“Mayor Jim Torrey pulled out “Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear” and treated those gathered to an excerpt from Kesey’s book for children, giving voice to a tale set on a fine autumn morning when “nothing was amove except one finger of sun.”
I have not read any suggestions by author or poets, as to what Ken Kesey would want in regards to the battle for the plaza named after him. Let this Oregon Historian writer make a real suggestion. Ken’s archive is being assembled at the University of Oregon. I think it is going to stay there. I suggest a Museim for Writers be built on the campus, and the Kesey statue be moved into to it. Wiccans and Travelers are not interested in Kesey’s writing. Students will have a great interest.
Because Ken wrote a Ozarks Tale as told to him by his grandmother, I am going to send that story to the University of Arkansas, along with my grandfathers books and letters, and, my eulogy to my friend, and Democratic Leader, Ed Fadesley. My grandfather was a close friend of Ozark Historian, Otto Rayburn. Ken belongs with his literary peers who founded a Back To Earth Movement that Kesey revived with the help of the Hippies.
Ken, Royal, Ed, have their roots in Missouri. These men enjoyed the Arcadian Life. They were born to sit out on the front porch and tell stories. Ken, come on home!
I believe Ken wants to get the hell out of the Broadway Plaza, and never look back!
Jon Presco
Family lore is that Ed Fadeley was born in the kitchen of the family’s home in rural Missouri on Dec. 13, 1929 — a Friday the 13th and just two months after the Great Depression crash.”
Thomas Hart Benton did lithographs and a painting for John Steinbeck’s ‘Grapes of Wrath’. This is huge! This puts a Literary Giant in the Benton Family Creative Tree. How could the three Rosamond biographers have missed this? Here’s a huge clue?
I am overwhelmed by the History I appear to be the Caretaker of. For this reason I am founding Royal Rosamond College, and am seeking funding.
There are two world famous artists with the last name BENTON. Thomas Hart Benton, and Christine Rosamond Benton.
https://rosamondpress.com/2015/12/13/the-roaring-tigers-of-art-and-literature/
https://rosamondpress.com/2015/09/28/ed-fadeley-a-man-from-missouri/
court-justice-dies-at-age-85.html.csp
Ed and Darian chose the Arcadian life. I had been out at their farm in Creswell. When Ed and I found ourselves by ourselves, we bragged about our Ozark roots. Mr. Fadeley was born there, on his folks kitchen table. My grandfather wrote books about the Ozarks. He may have met the artist, Thomas Hart Benton, whose great uncle was the administrator of the Oregon Territory. Otto Rayburn knew the Bentons. It was destiny that a Benton would marry a Rosamond. My ex-brother-law, Garth Benton, was a famous muralist and cousin of Thomas. Garth married my sister, the world famous artist ‘Rosamond’. Ed’s history is being carried home, perhaps on one of Benton’s trains.
https://rosamondpress.com/2015/09/02/the-columbia-street-grail/
http://libinfo.uark.edu/specialcollections/findingaids/rayburn/rayburnaid.html
It is the objective of my newspaper to restore the dream of these two men who published their own magazine. Rayburn published ‘Arcadian Life’, and Royal’s Gem Publishing, published ‘Bright Stories’. Royal also published one novel under ‘R.R. Rosamond Publishing’ founded in 1931 in Ventura where it was printed.
Ken Kesey spun his magic again Friday in the heart of Eugene, this time with a little help from his friends.
A statue of Oregon’s most famous storyteller, unveiled at Broadway Plaza, put him squarely back in the community’s midst two years and five days after his death from cancer at age 66.
The sculpture shows Kesey sitting on a granite bench reading to his three grandchildren, who posed for the work. After friends and family pulled the rainbow-colored fabric back to reveal the statue, kids in the crowd of hundreds pressed in first.
Zane Kesey, son of the late author, served as a model for sculptor Pete Helzer, a former neighbor of Ken Kesey.
People patted Kesey’s back and touched his shoulder, ran their hands along his cheek, even stroked his nose. Before long, someone had draped a green necklace around his neck and tucked small flowers into it.
Mayor Jim Torrey pulled out “Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear” and treated those gathered to an excerpt from Kesey’s book for children, giving voice to a tale set on a fine autumn morning when “nothing was amove except one finger of sun.”
Other speakers reminded the audience that Kesey was more than just the guy who wrote two seminal works of fiction – “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Sometimes a Great Notion.”
He was the man who could have lived anywhere but chose to live in Pleasant Hill, who rallied to the cause of saving Oregon’s wild places, who dreamed large and encouraged others to dream, too.
“He was interested in calling our attention to the things in life worth embracing,” said Pete Helzer, who created the sculpture of Kesey.
On a sunny afternoon despite a dreary forecast, author Barry Lopez wondered what Kesey himself was doing just then.
Ken Kesey’s grandchildren, (from left) Kate Smith, Caleb Kesey and Jordan Smith, sit next to the statues of themselves after the statue depicting Kesey reading to them was unveiled Friday at Broadway Plaza in downtown Eugene. The sculpture is titled “The Storyteller.”
Is he the pigeon or the seagull?” Lopez said as birds circled overhead. And when an audience member yelled out “Yes!” Lopez echoed him: “Yes! That’s exactly what he would have said.”
Lopez recalled a tender, kind and unfailingly generous Kesey, who was also “a walking hurricane of imagination.”
“He stood for turning orthodoxy inside out like a sock,” Lopez said.
Brian Lanker, who organized the fund-raising campaign for the statue, encouraged people to sit in the space of the sculpture deliberately left between Kesey and the children. “I think if you’re real quiet, you’ll here Ken reading to you,” he said.
Kesey’s wife, Faye, put an arm around the likeness of her husband. “It was the most natural thing to do,” she said.
His son, Zane, slipped in and sat next to him, posing as he had for the sculptor to help get the drape of the fabric and other details right.
“I’m glad I did it,” he said. “It was such a thrill. And having the kids there, he delighted so much in the grandchildren.”
The grandchildren – Kate and Jordan Smith and Caleb Kesey – sat next to their bronze images and smiled as dozens of photographers clicked away.
More than 150 groups and individuals helped pay for the artwork, with contributions from actor Paul Newman and authors Tom Wolfe and Tom Robbins, Lanker said.
The cost of the statue will come to $125,000 – $25,000 less than anticipated, but supporters are still short by about $25,000.
Organizers wanted to unveil the statue now even though not all the bills are paid because of the events honoring Kesey this weekend – a two-day symposium on his work at the University of Oregon, a staging of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” at the UO and the release of a collection of Kesey’s journals.
The unveiling drew youngsters on skateboards and old men with beards, young women in business suits and old women in tie-dye.
Michael Connelly, a retired drug and alcohol counselor, said he came to honor Kesey’s memory. A casual acquaintance who knew Kesey when he lived in California, Connelly said the author influenced his life.
“He inspired me to move, explore, take risks,” Connelly said.
Ken Kesey’s daughter, Sunshine, sits next to the sculpture of her father that was unveiled Friday in Eugene. The statue depicts Kesey reading to his grandchildren. The author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” also wrote a children’s book.
The statue depicts Kesey in one of his more benign roles. But Connelly hasn’t forgotten the man who led the Merry Pranksters, whose trip on the psychedelic bus Further became the stuff of Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” and whose wild streak was as memorable as his literary genius.
Yet the image unveiled on the Broadway Plaza seemed fitting, Connelly said.
“You take the man as a whole. This is a calm part, not the rapids in the river that he chose to float,” he said.
KESEY EVENTS
Symposium: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and 9 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Sunday, Fir Room at Erb Memorial Union, corner of 13th Avenue and University Street. Events are free. For more information on panels and topics: kesey.uoregon.edu.
Theater: “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” 8 p.m. today, 2 p.m. Sunday, Robinson Theatre, Villard Hall, University of Oregon campus. Tickets $12.
To contribute: Contact the Lane Arts Council to donate money for the Kesey statue, 349-2493, 99 W. 10th Ave., Suite 100, Eugene 97401.
COMING SUNDAY IN COMMENTARY
• The Kesey letters
OTTO ERNEST RAYBURN
Otto Ernest Rayburn moved to the Ozarks in 1917. He lived in Missouri and Arkansas, where he was a teacher, newspaper publisher, bookseller, and promoter of tourism. Toward the end of his life he organized his enormous hoard of information about the Ozarks into the collection now in the University Libraries. He died in 1960.
THE COLLECTION
The Otto Ernest Rayburn Collection was acquired from Mr. Rayburn, a collector, educator, publisher, and bookseller then residing in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in part purchased by an agreement dated September 8, 1952 and by additional deposits in 1959 and 1960.
The collection included an extensive library of books and other print material pertaining to the Ozark Mountains Region, which has been cataloged and shelved in the Libraries’ main and Arkansas collections. The remaining portion, divided into 13 series, comprises a voluminous collection of research files entitled the Ozark Folk Encyclopedia, bibliographies of Rayburn’s writings and other writing about the Ozarks, several typescript volumes written or compiled by Rayburn, correspondence, scrapbooks, pictures, and other material.
The Rayburn Collection, organized in 13 series, consists of correspondence, writings compiled or written by or about Otto Ernest Rayburn, research files, scrapbooks, and pictures. The bulk of the collection is the Ozark Folk Encyclopedia, 229 folders containing Rayburn’s working files of clippings, notes, letters, pictures, etc., arranged in alphabetical order.
Some material was compiled by Rayburn into book form: Bibliographies of his works and of other writing on the Ozarks; Enchanted Ozarks, in 3 volumes, “anecdotes of men and women who have helped enrich the lore of the region;” Ozark Panorama, in 3 volumes, “folkways and customs, actual events, and traditional folklore;” Ozark Folks and Folklore; Survey of Ozark Superstitions, in 2 volumes; Ozark Sketchbook; a compilation of his verse; Book reviews and comments on his works Forty Years in the Ozarks and Ozark Country; Way Back Yonder, copies of a published newspaper column by Rayburn.
There are 4 scrapbooks and a series of pictures, mostly photographs. Processed by Special Collections. Special Collections Division, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Rosamond Press 
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