MISSING THE BUS
May 15th, 2018
HALIFAX NOVA SCOTIA
The world’s most famous Hippie Bus is lost and fans are searching the world to resurrect it ahead of the 50th anniversary of Woodstock coming up in august 2019.
Dr. Bob Hieronimus painted the original Woodstock hippie bus in the summer of ’69 with symbols he believed would usher in the dawn of a new age. His friends in the band LIGHT drove the bus to Woodstock to deliver the message.
“It’s not psychedelic,” says Dr. Bob, “it’s symbolic.”
Now Dr. Bob has inspired a team of experts to help him restore and repaint the bus for Woodstock’s 50th.
The problem?
He can’t remember where he left it. It’s been lost somewhere along the road just like the spirit of peace and love it once represented.
They’re looking for help to find and restore the bus.
“We’ve spent hours with Dr. Bob, the people from the band and the people from the commune near Baltimore where Dr. Bob lived. It’s a ‘Dude Where’s My Bus?’ dilemma that threatened to end the project before it started. We decided we’d spend six months looking for the original bus and if we can’t find it we’ll use an unrestored matching model year bus as the “canvas” for Dr. Bob’s art,” says John Wesley Chisholm who’s leading the search and restoration project.
The team has the support of Curiosity Stream TV in the US and Autentic TV in Germany who are licensing a documentary about the bus, which allows them to commit time to the project. But the still need to find THE bus or A bus and finance the restoration and painting.
Once the work is done and Dr. Bob’s artwork is restored the bus will hit the road to festivals and VW shows, taking the long way around America back to Woodstock. After the anniversary Dr. Bob will be looking for a ‘forever home’ for the bus, a museum or gallery, so that the most people can see, enjoy and be inspired by this amazing artwork just as the Woodstock generation.
They’re looking for people who might have knowledge of the bus. It’s a 1963, 11 window, non-walkthrough Volkswagen Bus. The last known photo, taken near Baltimore in April 1972 shows the licence plate.
“We’ve searched the DMV, hired detectives, even visited famous psychics and remote seers with no luck”, says Chisholm, “We’ve also taken an epic road trip from the top of New Jersey to the bottom of Arkansas search backfields, garages, junkyards, VW shows and shops looking for the bus. No luck. Though we’ve met hundreds of wonderful Volkswagen people along the way who have been so kind and helpful. There really is something of the spirit of Woodstock that lives on in modern Bus culture.”
David and Cee Eccles in their book, Traveling with the VW Bus and Camper say, "Not only was the 'Light' Bus by Bob Hieronimus one of the first VW buses to be painted in the 'psychedelic sixties' style, its Woodstock heritage adds to its importance and influence on the future. It is not just another 'hippie bus,' but a work of art in its own right, which captures the mood and aspirations of a generation searching for its own identity and place in the universal scheme of things. The bus may have passed into legend, but its legacy as inspiration for new generations of VW bus owners lives on."
So, if you can help, or want to get involved in the project you can join the Woodstock Light Bus Project, or support their Kickstarter running this month to raise funds for the restoration where you can even book a week Traveling with the restored bus to your own personal Woodstock.
“It’s an incredible journey. The weirder the world gets the more we need to get back a little something of the peace and love generation. This is our effort.”, says Dr. Bob.
About Dr. Bob
“Dr. Bob”, Robert R. Hieronimus has been immersed in American symbols all his life. A visual artist, talk radio host, and historian, Hieronimus earned a Ph.D. with a sophisticated symbolic analysis of the reverse of the Great Seal as thesis. His weekly program, 21st Century Radio with Dr. Bob Hieronimus (http://www.21stCenturyRadio.com), is celebrating its 30th year of new paradigm talk radio.
About the Search Team
John Wesley Chisholm and the crew at Arcadia Content have been making a business of searching for lost and hidden things for over 15 years. Lost shipwrecks, Knights Templar, Stories of the Apostles, elusive narwhals, vintage machines and historic treasure have been the subject of their work with National Geographic and Discovery Channel. With this project, involving the search, restoration, and repainting, which they will document for broadcasters in the US, Canada, and Germany, they’re more challenged than ever before, and their time is running out.
Contact
To learn more about this project, please contact
John Wesley Chisholm, Search team leader
6454 Quinpool Road, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Direct: (902) 225-0763