Willowbee, Sally - interviewed by Rose Norman / Southern Lesbian-Feminist Activist Herstory Project / Duke Digital Repository

Rose

I'm now turning on the recorder,

0:00

this is Rose Norman, and I'm interviewing

0:02

Sally Willoughby by phone on January 23rd, 2015.

0:05

So Sally, I wanted to start with a little

0:12

biographical information, where you grew up,

0:14

where you were educated, and what got you interested

0:17

in living on land, in community land trust.

0:19

Sally

Okay, I was born in Des Moines, Iowa,

0:23

we moved to South Jersey when I was in second grade,

0:29

whatever age that is.

0:34

And my parents were peace activists,

0:36

my dad worked for the American Social Service Community,

0:43

and then for Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors,

0:47

and then they both got more and more radical as they

0:51

got older, and my dad stopped having regular jobs,

0:56

and my mom went to work as a dietician,

1:02

and my dad did full-time peace work.

1:06

When I was in Junior High School, he was on a boat

1:14

called The Golden Rule, which sailed into the Pacific,

1:16

to protest the bomb dropping on the bomb test area.

1:21

And then spent time in jail in Hawaii,

1:26

and my mom got arrested at the Nevada bomb test site,

1:28

and my dad went on to Moscow, and sailed from San Francisco

1:34

to Moscow Wharf when I was in high school.

1:39

Rose

Maybe we should mention their names,

1:43

since they were so radical.

1:44

Sally

Pardon?

1:47

Rose

Maybe we should mention their names,

1:48

since they were so radical.

1:49

Sally

Okay, George and Lilian Willoughby.

1:50

Rose

Lilian with..?

1:54

Sally

Spelled differently than the way I spell it,

1:55

W-I-L-L-O-U-G-H-B-Y.

1:57

Rose

Okay. Is it--

2:00

Sally

And then, let's see, when I was also

2:02

in high school, my dad walked across India

2:06

on an Indo-China peace walk,

2:08

and they just got more and more radical,

2:10

and when I was coming out of college,

2:14

it was the Vietnam War, and there was a group called

2:16

a Quaker Action Group in Philadelphia

2:21

that my parents helped start, and were involved with,

2:23

and when I got out of college, I went to work

2:27

for Quaker Action Group and totally immersed

2:29

in non-violent peace movement,

2:33

started with one of the original people

2:37

who started what was probably the first commune

2:39

in Philadelphia of that area called Any Day Now,

2:42

which was (inaudible) sisters and four or five peacemakers,

2:47

and where did I go from there?

2:52

Rose

Where'd you go to college?

2:58

Sally

Oh, Kalamazoo College of Michigan.

3:00

Rose

Okay.

3:02

Sally

It was full time, and sort of quasi-Quaker,

3:06

non-violent peace movement, feminist movement happened,

3:11

more and more fed up with the male dominated world,

3:18

and peace movement, got more involved in that.

3:22

Had one of the first consciousness groups

3:30

in the Philadelphia area.

3:32

That mine and I organized.

3:35

Rose

Your mother and you organized it?

3:41

Sally

No, Fred.

3:43

Rose

Fred.

3:44

Sally

No, no, not my mother, uh uh.

3:45

My parents meanwhile were at a Quaker Action Group

3:47

through a group called Movement for New Society,

3:50

which was a national international movement

3:56

and a local living community situation

3:59

in West Philadelphia called the Life Center.

4:04

There are still seven or eight houses left

4:08

that are land trusts.

4:11

Well so, in 1971, I--'70 or '71, somewhere around there,

4:16

a lot happened in '71,

4:21

and it couldn't have all happened then.

4:23

(Rose laughs)

4:25

Well, okay, wait a minute, it was May Day, 1971,

4:30

wasn't that May Day?

4:33

Rose

I'll look it up.

4:35

Sally

There was a big demonstration, because

4:36

I couldn't get arrested in Washington on that,

4:37

because I had already committed to sailing to Cuba

4:38

on a peacemaking trip sponsored by War Resistor's League,

4:44

and so I was at the demonstration,

4:51

but I didn't get arrested, and then left for Florida

4:53

to do that, and we sailed to Cuba,

5:00

and that was a whole adventure.

5:03

And then that fall I think, I picked apples

5:07

on an all women's crew.

5:13

It was a kind of Quakerish, non-violent group of people

5:15

who had--we were all challenging the way we were

5:21

making a living, not to be involved in the,

5:24

to use an old term, military industrial complex,

5:31

and not to depend on donations to do our peace work,

5:34

but to live and support ourselves in a really healthy way

5:37

for the world, and one of the things

5:44

was picking apples in the fall.

5:47

Some people pruned them in the winter.

5:49

And so four women picked apples together that fall,

5:52

and that's when we decided to--we were kind of all like

5:59

(Sally coughs) excuse me, I have a cold.

6:04

Rose

Sure.

6:07

Sally

We had decided, well, we were all in transition,

6:13

and we were coming from different areas,

6:18

and we decided, well why didn't we live together

6:20

in the country, and knew about this

6:24

peacemaker land trust, they had two pieces of land

6:27

in West Virginia, and one had a house on it,

6:31

and one didn't, and people were living in the one

6:34

with the house, so we decided, okay, let's move down

6:38

and build a house, and we'd live there and farm

6:40

and do all this stuff.

6:44

Looking back, it's pretty idealistic and unrealistic

6:47

and lots of fun and lots of drama,

6:51

and so we did!

6:55

We moved down and we found a house to rent,

7:00

and started living there, no money, no resources,

7:05

we had one car.

7:14

Rose

So how'd you rent the house?

7:18

Sally

Pardon?

7:21

Rose

If you didn't have any money,

7:22

how'd you rent the house?

7:23

Sally

Oh, it was only fifteen, no I think it was

7:25

fifteen or twenty dollars a month.

7:27

(they both laugh)

7:29

It wasn't hard.

7:33

Rose

Okay.

7:34

Sally

And there were four of us!

7:36

Rose

Yeah.

7:38

Sally

Jokingly we say we think they raised the rent

7:40

because we were foreigners, it had been fifteen,

7:42

they raised it to twenty.

7:46

Rose

Was this in Hinton, the house?

7:48

Sally

We heated with wood, and when I say no money,

7:50

we had enough money to live on,

7:56

but it was just that for a while.

7:57

From picking apples!

8:01

And so we found an old log cabin that we tore down

8:03

and I traded my sewing machine for a truck,

8:11

and we had started building a cabin.

8:18

And then I had also made a previous commitment

8:23

to something I wanted to do, which was there was a

8:26

doctor in Ohio who worked at the health department,

8:29

who had a program for people, for women to do exams,

8:36

physical exams on women, and the men could do

8:43

the exams and stuff on men, and I'd always been interested

8:45

in that, so I decided to build up cash to be able to work

8:50

for three months and do that.

8:54

And there was a lot of drama,

8:59

and that winter then, the whole group of us,

9:03

we went to Florida to pick oranges,

9:06

and then I never went back.

9:09

At that point, I came back to South Jersey

9:14

and found an old family friend who had some land

9:19

in Egg Harbor, New Jersey,

9:23

and renovated a chicken coop to live in down there.

9:25

Which I did for three years,

9:32

and was in the coming out process,

9:34

had been living in a women's community,

9:37

and considered myself bisexual (Sally coughs)

9:44

I don't know if this is going to work, wait a minute.

9:51

Rose

Yeah.

9:54

Sally

I'm going to try.

9:55

I thought oh, this is okay, because I'm fine,

9:56

but I haven't been talking.

10:00

Rose

Yeah.

10:03

Sally

Yeah, so South Jersey, renovated a chicken coop,

10:06

was self-taught, learning skills as I went along,

10:13

and there was a women's union at this local college,

10:18

and I got involved with that.

10:26

Actually, I think that's when I officially came out.

10:29

And then, I was also involved with a group of women,

10:33

that we called ourselves Women of the Fifth,

10:36

we started a group that was connected with the Girl Scouts,

10:40

and we went camping once a month or something,

10:42

and just sharing skills and learning new skills,

10:46

and all that excitement of the early seventies

10:50

of the world opening up to us.

10:56

Then I had my first girlfriend,

11:03

who was a lovely six foot Amazon!

11:09

(they both laugh)

11:12

And we decided to move to California.

11:14

She wanted to go to the Woman's Building in Los Angeles

11:18

and get her Master's Degree.

11:26

And so we did that.

11:31

We lived in Santa Monica for a year and a half,

11:34

and she was full time with Woman's Building

11:37

and I didn't consider myself an artist at that time,

11:40

I just made things.

11:45

Looking back, it's always interesting, I think I was...

11:49

I'd say it was easier for me to come out as a lesbian

11:53

than it was to come out as an artist.

11:55

Rose

Oh, cool! (laughs)

11:58

Sally

Yeah, it really was.

11:59

Rose

Wow.

12:01

Sally

In my family, who you were was fine,

12:02

but what you produced was always criticized.

12:06

Rose

Oh.

12:08

Sally

So, I just didn't want that kind of criticism.

12:10

Being a lesbian, that was okay! (laughs)

12:16

So I didn't come out as an artist until I was in my fifties.

12:22

Rose

Sixties, did you say? Fifties or sixties?

12:26

Sally

Fifties, early fifties.

12:29

Rose

Fifties, okay.

12:31

Sally

So anyway, we lived in California

12:33

for a year and a half, and were just totally...

12:35

It was wonderful.

12:39

I mean still totally amazing.

12:40

At the beginning, really at performance arts started

12:44

with the feminist movement,

12:47

I'm sure there were other beginning,

12:49

but I think it was just an amazing, amazing movement.

12:53

And I learned skills, I made a book,

12:59

I took a printing class, and made a book,

13:04

and we were in a show with Lily Tomlin,

13:08

and all kinds of exciting things.

13:11

The women's music movement was in LA at that time,

13:16

it was great.

13:22

So, then we came back to South Jersey,

13:23

and I started doing carpentry,

13:27

again with total support from other women,

13:34

saying, well, would you do this?

13:37

And I'm like, well, I don't know how, but I'll try.

13:38

And really learning on as I did,

13:41

and getting paid for it.

13:45

Rose

Wow.

13:48

Sally

And it was wonderful.

13:49

Then, what happened?

13:52

My girlfriend and I parted ways after a few years,

13:57

and we were still good friends,

13:59

and in the winter I had problems with depression,

14:02

so I struggled with that,

14:10

and then when I was forty, really had kind of gotten,

14:13

I would say, my thirties when we came back from California,

14:17

I got settled and got stuck.

14:20

When I was turning forty, I really wanted to

14:25

shake up my life.

14:28

I decided to have an adventure rather than a midlife crisis.

14:31

And went to, got an open-ended year long ticket

14:37

to go to Australia and New Zealand with South (inaudible).

14:40

And hadn't been involved with anybody for a long time.

14:46

And went to Australia and New Zealand and really did

14:53

shake up my life, it really changed it,

14:57

I fell in love, had a wonderful...I still write to

15:00

the woman I was involved with.

15:06

The letters that she wrote to me I donated to the

15:09

Lesbian Herstory Archive, because letters

15:13

just aren't written any more.

15:18

Rose

Yeah.

15:20

Sally

So email day has changed all that,

15:22

so they were really interested in them.

15:25

And when I came back, I had hurt my back in my thirties,

15:27

that was part of my getting stuck,

15:34

and I couldn't do much carpentry any more,

15:36

and started teaching myself cabinet making,

15:41

and in my forties, the late thirties and forties,

15:44

had a cabinet making business.

15:48

I liked to go away in the winter, and it fits perfectly

15:52

because people don't have things done

15:55

between Christmas and taxes, and I wasn't making a fortune

15:58

but I was doing fine,

16:04

and so I think the winter after I went to

16:06

Australia and New Zealand, I went and did volunteer work

16:12

on a women's place in Puerto Rico,

16:16

had seen an ad saying, pay your way there,

16:20

and then we'll give you room and board for mornings

16:24

worked five days a week.

16:28

So I did that, and that was a lot of fun.

16:30

And then the next winter, I was trying to decide

16:32

where to go, my mom said, well, why don't you go

16:35

visit Ruth, she lives down in the Keys.

16:37

And I had been to the Keys before, but not since

16:41

the late sixties, early seventies,

16:44

I used to go down and stay on this boat with this guy,

16:46

then the last time I was down there was when we went

16:50

to Cuba in '71.

16:53

I guess '68, '69, '71, I had gone down there.

16:55

So I had a VW Van most of these years, used for work,

16:58

and I drove my van down to the Keys to see Ruth.

17:05

And I didn't really know much besides that,

17:12

except that she was in a community down there

17:14

that Barbara Deming had started,

17:17

and I don't know if I ever met Barbara Deming before,

17:21

but she was somebody I knew from when I was a child,

17:26

she was at the same peace movement demonstrations

17:31

that my family was at.

17:35

It was interesting as an adult to learn a connection.

17:38

She was involved with the Committee for Non-Violent Action,

17:45

which my father worked for, and that's the group

17:47

that sponsored I think maybe both the

17:51

San Francisco to Moscow walk and the Indo-China walk,

17:54

and also as a child, I spent summer vacations

17:58

at demonstrations and peace conferences,

18:02

and walked Washington a few times,

18:06

and so Barbara, there is a piece of land that

18:13

may have been women's land in some part of it's history,

18:18

I don't know, in Voluntown, Connecticut

18:20

that they had bought back in, God, I don't know,

18:24

late fifties, early sixties?

18:29

For a community, because in Connecticut

18:34

there was a Committee for Non-Violent Action

18:37

had a big thing around the submarine.

18:40

So, Barbara was very much involved with that,

18:45

and I find out later when I met Barbara's partner

18:48

during that time that it was Mary Meg's money

18:53

who had bought the farm.

18:56

So it was just amazing to me to meet all of this history

19:00

that I knew about in a different way,

19:04

kind of as a child, and not some of the other stuff.

19:06

So anyway, so I went down to visit Ruth,

19:11

and met the members of the community,

19:14

and Blue and I fell in love,

19:20

and I moved down there the next fall.

19:24

I came up here, I went down there, whatever.

19:30

And then I moved down there in the fall.

19:32

And she and I were involved for several years.

19:37

I moved down there, I never made it through the summer,

19:41

I did not like the summers down there,

19:45

I'm not a hot weather person or a cold weather person,

19:47

and I think it's because I like to be outside a lot,

19:51

and that's where I get my rejuvenation,

19:56

and in the summer, you can't be outside down there

19:59

any more than you--it's hard to be outside up here

20:03

in the really bad winters.

20:06

So, I did live there predominantly,

20:08

September, October through May or June.

20:15

Blue was up here with one of her ex lovers

20:20

helping her die, the third year,

20:26

and that sort of kind of ended things between us,

20:31

(murmurs inaudibly)

20:35

But we tried to be friends, and I loved the community.

20:38

I guess you can tell from my life, that it's important

20:45

to me to be involved in something bigger than just myself.

20:50

And so for eighteen years, Sugarloaf was that,

20:56

even though I didn't live there all the time.

21:00

Some years I wasn't even, probably the least amount of time

21:04

I spent down there was a month,

21:08

but usually it was three, four, five, six months.

21:09

And even when I wasn't down there, it was still my focus,

21:14

and what an amazing time, just to spread my wings wider,

21:18

learn, teach, when I got there, it was a community

21:26

of four women, and that's...

21:33

Rose

Who were the women?

21:38

Sally

You've been there, right?

21:39

Rose

Yeah, who were the women that were living there

21:40

when you got there?

21:41

Sally

The women were Ruth Raindigger, Blue Lunden,

21:42

Jane Verlaine, and Vogel, Barbara Vogel.

21:46

And the houses are back to back, so in those days,

21:53

and it still is today, at least from what,

21:57

the community part was on Date Palm Drive,

22:00

and the more private part was on Canal Drive.

22:03

It was Ruth and Blue that were interested in the community

22:07

and having more women come and the visitors,

22:10

that society visitors part of it.

22:13

And Jane and Vogel, they weren't so interested.

22:16

I guess maybe it's better to say that Ruth and Blue

22:22

were interested in bigger community.

22:27

And when I got there, I definitely was.

22:30

And I started a guest book to be more organized,

22:34

and also 'cause that's the way I was brought up.

22:40

My family always had a guest book, my parents

22:44

were always sending out fundraising letters

22:46

to raise money for this project or that.

22:48

So, I was a daughter.

22:50

So I started a guest book, and I wrote newsletters,

22:54

and really tried, I considered the community much broader

22:58

than the five of us that were living there at that time.

23:03

And we invited, I organized the month, well, as I say too,

23:07

I went from living in this house where I live now,

23:15

and it's sort of within a family house,

23:19

and fixing it up, I got tired of that,

23:22

so I moved down to Florida to fix up five houses.

23:24

Rose

Mmhmm.

23:28

Sally

'Cause they were in bad shape,

23:30

really bad shape, and I started working on fixing them up,

23:32

and learning as I went, and invited women with skills

23:39

or without to come down and kind of the same way

23:46

I had done when I went to Puerto Rico, where we gave them

23:50

a free place to stay and we worked and ate together.

23:54

And we did some projects.

23:59

I started learning to be a plumber down there,

24:03

we had to do some plumbing, and we said, okay,

24:07

has anybody sweated pipe?

24:09

And I said, well, I did one time, my dad showed me how.

24:11

And nobody else had done that, so I was the pipe sweater.

24:15

Rose

Sweater? Is that what you're saying, sweater?

24:21

Sally

Pipe, copper pipe, sweating.

24:24

Rose

I'm not hearing that word

24:29

that goes with copper pipes.

24:30

Sally

It's maybe, sweating, when you connect

24:31

copper pipe together, it's called sweating.

24:38

Rose

Sweating.

24:43

Sally

S-W-E-A-T-I-N-G.

24:44

Rose

Okay, okay, got it.

24:45

Sally

It's when you use, I can't even think of the

24:47

other word (laughs) sorry.

24:51

Rose

I think I got it, you go on, its okay.

24:55

Sally

And it was a wonderful place

25:00

to both learn and share skills.

25:02

I would often be doing things that I had never done before,

25:07

and the nice thing was if you ran into trouble,

25:12

you didn't feel like it was all on your shoulders.

25:15

Not that anybody else knew any more, but at least

25:18

there were other people there that were willing to

25:21

shoulder that and help figure out what to do next.

25:24

Rose

Yeah.

25:29

Sally

So it was amazing.

25:30

And we did a lot of work on the houses that,

25:34

if you see them now, they've just gotten better and better.

25:36

And it's interesting 'cause it went from a very different

25:40

community when Sky, who had been partners with Blue

25:43

when they moved down there, came down to visit,

25:47

she didn't like it.

25:51

Now these are my words, so I'm not gonna--but it felt

25:53

like she didn't like it because when she had lived there,

25:56

mornings were quiet time, that's when Barbara wrote,

26:00

and so Barbara didn't kind of come out until the afternoon.

26:04

And I'm a morning energy person, and that's when I get

26:09

things done, so mornings were working time,

26:12

or had become a lot of working time,

26:17

and then afternoons were more free time.

26:18

And so it was really different than it had been originally.

26:23

And it continued to change.

26:28

More women came, we kind of called ourselves

26:34

winter residents, came just for the winter.

26:38

There were a few German women who had moved there,

26:44

they lived there full time.

26:49

There was a lot happening after

26:51

the first couple years of my coming.

26:54

And also tensions and problems arose.

26:59

And we were trying to figure it out day by day,

27:06

there was no grand plan.

27:11

And I don't know how many--for a while there were

27:15

a lot more people living there,

27:19

and lots of winter residents.

27:21

And after I stopped quote-unquote living there

27:25

with Blue, that's what I considered myself,

27:27

was a winter resident, and not just a visitor.

27:29

And I pretty much, those years, went down there,

27:35

I didn't work, I worked up north, doing cabinet making,

27:41

and when I went down there, I worked for the community,

27:47

and basically worked five days a week, mornings,

27:49

doing different, mostly building, renovating projects.

27:54

And again, continued to organize,

28:01

I guess the funnest year was when we had women come down

28:08

and we did some bathrooms and then after that,

28:12

the smaller projects from doing the back porch

28:16

of the community house, which had been Ruth's house,

28:23

needed concrete blocks and windows.

28:27

I'd never done concrete block before, but I said I'll do it,

28:31

had some other women visiting that worked on that,

28:35

same with the front porch and so lot of work came

28:39

and got done, other people moved down and lived

28:44

in other houses because of the community.

28:48

So, when I got there in the winter,

28:51

Blue did potluck often, and the community house

28:55

when I moved down there was Blue's house.

28:58

When we had potluck, it was always at Blue's house,

29:04

then Blue's and my house.

29:08

And then, so Blue usually, she knew a lot of women

29:12

who were, I would say, intellectuals, and activists

29:17

from other areas who would come to Key West and stay,

29:25

sometimes in Key West, sometimes in the community,

29:29

and she would often invite them to

29:31

do something for (mumbles).

29:33

I'm not going to remember her name, but the woman who wrote

29:36

the biography of Eleanor Roosevelt.

29:38

Rose

Oh yeah, I know who you mean, Blanche Wiesen Cook.

29:44

Sally

Yes, she came and read from that before

29:47

it was even published, and actually Sugarloaf

29:52

is mentioned in the beginning, the forward, or something.

29:55

And it was wonderful.

30:04

Here was this group of women who were just so positive

30:07

about things that it was the perfect place to do that.

30:11

After Blue died, I mean, potlucks became more regular

30:18

and longer, and when Blue died, I did a lot of the potlucks,

30:24

and even before she died, I really thought it more than

30:32

just a place for women who wrote, or teachers,

30:37

it was a place for every woman to have a mind

30:47

to share what they wanted to share.

30:50

And that was really important to me.

30:55

Maybe because of the place I was coming out of.

30:57

So, it became not only for visitors, but also

31:04

for women who lived there.

31:09

(coughs) excuse me.

31:13

And we did potlucks on, one woman who was from New York,

31:16

who was a friend of mine, we asked her to teach

31:20

us how to cut hair.

31:21

Oh, and then one woman who did astrology,

31:29

I mean just, everything.

31:33

We did writing, we had presentations,

31:35

but it was more anybody that wanted to,

31:42

rather than if you were famous or had written something

31:44

and published something, or the organizer of this or that,

31:49

it was more democratic.

31:54

Rose

Yeah.

32:00

-

And that was again, that was really important to me.

32:02

Oh, what else?

32:10

I'm doing a pretty good job here talking, I was surprised.

32:13

Rose

Yeah!

32:16

(Sally laughs)

32:17

Yeah, you're filling a lot of holes in my understanding

32:18

of what went on in Sugarloaf.

32:21

Sally

I'm sure.

32:23

Well, that's because I'm the only one left.

32:25

Rose

Yeah, yeah.

32:27

Sally

After I was--okay, so Blue's dead,

32:31

Ruth's dead, Jane died, Vogel died.

32:34

The women who moved there after I was there,

32:38

the first woman standing is dead.

32:40

None of the rest, the other ones, the two German women,

32:44

I don't know who else lived there,

32:50

are not involved anymore.

32:52

Another woman who was a pretty regular winter resident

32:56

for quite a few years died.

32:59

And this is all before anyone, Bonnie was there

33:02

way before I was ever there,

33:09

but then not again until after all of this.

33:11

I had decided well, okay, so then Lo, Mary Meg,

33:18

who had been partners with Barbara during

33:27

the maybe the early sixties, I'm not sure how long,

33:32

and as a writer, and also has a lot of money.

33:36

She would come down in the winter, and she loved it.

33:40

And she just got more and more excited as the community

33:46

went from being this very, pretty quiet four to five

33:50

to lots of women being down there.

33:56

And when she got ill, she had a stroke,

33:59

I organized--well, first I went up when she came out

34:07

of the nursing home, she was in Montreal,

34:10

my partner Puck and I went off

34:14

and took care of her for three months.

34:17

And then I organized, she really only wanted lesbians,

34:19

and she could afford to pay ten dollars an hour,

34:23

whatever it was to have women take care of her,

34:27

and she just needed somebody to live there.

34:32

She wasn't able to do that, totally everything herself.

34:36

So I organized different women to go up there

34:40

for a month or two,

34:42

and we did that for way over a year, I can't remember,

34:44

and then people ran out of energy,

34:51

and then she and I found again through Women's Land,

34:53

Martine and Maryann, who, Maryann had been involved

35:00

with the pagoda, and I had known her from that,

35:05

and Martine from music, women's music festivals,

35:08

and they knew all these women,

35:17

so after that, they found two women who lived in Montreal

35:18

Rose

Martine and Maryann lived with the two women

35:24

who lived in Montreal who'd stay with her then?

35:27

Sally

No, we found some, no, they didn't,

35:30

but through them.

35:32

Rose

They helped find them.

35:33

Sally

We found some other women

35:34

who continued until she died.

35:35

And it was wonderful.

35:40

It was so fantastic.

35:41

So we did that, and then before she died,

35:45

this land across the street came up for sale,

35:55

and it was during the building boom of the Keys,

35:59

that everybody was buying land

36:03

and building, building, building,

36:05

and I said, we should buy that.

36:08

At that point, had all the lot that we could,

36:12

on the empty lot, on the one next, Ruth had bought the one

36:20

next to her house when she moved down there,

36:26

and when I first moved down there, I found out about

36:29

the lot next to Blue's house,

36:32

which is where Bonnie lives now.

36:35

And had written a letter to him, and with the help

36:39

from Mary, we'd bought that land years earlier,

36:43

but then this one across the street came up for sale,

36:49

and we just had visions of them building one of these houses

36:52

on stilts that would look down over us.

36:55

And I said well let's raise the money to buy that land,

36:58

and I committed to doing that, raising the money for that.

37:03

But at this point, everything was in Blue's name.

37:13

And it's not that I didn't trust her, I just didn't

37:18

believe in it, and I wasn't gonna put all that effort

37:22

into raising money to put in some individual's name.

37:27

So I said, I would be glad to, but we needed to set up

37:34

some kind of organization, and we had been talking

37:39

since I moved there about putting it into land trust,

37:43

and as far as I knew, Blue believed in that.

37:47

I still think she believed in it, but I think

37:54

like all of us, and that's the reason I believe in

37:58

land trust, we get scared and then emotions say,

38:01

oh, don't do that, don't do that.

38:09

So, we spent a year, a winter, figuring out with Blue

38:12

always getting final approval,

38:20

doing the by-laws and everything for

38:25

that one little piece of land, that was it.

38:27

And we raised the money and bought that land,

38:35

and put it in the land trust,

38:41

and still all the other land was in Blue's name,

38:42

and the next winter, we spent the whole winter

38:45

trying to put the rest of the land into the land trust.

38:53

Redoing and working on all the by-laws and all that stuff

39:00

so again, that Blue would feel comfortable,

39:04

she was the one that had to sign it over and she and I

39:07

had our personal issues and it got taken into other issues,

39:12

and we were working on those too,

39:16

we were doing pretty good, and then we went to one meeting,

39:23

and she said she had talked to a lawyer

39:31

and that she had decided not to put it into a

39:34

community land trust, that she wanted to

39:36

put it in the lawyers,

39:41

let the lawyers have control over it after she died.

39:42

Rose

Now wait a minute, what?

39:47

I didn't understand that.

39:49

Sally

Oh yeah, well this is where community land trust

39:49

and land trust need to be separated,

39:53

because a community land trust is not even a legal identity,

39:55

it is just a non-profit group that calls itself

40:00

a community land trust, and one of the tenants

40:04

of the movement of community land trust

40:09

is you can't sell the land, and there's different things,

40:12

but it really is a non-profit group.

40:16

There is no legal way in a non-profit group

40:20

that you can't sell the land.

40:23

You can always change the by-laws and sell it.

40:25

But then there are land trusts, and this is what

40:28

the rich people do, and they put it often in the

40:31

control of lawyers, and there are different laws and rules

40:35

to govern the land, but it's often controlled by lawyers.

40:42

And she had decided to do that.

40:52

And that was after we had worked so hard,

40:55

and I was furious, and at that point, I left,

41:02

and said, I can't do it anymore, I can't do it anymore.

41:06

And I had a slow trip north, by the time I got north,

41:11

Blue was in the hospital with cancer.

41:15

And some other people went down and it was too late

41:24

to start with the way she had decided to go,

41:29

so she agreed, I guess, and they put it into

41:33

the community land trust that we had worked

41:36

so hard all winter on.

41:38

I don't know, I don't know if it would've gone that way

41:40

if she hadn't gotten ill and died.

41:43

Because she had said no, she didn't want to do that.

41:46

If she was afraid, I just knew her so well,

41:49

and her politics were so good, and her belief systems,

41:53

like every human being, she was afraid,

41:59

and I think she was afraid that people would get rid of her.

42:02

Rose

Yeah.

42:05

Sally

And so...

42:10

Rose

Several people have said that,

42:13

that I've interviewed, she's quoted.

42:15

Sally

Yeah, well we all know.

42:17

Rose

She's quoted as saying it.

42:19

Sally

I mean we talked about it.

42:19

We don't know, but that's what makes sense.

42:20

She wasn't an easy person.

42:25

Rose

Yeah, yeah.

42:28

Sally

And it was hard for her, she was king.

42:28

And it was hard for her to give up control,

42:34

and she came from a really hard life,

42:38

and I totally can understand it,

42:41

but it wasn't easy to live with.

42:50

So, it became a land trust, and during all this process,

42:56

people used to say to me, and I think that's why I got

43:01

so furious with her, do you think she really wants this

43:04

to be a community land trust?

43:08

And I would say yes, I think she really does,

43:11

it's just hard for her.

43:14

So when she said no, I was just furious, no other word.

43:17

So anyway, after much drama (laughs)

43:32

And then I continued being very involved

43:37

for quite a few years after that,

43:40

and at one point decided that I was wanting to move on,

43:44

and as I see we're back again,

43:53

I think I wanted, this is when I came home

43:56

and focused more on myself and came out as an artist,

43:59

rather than doing things totally for a community and stuff,

44:05

kind of started exploring all my own personal creativity.

44:09

And at the same time, my parents were getting older,

44:18

and didn't want to go to an old people's home,

44:21

even though they had no money, they didn't work that way.

44:28

They would have been paid for to go to a very nice

44:39

Quaker old people's home,

44:43

the Quakers would have paid for them

44:44

because their whole life had been that.

44:47

And I say, well, they owe me a big favor,

44:51

because they would have been sorry at those

44:56

old people's homes if my parents had moved there,

44:58

my dad would have wreaked havoc.

45:01

He would have organized the place (laughs).

45:05

So anyway, so I said well, I'll try to

45:09

make it possible for them to stay.

45:15

They had moved back to the family home after living

45:19

years and years and years in community in Philadelphia,

45:22

and so we had a little community here, my parents and I.

45:29

And I cook the dinners, but it felt like a community,

45:33

also a lot of healing for me.

45:39

As wonderful as my family was and my parents were,

45:44

it was also horrible, like most families.

45:46

A lot of healing was done during those years,

45:51

and the women's land community flew, passed by through here,

45:56

and everybody knew my parents, my dad was in love

46:05

with the Ghandian foundation,

46:09

which was an umbrella non-profit that sponsored groups

46:11

so that people could get tax deductions through them,

46:19

and they would take a percentage,

46:26

so Sugarloaf, they sponsored Sugarloaf so people

46:27

could give tax deductibled gifts.

46:31

And they came down to the Keys one time,

46:34

they made a, what's that right word, when the Pope

46:42

makes the exception, my dad was allowed to stay

46:45

at the women's land (both women laugh).

46:49

He wasn't allowed to walk around.

46:51

And it was really good,

46:57

it was good to have to figure out that.

46:58

So, yeah, my parents were always very supportive,

47:04

and women traveling from New England to Florida

47:13

would often stop here.

47:16

My father came out as being bisexual (laughs)

47:23

Rose

Wow.

47:27

Sally

Puck said he was an honorary lesbian,

47:30

but I didn't agree with that one (laughs).

47:33

So anyway, it was a family affair, later.

47:36

And so I really thought I would be broken-hearted

47:48

when I left Sugarloaf,

47:51

and it was interesting because I wasn't.

47:52

I was ready.

47:54

I thought it would be like leaving a girlfriend,

47:56

I would really grieve, but I think it took me a while to

47:58

get to that point, and by the time I got to it,

48:02

I felt it was a really positive thing.

48:06

And my heart a is still a little,

48:09

less and less as years go by,

48:11

but there's a piece of my heart at Sugarloaf,

48:13

always will be.

48:16

I don't know, do you have any questions?

48:20

Rose

Wow, that's a good way to end it right there.

48:23

I know I do, I think the best thing is gonna be

48:27

for me to go through these notes,

48:30

and then insert the questions in the notes.

48:34

Sally

Yeah, okay.

48:38

Rose

Because there's various places where I didn't

48:39

want to stop you that I didn't quite understand something,

48:41

I mean I stopped you sometimes.

48:45

Sally

That would make sense because I jumped around.

48:47

Rose

But I think we've got enough here

48:50

that I can go ahead and type these notes,

48:52

insert my questions, and I'll email it.

48:56

Can you, I think I'm gonna go ahead and stop the tape here.

48:59

I'm gonna send you a paper copy in any case,

49:07

because you're going to need to sign the form.

49:09

Sally

Right.

49:12

Rose

But I can also email it to you in a form that

49:12

you can edit, if you...

49:15

Sally

Nope, that's fine.

49:17

Rose

And do you have Word, can you do Word,

49:19

do I need to send it in another..?

49:20

Sally

Yes.

49:21

Rose

Okay, I'll send it to you as a doc file

49:22

and then you can do whatever you want to it,

49:24

and email it back.

49:28

Sally

Yeah, actually I have Libra,

49:29

what's it called, Libra.

49:32

But it does Word.

49:34

Rose

It'll open a Word doc?

49:36

Sally

Yeah, it's the free version of Word.

49:38

Rose

Yeah, yeah, I know.

49:40

If you have any trouble I can save it in another format.

49:42

But start with that, because that'll be the easiest.

49:45

Sally

Yes, good, all right.

49:47

Rose

Wow, this has been so great.

49:50

I'm also going to send you, or did I already send you

49:52

the Sugarloaf story that's gonna come out?

49:54

I did go spend about a week at Sugarloaf,

49:58

and I interviewed Bonnie at great length.

50:00

Of course, she's only lived there since 2006,

50:03

but she was there off and on before,

50:06

and I interviewed Connie Tarpley, she's as close

50:08

as I got to somebody who had...

50:11