This article appeared in the Townsman, September 11 edition
A lot of Woodstock's old beats, bohemians and even veterans of the age of 'flower power' were distressed to receive reports of the passing of Ric Sanchez, who died September 2nd in Benedictine Hospital from pulmonary disease and a ruptured aneurysm. Sanchez had been a resident of Woodstock on and off since the end of the Second World War and, since 1996 lived in the old school house now located behind the new Ulster Savings Bank on Mill Hill Road.
A collector and connoisseur of classical and jazz recordings, in 2006 Sanchez donated to the Catskill Mountain Foundation's Pleshakov Piano Museum in Hunter, New York, thirty-thousand 78 rpm 'phonodiscs,' some representing the earliest recordings of that type. In a statement prepared by "donor Richard Warren Sanchez," in the Pleshakov 2007 program, Sanchez describes witnessing a parade on Fifth Avenue in New York celebrating Charles Lindberg's 1927 solo trans-Atlantic flight as "a goodly fanfare to start off a young life." He then noted his subsequent discovery of recorded music, which occurred during a music appreciation class in elementary school. "This was the beginning of a life of love," wrote Sanchez. "I learned to appreciate right then and there for the rest of my life what a vital force music can be."
His endeavor to preserve great recordings of this "vital force" became a life's work greatly aided by the invention of 33 rpm "long playing" records, which caused people to dump their old 78s. For decades Sanchez combed thrift shops, yard sales and even landfills for discarded recordings and eventually amassed the collection some have estimated to be worth tens of thousands of dollars if indeed it is not priceless.
Ric, Ricky, Richard, Ricardo - depending on what period of his life one knew him - began life in a Dickensian setting. Born in New York City to parents of German and Argentine heritage, he spent his first five years in an orphanage before being adopted by a Mr. and Mrs. Cowan. The Cowans resided in Northport, Long Island, and Mr. Cowan was of Scots ancestry, had a career in advertising and maintained an office on Fifth Avenue. Mrs. Cowan, of French ancestry, was said to have helped inspire Sanchez's love of music and fine cuisine. The Cowans named their adoptee 'Clyde.' For reasons not made clear, but which may have been Mr. Cowan's lack of approval of his adopted son's artistic sympathies, 'Clyde' was on his own from an early age, perhaps as young as fifteen. Around this time he discovered his birth certificate and on it his birth father's surname. From then on he assumed the official name Richard Sanchez.
After leaving the Cowan household for New York City, and in the years before WW II, according to unexplored, vaguely recalled or almost forgotten asides to friends, a Jesuit remembered only as Kelly, who introduced Sanchez to the writings of Joseph Campbell, mentored Sanchez. (Later in life Sanchez was known to defer questions concerning religion to Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces.) Sometime in this period he made acquaintance with Anton Busch, brother to the noted musician Adolf Busch of the Busch String Quartet. Also around this time Pietro Di Donato, author of Christ In Concrete, took an interest in young Sanchez, often inviting him into his family's home. Whether or not these men had deeply influenced him, Sanchez spent WW II laboring, some say as a medic, in an internment camp for conscientious objectors located somewhere in middle America.
After the war Sanchez pursued painting, with most of his attention drawn to the abstract-expressionist movement. Old newspaper clippings just discovered in his files indicate his particular interest in the career and works of De Kooning. Perhaps his artistic endeavor initially brought Sanchez to Woodstock around 1945 where he first resided on The Maverick. (Some old friends think it was Joseph Campbell's residency in Woodstock at that time that attracted Sanchez.) He claimed to have introduced the painter John Ernst to his wife-to-be poet Pearl Bond. He continued painting into the 1960s, his works exhibited in the Hamptons and New York City as well as locally. An exhibit of his works sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s was noted in the local press: "Art Critic, Stuart Preston of the New York Times, guest in Woodstock over the weekend paid particular tribute to the painting of Judson Smith exhibited at the Woodstock Art Gallery and the paintings by Rosemary Beck and Ricardo Sanchez now on show at Parnassus Square." Eventually Sanchez became fed up with the "art scene" and put aside his brushes but for the occasional compositions that either served as gifts for friends or simply disappeared. Sanchez considered it flattering to have art stolen from him. Paintings from his abstract-expressionist period cannot be located.
1972 saw the birth of two local newspapers, one of which survives. The other, Woodstock Review '72, which began its run with a front-page photo and article about the federal government's closure of the Sled Hill Café, was founded and edited by Sanchez and lasted through thirteen editions.
Throughout his life Sanchez held various occupations; work in (what was called then) an insane asylum, a window dresser for Macy's department store, a building superintendent, a waiter (he often would comment on a restaurant's service); some vaguely remember that he had worked in a Ford aviation plant. It was house painting and his excellent cooking that ingratiated him in 1970 with Joan Schwartzberg, the new owner of what had been the Eleanor Lamb ("Lamby's") Guest House on Tinker Street, and helped begin an association with Ms Schwartzberg that lasted until his death. He otherwise got by with small jobs and as a negotiant.
Sanchez is credited with possession of a rare presence of mind. Years ago, when confronted by two teenage boys who had just rapidly consumed a toxic amount of hard liquor and who demanded he judge which was the "shoberest," he took them one by one outdoors, pressed his fingers into their stomachs causing them to purge, an action that possibly may have saved their lives. One evening a distressed woman demanded he help her asphyxiate herself by running a hose from her car's exhaust to its cab. He promptly took her car keys and threw them into the snow, the woman's death wish suddenly subsumed by a huge, life affirming annoyance she might never find her keys. She lives to this day. "He had a gift for the uncomplicated," says his daughter Camille.
Sometime in the latter part of the 1940s, Sanchez married a woman named Luanna and fathered a daughter some remember as Cecile, or Cecelia or Celá. There is no available information about Luanna's later life or certainty of when she divorced Sanchez. The daughter from this marriage died sometime in the early1970s.
His daughter from a later relationship, Camille Benjamin, and a grandson, Gabriel Fernandez, survive Sanchez. Camille and her husband, Craig Ungerman of Pomfret, Connecticut, were with Sanchez during his last moments, as was Joan Schwartzberg and one of the men whose life he saved decades ago.
Tonto, Susie and Gracie also survive Sanchez, who had a life long affection for cats.
Funeral arrangements are with Lasher Funeral Home of Woodstock. There will be calling hours from 4:00 to 8:00 pm on Sunday, September 14, and a memorial service beginning at 1:00 pm on Monday, his birthday, followed by procession from Lasher's to the Artists' Cemetery where he is to be interred. Markers will be provided and friends are invited to give some thought to writing on Ric's casket a farewell message that will accompany him with "goodly fanfare" forever.
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