When the festival was over I felt like a new person. I had never experienced such peace and freedom and I had never met so many wonderful people gathering just for the sake of being together and loving each other.
I felt ready for another year at school. Liberty went back to Minnesota and we settled in for another Woodstock winter. We spent Christmas vacation with Gina Funk and her brother Gabor, sledding, watching movies, and hanging out.
In the spring we got ready for another great summer.
In july we went to the Regional Rainbow Gathering in Vermont. It was a long rainy week and we were glad to get home.
When Bethel came around, Gina and I weren't even sure that we wanted to go, but we did.
We found ourselves facing a standoff with the owner, June Gelish, who inherited the property from her boyfriend Louis Nicky, who had died of a heart attack in 1989.
After being threatened with a civil suit by Stephen Dubrovsky, a local landowner, who charged her with staging a commercial concert in a neighborhood that had residential and agricultural zoning, she claimed these people were uninvited and asked the police to tell all the pilgrims to leave or be charged with trespassing. Thousands of people, who had come from all over the globe were already camping on the property and refused to acknowledge her "trespassing" complaint.
They'd been coming to that property for over thirty years and now there was this woman from Brooklyn, afraid of being sued or held liable by other land owners trying to tell the gathering masses that they had to go home. They were home. Her threats went unheeded.
In fact, when the police started handing out tickets, people started lining up. Everybody wanted a ticket as a souvenir. 25 tickets were given out to the first people in line. My mom, dad, and Will Callaghan, plead not guilty. The case was settled at a trial and they were found not guilty.
The next year, at the 22nd Anniversary June Gelish stayed in the background, and the town of Bethel dumped truckloads of sand at the entrance, but it was shoveled away to the rhythm of a drum circle, by quick action pilgrims. The entrance was clear, but cars kept getting stuck in the remaining slippery sand. Then wet gravel was brought in to stop us, but that too was quickly shoveled away, and the remaining wet gravel solved the slippery sand problem and once again cars rolled smoothly and steadily onto the site, with the cheers, laughter, singing, and drumming, welcoming everyone home, and the police standing shaking their heads and smiling on the corner.
We had our reunion and, once the numbers were enough, police kicked back and things unwound and floated around on the winds of red dust, and camp fires. Once again the grounds were left spotless.
A friend of our's Charlie O'Neil helped us to get a small school bus and put it on the road. We took it to Bethel and in October we left Woodstock and made it as far as State College, Pennsylvania, the home of Penn State University. It was a big town with alot of new development, a real shopping center American university town.
My dad did alot of studying at the university library, and we attended the local schools. We were staying with a man named Kitu Sampson in a two bedroom townhouse apartment. Him in one room, and the seven of us in the other. I like us all being so close but sometimes it got pretty stressful, because we all weren't really old enough to get along yet.
My closest friends were Keely Deutsche, and Hannah Hippely, I had alot of other close acquaintances but these are the two that I knew could see me, and know me. Keely belonged to a youth group called FISH and got me to join. The people who ran it really cared about the kids, but now that I look back on it I think there was alot of confusion there. But they were really great people. They made it easier to be away from Woodstock, but all I wanted to do was get back.
We spent two years in State College, and missed one summer at Bethel, the summer of '92. No one got on the land that year, and the town used snowplows to block the roads.
My parents were so upset about it that the next summer we went back to Woodstock and my mom and dad landed on the site on June 30th and set up a Welcome Home Center at the gate. They were also angry because we had also heard that Robert Gersch, Exec. Dir. of the Multiple Sclerosis Society, had plans of closing off the site during the 24th reunion in order to develop the site for his 25th reunion, which he had arranged with June Gelish. I joined two weeks later, then a week after me, Hannah came.
We had a bumpy year with the police that year. The owner June Gelish returned this time, along with the money men of Multiple Sclerosis Society who were attempting to cut deals for a concert. They had my mom and two other people arrested for trespassing and then, in order to keep pilgrims off the site, Robert Gersch bought 106 tons of chicken manuer with MSS funds (which MS was not too happy about) and had it brought in semi-dumptruckloads and spread it on the field, leaving things very stinky but not hopeless, at least not completely. My mother said she had never seen a semi-dumptruck before. She just stood there and cried when she saw what people will go through to keep us off that field, just so they could do it themselves.
We gathered over at Hector's property off 17B until Charlie Manar, a property owner down the road, opened up his land, and the anniversary went on. But it's just not the same when you can't sit on top of that hill and see everyone all around you, and hear their voices echoing accross the grass in the natural amphitheater. I was sad the whole time, and everyone else seemed to feel the same way, but waited patiently for the next year.
When the event was over. We didn't know what we were going to do, we thought we might stay in Monticello, but decided to go back to Woodstock. We stayed with DAY at his girlfriend, Kamayani's house for a little while and then I went to stay with my friend Myra Hage.
I started school again at Onteora Highschool, 11th grade. Everything of course was totally different and alot more relaxed somehow. But things also seemed unrested and confusing about the students and the teachers. Teachers and students had had breakdowns, become drug addicts, and things all around felt kind of sad. But things were still pretty relaxed.
My parents went to stay with Bruce and Susan Greenburg's in Monroe, New York, where the boys had enrolled in school.
After a month with Myra and her parents, I joined them.
I couldn't stand the school in Monroe and was depressed to be away from my friends.
In the Winter we moved to Woodstock. We had a nice three bedroom house on Mill Hill Road, right in town. The church next door owned our house and they were good people. They had a soup kitchen and we kept our door open for local wanderers to stay at night.
The next year came. It was the summer of the 25th anniversary. The original promoters were holding their mega bash in Saugerties. They offered a group of us $120,000 to bring the spirit of Woodstock to Saugerties, and act as the Hog Farm and Welcome Home Committee, but the spirit was calling us to Bethel.
There was a commercial event planned in Bethel, too, but plans fell through. They always do, and we got to have our free event anyway. 200,000 people arrived and we had the largest reunion since the original concert. The stage was huge with two towering speakers and a movie screen projecting the faces of the performers across the open fields.
The stars came and dropped their blessing, proclaiming that this is "Woodstock".
When the Saugerties event ended, people came over to Bethel, and we celebrated for three more days, with volunteers already starting to clean up.
Traffic was kept flowing continuously, thanks to Sheriff Joe Wasser, a local hero, and Woodstock supporter. He was the judge during the '69 festival. They called him "Cut 'em Loose Joe" because he kept cutting people loose from jail. He told my mom he wasn't bein' nice. He just wanted everybody to go home.
The summer of ' 95, I graduated from Highschool and started reading the Bible. I got my mom to quit all of her housecleaning jobs, we moved out of our house, and camped out in the woods of local Woodstock banjo player Billy Faire.
I decided all I wanted to do was free people from the bonds of their fears.
Bethel became more to me than it ever had been before. I spent my time sitting on the hill, reading the bible with fellow pilgrims, Star Nigro and Day Yusko, playing music and talking to whoever came and sat down. Or I hung out in a free kitchen and talked to road dogs and accountants about how God had changed their lives.
Everyone had their own story. God was working everywhere. In the real world with appointments, school, bosses, bills, and watches, people don't get to spend the time to freely communicate, and you don't have the time to try to find people who want to communicate. But, at Woodstock, you meet people from all over the world who want to do just that, communicate. You sit down on someone's blanket and listen to the music, or someone offers you some food, or a smoke, and you enjoy existing with witnesses of that existance.
For the first time I noticed how much people were talking about Jesus, he was the first hippie, gathering in the wilderness, sharing your food and your wisdom and loving Peace. I knew that not only was Jesus more incredible then I ever imagined, but he had given me WOODSTOCK. This was a real living breathing thing, alive and loving it.
Whatever this was, this spirit, this truth, this was eternal. There really is a Woodstock Nation and it's world wide, and it's about peace and love, and it meets every year in one place, at one time in the minds or with the bodies of all those who care. That one place where they meet has to be FREE, and owned by the people.
Feeling God's victory at Bethel and finally getting to know eachother, my brother's all signed out of school and we stayed at the camp for the fall.
In October we stayed for a little while with Kamayani, and then just kind of stayed here and there, and at friend's houses. It was great living day to day, moment to moment without a thought for tomorrow. Alot of people in town didn't approve of our lifestyle. They thought that my dad should be working, we should be living in a house, and us kids should be going to school. They just couldn't understand that we were all in agreement, loved our life, and could see right through the lie that you have to be a slave to the world's system. We were serving God only and realizing how free you can possibly be.
In November of '95, my mother, Abigail Storm, formed the Woodstock Nation Foundation to raise the asking price of $1.5 million, to buy out June Gelish's interest in the site, securing it for PERPETUAL FREE ASSEMBLY. To remain forever meadow, inspire the citizens of the area to welcome home the Woodstock Nation and once again make Sullivan County the booming resort and vacation area that it once was. The bungalow colonies all along the state highway lie waiting for the pilgrims to return for a summer of Peace, Love and Music in the Catskills.
There's plenty of room for everyone and plenty of people all over the world who want to volunteer to help keep things running smoothly.
By Christmas, we were staying with Lincoln Woodrow Wilson, in his one room apartment. There wasn't alot of room so Thyl, James, our friend "High Times", and I spent a few weeks with Woodstock musician and poet, Clayton Denwood. But most of the snowy days (the most snowfall in recorded history) were passed with all ten of us cramped into Lincoln's apartment, smoking pot, reading the Bible and praising God.
In February Clayton got thrown out of his house for letting us stay there, and his landlord offered to let us stay in a school bus parked on his friend's property. We stayed there, gardening and landscaping, until September.
On April 7th, we held a fundraiser for the Foundation at the Chance in Poughkeepsie. We couldn't get any advertising from the radio stations or newspapers, for some reason, and there was a blizzard the night of the show but, even without a big audience, we had a great show. Local Woodstock Performers rocked the house. We got some great footage and learned alot. The guys who own the joint had a great time, too.
By June '96 we had help in getting a computer, a fax machine, and we had our campaign on a free World Wide Web site in the Christian Catacombs. We had opened the Woodstock Nation Foundation office at 86 Mill Hill Road to promote a benefit concert which Arlo Guthrie had agreed to perform for the Foundation in Woodstock on July 7th.
Arlo's concert was beautiful, the weather was beautiful, and spirits were high.
I had to man the gate and didn't even get to see the show, (neither did mom. She was too busy) but I could hear the music echoing down to the gate and I could hear the love in Arlo's voice. I painted him a portrait but never had the chance to sign it.
We had agreed to pay Arlo $3,500, but he only took $500 for his driver.
August arrived. The 27th Woodstock Nation Annual Reunion, the Sabbath year, we didn't get on the land. The captain of the state police, Alan Martin, went to Brooklyn to get June Gelish to sign a tresspass complaint against the summer's expected hordes. They obtained the signature of the intimidated June Gelish and returned to Sullivan County, glowing with the pride of their victory against these middle class, parents, kids, grand parents, grand kids, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, friends and neighbors, from all over the world who waited all year to travel miles and spend a week camping in Bethel, New York and remembering the finer things in life. This could not be allowed?! (was some neighboring landowner worried that someone was going to take a crap on their land? Or some politicians worried that their interests in Monticello gambling might be effected?)
Captain Martin told my mom "Last year you wouldn't let us on the land. Well, this year we're on and you're off". It didn't sound like a "welcome home".
When August came, State Troopers were set up as road blocks on all roads leading to the site for two weeks, 24 hours a day, ten dollars an hour, twelve hours a day, plus overtime on weekends, multiplied by seven cops on a corner, multiplied by eight corners. That's alot of taxpayer's money to be spent on keeping revenue out of the county. The state police were overheard admitting to turning away over 100,000 people (from this economically depressed county).
Locals and pilgrims told horror stories of stopping to ask police for directions and being ticketed with no explanation.
Besides the fact that June Gelish erected a historical marker on the site, to attract people, the real butt of the joke is that the Sullivan County Travel Guide published pictures of Bethel and the site, directions how to get to the site and tourist bus information. These blatant invitations to the peoples of the world resulted in thousands descending on Bethel, only to be met by armed police officers and unnecessary and dangerous confusion.
These people save up their money all year to go to the one place where they know they can relax and be at peace, and they are turned away: robbed and disappointed. For What? All attempts to commercialize the site have failed. The people aren't coming for a concert. They're coming for each other.
Roy Howard, who owns the Yasgur Farm Homestead down the road, opened up his land for people to camp, and so there was a reunion anyway. But, of course, like '93 when the event was held on Charlie Manor's property, things just weren't the same.
We knew we couldn't let this happen again next year.
We started looking for a place to land close to the site. In September, Roy Howard gave us use of a building in Monticello for the foundation office. We started off the fall with a fundraiser called the WOODSTOCK ART ATTACK. I painted over 20 store windows all over town with the Woodstock theme and artists. We raised over $1,000 and had found a way to show the support of the local business owners. Spending hours in stores, painting their windows and listening to the conversations of customers and employees, I learned alot about how people feel about the Woodstock Reunions and local politics.
This area has always been known for corruption. In the '30's it was known for "Murder Incorporated" due to the number of killings by politicians, police, weekend gangsters, and good old boys. When Max Yasgur allowed the Woodstock Festival to take place on his land, he brought a light to this county that no one has been able to put out. But, he was put out, put out of business. But he knew the price of his decision, he decided to allow the festival in the first place because people had told him that he couldn't. And we've already received the same kinds of threats, but when people aren't allowed to camp, and gather peacefully in a field, for free, what is left of America? What's left of freedom when money is all that matters? Well if money is all that matters, we'd like to buy our freedom and establish a safe zone for all those who seek a place where they can care and share.
And to think most people of the World laugh when they say " Are you going to college?" and I say, " No, not this year. This year I'm helping to secure Yasgur's Farm for perpetual free assembly". But they don't even get the joke, they only laugh because it sounds crazy, but it is a massive, huge thing.
Every time I feel like, "What are we doing"? I hear some black welfare mother, or a dusty construction worker, or an off-duty local police officer say, "Why don't they just let us have Woodstock? That would bring all the money we need to this county," or, "I wait all year to sit in that field, drink a beer, watch my kids playing in the grass, and have a barbeque with thousands of strangers" or, "why did State Police get involved? Our local sheriff had it all under control, and he's our elected official.
Who's paying for all of the State Troopers on overtime for two weeks?" And then I'm reminded, this is something that thousands, and millions of people care about, and only a small group of people with their hands on the reins and their fists full of cash, want to stop it.
We got hooked up with BrainLink and John Agusta, who helped us to get our site on the web, to reach the whole world.
Hopefully, by this summer, the summer of 1997, the site will finally belong to the people. Something Max Yasgur had tried to do before his death in '73, by donating it to the town, but the town refused to accept it.
Hopefully, despite all political and personal agendas, this summer we will once again feel as welcome in Bethel as Yasgur intended.

Written by Jewel Eggink

Edited by Abigail Storm

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WOODSTOCK NATION FOUNDATION, Inc.
28 Pleasant Street
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(914) 794-3810
liberty@woodstocknation.org

Last updated 1 March 1997
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