'Farmer' is little known despite his historic role

The world knows plenty about Woodstock - Bethel, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the counterculture, 1969, hundreds of thousands and so on. Even after 40 years, there remains some mystery about Max - Max Yasgur that is, the man on whose farm Woodstock was held.

Indeed, Yasgur saved Woodstock, as the concert's promoters found his farm in Bethel, Sullivan County, after losing their proposed site in the Town of Wallkill, near Middletown.

His willingness to let Woodstock Ventures stage the concert on his property, and the acceptance by this older man with the crew cut, glasses, conservative clothing and pipe, of hippies, is as historic as the events that unfolded during that weekend of magical music 40 years ago.

You might say Yasgur validated the entire undertaking - the concert's promoters, the bands that played and those who attended, for the rest of the world.

"I'm a farmer," Yasgur said while addressing the crowd at Woodstock, as captured in the Academy Award-winning documentary about the festival. "I don't know how to speak to 20 people at one time, let alone a crowd like this. But I think you people have proven something to the world, not only the Town of Bethel or Sullivan County or New York state. You've proven something to the world. This is the largest gathering of people ever assembled in one place. … the important thing that you've proven to the world is that a half-a-million kids, and I call you kids because I have children who are older than you are, a half a million young people can get together and have three days of fun and music and have nothing but fun and music and I God bless you for it."

Yasgur's appearance on the stage at Woodstock, judging from the crowd's response in the documentary, was as warmly received as Jimi Hendrix's version of the "Star-Spangled Banner."

There is much more to Yasgur than what many know.

According to "The Road to Woodstock," written by Michael Lang, one of the four concert promoters to stage the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969, and the public face of Woodstock for 40 years, Yasgur: • Was the biggest dairy farmer in Sullivan County in August 1969, owning 2,000 acres that comprised 10 farms, including the 600-acre plot at the intersection of West Shore and Hurd roads in the Town of Bethel, off Route 17B, on which Woodstock was held. • Had only three fingers on his right hand.

• Grew up on a farm with a boardinghouse where summer guests stayed.

• Became the head of his family's household as a teenager, after his father died.

• Studied real estate law at New York University.

• Developed delivery routes and built a massive refrigeration complex and pasteurization plant for Yasgur's Dairy, then Sullivan County's largest milk producer.

• Had suffered several heart attacks before he had ever heard of Woodstock. An oxygen tank was kept nearby at all times and he had an oxygen tent in his bedroom.

When Lang met Yasgur for the first time, he wrote, "Max had a sharply intelligent face and looked me in the eye."

Elliot Tiber, who wrote "Taking Woodstock," a memoir that featured his family's motel in Bethel, and its role in Woodstock, described Yasgur as "a mensch (a good person) and it showed. But he was nobody's fool, either."