LETTER: Remembering Jon Gailmor
December 4, 2025 | By Carol Johnson CollinsJon Gailmor performs at Robinson Elementary School in Starksboro, April 12, 2022. Photo by Carol Johnson Collins
To the Community:
Jon Gailmor hugs Carol Johnson Collins and her daughter and art teacher Eliza Joy Collins Weissberger after Gailmor's visit with Starksboro students. Photo by Fred Collins
He was my friend, as he was for so, so many others. He made each of his friends feel they were special, as they were. He gave more of himself and his personal energy to the children, adults, and communities in Vermont and beyond than anyone else I've ever known.
We often visited in conjunction with the craft festival circuit. He sang, and I spun at my spinning wheel. I loved his wild energy and the way he totally gave himself at every performance. I wrote this poem, titled “For Jon Gailmor,” for and about him in 1986, after attending one of his outdoor summer concerts with my family. I gave him a copy around that time. I also gave him a cassette tape of songs that I'd written for and sung to my family, and he gave me his latest cassette tape, which was “Gonna Die With A Smile If It Kills Me” and “Dirt,” in trade. Both of those collections were on the same tape.
He worked with our two children and their classmates at the Duxbury Corner School. Approximately 30 years later, our daughter hired him to teach her own students songwriting at Robinson Elementary School in Starksboro, Vermont. (see photos)
The Seasons They Go Round and Round.
Thank goodness he recorded so many songs. Through them, he will be able to keep giving, forever, and we will never forget him.
FOR YOU, JON GAILMOR
(Or A Midsummer Night's Scream)
July 1986
As adults,
we usually quietly sit,
or write or type or cook
AND lecture our children to grow up.
YOU come
on a hot midsummer day.
Before we even know
we are not children,
you JOUST us from our comfy seats!
We fly up, raise one fist
and shout "Dirt"!
You shirtless Thing,
with arteries bulging,
you Son of a Wing,
with guitar blazing.
You Amazing Thing.
You wiggle your hips
and jump your lips,
and
make
Us
SING!
Jon Gailmor visits with students at the former Duxbury Corner School, circa 1983.
Carol Johnson Collins and family
South Duxbury