I’m stealing this post from my dad who tells the tale of The first Fourth of July festival at Sunhearth.
“ Hi folks, thanks for welcoming Lara. She mentions that she has three dulcimers. What she doesn't say is that she built one of them at Sunhearth, under the watchful eye of Walt Martin. Her roots in the Martin family are deep.
Ken, the July 4th weekends at Sunhearth have an interesting history:
Walt was friends with a group of musicians centered around Penn State U, about 75 miles from Roaring Spring, where Walt and his Dad built the Martin homestead, Sunhearth, (upwind from the Roaring Spring village paper mill, thank goodness...).
Awhile after Walt started building dulcimers, he got into a free-wheeling conversation with these musicians, and said "I'll bet all the beer you can drink that you can't sing and play for 24 hours straight without repeating a song!"
Well they took him up on it. And along came everyone who had owned a Sunhearth. And Lara, her mother (who was Walt's niece), and me.
We all got sloshed, and Walt gladly paid for the beer. And we had one of those 12 fish and 5 loaves of bread stone soup three-day weekends. Sometimes I'd go down early to help Mike put up out-houses and get the electric lights strung, etc...
That weekend became a tradition for many years, until Walt and Helen wore out...”
