Garwood Mansion

[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.

[rockinrona]

To everyone attending tomorrow...

Attachment 1694

yo your all beautiful folks I'm loving it, from a distance Isle your hitching guy is also one of us, where ever you are,we are in it together, nothing like a 5 day roll to rock and roll the last time I thought I was hearing music like bent spur was at a stones triping stevie Wonderat Winter Land oh YA

[rockinrona]

Thanks MAHALO got a couple calls in during the party Kick out the Jams Mother tRUCKEERS

[stnfrnt]

I'm back from the Firefly, and the only two bumps in the road were we didn't get around to doing the Garwood Anthem song [[it will get done on tape) and Mark"4string"Swanberg couldn't make the trip from Tupelo, Mississippi. Something about two broken ribs and one broken leg. His brother Jeff was there, though, and we all missed Mark and wish him a speedy and quick recovery. Love ya' 4string.

Words are going to be hard to come by to describe the gig. Sleep will not be hard to come by. Manana.

[rockinrona]

Larry i'm SURE YOU were first in best dressed??Heck of a job ,was the place still in one piece when you left ,are is rick and the Mover still putting the place backTOGETHER?? I hope IT does not look like the Grande now, after all of you folks?Ruth, Bruce and Lowell many thanks your made of the real stuff, GOOD WORK MATES !!!!!!YOU TO OG AND HOOV, NEXT STOP MAUI

[Margie]

Could'nt sleep without putting up at least one pic................Sweet Dreams xoxAttachment 1719

[Margie]

Bushmark-Annie-GusAttachment 1720

[Margie]

Natalie with the guys...........SweetAttachment 1721

[Margie]

Thank you Ruthie..........You are the BEST !!!!!!!Attachment 1722

[old guy]

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[southernboy]

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

[Gleeman]

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...well...
the last nights doings have had an effect on O.G...I'm sure he'll be o.k... just the normal "after-GarWood party syndrome " has left him speechless...

[Candy man]

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I agree. Peace

[stnfrnt]

OG......I couldn't have said it better Welllll........maybe I could have, but I can't spell as good as you.

There will be lots more to come,but first:

MIKE KELLEY..........you are one awsome dude to step in and do what you did with the band. It's tough, and I know it, but you really stepped up to the plate; you got some vocal chops too. So a special gracias to you, my friend.

[stnfrnt]

Free fishing in Michigan today, June 14th.

[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

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[Margie]

Oh yeah !Attachment 1741