Dedication

This Fair is dedicated to Robin Sutherland ... and all those who gave of time and spirit

Written by John Colson

The late, nationally recognized concert pianist Robin Sutherland was in one sense a true son of the Carbondale Mountain Fair, now celebrating its 50th year.

Born John Robin Sutherland in 1951 (he legally dropped the “John” later in life), he was raised in Greeley, Colorado. Sutherland was a child musical prodigy starting from the age of four years and, thanks to a fortuitous combination of circumstances, ended up living, teaching and learning in the Roaring Fork Valley in the early 1970s, the era when the Mountain Fair was born.

The woman credited with being the main force behind creation of the Fair, Laurie Loeb of Carbondale, befriended Sutherland that year and remembered recently that he was peripherally involved in Fair activities starting in 1972, though she could not recall exactly what he did in those early years.

By 1975, however, Sutherland's growing fame as a gifted classical pianist (he was named principal keyboardist for the San Francisco Symphony in 1974) propelled him onto the makeshift stage of that year's Fair, playing a piece the title of which unfortunately has been lost to time.

Several years later, after Loeb had met and married another of the Roaring Fork Valley's long time musical personalities, composer and conductor Ray Adams, the two men came up with a formal, if somewhat irreverent connection to the annual Fair.

Sutherland and Adams (with a changing crew of helpers, including yours truly) took on the nighttime security chore for the Fair and, in the early 1980s, dubbed themselves “The A Team,” filching the name from a television series that ran from 1983-1987 (ultimately the A-Team morphed into today's Peace Patrol.)

Robin Sutherland. Photo by Becky Young.

With official sanction from the Fair organizers, they attached themselves to the Fair’s weekend security squad, which was in charge of keeping the peace and watching over the many booths that lined Sopris Park.

Sutherland, who died last year, loved Carbondale and immensely enjoyed coming to the Fair when he could, and it is a fitting tribute to his devotion to this community that this year's Carbondale Mountain Fair is dedicated to his memory.

REAL ESTATE FOR YOU!

There's no place like home ... Your own home in the Roaring Fork Valley! Let me help you fi nd it!