A public gathering to celebrate the life of Mary Anne Guitar will be held on Saturday, Aug.12, at 4:30 p.m. at the Redding Historical Society, 43 Lonetown Road, near the Community Garden, organized by Mary Anne’s “Connecticut cousin,” Mary Guitar. Mary Anne served the residents of Redding in an official capacity for over a quarter of a century, but her love for Redding, and Reddingites, goes back some sixty years: through her work with the Town Hall, New Pond Farm, the League of Women Voters, the Land Trust, the Old Redding Road neighborhood and the Democratic Town Committee.

Parking will be at the Historical Society meadow. Seniors and those with mobility concerns can be dropped off directly at the tent, with parking nearby. Police will be on site to direct traffic. The large tent (with hundreds of chairs) will be between the historic house and barn (the Rock‘n Roots/Fireworks space). Those without transportation can request pick up/drop off service by the Senior Center van. Please call Gordon Loery (203.938.4774) by Friday morning to add your name to this list.

After the program, everyone is invited to be together for the champagne toast, and light refreshments. Friends are invited to share their anecdotes about and memories of Mary Anne. In the barn will be ‘memory boards’ ‒ gleanings from Mary Anne’s many boxes of memorabilia, along with a lovely profusion of flowers from her garden and land trust open spaces. The last of four videos that she helped produce, “A Love Letter to Redding” will be projected in the barn.

The site of this memorial gathering is significant: just east of the Community Garden where Mary Anne grew her prized tomatoes, just north of the first open space parcel acquired by the Town (Lonetown Marsh, aka Murphy’s Swamp) and just south of Warrup’s Farm where she and Sam Hill and Stuart Chase cooked up the notion of saving Redding as a clean and green oasis in a rapidly developing Fairfield County. It is the very heart of her Redding.

In lieu of flowers, contributions in her name can be sent to the Mary Anne Guitar Education Fund (checks made out to the Redding Land Trust with Mary Anne Guitar Education Fund in memo line) or to one of the boards she sat on and held dear: the League of Women Voters, New Pond Farm, The Redding Land Trust and the Mark Twain Library.