A steady flow of friends joined Jim Henson at the Bend Athletic Club in the lovely Fireside Room inside Scanlons on Tuesday night Dec. 7. The weather cooperated by not snowing here in Bend and the roads did not ice up early in the evening.
Perhaps one of the highlights of the evening was when a woman showed up at the sales table and said she wanted to buy a "bunch" of books. Linda who was helping me sell and I didn't know if she was kidding or not, but she didn't seem to be. But she didn't seem to know right off just how many. She wandered over to the table where Jim was still chatting up a friend who had just purchased a copy. A few minutes later I saw him rise greet the woman, then he excitedly gave her a hug and brought her over and introduced her. It took a moment to understand what he was saying, She was introducing her as "Hugh's daughter!"
Then it dawned on me that Hugh was one of the people in his book, Pee Up a Tree: a Mental Health Memoir. Hugh was his Jim's first boss in community health practice in Oregon and according to Jim had a tremendous influence on his later style of management when he took over the Deschutes County Mental Health Department.
There is a note on the preceding blog entry of 11-28 from Jan saying who she was and that she was going to try to come down to it. Unfortunately I did not get a notification that a comment was waiting for posting and I didn't see it until I came on to make this report so we weren't expecting her. It was a total surprise when she walked in.
The rewarding thing for me as a publisher is to see this kind of interaction between the author and an individual who is affected by the book. Jan' Dad passed away some time in the past and this book is a tribute to him in its own way. Her comments about the way that it captured him was a high compliment to Jim. I won't say how many copies she ended up buying because some of the folks who might receive them might read this blog and it might spoil their Christmas. But there will be a number of happy folk who will receive an autographed copy of a very fine book purchased by the daughter of an influential Mental Health Professional who once practiced in the Rogue Valley of Oregon in the early 1970's. Jan had driven 150 miles all the way down from Mosier, Oregon on the Colombia River and had the same return trip the next day. The weather was not ideal for that kind of a drive with the ice, freezing rain and snow that we had experienced all over Central Oregon during the preceding week.
Before leaving talk was made of a follow up gathering down in Roseburg, which she expected could be even larger if she and her friends down there, including her four sisters, got to work on it. Maybe in the spring.
A wonderful evening. The staff at Scanlons and the Bend Athletic Club were charming and efficient hosts and Jim's friends in Bend certainly showed their pride in their own.
Respectfully,
Kenneth Fenter
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