This is a rather odd, convoluted story. I hardly know how to process it. Seemingly unrelated events converged at rhomboid angles when I tried to find the news clipping on a play I was in, called San Geronimo! in 1965. It was written by Barbara Scott and directed by Stu Rasmussen. The Marin County librarian had no luck finding it, so when Newspapers.com was free today, I slogged through a decade’s worth of newspapers. Sometimes finding what you aren’t looking for is the real story. Synchronicity works in mysterious ways. During Freedom Summer, the good folks of San Geronimo Valley had raised money and made a massive book drive to furnish Indianola Freedom School in Mississippi. Someone’s local son taught there. They needed books. We gave. We sent them 2000 books. I remember being asked to give up some of my books. I belong to Scholastic book services book club and every month I bought armloads of books for $.10 each—that’s where all my babysitting money went, was for books. The organizers included Harold Gregg of Forest Farm Camp, and the Greenbergers—Joan’s father was a guard at San Quentin. One night he took us kids out to dinner. Instant mashed potatoes and salisbury steak in the San Quentin mess hall. Weird. Understand that the San Geronimo Valley, an enclave of artists and musicians, was not mainstream Marin. More like the poverty pool. Jazz pianists Lenny Tristano and Ralf Sutton were fathers of our our classmates. Maurice del Mué painted our WPA school mural. Meanwhile, during that Freedom Summer, many of Marin’s young folks rallied, they also joined Martin Luther King, marching from the San Francisco Theological Seminary to Selma. Ken Bullock remembers seeing the greyhound busses pull away from the seminary. Unrelated segue no. 1, I was part of that Marin City mounted entourage from the San Geronimo Valley. I played Joseph leading Mary on a donkey, Dec. 1964. Yeah, I was dressed in white bedsheets pulling a recalcitrant ass through the streets of Marin City. Equally weird. Unrelated segue no. 2. More of a prequel as it set everything in motion. Cathy Barbano who lived on our road, was killed in a car crash in Mexico in 1965. Then her grief-stricken father, Ed Barbano shot himself. Meanwhile, there was Selma Alabama. Bloody Sunday, March 1965. Well, Freedom School was razed to the ground, and Mississippi was burning. So SGV folks began raising money and collecting books all over again to help rebuild that school—and our play, San Geronimo! was a fundraiser. Why I had trouble finding the article was because the lead was buried. Literally. I kept seeing references to Freedom School. Curiosity finally got the better of me. I was so sure I would never find that article. Maddening. And lo, filed under the headline of Freedom Summer, there was the slippery article that had evaded detection for decades. Everything suddenly came together. Our fundraiser, the rebuilding of Freedom School was a memorial tribute to Cathy’s father and our playground teacher, Ed Barbano. See Harold Gregg’s rousing letter at the end. What spurred us into action? The abduction and murder of three civil rights leaders June 25, 1964, by the KKK may have been the galvanizing event. Synchronicity works in mysterious ways.
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