Two Women Return To Woodstock 55 Years Later To Relive Iconic Festival

"We're like hippie queens!" Grant joked. They certainly were treated like queens. The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts pulled out all the stops including a tie-dyed carpet for the two at Woodstock. Returning to the area was like taking a stroll down memory lane. Shelburne remembered hitting the Woodstock festival with her future husband David.

"I'm looking at this person in the photograph, who is me, but a person just starting out in life at that age. And now I'm looking back at sort of bookends of my life," Ellen Shelburne said. "All these decades later, I'm back at Woodstock and it just brings it all up in such a positive way."

Returning To Woodstock

Neither Grant nor Shelburne knew each other prior to Woodstock. Shelburne came with her boyfriend, his friend, and another woman. They slept in a pup tent for the event. "I was never cold, wet, hungry, muddy, dirty, uncomfortable or miserable," she said. "It was the total opposite."

Grant decided to hit Woodstock after meeting a surfer in Florida. He said, "There's this music festival happening in New York. You want to hitchhike up there with me?" While Grant's friend gave up, Grant and the surfer made the distance across the country, walking the last few miles to the festival.

Both women remembered how generous everyone was then. "If we needed food, someone gave us food. Someone gave us water. We needed nothing," Grant said. The two wouldn't meet for months later when they ran into each other at Ohio State University. They ran adjacent shops. Each also married their concert companions, but Grant got a divorce a few years later. Meanwhile, David sadly passed away.

Shelburne said she's "stuck in the '60s and proud of it." They wanted to return to the site after giving oral histories about the event. Returning was like a blast from the past. In particular, Shelburne became weepy at Woodstock when she saw the site where she had once stayed. It hit her hard that her husband was no longer there with her.

"It's very wonderful to see that it's in history forever," Grant said, "and we're a part of that."