The Gilded Age of Fellowship

What do an Appalachian guitar maker, George Washington Vanderbilt II, and the Forum have in common?  Fellowship.  

The 2012 ABA Forum on Construction Law annual planning retreat just concluded at the Biltmore Resort in Asheville, North Carolina in the glow of lightning bugs and dancing in the grass to the strains of a bluegrass band next to a fire.  For two days we brainstormed under the capable guidance of Eva Abramowitz (2008 Forum cornerstone recipient) about goals, objectives, and strategies to guide us through the next three years.  Prominent in our discussion was the idea of the Forum as a place of fellowship; a place for friendship and good will; a place for communion with others who share the same passion and creed. 

On the way to the retreat Bobbi and I visited our friends Wayne and Helen in Rugby, Virginia, a world removed from vibrant, youthful, and moneyed Asheville.  Wayne Henderson is a National Heritage award recipient for his building and playing of flattop steel string guitars.  Wayne is also part guru, eccentric, and saint.  He builds among the finest handcrafted flattop guitars in the world and he gives them away almost for free.  There is a book out based on an encounter between Eric Clapton and one of Wayne’s guitars that belonged to a friend of his.  [It seems everyone who owns a Henderson guitar is a friend of Wayne]  The guitar was not for sale, but Clapton was so enamored of it that he offered a price too good to refuse:  $100,000.00.   Wayne’s guitars frequently sell on the secondary market for up to $25,000. Wayne’s daughter recently took up an apprenticeship with him and she sold her first guitar made jointly with Wayne for $25,000.   Yet Wayne continues to sell his guitars for a fraction of this price.  Moreover, he gives away four to five guitars each year to musicians who come to play for his music festival held each June in Grayson Highlands Park.  Wayne plays without charge for every funeral, wedding, dance, and special event that comes along in a hundred mile radius of Rugby.  Each Tuesday he holds court in his shop and gives tips, guidance, and inspiration to fellow guitar makers who flock to his shop, up to thirty or more at any given time. He does all this for free.   Yet Wayne is a rich man.  He is rich with the love and fellowship he receives back from his community.  He is not a stupid man.  He wouldn’t have it any other way. 

George Vanderbilt was on the other extreme of this spectrum.  He is what people think of when they say that, in America, fortunes made in the two generations are squandered by the third.  His grandfather (Cornelius) and father (William Henry) had built a great fortune from New York ferries, shipping, and railroads.  This amounted to about $200 million, by William Henry’s death in 1885.  George is said to have inherited about $12 million of this, although online sources are thin.  He spent most of it on the purchase of 120,000 acres of land in Asheville and construction and maintenance of Biltmore House, a 250 room mansion styled on French Renaissance Chateaus.  Unlike the pretend imitations we would build today, Biltmore House is the real thing, as genuine as Jim Schenck.  Richard Morris Hunt and Frederick Law Olmstead, respectively the architects of the building and grounds (including the forest), did a truly masterful job.  The house is beautifully situated a short distance above the French Broad River and it overlooks the valley and Smokey Mountains to the west.  The entry hall, library, billiard room, breakfast room, many common and private sitting rooms, and great hall are truly stunning.   The bedrooms are on a grand scale and functioned as a luxury hotel.  Guests had ample privacy, areas to congregate in, and a staff of 35 at their disposal to cater to their every need at all times.  In its glory days the Biltmore was like the best five star resort you could imagine, except the guests did not pay, would stay more or less indefinitely, and they were all friends of the Vanderbilts.  George Vanderbilt died in 1914, at which point his widow began to sell off great chunks of the land, and by 1930 Cornelia, the only child, had lost the house to John Cecil (the son in law); the George Vanderbilt money was mostly gone, and the Cecils began to open the house for public tours to raise funds.  What possessed George Vanderbilt to stake his fortune on building a great house and run it as a resort for friends if not a deep seated desire for fellowship.  We may look down on the fact that he valued the fellowship of the rich, famous, and connected, but for valuing fellowship above money in the bank, who can say he was wrong? 

Like the passions of Wayne Henderson and George Vanderbilt, involvement in the Forum does not come cheap.   By writing and editing articles in Under Construction and the Construction Lawyer, writing chapters of books, editing books, cat herding programs, preparing materials and presenting program sessions, chairing programs, serving on Division steering committees, as Division chairs, presenting materials for Division activities, organizing and speaking at breakfast forums, serving on the governing committee, publications committee, SPEC, or division chairs committee, diversity committee, membership committee, finance committee, etc. we volunteer enough hours each year to power a good size law-firm.  By the time we get to a planning retreat everyone has done many of the above, and the officers have done virtually all of these things over a period of 15 or more years.  We do all this without monetary compensation, yet we are rich with the love and fellowship we receive back from this community.  We are not stupid.  We wouldn’t have it any other way.  For us, after a few years of Forum involvement,  it’s a gilded age of fellowship.