BETHEL, NY – Beverly “Cookie” Grant hitchhiked to the Woodstock music festival in 1969 without a ticket and slept on straw. Ellen Shelburne arrived in a VW minibus and pitched a tent.
Fifty-five years later, the two longtime friends finally returned to the garden, but this time in style.
The women, now 76, were recently gifted a two-bedroom glamping tent in upstate New York, equipped with comfortable beds, a shower, a coffee maker and Wi-Fi. No mud from the torrential rains this time. They sat in the pavilion seats to watch performances by Woodstock veterans John Fogerty and Roger Daltrey.
“We’re like hippie queens!” Grant joked over breakfast during the trip earlier this month.
The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, the nonprofit that runs the site, rolled out the tie-dyed carpet for Grant and Shelburne to promote their new glamping digs and delve into Shelburne’s treasure trove of photos from the festival that defines a generation held from August 15 to 18, 1969.
The once-trampled hillside near the main stage is now a manicured green space near a Woodstock and ’60s-themed museum and concert pavilion. But the revisit still brought back a flood of memories. Shelburne was able to retrace the steps she took as a 21-year-old college student in photos taken by her then-boyfriend and future husband, David Shelburne.
“I’m looking at this person in the photograph, which is me, but a person who is starting life at this age. And now I’m looking back at a kind of bookend of my life,” said Ellen Shelburne. “All these decades later, I’m back at Woodstock and it brings everything to the surface in a very positive way.”
Grant and Shelburne did not know each other in August 1969 and attended the concert separately.
Shelburne came from Columbus, Ohio, with David Shelburne, his best friend, and another woman. They bought tickets, arrived early and bought ponchos at a local store after rain was forecast. She slept in a dog tent.
“I never felt cold, damp, hungry, mud, dirt, discomfort or misery,” she said.
Grant went to Woodstock on a lark.
A long-haired surfer she knew named Ray came up to her and a friend on a beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and said, “There’s a music festival going on in New York. Do you want to ride there with me? Grant’s friend gave up along the way, but she and the surfer managed to reach the city of Bethel. The last driver dropped them off at the edge of the epic traffic jam outside the festival and gave them a blanket.
Grant walked the last few miles to Woodstock barefoot.
Both women were impressed by Jimi Hendrix, The Who and other musical artists, but also by the good vibes of the 400,000 or so people who converged on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm, about 80 miles northwest of New York City. .
“If we needed food, someone gave us food. Someone gave us water. We didn’t need anything,” Grant said.
The two women met months later in Columbus, where they each ran stores adjacent to Ohio State University with the men they went to Woodstock with. And each of them married their co-stars, although Grant divorced several years later.
David and Ellen Shelburne ran a film and video production company together until their deaths four years ago. Grant moved to Florida and eventually became a chef on mega yachts before starting his own business providing crews for these big boats.
Each woman retained a spark of the Woodstock spirit. Shelburne said she is “stuck in the 60s and proud of it.” They caught the bug to return to the festival site last year after providing oral histories in Columbus for curators of the Bethel Woods Museum.
Just like in 1969, the women got what they needed during their recent long weekend of peace, love and nostalgia — although this time it was a “Luxury 2-Bedroom Safari Tent” with a front deck and shower in the bathroom. And this time, when it rained, they managed to stay dry in the museum.
On a sunny Saturday, Bethel Woods Senior Curator Neal Hitch took the women in a golf cart to explore the spots where David Shelburne took his festival photos. Unlike others who focused their cameras on the stage, he documented festival-goers camping, swimming, selling merchandise, relaxing and having fun. Hitch noted that David Shelburne’s images are also valuable because they are in sequence, meaning they tell a story.
At one stop, Shelburne was standing near a tree line while holding a photo of a field full of campers. She stood at the spot where her late husband took the photograph and looked out at the same field, without the campers, 55 years later. Visibly moved, she said “ah” a few times and took a deep breath before exclaiming: “Wow!”
She was heartbroken that her husband wasn’t in the photos, but she felt his presence that weekend.
The women toured the festival site over several days, from the stage area to the woods where vendors set up stalls. Despite the changes — the plush tents, the fences, the museum — the women said they recognized the same mellow, friendly vibes here that they experienced when they were 21.
And they were thrilled to dive into it again decades later.
“It’s wonderful to see that this will go down in history forever,” Grant said, “and we’re a part of it.”
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