Memorial Brick: Ripley River Walk

You can pay tribute and immortalize your family or business by sponsoring a memorial brick in the Ripley River Walk. Your commemorative brick ($50) will be engraved with your inscription for generations to come. Also available: Planters ($500); Benches ($1000). Contact Lesley at (937) 392-4377 for details.

Interesting Ripley Residents:
Ben Pedigo, Bluegrass Musician

Gunpowder Creek has just released their first CD. See www.ripleybanjoworks.com for details.

Wanting to combine music with higher education, Ben decided to attend Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and immediately gravitated to picking with Nashville bluegrass musicians. "After school I could walk a couple of blocks to the Bluegrass Inn, tune up my banjo and sit in with people like Scotty Stoneman, and Buck White."

Ben's work with The Whites gave him the opportunity to audition for Bill Monroe. Ben decided to take a leave of absence his junior year at Vanderbilt to tour with Bill and The Blue Grass Boys. The opportunity to perform with Bill was a once in a lifetime experience. Ben traveled throughout the South and to California with The Blue Grass Boys, in addition to playing on the Opry and Ernest Tubb's Record Shop.

 "When I lived in Nashville, I noticed that the row buildings on the Cumberland were beautiful and I thought that it would be fun to restore an old building on the river." Ben got his opportunity to do just that when he was asked by friend, Jim Collins, then professor  of art at University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, if Ben would like to move to Ripley, Ohio and help with the restoration of an old bank building that Jim purchased to make an art gallery for his sculptures and other works of art.

For a time, Ben spent his summers working on the Julia Belle Swain in Peoria and his winters in Ripley. Ben has started to give banjo and guitar lessons and has started performing with his wife Kim's brother, Forrest Utley, in the duo GUNPOWDER CREEK. Kim and daughter Katherine are creating a jewelry line incorporating vintage beads. Their line of jewelry is under the name  riverpeepers. Click here for more information about beautiful Riverpeepers jewelry with vintage beads. See http://www.ripleybanjoworks.com

Ron Barrett, Winegrower
In 1998, Ron and his partner Nancy Bentley sold their Oregon Pinot Noir vineyard and relocated to a southeast facing ridge near the Ohio river in Ripley, a historical viticultural area. They planted five acres of wine grapes on the 126 acre farm. Two of their wines have been rated as the Top 100 Exciting Wine Finds in the World by Tom Stevenson, British Editor of the New Sothebys Wine Encyclopedia. See www.KinkeadRidge.com for more information.

Ann Hagedorn, Author
Ann Hagedorn was born in Dayton, Ohio and grew up in Dayton, KansasCity and Cleveland.    Since college, she has lived in Chicago, Ann Arbor, MI, Lawrence, KS,San Francisco, and New York City.  Hagedorn earned a B.A. in history from Denison University, an M.S. in information science from the University of Michigan, and an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University.   

In 1991, Hagedorn focused her knowledge of fraud and bankruptcy on probing the collapse of America's premier horseracing dynasty, Calumet Farm. The result was the highly acclaimed book Wild Ride: The Rise and Tragic Fall of Calumet Farm, Inc., a story of greed and intrigue in the 1980s that is now under option with Paramount Pictures.  The author left the WSJ in late 1993 to join the New York Daily News as Special Projects Editor. There, in addition to overseeing projects, she wrote multi-part series on geriatric inmates in New York prisons, New York lawyers who were laundering money for Colombian drug cartels, capital punishment, and a four-part series on George Steinbrenner and the bankruptcy of his shipbuilding empire ( which won an Associated Press award.)  Next, she wrote a mini-sequel for the Wild Ride paperback edition and began researching and writing Ransom.  After the release of Ransom, Hagedorn wrote a piece for The Washington Post and taught a narrative non-fiction writing course at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where she had been giving lectures in various classes for several years. During that time, she discovered a stunning story in the Ohio River Valley that resulted in her third book Beyond the River, now under option with Clear Pictures Inc.  After writing Beyond the River, she taught a writing course at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Illinois and while in Chicago she began the research for Savage Peace.  

Currently she is writing another book and working with a group of writers to launch the Late Bloomers School of Writing. When not writing, reading or teaching, she is canoeing, bicycling or learning to play the fiddle and the concertina. See www.annhagedorn.com for more information.

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Underground Railroad Bicycle Route: Route maps will be published by Spring 2007
From Mobile, Alabama, through Ripley, to Lake Huron in Ontario, Canada. Riders can pedal all 2000 miles or enjoy a day trip. For additional information see www.adventurecycling.org/ugrr

Click here. For more information contact Ginny Sullivan, Adventure Cycling Association, 150 E. Pine Street, Missoula, MT 59802, (300) 755-2453 EXT 229, gsullivan@adventurecycling.org.