Aspire to Inspire
Finding the Woman Who Gave Me the Guitar
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Some of you may remember that I dedicated the CD Sweet Life to Lynne Ramsdell, who gave me my first guitar and started me on this path of being a singer/songwriter. At that time, I was hoping to find her in order to thank her personally, but all I had was a name, someone who lived in Saco, Maine for a brief time in 1980. On December 5th of 2008, while performing a show at the Iron Horse in Northampton, I told the story of my first guitar and mentioned Lynne's name. Someone in the audience knew Lynne's nephew, Nick. Finally I tracked down Nick in Portland, OR. I was practically shaking when I talked to him on the phone. That is when I discovered that Lynne passed away on December 6, 2008, the night after that show at the Iron Horse, and less than four months after the release of Sweet Life. Recently, I met her brother Clyde, who remembers Lynne giving away her guitar to me all those years ago. He remembers thinking, "oh there she goes again, giving away her possessions." He said she always did things for reasons only she could understand, and that she must have really sensed that I needed to play guitar. She lived adventurously, leaving Maine (where she was raised, and where we met) for Florida where she got a job acting at Disneyworld, and later she moved back to Maine and discovered a passion for visual art. Though disabled by chronic health issues, she worked as an artist until her passing at age 55. Clyde gave me a couple prints of some of her artwork. I uploaded one piece that I particularly love on to this page... it's the beautiful blue and mulit-colored weave image. She was on the verge of getting her work exhibited at a gallery, but didn't get the chance before she died.