
seniors 
at
 Dickinson 
College
 in 
Carlisle
 Pa.
 wanted
 to 
organize
 busloads
 of
 students
 to
 go
 to
 the
 big
 demonstration
 that
 Saturday
 in
Washington 
(about 
2
 hours
 away.)

They 
contacted
 many 
bus
 companies, 
all
 of
 whom
 refused
 to 
take
students
 to
 the
 demonstration.

 However, after a little cajoling, one company agreed and that Saturday about 6 busloads of students arrived in D.C. in brightly painted “GETTYSBURG BATTLEFIELD TOUR” buses.

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Another person was going to school in St. Louis at Washington Univ. That year she traveled 13 hours by bus to demonstrate against the Vietnam War with 100,000 others in Washington DC.

Her future husband was a freshman (and fresh he was) at Indiana University of Pa. He also attended the November anti-war demonstration. In 1970 he was into rock and roll, pot and hallucinogenics, shocked by Kent State and lost his virginity.

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Cody DeLong says:

In 1970, I was 6 and started first grade. Sara was 10 and got ‘cat-eye’ glasses.

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Donna Chesler:

We were students at University of Maryland. Ken and I met on the mall at the school. May 14, 1970 – the National Guard took over the campus due to protests and unrest. There was a big march on Route 1 and tear gas was used on protestors. Ken did not participate in this but I was on the fringe. He pretty much lived in the library, doing research on William Blake. We had not met at that time. Very exciting times.

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&
 Jean
Womack

We were serving a church in Hawaii in 1970. In 1970, Jean and I both turned 39–and holding.
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Jeff wrote in Reaction to the Kent State shootings:

Since I had already been a radical for a number of years by then, the violence was no surprise. As somebody else said, this country was so messed up that I really didn’t expect to grow old. I was 25 years old and my daughter was a toddler of one year old. I was struggling to make it in a “dropped out” lifestyle doing farm labor in New Hampshire. I was in thorough despair about where this country was at, but I had decided not to leave the country when I had been faced with that option. …. Just a couple of months after Kent State, I made my first strong contacts with the radical Quaker Young Friends group called “New Swarthmoor….”

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Sandy’s Cousin Jack Brewster:

I was so buried in work in 1970 that I barely had time to look up. But that was the year of the movie PATTON, starring George C Scott. Franny and I saw the movie in Dallas and it was overwhelming. There was an odd cultural dissonance between the movie’s celebration of absolute heroism and our strong anti-war sentiments, but it blew us away anyway.
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Henry & Darlene Mellon were both high school counselors, Henry in Sacramento and Darlene in Ogden UT
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Chris’s cousin Jan Cherubin:

I was fourteen going on fifteen and so excited to have tickets to see Leonard Cohen at the Merriweather Post Pavillion. Your sister Rachel and I drove to Columbia, Maryland as soon as the concert date was set and god I remember walking up to the box office window in that lovely glade surrounded by woods and we were months early buying tickets so WE GOT SECOND ROW SEATS. IN. THE. CENTER.
I thumb-tacked my tickets to my sliding closet door so that i could stare at them from my bed. I dreamed of Leonard gazing into the audience and seeing me there and pulling me onto the stage the way Bruce Springsteen did to Courtney Cox (which of course hadn’t yet happened.) I don’t know what my plan was. I think we were going to run away together or something.
and then, THEN, the CONCERT WAS CANCELLED!!!!

Cancelled? Why? you ask. Why? Because Leonard Cohen was cavorting at his Greek Island retreat–on Hydra–and couldn’t fly back to the States to fulfill his concert commitment because he was having TOO GOOD A TIME HANGING OUT WITH CHRIS AND SANDY BOOTHE. I am still trying to forgive you two.

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A college friend who is now a child psychiatrist wrote:

1970 was the year I turned 13. I was a cute, very petite, flower child. My boyfriend, a high school drop-out in the neighborhood had hitchhiked to Woodstock the year before. I was an excellent student in the local junior high school, but my parents never realized that structure and supervision could be important for a child. I’m not sure any parents in our neighborhood supervised their kids. It really was a free-for-all. And, I was totally caught up in the peace, love, and recreational drug movement. I hated the US government, I hated the war in Vietnam, and I hated my father for his blind support of both.

I loved Jimi Hendrix then, and I still love him. His death was a major loss for me then, and a major loss for all of us for all of time. —————————–
A friend says:

I was an Army MP, investigating traffic accidents in the city of Danang, Vietnam. I was also smoking a lot of pot! I spent most of 1970 in That Place Where We Had No Legitimate Business.

I thank the powers that I’m living in mayberry-of-the-desert. Something noteworthy from 1970? My awakening to the fraudulence of empire.

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Marilynne Imhoof :

We were in our first year in Bloomington, IN. Maurice was teaching at Indiana University and I was holding down the crumbling home fort. Chad had been in the hospital, Erika was wetting the bed, and the Opal wouldn’t start in the rain. The usual first year. Campus life got quickly interesting as protests gradually came to Indiana.

Since 1970 we’ve lived in Cairo, Egypt, Rockville, MD, Maseru, Lesotho, Rockville again, and now Nashville, IN.
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Michael Steele: When I graduated from college in 1970, the Vietnam War was still raging, and my draft lottery number was 55. I was promptly drafted.

So I went before the draft board for my hearing on my requested conscientious objector status. The secretary was obviously hostile to me during the questioning process; a draft board member had to admonish her to stay businesslike. I came out to my car, and as a draft lawyer had advised, immediately wrote down everything that had transpired at the hearing, and sent my report to the board, to be included in my file.

A few weeks later, when I returned for the determination hearing, a board member asked me if I had secretly recorded my first hearing. I said no, that it was just extremely important for me to get things right. I was granted 1-0 status as a Conscientious Objector, and performed two years of alternate civilian service in northern California, working at a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed adolescents.

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Cynthia Jenkins: I was 19 and living in Los Angeles, working as a sales rep for the phone company. I had been writing to a friend who was drafted into the Vietnam War. When he came home, I took him to see Easy Rider. At the end, when Peter Fonda’s motorcycle got shot out from under him, my friend burst into tears. I thought, “Oh my gosh! What have I done?”
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Nancy Biasini

I was starting grad school at University of Notre Dame. I had 2 little boys for whom I had to hire a sitter, and my then-husband’s parents were aghast.
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Pamela Patur
I was 25 years old, had my masters, was teaching ESL to adult immigrants, had a boyfriend who wasn’t good for me, and started psychotherapy! And I was thin and cute!!! I was living in a studio apartment ($53.00 a month) in the area of Manhattan called the “East Village” — where “hippies” and old Polish and Ukrainian people lived. Now the same apartment is probably over $2,000 a month–and is the hippest neighborhood in Manhattan and Madonna and a lot of other stars have apartments there.
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Michele Naylor
When I told Roger about your anniversary he said, “They can’t be that old!” (not that you’re “old,” but rather “that old.”

Sandy: As Pamela Patur said to us, “I may be old but I’m not mature!”

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Peggy Chaikin
Hank was teaching science in the Bronx (avoiding the draft), I was living on a commune in Albion Calif. in pre-work retirement- gathering my own thoughts after being pumped full of the world’s greatest literature, etc. (liberal arts), and yes, avoiding full time work.

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Rex Peters
In 1970, I was a High School Sophomore in Quincy, Washington, a dreary tumbleweed of a community, with the high spot of my life getting my drivers license and having my own car, a 55 pontiac. That was the year I was introduced to Thoreau, setting the scene for a lifetime of Civil Disobedience. My cousin introduced me to JD Salinger, further fueling my teenage impatience with the world and I found a copy of the Whole Earth Catalog, inspiring me to grow my hair and quit shaving, even tho it was another couple years before I could grow a beard long enough to conceal the fact that I was an underage beer buyer.
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Robyn Prud’homme Bauer

In 1970, I was in the 10^th/11^th grade and Bud was in the 11^th/12^th grade – we both were attending Thomas Jefferson High School in Denver Colorado.  We actually met each other in Fall 1970 when we were in the school band at the same time.

Something noteworthy besides meeting my future husband – I helped start the Ecology Club in my high school and the club held its  first event on April 22, 1970 (Earth day)

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Sean Berrett (can stand in for many of the young people)

I would answer the questions, but I wasn’t even a twinkle in my mothers eye in 1970
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Steve Block

I was a sophomore in college, being shaped by the political events and certainly the counterculture, music, and everything that went with that. Wow.

Sharon was graduating high school and starting college at ASU. She remembers “make love not war”.

I attended an anti-war protest on campus wherein a nearby Bank of America branch was to be shut down (because they helped fund the military-industrial complex or some such rationale). I was sort of hanging around in the back of a very large group of students, mabye 1000 or so. We headed off as a slowly moving mass to the branch a couple of blocks off campus, only to be faced with a phalanx of police (how did they know?). A trap was set to cut off the leaders of the group. Just before it was sprung a guy turned around and yelled at the crowd of students behind “it’s a trap!” Everyone scattered in a panic, I took off running, but not down the street. Instead, I hopped a couple of fences through 2 back yards into the next block, and nobody … nobody … could catch me. Not even close. I took refuge in a fraternity house. I had to miss work that day. Called in and told my boss if I left I would be arrested. That was a good excuse.

Sharon remembers the camraderie of our generation and the influence the Beatles had on us, and feeling the power that we could change the world.

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This person was married with a little boy and deciding that life on the road as a rock and roll guitarist was not for him:

I was burned out on bars, but plenty of drugs and sex were still on my list.

My “daytime job” was construction, and in the upper mid-west, I did not work much in the winter. It clouds up in October and the sun never shines again until late May. It also snows a great deal.

I guess I was gradually coming to the conclusion that I had better get on with college. Even starting in 1965, it still took me until 1974 to get an MA.

I did get drafted and spent one day in the army before they decided that my back was way too messed up for them, to my great relief. That put me back in the midwest in the middle of another endless winter.

But I was young and tough, so life was good!

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Tommie Bain
In the 70’s I was working for the State of Arizona.

Nothing stands out, just work, work work.
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Tony Gioia
In 1970 I was a freshman in an all boys high school on the other side of the country. I spent most of my time playing drums in 2 bands, hanging out at the all girls high school, working 2 jobs–as a roofer and at the Daily News newspaper plant on most weekends. Oh, and going to high school.

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Terry Groseclose, a craft show buddy who couldn’t be here (doing shows!):
In the 70’s I attended and quit college, lived in mountain cabins, lived in a truck and traveled the US for years while teaching myself to make things and sell them.
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Wayne St. John
1970: The first 2/3s of the year I was flying OV-10s (a forward air controller) in Viet Nam and Cambodia. Then I came home and started T-38 IP school at Randolph AFB, Texas. The most distinct thing I can remember was coming home from the war and getting off the airplane to see my wife and one year old son both standing on the tarmac waiting for me.
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Sheila Neeley graduated from my 2nd miserable high school, Calvin Coolidge!

She says “I have good memories of Coolidge, if unusual. My senior year I was a Cheerleader and the only white cheerleader on the squad. At the beginning of that year David’s school friends thought he was dating a black girl…if you know his sense of humor, he had a blast with letting them think that. He definitely had fun and loved the way they looked when they actually got to meet the blue eyed blonde that he was really dating.
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Suzen Brackell remembers granny dresses, long and sexy

I found a few examples….

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Other clothing styles

Chris “trucking”

Mini-skirts

Ken doll:

Hereʼs Michael Durgain on the left

You know some things never change: a whole lot of people still dress like this! Hereʼs another: Steve Biasini

OK, now you get to get up and visit with each other. But first we want to say Thank you!

To Quince restaurant for making the dinner–and the wonderful servers. Donʼt forget, Quince is just down Main Street and serves more fabulous food–check out the chile rellenos!

Nancy Biasini and Deborah Allen-Adair for wonderful brownies and cookies Betsy & Edy
Mark Foltz for hours of work with our old photos
Alice Keith for helping fund this event

Ivan and Camille Boothe for too many things to list

Don’t forget Art Walk tomorrow night 5-8pm with an opening at the Jerome Artists Cooperative Gallery featuring the work of Wanda Wood and Wayne St. John. Thanks and please stay as long as you like.