Edward D. "Sandy" Ives (1925-2009)

Edward D. "Sandy" Ives was the kind of guy who naturally and easily made friends. People enjoyed being with him as he always put them at ease and usually had a story or song to share. As a result, he made many friends in the world. His friends came from all walks of life, and he had a special talent for staying in touch with all of them, including his students and the people he interviewed as a folklorist. Perhaps these are good traits for a folklorist to have. At any rate, they served him well because Ives had a very successful career as a folklorist. He left his mark on generations of students who took his classes; on Maine, the state he adopted; on folklore and oral-history scholarship; and on fieldwork methodology.

As a teacher, Ives inspired generations of students in his folklore classes. Forty-four years of teaching folklore left a big impact on so many citizens of Maine, such that wherever I go in Maine all I need to do is mention the word "folklore" and people respond, "Sandy Ives." Everyone who knew Ives has a story about him, and he has entered the oral culture of the state as something of a folk hero. One of his former students, Erica Risberg, recently wrote in a note to me, "He was by far the most amazing storyteller I've ever had the pleasure of listening to. I miss him and his stories dearly." Beloved by students, Ives had a unique style of bringing folk music and folklore alive in the classroom. Professor Ives, as he was known by students at the University of Maine, could often be seen in his later years ambling around campus with his golden retriever, Summer—the only dog on campus with his own staff library card.

Sandy Ives began his teaching career as an English instructor at the University of Illinois (1950-53), after completing his masters in English at Columbia University. He then taught for one year at the City College of New York before going to the University of Maine. He met and married Barbara "Bobby" Herrell in 1951 in New York. While in New York, he began playing the guitar and singing folksongs. He enjoyed the Greenwich Village folklore scene, especially the performances of Richard Dyer-Bennet. Ives enjoyed ballads and began performing them. A few years later he accepted a position at the University of Maine as an English instructor and began teaching additional courses on Saturdays through the University Extension Service at locations all around the state in 1957.

The Iveses had three children, Steve, Sarah, and Nat. Looking for ways to support his family by supplementing his small instructor's salary, Ives began traveling around Maine to summer camps, singing folksongs that he had learned. While he was doing this, he developed an interest in traditional Maine songs, and he began seeking out songs about Maine, including shanties and lumber camp songs. Ives loved singing, but he was an academic at heart. He conducted research on Maine songs by reading Fannie Hardy Eckstorm and Mary Winslow Smyth's Minstrelsy of Maine, William Main Doerflinger's Shantymen and Shantyboys, and Phillip Barry's Maine Wood Songster. As a result, his research began to influence his teaching, and in his classes he began to play tape recordings he made during his fieldwork.

Meanwhile, Bobby, who shared his enthusiasm for ballads, accompanied him on many of his fieldwork trips and read and critiqued much of his writing. On reading Doerflinger's Shantymen and Shantyboys, she became very interested in a satirical songmaker named Larry Gorman and told her husband about him. Ives had been educated in graduate school to believe that folksongs were made up by das Volk—a "singing, dancing, throng" or communally recreated, and that the author was not important, only the tradition. But the more he found references to Gorman, the more intrigued he was with the man. Then one night at one of Ives's concerts, an old man told him that he had known Gorman.

Larry Gorman, "the man who makes the songs?" Why, he...