Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (1925-2009)

Subject: Sandy Ives gravely ill
From: GUEST,Julia
Date: 06 Jul 09 - 02:02 PM

I've just received word that Dr. Edward (Sandy) Ives is gravely ill. He is well known and highly regarded for his work in Northeast American/Canadian Maritime folklore and founded the Maine Folklife Center at Univ. Maine Orono.

Well-wishers please send cards and letters to
Sandy Ives
8 Poplar Lane
Dirigo Pines, Orono Me 04473

Please NO PHONE CALLS

Thanks- Julia Lane

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill
From: meself
Date: 06 Jul 09 - 02:04 PM

Thanks for letting us know. He has made a great contribution to the knowledge of folk music in Prince Edward Isand in particular. Sorry to hear the bad news.

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill
From: Dan Schatz
Date: 06 Jul 09 - 02:39 PM

I consider it one of the great privileges of my life to have had the opportunity to spend even a little time with Sandy and his wonderful wife Barbara at gatherings in Maine. And of course, many of us have for years been singing and loving songs that he helped to preserve without even knowing it.

Dan

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill
From: kendall
Date: 06 Jul 09 - 05:19 PM

This is unwelcome news. What a great guy he is, and he sure has a winner in Bobby.

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill
From: maeve
Date: 06 Jul 09 - 06:04 PM

Thank you, Julia. Our card will go out in the morning.

maeve

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 06 Jul 09 - 09:04 PM

Julia-

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Sandy is a mentor to many of us who live and make music in Maine.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: kendall
Date: 06 Jul 09 - 09:13 PM

I had him on my TV series, In The Kitchen, back in the early 80's. He is an outstanding storyteller.

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: open mike
Date: 06 Jul 09 - 09:18 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_D._Ives

here is an interview from 2000
http://digilib.bates.edu/gsdl/collect/muskieor/index/assoc/HASH01a2.dir/doc.pdf

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: maeve
Date: 07 Jul 09 - 06:31 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: maeve
Date: 28 Jul 09 - 10:56 PM

At our Quasimodal Chorus rehearsal tonight, we ended with two beloved songs for two beloved friends; Sandy Paton, whose long life ended on Sunday, July 26, 2009 and Sandy Ives, who is so ill tonight.

First was "Barnet"

Peaceful be the silent slumber,
Peaceful in the grave so low.
Thou no more shall join our number;
Thou no more our songs shall know.
Yet again we hope to meet thee,
When the day of life is fled;
There in heav'n once more to greet thee,
Where no farewell tear is shed.

(Lyrics: Epitaph of Azro W., Barnet Center, Vermont Cemetery Tune: Seth Houston, 1993 Meter: 8s, 7s (8,7,8,7)Northern Harmony Tunebook Index)
Found here Barnet mp3 file (scroll down 2/3)

Then we sang The Farthest Field by friend and sometime chorus member, David Dodson.

There is a land high on a hill
Where I am going- there is a voice that calls to me
The air is sweet, the grasses wave
The wind is blowing - oh, 'way up in the farthest field

REFRAIN:
Oh walk with me and we will see the mystery revealed
When one day we wend our way up to the farthest field

The sun will rise, the sun will set
Across the mountains - and we will live with beauty there
The fragrant flowers the days and hours
Will not be counted- And peaceful songs will fill the air

I know one day I'll leave my home
Here in the valley - and climb up to that field so fair
And when I'm called and counted in
That final tally - I know that I will see you there

Oh my dear friends I truly love
To hear your voices - lifted up in radiant song
Though through the years we all have made
Our separate choices -we've ended here where we belong.

[Refrain doubled at end.]
Farthest Field thread

Then we were silent, thinking of one mighty soul already gone on the great journey, and the other mighty soul, gazing up that farthest hill.
                         **************
I've posted this same note on Sandy Paton's thread, so Caroline Paton and Bobbie Ives both know we love their menfolk, and we love the two strong women who have let us travel with each Sandy through the years and across the miles.

maeve in Midcoast Maine

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: EBarnacle
Date: 28 Jul 09 - 11:10 PM

I only met Sandy a couple times. To paraphrase one of his songs: We'll "be glad when this summer is over,"
We'll be glad when this misery's done,
On that September morn when the season is done,
We'll know we have stuck through it all.


yesterday, when writing about Sandy Paton, I realized it had been a long time since I had heard about Sandy Ives and was wondering how he was doing. This is not the sort of news I had hoped to hear.

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: GUEST,Julia
Date: 28 Jul 09 - 11:16 PM

Thanks , Maeve for refreshing this thread
Fred and I visited Sandy & Bobbi Ives last week and played some songs for them, and reminisced. He tires easily, but it was good.All the notes and cards people have sent have been very much appreciated.

Thanks also for remembering to support the womenfolk.Bobbi, thankfully, has some great hospice workers helping her, but the loving energy of those who know them is vital.

blessings- julia

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: Dan Schatz
Date: 28 Jul 09 - 11:56 PM

And thank you, Julia, for keeping us up to date.

Dan

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: GUEST,julia
Date: 30 Jul 09 - 11:04 AM

I have just heard that Sandy will be leaving us very soon...perhaps within the next day or so
I'm not able to say more just now
J

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: maeve
Date: 30 Jul 09 - 12:44 PM

Yes, Julia. Thank you. When I saw Dick Swain on Tuesday I asked him to deliver a message from Archie.

maeve

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: Severn
Date: 30 Jul 09 - 01:06 PM

I never met him, but have a copy of both the Folkways album and his excellent book, "Joe Scott: The Woodsman Songmaker". I've seen lists of some of his other impressive accomplishments.

My best thoughts wishes and prayers go out to a man I would have loved to have met, and to all those close to him.

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: Dan Schatz
Date: 31 Jul 09 - 01:17 PM

Go well, Sandy, in peace and comfort, lifted by the love of your friends and family.

Dan

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: georgeward
Date: 01 Aug 09 - 12:19 AM

I was never one of Sandy's students...and yet, of course, I was and am. You can't care about songmakers working within a tradition (maybe any tradition) and not be. Such is the importance of his lifework, and of only a part of it at that.

In a week overly aware of the importance of sharing a few beers, it's probably also worth saying that he and Bobbi rate way up there on my list of folks worth spending an evening with. Haven't done so for years. Never got to do it often enough. But nevertheless.

And when Sarah Cleveland - unaccompanied balled singer - brought the largely-student house down at the Buffalo Folk Festival in 1979 (I think), that was partly the doing of the august Dr.Edward D. Ives, who - having shared a few beers - led the cheers from the front row.

Sandy and Bobbi...my love and admiration,

George Ward

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: kendall
Date: 01 Aug 09 - 08:35 AM

I'll always remember the festival that Sandy and Bobbie hosted in February of 1977. I was honored to participate. Some of the performers whom I didn't know were, Sparky Rucker, Debbie McClatchy, Lisa Null Margaret MacArthur and Joe Hickerson.

Sandy also wrote a book about a famous poacher in my home area of Washington County Maine. I'd heard stories of Wilbur Day but thought he was a myth until I read Sandy's book.

He is a giant in his field, and one hell of a nice guy to boot.

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 01 Aug 09 - 01:12 PM

Thank you so much, Sandy, for your book, Drive Dull Care Away: Folksongs from Prince Edward Island, and the songs and the work that you did.

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: curmudgeon
Date: 02 Aug 09 - 02:43 PM

It was just reported on Ballad-L that Sandy passed away yesterday - Tom

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: meself
Date: 02 Aug 09 - 03:14 PM

I suppose he had a good run of it - but you wish guys like him could just go on forever, and keep doing the good stuff.

Subject: RE: Sandy Ives gravely ill (July 2009)
From: Dan Schatz
Date: 02 Aug 09 - 03:27 PM

We're losing too many friends. I'll miss seeing him. But Sandy sure had a long and incredible life. My heart goes out to Bobbi.

Dan

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 02 Aug 09 - 08:34 PM

I'll always remember the song parties that Sandy and Bobbi would kindly invite me to when I was attending graduate school at the University of Maine in Orono, way back in 1965. It was one of the few bright memories I have of my brief sojourn there. I also sat in on his folk music class and spent too much time reviewing his archives, while not doing the studying necessary to keep my grades up. Well, folk music was much more interesting to me than geology at the time.

We will miss Sandy but we certainly will not forget him.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: kendall
Date: 03 Aug 09 - 06:35 AM

Sandy, my dear old friend, it was such a pleasure to know you. To quote Gordon Bok, "Where you go, go well, and a fair wind home"

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: maeve
Date: 03 Aug 09 - 06:53 AM

Yes, Kendall. Sandy's life has been well sailed. I'm thinking of him, and with particular gratitude of his life's work, on this cool, bird-filled morning. Thank you, Dr. Ives.

maeve

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: lisa null
Date: 03 Aug 09 - 10:24 AM

In the early 1970s, I remember driving to Maine from southern Connecticut, where I lived. Sandy was giving a one-day workshop on oral history. That's how we met, I think, and it was the start of long years of fast friendship, festival production, and my own transition from singing sean nos Irish style to singing folksongs of the Northeast, closer to my own general cultural region. I also remember what a fine singer and guitarist he himself was and the joyful parties he gave in his barn. Sandy was the soul of life: opinionated, courageous, and passionate and always a formidable opponent of bull. As for his work, he wrote like a dream and thought like a genius-- one hell of a pathfinder and, yes, a great and loveable man.

What I particularly loved as a singer was his essay in "Folksong and Their Makers" (by Henry Glassie, Edward D. Ives, John F. Szwed - 1979 ) which helped me pay attention to the songwriter as a continuation of folk tradition. When we co-directed a festival at the University of Maine together-- the one Kendal attended?-- "Folksongs in February," Sandy stitched together traditional singers, local topical singers who wrote of material of interest to their own communities, and modern Maine songwriters with broader appeal who nevertheless were deeply connected to their region. His weaving these musicians throughout the festival in telling places was a tour de force and went a long way towards illuminating and mending a widening rift at that time between the folk revival's singers of traditional song and singer/songwriters.

My son, a Mainer by choice, later encountered George Magoon and the Down East Game War. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Reprinted (paperback) 1993. I think it showed us both some of the complexities of colliding sub-cultures with conflicting patterns of sustainability and excess.

One special insight of Sandy's from that long ago oral history lecture: "Honor and take an informant's digressions seriously. What you find may be far more interesting than what you were actually looking for!"

I am reeling from the loss of this wonderful friend and mentor and also from the loss of that dear friend and mentor: Sandy Paton of Folk-Legacy Records. Mike Seeger is also gravely ill-- these are three bright stars whose light will shine for years into the future, but for now I am absolutely devastated.

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: maeve
Date: 03 Aug 09 - 10:29 AM

Thanks, Lisa. Your post illuminates many of the reasons we've held Sandy in such high regard.

maeve

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: GUEST,Julia
Date: 03 Aug 09 - 12:41 PM

Sandy passed quietly at 6:30 sunday night

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: maeve
Date: 03 Aug 09 - 12:59 PM

Thank you, Julia. Sinsull's house in South Portland was full of music at that time, as is fitting.

He will be missed.

maeve

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Aug 09 - 01:45 PM

The work of people like Sandy Ives leaves behind treasures for us all. Thank you Sandy. Rest peacefully. Burl

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Aug 09 - 09:18 PM

Here's the official obituary in the Bangor Daily News

http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/114269.html

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: maeve
Date: 03 Aug 09 - 09:26 PM

Obituary notice link from the previous GUEST post.

maeve

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 03 Aug 09 - 09:26 PM

Here's the text (since the link might not last):

           
By Jessica Bloch, BDN Staff
Posted Aug. 03, 2009, at 8:19 p.m.

Folklife expert, UMaine professor Ives dies

ORONO, Maine — International folklife expert and longtime University of Maine professor of folklore Edward “Sandy” Ives, who traveled the woods of Maine and eastern Canada to record folk songs and oral histories while teaching thousands of UMaine anthropology students, died Saturday [August 1, 2009] at his home. He was 83.

Ives taught at the University of Maine for 44 years, retiring in 1999. In his career he published dozens of articles, books and recordings based on his journeys to lumber camps all over the state and region.

“I was interested in the songs that people sang, the guys in the lumber camps,” Ives said in a 2007 Bangor Daily News story on the occasion of some of his work being included in the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

“I knew there were song makers and that their songs were passed on by oral tradition,” he added. “To record the music, I have to go to the people who knew the songs.”

Pauleena MacDougall, director of the UMaine-based Maine Folklife Center, the origins of which Ives founded in 1971, said Ives had a “tremendous impact” on students. He often played his recordings for students, punctuating his lectures with stories and jokes.

His students eventually went out into the field to make recordings of their own.

“He had a unique style of lecturing and bringing folk music and folklore alive in the classroom,” MacDougall said last week. “The students loved him.”

Ives first taught in the English department and later in the anthropology department, where he served as department chair from 1983 to 1989.

A biographical sketch written by MacDougall for a 2000 University of Maine press book “Northeast Folklore: Essays in Honor of Edward D. Ives,” which MacDougall edited with former Ives student David Taylor, now a folklorist at the American Folklore Center at the Library of Congress, reveals a glimpse of what motivated Ives’ research and teaching.

In the late 1950s, according to MacDougall’s essay, Ives, then a young and struggling UMaine professor, had the idea to earn extra money singing and playing guitar at summer camps in Maine. He decided to sing shanties and lumber camp songs about Maine.

“Because so many of the Maine songs had to do with river drives and woods work … he soon found himself searching for more information about the Maine woods,” MacDougall wrote. “His excitement grew, and he no longer considered leaving Maine.”

His travels also altered his teaching methods, as Ives began to include the songs and stories he brought back from the woods.

“What I had been offering students in the guise of literary history was something that never was … something that had more to do with the concert stage than with the bunkhouse or farm kitchen or any other normal arena of traditional song as I had come to know it,” MacDougall quoted Ives as saying.

A former Bucksport resident, Ives served as director of the Maine Folklife Center for 22 years. The center started out as the Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History, merging with the Northeast Folklore Society in 1992.

Ives served as a folk arts panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, a fellow of the American Folklore Society, a member of the Maine Arts Commission, and was appointed to the Acadian Cultural Preservation Commission.

William Ferris, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1997 to 2001, said recently that Ives had been a powerful presence on the national folklore scene for many years. The two met in the early 1970s, Ferris said, when Ives was involved with the Kennebunk-based organization Salt — now the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies — and Ferris was connected with Foxfire, a Southern folklife program for high school students based in Georgia.

Ferris, now a professor of folklore and associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said Ives will be remembered for his compassion and attention to detail in his dealings both with his students and with the subjects of his many interviews and articles.

“Whenever he spoke about Maine, you felt like you were right there, in the presence of the incredibly important people whose lives he documented,” Ferris said. Ives brought Ferris to speak at the University of Maine twice — once in the 1980s, when Ferris gave a talk on the evolution and role of blues music in American culture, and again when Ferris was at the NEH.

In 1991 Ives was presented the Marius Barbeau Medal, awarded by the Folklore Studies Association of Canada for outstanding lifetime contributions. He also received an Award of Honor from the Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation in 1998 and the Annual Harvey A. Kantor Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement in Oral History in 1979.

“He left a legacy in the whole folklore field, not just here in Maine but nationally and internationally,” MacDougall said. “He is someone that I consider a mentor and a friend. He taught me about writing, about personal relationships and networking, about folklore.”

Ives, a New York native who served in the Marine Corps, graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., received a master’s degree from Columbia University in New York City, and earned a doctorate in folklore from Indiana University in Bloomington in 1962. He began his teaching career as an English instructor at Illinois College in Jacksonville, and moved to the City College of New York before arriving at the University of Maine in 1955.

Ives is survived by his wife of 57 years, Barbara Ann “Bobby” Herrel, two sons and a daughter.

A memorial service will be held in the fall. In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent in Ives’ name to the Maine Folklife Center, care of the University of Maine Foundation, Buchanan Alumni House, Two Alumni Place, Orono, ME 04469-5792, and New Hope Hospice, P.O. Box 757, Holden, ME 04429.

BDN writer Meg Haskell contributed to this report.

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Aug 09 - 09:46 PM

I learned a story from Sandy, about a giant, a greedy King and a bright young man. I used to tell it in schools and the kids loved it.

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 08:14 AM

One of Sandy's best known books is LARRY GORMAN: The Man Who Made the Songs, his research into the Prince Edward Island lumberman who worked in Maine and composed dozens of satirical songs about those he was working with, "friend and foe, relative and stranger, without fear or favour."

Sandy also published his in depth research into the traditional folk song "The Bonny Earl of Murray." It's fascinating reading.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: Nancy King
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 12:23 AM

I really didn't know Sandy Ives well at all, having met him only a few times, and, truth be told, spending more time talking to Bobbi than to him. But I do know how much he was loved and respected by all who worked and studied with him.

Here is an obituary from the Bangor Daily News, forwarded to me by my old friend Lois Lyman, who studied with Sandy for a college project about -- gulp -- 48 years ago.

Nancy

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 07:06 AM

this from the American Folklore society:



Folklorist Sandy Ives passed away Sunday evening, August 2, at home in
Maine. Sandy received his PhD in folklore from Indiana University in
1962 and was a professor of folklore at the University of Maine from
1964 to his retirement in 1998. He founded the Maine Folklife Center
and the Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History, both at the
University. Among his major publications were Larry Gorman: The Man
Who Made the Songs (Indiana University Press, 1964), Folksongs and
Their Makers (co-editor; Bowling Green State University Popular Press,
1970), Joe Scott: The Woodsman Songmaker (University of Illinois
Press, 1978), and George Magoon and the Down East Game War (University
of Illinois Press, 1988). In 2000, Ives received a festschrift issue
of the journal he founded, Northeast Folklore, entitled Essays in
Honor of Edward D. "Sandy" Ives and edited by Pauleena MacDougall and
David Taylor (University of Maine Press). He was elected to the
Fellows of the AFS in 1980, and received the Society?s Kenneth
Goldstein Award for Lifetime Academic Leadership in 2003.

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: bbc
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 07:28 AM

I didn't know Sandy, but he sounds like a great person. My sympathy to Bobbie & all who loved him in this loss.

Barbara

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: kendall
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 08:17 AM

One of those Guests was me. I learned a story from Sandy that kids love.

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: GUEST,hg
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 02:39 PM

the last guest wAS ME. i'M IN THE AMERICAN FOLKLORE SOCIETY DAM CAPSLOCK
HARPY

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: maeve
Date: 05 Nov 09 - 02:12 PM

For those who are able to attend and wish to do so:

EDWARD D. "SANDY" IVES
4 SEPTEMBER 1925 - 1 AUGUST 2009

Memorial Service
7 November 2009 2:00 pm
Wells Commons, University of Maine, Orono

http://www.umaine.edu/folklife/

maeve

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 05 Nov 09 - 08:11 PM

Thanks, Maeve.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Obit: folklorist Sandy Ives (August 2009)
From: GUEST,Shane Bryanton
Date: 06 Nov 09 - 07:19 PM

I had the great pleasure to have been a guest in the Ives home on two occasions and to have drank and sung with him in homes on Prince Edward Island. One of my favourite possesions is a copy of "The Man Who Made the Songs" inscribed "to Shane, a fine singer of the old songs". His contribution to the oral history of PEI cannot be overestimated. As an Islander I am deeply grateful for his work and for having known him.