Tag Archives: Lenny Provenzano

Sandy Swank (1959-2015)

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Lisa Ashton and Sandy Swank in “The Letter.” Photo by Leonard J. Provenzano. Used by permission.

Lisa Ashton and Sandy Swank in “The Letter.” Photo by Leonard J. Provenzano. Used by permission.

Sandy Swank, an active member of the International Costumers Guild, passed away June 13 of lung disease.

He was President of the Greater Delaware Valley Costumers Guild. He also was a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, participating in an early 17th century persona.

Before he retired, even his day job allowed him to appear in costume, as a historical re-enactor at Philadelphia’s Cliveden museum, sometimes playing an 18th century German farmer and sometimes the Grandson of Pennsylvania founder William Penn.

After retirement he moved to Charleston, South Carolina. There he co-chaired Costume-Con 33 (2015) with his husband Robert M. Himmelsbach.

He was part of the memorable Chicon 2000 Masquerade entry, the humorous “Mad Cows Through History”.

And Swank and Lisa Ashton won Best in Show at Philcon as well as multiple awards at Costume-Con 29 in 2011 for ”The Letter”  (scroll down for video), a meticulously researched presentation of the famous Sullivan Ballou letter. Lisa Ashton recalls:

We were on a panel together about a year earlier, at a Philcon, on a Sunday morning, and only about 1 person showed up, so we all just talked about things, and the subject came around to the Ken Burns Documentary about the Civil War, and the very poignant letter written by Sullivan Ballou to his wife Sarah, about two weeks before he was killed at First Manassas. This led to Sandy and I doing this on stage, and people telling us, “The hair stood up on the back of my neck” among other comments. I am smiling as I remember our planning and presentation and how touching it was. We were so in character we barely felt we were ourselves. I still cry watching this presentation on video.

Swank is survived by his husband, and two sisters.

John Hertz: Forry Remembered at Lunacon

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By John Hertz: Lunacon is hosted annually by the New York S-F Society, the Lunarians. Lunacon LII in 2009 was March 20-22 at the Hilton Rye Town, Rye Brook, N.Y., fondly known as the Klein Bottle Hotel because the fourth floor is the seventh floor and the green grass grows all around.

The Forry Ackerman memorial was Sunday morning at 10. Lee Gilliland moderated Louis Epstein, Dennis McCunney, the Wombat, and me. Dave Kyle was attending the con but not staying in the hotel. We asked him to join us but he couldn’t get his car through the multi-dimensional barriers in time.

Without Kyle, everyone on the panel was much younger than Forry. I thought this showed how he reached into the future. The Wombat had met him in 1973 – when Forry had already been an active fan almost forty years.

Lenny Provenzano in the audience had some photos of Forry and his house the Ackermansion on a laptop computer. Failing to get a big screen and a projector we put the laptop on the table and crowded in. Forry would have found some way to joke about the laptop turning into a desktop and no doubt being a were-computer.

Gilliland who is active in Man from U.N.C.L.E. fandom remembered Forry in “The Vampire Affair”. He had many cameo appearances. Epstein who co-founded the National Tolkien Society remembered Forry in the 1981 edition of Tolkien’s letters. Forry was an agent for an early project to film The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s comments are pungent today.

I told how Forry had co-founded the Big Heart Award. When he stepped down from administering it after fifty years, we could finally give it to him. He won the first fan Hugo. When he was called to the stage he said “But I really think this should go to Ken Slater” and walked away.

Once Forry was driving Walt Willis across the country. Just thinking of those two punsters together staggers the mind. In Wyoming he told Willis they should visit Cheyenne because of its literary reputation. Willis said he didn’t know it. “What!” said Forry, “you haven’t heard of Cheyenne’s fiction?”

Forry held Open House at the Ackermansion every Saturday he was in town. He had hundreds of thousands of books, and things too fierce to mention. He told tours, “I’ve read every last word.” They would gasp. “Yes,” he would say, “as soon as I get another book I turn to the last page, and read the last word. So I’ve read every last word.”