(1922-2013)
Excerpts reprinted from Plainfield Co-op Newsletter: Fall 2013
John Wires, a long-time supporter of the Co-op, moved to Plainfield in the 1960’s. “As best I understand John,” reflects George Springston, “he was always trying to have the big conversation about how we should live, and the Plainfield area is where much of this conversation took place.” For many years Plainfield was also where he practiced his belief in living simply and in harmony with nature. After his cabin burned down in the late 1980s, the community gathered around him in a large circle in the Community Center, helping John think through his recovery. Eventually he rebuilt.
Even after he moved to Montpelier, the Plainfield Co-op and Community Center remained important enough to him that he wanted memorial contributions made to it.
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John at the Co-op: Remembrances from Ellen Bressler
At one time in the Co-op’s history when working members were the rule (and mostly younger) rather than the exception, an exemption was made for members over perhaps 65. John would sit at the then horseshoe counter protesting that elders should still have to work, including him.
When John went to Arizona in the winter, he wrote postcards back to the Co-op, one urging that we have a packaging table in the middle of the store, as was the arrangement at the co-op he went to in Arizona. Instead of putting work on the sidelines, it put work in the center of things—where we happened to have a woodstove.