Requiem for a Redhead

ter dinner, there was magic. Jazz mavens, she and John would play their music. John played piano and Anne played gut bucket. Their favorite tune was “Summertime,” and I can never hear it without thinking about those magical evenings. They knew jazz diva Ethel Ennis from their days in Baltimore, and when she played the Avalon, Ms. Ennis and her husband stayed with the Goodspeeds. So I actually got to meet her, which was a major thrill.

her contacts generously to get me into the Baltimore Sun , where my Oysterback column ran for nearly a decade, and led me on to the Washington Post , and she brought me to Tidewater Times , where I’m proud to have had a safe berth for many years. Anne loved my writing, even when I didn’t, and took me into her life for a glimpse of joie de vivre I might never have found anywhere else.

To begin with, there were the dinners at her house with her husband, John Goodspeed, a retired Sun Hand. We started with cocktails and progressed to something Anne cooked, and it was always good, and great conversation flowed with the martinis. Af-

There will be a lot of ink about Anne, and people will tell you about her gorilla statue, her peeing boy lawn ornament, her beautiful gardens and her adventures in both politics and the scribbling trade. Her life was not always easy, but it was never dull.

The memory I want to share is the time we rode in Easton’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade as The Barbarian Queens.

It was, of course, Anne’s idea. And since she was the Empress Queen of the Barbarians, who was I to disagree? After all, we were rebels and artists and classic performers and in your face, Talbot! We could have been a pair of Boudicas, off to show the Romans what for. It was the ultimate feminist statement at that point. Anne being Anne, she wrangled a spot for us.

Now, to ride in a parade, queens need a convertible. Fortunately,

Charles Newman

Requiem for a Redhead

Anne was driving an Olds Delta 88 that just happened to be a convertible. She looked so cool, whipping around town in her shades with her red hair streaming in the wind.

A parade float needs a driver, so we enlisted my friend Jeff Oliver, who immediately got the idea and agreed to be our wheelman. He donned a Cat in the Hat hat for entertainment.

For us, Anne sewed two tunics from a glittery green material, and we dug up some rhinestone beauty queen tiaras from somewhere. We probably did look like barbarian queens after a night of looting and pillaging, but we were cool.

Anne and I spread our old fur coats on the back deck of the convertible to look even more Barbarian Queen, and I bought a couple of pounds of loose candy we could toss

Requiem for a Redhead into the crowd. We got some posterboard to attach to the doors and wrote BARBARIAN QUEENS. You know, in case anyone didn’t get it.

I felt as if we were the Krewe of Stinson, riding in the Mardi Gras parade as we pulled into the gathering place behind the police station. The ladies from the local banks and businesses were decorating golf carts with shamrocks and garlands, the high school bands and Double Dutch teams were warming up and, best of all to Anne and me, the Purple Hat Ladies were giving us the stink eye of lèse-majesté like we were a punk band that had just fallen out of CBGB’s. Of course, since we loved shocking the staid, Anne and I were thrilled. Every - one else seemed to think we were pretty cool, though.

As the parade slowly progressed down Washington Street, the crowds had gathered. We even saw some people we knew who actually got the joke. I got my biggest thrill from tossing candy to the kids. I probably wasn’t supposed to, but the looks on those kids’ faces made me so happy. The expressions on everyone’s faces made me happy because we were part of it.

Anne and I had practiced our Queen Elizabeth wave - you know, the twist of the wrist - so we could look even more royal. Performance art at its best. Only Anne could have pulled it off.

As the parade rolled down Dover Street past the Avalon, I hurled half a bag of Snickers Miniatures to the gang at the theater.

We certainly knew we were cool. And as the parade took off down the street and made a hard right back on Washington, we noticed a friend of ours was chasing us with his camera, so we smiled and posed and waved our queenly waves.

I don’t know about anyone else in the parade, but I was having the time of my life.

I was actually sorry when we pulled back into the lot behind the police station. It had been a lot of fun and had made a lot of people happy. And, once again, Anne had pulled off something no one else could have accomplished.

Back at her house, there were drinks and cackling. And there would be drinks and cackling for many years.

I will miss Anne, but I was so fortunate to have her in my life. I was fortunate that she liked my writing and loved me. She may be gone, but her essence will stay with me forever.

I know that somewhere Anne is in a place that looks like Longwood Gardens, surrounded by beauty and color, with all the people she loved who went there before her. And I know she is Barbarian Queen of it all.

Helen Chappell is the creator of the Sam and Hollis mystery series and the Oysterback stories, as well as The Chesapeake Book of the Dead . Under her pen names, Rebecca Baldwin and Caroline Brooks, she has published a number of historical novels.

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