Wesley was an important figure to me at a time when I felt excited, scared, adventurous, and doubtful. He read my words, praised me, and called me out. I felt appreciated and challenged by him.
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Truth be told, I was always slender, but my weight varied by a few pounds in college. Then, along with my friends, I’d go on the Atkins Diet…no carbs, only protein and 8 big glasses of water a day. The weight would fall off me. I’d eat eggs, hamburger (you couldn’t get good meat at the dining halls in college), cottage cheese (this was before yogurt got tasty). And pee A LOT! This would last about a week. Then I couldn’t stand it any longer and I’d go back to regular eating, which would include my favorite lunch…fudge cake and skim milk; YUM! But I weighed about 90 pounds throughout most of my college years, 89 pounds on my wedding day in 1974.

Going through periods of emotional difficulty was a sure way to lose weight for me. I weighed 84 pounds while living alone in Chicago from 1978-9. I struggled to put weight back on. Ah, for those days again! I weighted 98 pounds at the beginning of each of my pregnancies (it took me a while to get pregnant the first time…I thought perhaps because I didn’t have enough fat on my body). I lost my baby weight quickly (and I put on 42 pounds with the first pregnancy, 47 with the second…I was LARGE, but delivered good-sized babies too).

In 2003, I became sick and dropped to 90 pounds. I looked skeletal. It took me a few years to get back up to 100 pounds, which now was my desired weight, but then I kept going.

Six years ago, six months before turning 60, I looked in the full-length mirror in my bathroom and didn’t recognize myself. As I said, I had always been slender. Now I could no longer say that. I was up to 116 pounds. I was determined to change that, so worked with a trainer, who also discussed eating and healthy lifestyle choices with me all summer. I tried to give up carbs and as much sugar as possible. I had been doing a Pilates mat class at my gym on the Vineyard for several summers. Griffin taught me a different workout; 30 minutes of aerobics with an interval aspect to get the metabolism going, then weight work for strength building. The weight began to come off and my shape changed. It took a year, but I lost 18 pounds and got down to 98 pounds (a 2 pound cushion). I joined a gym when I returned from the Vineyard, and a new one as soon as it opened, for I didn’t like the original one back home.

I love my gym and take tough classes 5 days a week, doing my own workout the other day. One day I rest. But age has tripped me up and I’ve dealt with a series of injuries over the past 15 months, from tendinitis and a sprain in the left hip flexor, to bulging discs in my back, causing sciatica down my left leg. I have had three cortisone injections directly into my spine over the past three months, which have eased the pain. Just the past few weeks, I’ve been able to get back to the same level of aerobic exercise I once enjoyed. But now I have some pain in my left rotator cuff and began physical therapy in May on that. It doesn’t limit me severely yet. We’ll see.

My eating also isn’t as pristine as it was 6 years ago. Too many parties, too difficult to stay rigorous, too much stress eating thanks to the current political climate! So a few pounds have crept back on. Now that my back and hip are feeling better, I hope to take care of all of that this summer, but age and metabolism are stacked against me. Summer fruit beckons.

My sister checks in with the woman behind the counter, signing her name and mentioning what she’s there for. It hardly seems necessary to mention this. Everyone who enters this room, unless they are a support person like me, is here for one reason: they have cancer.
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I can’t say exactly why I’m so drawn to family history and the mysterious links that cross generations and inform who we are. But it’s something I’ve always had.
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I had no idea that part of me had come from this place, a California boardwalk town in the northern Sierras. I’d grown up in Massachusetts. Save for one trip to California when I was 10, I knew California as a distant, colorful place that gift packages materialized from, sent by my West Coast aunts and grandmothers, boxes full of kites and kimonos, Chinese hats and puzzle tricks, gongs and horns and incense, all from San Francisco’s Chinatown.

I knew that my father had been born in Butte, Montana and lived through his teens in San Diego where, he insisted, there was nothing to do but chase desert jackrabbits through the cactus.

At 18, my father left San Diego. He sailed the ocean seas during the Great Depression and met my mother at a communist party gathering in New York. I grew up in New England, attended school there, and can still sling a wicked pissah South Boston accent. I was no Californian.

I suppose I could have known about my wild western heritage but my father seemed eager to keep a distance between himself and his childhood past. Nevertheless, forbidden California beckoned to me like the gold rush. I headed west after college and landed in San Francisco.

California felt strange but familiar. Still, I knew nothing of this old time family connection. I was full of radical theater, collective living, identifying more closely with Italian commedia actors and jazz musicians than anything requiring muddy boots, a crumpled hat, and the company of galoots. Then, this photo arrived in a manila envelope from my aunt Laura, the family archivist.

The Degelman boot shop

The gentlemen pictured — note, not a woman in sight — have lined up in front of my great grandfather’s boot shop in Placerville, California. John Degelman, the boot maker, stands behind the men, sunken eyes glaring out over a mustache. If you look closely, you can see he’s wearing a rakish bowler hat and a white collarless shirt, linking him to the scattered merchants in watch chains, uptown hats, and good boots who gathered for the photo op.

Perhaps this squadron of gents served as my great grandfather’s local catalog. I imagine a scenario where John Degelman paid the boy in the bowler — third from the right, hands on belt buckle — to recruit satisfied customers to pose in front of his fancy new shop.

First come the bearded fellows on the left, hands in pockets, sporting the gallant-yet-practical caballero-style riding boot. To the right of the caballeros, the young dandy with the white cravat proudly displays the shine on a Degelman boot, style name unknown.

If you skip over the galoots in the mud boots — the boy probably dragged them out of the livery stable — you come to a prosperous-looking duo, trimmed out a bit sharper than the rest, thrusting their Degelman boots forward, striking a tandem best-foot-forward pose.

To the far right, the barflies arrive. I’m guessing great-grandfather Degelman handed the urchin a pocket full of nickels and told him to round up the denizens from the saloon on the south side of Main Street, where nobody had anything better to do anyhow.

The man at the end? With the pipe and the organ grinder hat? I leave his identity for you to imagine. I’m speculating he traded with the indigenous locals. Perhaps the rough-and-tumble residents of Placerville portrayed in this photo displayed a modicum of civility toward the Maidu and Miwok who had come before. One can only hope.

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I first saw this photo after my mother died. My oldest sister, who is the repository of all the family photos that my parents had (because she lived the closest), was scanning many pictures and emailing them to my other sister and me for use in the shiva-type services we were each having in our local communities. This one took my breath away.

It is a formal portrait of my grandparents and their two daughters. My mother, the younger, is sitting on something, perhaps the arm of my grandmother’s chair, so she is almost in my grandmother’s lap, but not quite. My aunt Daisy, the older daughter, is standing proudly behind her mother and next to her father. No one is smiling, because in those days people didn’t think it was appropriate to smile in portraits. Not certain of the year, probably 1924 or ’25, since my mother was born in 1921 and she looks to be three or four.

Wish I could have asked her about it.

We were as close as family without the drama or angst.
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I lost my prom photos years ago, but I still have the shoes.
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I met him when I was 9 years old. My older brother was Nanki Poo in the Intermediate production of MIKADO at camp that summer. Clarence “Dude” Stephenson directed the Intermediate and High School productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, as well as other plays and musicals at the National Music Camp (now Interlochen Arts Camp) for 57 years. He became my teacher in 1965 when we, again, performed MIKADO as Intermediates. I was in the chorus, as I was all five summers that Dude was my instructor. I always tried out for a lead, but my voice wasn’t good enough. No matter; all performers were treated with dignity.

Dude made being in the chorus fun and important. He learned all our names (and in High School, there were a LOT of us, maybe 90 women, 30 men) within the first week of camp. That’s quite a feat, but it taught us that we were important as individuals. He lined us up according to height. Since I am petite (a euphemisim for TINY), I was usually the chorus leader, with the extra responsibility of knowing all the cues, as I led everyone on and off the stage. By my second summer, I had the responsibility to take attendance in class. Dude saw I had a flair for the acting stuff, so he gave me (and the other theater people) extra little bits to do.

We flocked to him. He was everyone’s favorite. In High School, Operetta was a “minor”, so even non-majors could participate. We met for 50 minutes, five days a week, late in the afternoon and music majors delighted in performing with the die-hard drama majors. It was just pure fun. No matter how many times Dude performed the G&S catalog, he found inventive new ways to move our large troupe around the stage and gave us funny new bits to perform. We all adored him and vied for his attention. He never missed ANYTHING! Watching the first performance from the light booth of our large performance venue through binoculars, he’d give notes before the second show. During PRINCESS IDA, he commented that I had pushed my Twist-o-Flex watch band way up on my arm, under my graduation robe in Act II, but had looked at it once! He caught me! We all had fun, as long as we took our task seriously.

I learned that being part of a large ensemble didn’t mean one could hide. I still had to do my best, because everything was noticed, we had to work together to shine, though I could still show my own personality. That was an important life lesson. Dude rewarded me by granting me the Operetta Chorus Award all three summers that I was in High School division, and years later, the best female chorus member for the first 25 years of Operetta. I was honored and humbled.

1969 was my last summer as a camper at Interlochen. In December, I sent out my usual group of holiday cards to all my camp friends and teachers, including Dude, telling him I would not return. Honestly, my father couldn’t afford camp and tuition at a private Eastern university in the autumn.

But Dude wrote back. I still have the letter, now 48 years old. It reads: ‘Jan. 1, 1970, Dear Betsy: It’s unthinkable that there won’t be a Sarason at camp this summer — particularly a Betsy Sarason. How can I do without you in Operetta? You know, operetta has never been one person, but it has been a number of people whose value to the group far out-weighs that of the general number of the class. You’ve been a member of the special category every summer – always willing, always dependable, always outstanding in achievement. Both Father Ken [Jewell – music director] and myself have deeply appreciated your contributions to the shows that we’ve done together – I hope you’ll reconsider and return to Interlochen –Remember that you’re young only once, and the years of youth are few; your opportunities to take part in that wonderful something that NMC offers are relatively few. Come back…   My love to you – “Dude”‘

This was a man who cared about me and told me so. In so many ways.

Christie, my friend since 1965 Intermediate Girls Cabin 5, and I decided to vacation at Interlochen in 1975. We arrived late afternoon, shortly before the Operetta opening night. We found many familiar faces, but not Dude’s. We knew he and his wife of many years, the mother of his first five sons, had recently divorced and he was hurting, so we particularly wanted to see him. We waited for him on the dock behind Kresge, knowing he would come to talk to his cast before show time. We saw the familiar crepe-soled shoes round the corner. His eyes took us in and we flew into a group hug. We were home; inseparable for the remainder of our stay. That weekend, our relationship changed from student-teacher to peers. We became fast friends. There was nothing we couldn’t and didn’t say to one another from that day forward.

A few years later, Dude asked Christie if her company could fund an operetta scholarship. It couldn’t, but she and I discussed it later that night. We were both doing well professionally and thought we could get a group of our friends to chip in and began the “Pine Tree Wonder Scholarship”, a half scholarship for someone in the Operetta. Christie and I continued to fund it until camp went from 8 weeks to 6 weeks and Dude stopped performing a full operetta in 2004.

A new theater was built in 1998. A friend remarked that he thought it would be wonderful if something in the building could be named for Dude. Dude’s older brother, Jim Bob, also worked at camp. For years, he directed University Drama, (in conjunction with the University of Michigan), until the University Division was disbanded. Later he came back as Dude’s assistant on Operetta. I had served six years on the National Alumni Board, so made inquiries about naming the lobby for the brothers and led the fund raising for that effort. Here is the photo from the dedication ceremony.

Dude lived in San Diego, so, as visits to Interlochen became less frequent, I saw him less often. We talked and laughed long-distance. I was invited to, and attended his surprise 75th birthday party in San Diego in 2003. Lately, I knew his memory wasn’t as sharp as it had been. He would call me (the unofficial camp historian) if he had questions regarding old photos or who performed in what show, when.

He was one of the first to call after the Marathon Bombing, five years ago, knowing that I live close to the race course and always go out to see the race (I was on the course at the time of the bombing, but five miles away from the bomb blasts). “Betsy, please call and tell me you are OK!” I called to reassure him. Increasingly, the phone conversations became, “I don’t remember things as well as I once did, but I know you are one of the special ones…I love you”. To which I would always reply, “I love you too”.

Last year, I knew this April would be his 90th birthday and I couldn’t dither any longer. Getting from the island of Martha’s Vineyard to Interlochen, Michigan is a logistical nightmare, but it had to be done and I began planning the trip last summer. I knew I was on borrowed time. Yet I was unprepared when I got a private Facebook message on December 29, 2017 from an old camp friend. Dude had taken a fall, was on a respirator and was not expected to survive. He did not make it through the night. I sobbed in the locker room of my gym when I got the message the next day, immediately texting the news to a group of friends, who shared my grief.

There will be a celebration of his life on July 29 at camp. His wife of 40 years, heartbroken to lose her best friend, can’t believe that Interlochen would honor him in such a way. “It isn’t done”, she’s said to me. He taught thousands of students, and impacted all of us. It needs to be done. He started the careers of Tovah Feldshuh, Tom Hulce, Josh Groban, to name a few. He was always so pleased when talent he nurtured went on to do well, whether in the performing arts or in our regular lives. He is, quite simply, irreplaceable.