Garwood Mansion

[Lowell]

driving to a2 right now cya in 20

[Bentspur]

Have fun Lowel. And thanks a ton for hosting this blog. This has been the best trip I have ever been on.

[Bentspur]

Just to keep this blog going while the party is going on, I will give you a blow by blow on what I'm doing. I lit the grill about 20 minutes ago and just put some potatoes wrapped in tin foil on. They will be done in about 15 minutes. Then I will put on a big thick Rib Eye steak. Oh I forgot I have been drinking Ice House Beer, Had about 4 so far.

[Bentspur]

I think I hear music...........

[Bentspur]

Steak and potatoes turned out great. Now just rolling a fat one for desert.
Are there any lurkers out there????

[southernboy]

We're out here. Can't get enough of that sugar crisp!

[eriedearie]

Oh we're out here Bentspur! Your supper sounds yummy

I bettcha they're tearin' up the house - A2 is rockin' & rollin tonight with Garwoodians from near and far. Let the good times roll.

[john collier]

Attention Garwoodians...calling all FOGs ...we have video of Capone drums and guitars....

go to www.collierpics.blogspot.com

this is new---Gleeman,Stone,Drummer 21 are all in it..go lookie

[john collier]

Kielson--please save that for me -thanks
drummer 21 I tried your e mail and no luck what am I doing wrong-
go www.collierpics.blogspot.com
for great drumming---

[1KielsonDrive]

John, I'm not about to throw anything away. Don't worry - we'll get it back to you. It is Michigan State Police 'Red Files', am I correct?

[stnfrnt]

Mj8gdw77u. nh7uihja1d, Los Angeles hssggggqsipp[!!!#!

[john collier]

Stone, you were a sight for sore eyes, or was it your eyes that were sore, I can't remember. What a pleasure to see you and thanks for coming all the way to A2 for little ole us. "You the man" . Its been great to hear that great music again. Even without the stimulus package it still feels pretty good.
Sorry for everybodys bad times -glad it wasant me, just kidding. Happy to see Lindas smiling face and dttglr313, you should be ashamed.
My best to you all -see Jeep on the blog... www.collierpics.blogspot.com

[john collier]

Stone
You might have wondered why I posted that note about detgrll and the "you should be ashamed" ---maybe I should explain...
It must have been last summer or maybe a couple of years ago that I saw either dttgrll in or with a guy she was with in the Cass Cafe in the most elegant of pink carpri pants. Then all of this flack about yours and I just couldnt help but put two and two together and come up with maybe your missing pants. At any rate they are now out of style that Nadal lost the French open. So dont worry we still love you with or without.

[Drummer21]

www.collierpics.blogspot.com[/url]
for great drumming---

Sorry John, I've talked to the company building the website and they are fixing the problem. Feel free to call me.

John your work is absolutely marvelous. You truly are a gifted man. I feel it's a great honor to be a subject in your work. I'm guessing everyone you photograph feels the same way. Your compliments mean more to me than you'll ever know. Thank you.

[southernboy]

Thanks for posting the pics, Margie. Looks like a good time was had by all.

[detroitgirl80]

Good Morning to all.....Had a great time last night. Lots of good music! Nice meeting everyone. Perfect day for a get together in the park. Have fun. Mark, take care. Good seeing you again

[RickBeall]

Hey, the Ovaltine decoder ring and Maypo worked! I got to the party and actually met Stnfrnt and Hoover ... and Bushmark, Gleeman, John Collier, 1Keilsondrive, Ruth Ruth Ruth, Isle of Fun, Whaler, got a hug from Margie, Robin, and more!

I only wish I could have arrived earlier and stayed later and had more in depth conversations with everyone, but sometimes with a spouse in tow things are a bit of a balancing act.

What an event! What a marvelous venue! I don't know how Ruth put this together for only $30 a head. She and Gleeman conspired to give everyone a T-shirt, but this was no ordinary T-shirt. It has Gary's graphic on the front and the back, and this is no 8 1/2" X 11" inch panel of graphic, the graphics are big, colorful and beautiful! I can wear this around the neighborhood and really confuse everyone. The color mansion was on the front, and a black and white mansion was on the back. The Black & white mansion had everyones names written on it, and I mean everyone's --even us enthusiastic lurkers were there!

And talk about being made to feel at home! Ruth and her team gave out framed "Honorary Member of the Fraternal Order of Garwoodians" to various people. And I got one! It has my name right on it. Up on the wall it goes.

The music was great, the conversation was great. I have my honorary Garwood membership ... is that like an honorary degree? It's in a frame. In glass. Should I put it on my resume?

Ruth, somehow in her "spare" time, put together a DVD documentary of Garwood pictures, music, and writing. This was shown on the screen. The re-constituted Garwood House Band, played lots of classic rock. Natalie sang! David and Roselyn, and their daughter sang! Their daughter joined the band for some vocal tone shaping pyrotechnics on "Black Magic Woman" with the band.

Whaler gave away CD's of music popular back in the day. 1Keilsondrive was selling commemorative clay medallions at prices I could have paid with the coins that fall through the hole in my pocket that accidentally gets captured in my shoe. I gave away a CD I call "Mostly Blues" which now contains the two Garwood songs. I made a special graphics for it ... okay, I stole Gary Markley's great Garwood Shield graphic and borrowed from our great resident photographer John Collier to make a special Garwood Edition..

Gary Markley and others conspired to give Ruth an organ pipe. This was an 3 1/2 foot tall, actual wood covered pipe from an organ. Ruth knew what it was right away as she was unwrapping it. Man, I had to do a lot of "on the fly" explaining to my wife so she could make sense of what she was seeing.

Somehow through all this, Ruth managed to feed us. The event was in a part of Ann Arbor that used to be industrial/rail. There was an active train track behind the building. The building itself looked to be an example of 19th century industrial design with a somewhat roughed out interior where machines or storage would go. It was a big venue! It was perfect for our size. Ruth was real gutsy to book it with the attitude, "Book it and they will come".

What a bunch of fine people. It was a true pleasure meeting everyone.

[Whaler]

Wow....Ya A'll were tooo much for me..Thank You

[1KielsonDrive]

STARDATE: 7:20PM, June 14 in the year 2009. Transmitting from Gallup Lake, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America, Planet Earth. I'm crying - tears of joy and sadness. I, and likely we, never, ever dreamed this reunion would take place. A magical week-end with, and for, magical people. Thank you Ruthie for being almost solely responsible for bringing us together. It took a special, creative, kind and determined person to persevere and make it happen. I love you and I'm sure I can say we all love you. Thank you all GarWoodians for being here and sharing. We lived a special time together and hopefully will have more special times together. Take a moment to remember GarWoodians no longer with us and those unable to be here. Here's a parting photo of our Gallup Lake Pavilion as our last GarWoodians departed. I sat and pondered our weekend. Finally I had to tear my self away. I'll walk here and forever think of us. With love, 1KD

[Kathleen]

Sounds like you all had the time of your life. Great pics!!! I'm so glad to hear that everyone had a great time. Looking forward to more pics and stories once everyone gets back home.

[Margie]

I want to take a moment to share with you some facts about Ruthie...
Upon request, Her loving husband Bruce sent me some info. about what our girl has been up to in the past years..So I want to share these things with all of you.
She served as an active worker in Aids Volunteers of Cincinnati [[AVOC). Then, when a friend she made while working at AVOC became ill himself, she switched her efforts to caring for him individually. After her stint at AVOC, Ruth became involved with the local Red Cross. Her work there began in a singular way. One Christmas, she came across a newspaper article reporting a devastating fire in a West Side apartment building that had left many homeless and largely propertyless. Ruth promptly responded by gathering up clothing of her own, adding to it both clothing and small appliances [[radios, etc.) that she purchased precisely for this purpose, and carefully wrapping all these goods in the form of Christmas presents. She then brought the gifts down to a Red Cross shelter, where a volunteer Santa Claus distributed them to the dispossessed adults and children gathered there. Since then, Ruth made herself available for night-time and weekend Red Cross duty, helping to provide food, shelter, and clothing to victims of other fires, especially in low-income sections of the city. And she did all this while being enrolled in six courses on average per quarter at UC [[where she has maintained a straight 4.0 grade-point average) and working ten to twelve hours per week in the UC Arts & Sciences office!

Ruth's penchant for helping others did not begin with her arrival in Cincinnati a decade ago. In Los Angeles, she contributed her time and effort to Operation Reach, playing a key role in that group's conversion of an abandoned medical center into a shelter for some eighty homeless people. [[Her efforts in that connection took many forms and drew upon a range of her personal resources. Having met Peter Ueberoff in the course of business, thus, she talked him into donating bunk-beds used in the Olympics to the new shelter.) Having helped to house these homeless individuals, Ruth then set about assisting many of them to write employment resumes and to apply for and obtain jobs. In the same period, Ruth also worked with a church group based in Los Angeles that built homes for the poor in nearby Tijuana, Mexico. There as here, she regularly engaged in what one currently popular bumper sticker popular calls "random acts of kindness and generosity." On one occasion, she learned from the Make a Wish Foundation about a 15-year-old girl from Columbia who was then staying in this country in order to receive treatments for leukemia. The girl, it developed, was desperately lonely for her family, which remained in Columbia. Ruth anonymously arranged to pay the girl's round-trip air fare back to Columbia and then even paid the girl's mother [[employed as a domestic worker) the equivalent of two weeks' wages so that she could give her daughter her undivided attention during that visit.

Ruthie lives her principles not only in large ways such as these but also in the smaller gestures that easily go entirely unnoticed. She has become the pen-pal of an inmate of a state penitentiary in Ohio, an aspiring artist. In addition to corresponding with him, this past Christmas she sent him a gift of pencils, charcoals, and professional sketch pads. Meanwhile, she remains a strong advocate of those afflicted with AIDS. The owner of the house in which she lives, she rents out other apartments in it. She went to great lengths to rent one of those units to a seriously ill, HIV-positive individual -- and then set out to make it as accessible and comfortable for him as possible. Nor is her sympathy and empathy limited to human beings. Over the past ten years, she has evidently spent thousands of dollars tending to injured stray animals she has encountered.

Frankly, if I had read the paragraphs above in a letter written by someone else, I would be strongly inclined to dismiss it as simply too good to be true. That was, in fact, my reaction to this information when I first collected it; perhaps I have become jaded by a social atmosphere in which "look out for number one" seems to have become the guiding principle for so many. But all of what I have written here about Ruth is true. A host of her longtime friends, who have known her much longer than I have, attest to its accuracy in every detail. [[Access to their testimony, indeed, has turned out to be all the more valuable because Ruth has proven to be painfully, modestly reticent about discussing these aspects of her life with me directly.) As these facts illustrate, Ruth is someone driven by a quiet but tireless determination to do whatever she can to make life a little better for those around her -- and, thereby, for herself as well. Since then, she has worked for the University of Cincinnati as a part-time [[and then full-time) student advisor; taught freshman ciurses at the University of California at Santa Cruz; and is now again a student visor an the Associate Director of the "Learning Communities" in the University of Illinois's College of Literature, Arts & Sciences. [[Learning Communities are teaching and studying structures set up to help incoming freshmen adjust to college life.)

The jobs he does here are really, properly, the work of 1 and a half to 2 people. Since you know Ruth, you''ll understand that she does it all -- and more -- without a whimper.. She has done an ENORMOUS amount of work to help make the Gar Wood reunion happen. She's a whirling dervish of energy and determination -- and she loves all of you VERY much.
Well Ruthie...WE LOVE YOU VERY MUCH ALSOAttachment 1729
THANK YOU !
AAttachment 1728

[Margie]

Sweetest girl on earth awardAttachment 1731

[Margie]

Getting ready........gleeman painting & hoover in the backgroundAttachment 1732

[Margie]

Ta-da !!!!!!![attach]17Attachment 1738

Attachment 1739

Attachment 1740

[MrJones]

I want to take a moment to share with you some facts about Ruthie...
<SNIP>
Upon request, Her loving husband Bruce sent me some info. about what our girl has been up to in the past years..she loves all of you VERY much.
Well Ruthie...WE LOVE YOU VERY MUCH ALSO
THANK YOU !

Well, if any one had any doubt, there are Angels among us. Still the same glimpse-my-heart smile she had with the light up jacket... And the girl's still got it too. WOW.