- On Saturday August 9, 2008 at Mitchell Park in Palo Alto.

(Opps, for months we thought August 8 was a Saturday.)

Most will remember it was the huge park adjacent the church of our wild five day Easter conference in 1975.

It’s in the Bay Area and it should be nice and sunny, parking should be good, we haven’t scouted out where the best place to picnic in the park is yet, (it’s 21 acres.) Be fun to take a quick walk around the church grounds, trade war stories.

David Lewis and family will be bringing food and refreshments for the third time. Dave says “I have a killer new recipe for Korean Tri-tip and the like.”

- Give us an RSVP and or any ideas you have. Contact main planners Stephanie Rumrill or Paul Stewart

Maybe we can come up with something special for the barbeque and post reunion dinner.

So please contact your closets LRY friends and try to drum up interest. Again, please let us know what you think about the where, when and how.

All mid-70s LRYers and their loved ones are welcome at the reunion, even if your name isn’t posted anywhere on this website.

Below these graphics from past reunions are rambling notes about the reunions and observations about the phenomenon.       REUNIONs AT A GLANCE 1) 2002: In park in Sacramento, big picnic Saturday, house parties Friday and Saturday nights, and two morning brunches. Over 50 people, spouses, kids of about 25 regular LRYers. 2) 2003: Picnic in Golden Gate Park. Smaller turnout than first year, but sunny and relaxing. Several of us shacked up for the weekend and had brunches plus dinner in restaurants Friday, Saturday and Sunday. (Eliot Petrocchi picked up the tab for seven or us at Olive Garden.) 3) 2004: Private house party in Hayward. Boring Friday night to Saturday afternoon as some people couldn’t make it at the last minute and others kept calling to see who was there. But Saturday night felt just like a conference as people kept showing up. Lots of brief drop-bys, but about 14 LRYers made it. Good Sunday brunch. 4) 2005: Picnic in Golden Gate Park again. This time it was cold and overcast, but by far the best reunion yet. 21 LRYers total, no drop-bys. 90 percent of them were there most of the time. From 1PM in the park to 1AM in the near-by restaurant. No one wanted to leave. Sunday brunch on the wharf with 10 LRYers. 5) 2005: Picnic in Golden Gate Park yet again. Webmaster couldn’t make it, but heard it was even colder. Smaller turnout, could be because of lack of promotion, bad weather and the date change or all three. But still a worthwhile effort. REUNION ANALYSIS: Six years ago our goal was to see how many LRYers we could bring back together. (A number of LRYers had already remained in touch.) LRY had a large positive emotional impact on most of our lives. But we had no grand expectations, the goal then and now was to simply have fun. Well, it has been an amazing experience and social experiment. Several friendships have genuinely been renewed for years now, including half a dozen rekindled romances. A surprising amount of LRYers have hooked up and done projects together. What’s equally surprising is how many long time hardcore LRYers aren’t interested in reunions. While others simply can’t make up their minds if they care or not. A number of us left LRY kicking and screaming, at age 20 or even 21. Some teenagers just dropped by one conference never to return, (sometimes even if they got lucky.) Others were regulars who dropped out at 15 or 16 as LRY continued near by them at full steam. Ironically some of these same people have overly embraced reunions. LRYers are often lumped together, but the fact is whether you’re a teenager in the ‘70s or middle aged, LRY has always meant different things to different people. Some LRYers came only to have fun, sing, dance and play music. Some came as couples in long term romances, often having met their mate in LRY. The people having the most sleeping bag hanky-panky didn’t need a conference or LRY to meet people attracted to them. Some came only for the drugs and the hope of maybe having sex. The drugs ended up having long term negative effects and some are still hoping for the sex part after over 30 years. Busy people make an effort to go to reunions to see the LRYers they were closest to. Sure we had overlapping cliques; we held hands in large circles and always had a spirit of community. But the fact is LRY was mostly about close friendship. Most serious LRYers continued to go to conferences to hang out with friends and sometimes make new ones. It turns out that through these reunions and subsequent get-togethers you can actually become close friends with an LRY you didn’t know well back in the day. But no one can remain close with all the friends they’ve had over the years. Opps, last year we didn't have a reunion, but reunion 2008 is being heavily planned. Click above on "REUNIONS" for updates. Regretfully I was not able to make the last reunion at the last minute. But I've always remained very committed to continuing to help bring mid-70s LRYers together. I’m happy update any bio or contact info in our online LRY directory and post any reunion photos and also provide new links to photo pages. I do not use the phrase “Babachoo to you” lightly. LRY is about love and sharing. Reunions have been well-attended considering how relatively few long time conferences goers there were. Nothing wrong with just dropping by a conference or dropping out of LRY, it wasn’t everyone’s bag. Though conferences may have sometimes had 70-100 teenagers show up, there were probably not much more than 50 people who went to over half of them. And far less than that were hardcore LRYers who went to most conferences ’74 to ’76. Example: All three week-long Mendocino conferences were relatively small. Most of the committed LRYers from 1974 stayed committed through 1976 or 1977. Graduating high school didn’t stop us as the age of the last Mendocino conferences-goer was 19 or 20. About 50 long-time conference-going LRYers have been to at least one reunion. Though never half that all at once. Over a dozen LRYers have been to at least three reunions, a few less have been to four. No one has been to all five. Choosing any date for a reunion is a gamble because people are busy and often don’t know if they can make it till the last minute. And of course often most LRYers only want to go if their closets LRY friends go. Every year there are lots of emails from people wishing they weren’t busy that day. Interest in reunions often runs hot and cold, feast or famine. Several LRYers have show up at a reunion and it dramatically changes their lives, others have been disappointed when it didn’t. I say show up and have food with old friends and quit stressing.         Notes after reunion 2005: Reunion 2005 is over! Verdict: Anyone who still thinks reunions can't work out can kiss my A$$! Thanks to better planning, the fourth annual reunion was by far the most successful. (Even though as always I got bitched at by a couple LRY users.) From 1PM in the park to about 1AM in the restaurant, 90 percent of the people were together 90 percent of the time and most of us didn't want it to end. If conferences were hardly ever boring, there's no reason reunions should be. After all the life experience we have. In early adulthood you simply can not maintain friendships with everyone you were close to as a teenager. (Particularly with friends in so many different cities.) But in middle age you may often find you have the time and resources to let a few people back in. If you really truly care about someone when you are a teenager (or any age) than you should be able to meet them 30 years later and care about them just as much. Over the last 3 and a half years, I can't tell you how many thankful LRYers have told me how surprised and delighted they are about meeting LRY friends and picking right back up on conversations as if three decades hadn't past. I can tell you how many LRYers have been selfish flakes concerning reunions, but I won't. It is a very small but powerful number. So much so that I was not planning to have a reunion this year. Special thanks to David Lewis (and his family) for doing a diving catch and saving the reunion. If it were not for David, then later a couple more LRY heroes who stepped up to the plate, there would not have been 20 LRYers hanging out like teenagers for 12 straight hours and not wanting to go home. We had 21 LRYers total this year, nine first-timers. Only two of those didn't make it to the park. About 10 of us had a wonderful Sunday brunch on the wharf. Five of us stayed and walked around the wharf for several more hours. But yes, we understand, some people are busier than ever and reunions are not for everybody.     Written after first reunion: Our first reunion weekend in 2002 was an overwhelming success! Far more people showed up and stayed longer than we'd expected. Everyone showered the reunion planners with gratitude. At times that warm and fuzzy conference atmosphere feeling was in the air. We learned a lot about planning future reunions. Corny as it all sounds, old relationships were re-established, new ones began etc. Go to the "PHOTOS" link on the main page to see shots of a bunch of middle-aged people who for one brief weekend went back to the mid-1970s. Us planners are delighted the small intimate atmosphere was achieved. There are still plenty of mid-70s LRYers who would have showed up if they'd known and others who expressed regret for not being able to make it this time. Although this year's reunion is open to everyone, we truly feel the success of the reunion and the reason so many people made sacrifices to show-up was because we kept it simple and focused on regular conference-goers from such a narrow time period. Thank you to those who helped plan last year's event. Special thanks to Dave Chadd, Mickey Phrog and John Alexander. (Here's who showed up. Many of these people brought along loved-ones, who no longer say "what was LRY?") Please let me know who I left out. Stephanie Rumrill-McBrayer Ulysses Torassa James Finley Eliot Petrocchi Michael Johnson Libby (Lianne) Shafer Eden Heustis Meredith Bauman-Gross Mary Purcell-Miramontes Mike Purcell Jane Weirick Mickey Phrog John Alexander Dave Chadd Paul Espinoza Carlos Espinosa Eli Glickman Cathy(now Clio) Lee Paul Stewart Geof Nash Adam Miller Annelelise Jade Bazar Christe Nordquist-Welch Dwight Bradish Tom and Lynne Anderson Terri Freeman Back To Paul's LRY Home Page