Stewart Oksenhorn

Stewart's daughter, Olivia, attended the Aspen Chirdren's Garden, an independent preschool taught by Patty Fox and CP Kanipe from 2001 to 2004. When she transferred to the Waldorf School on the Roaring Fork, Stewart began the journey forward through the grades as well as the journey back through the history as editor of Raising Waldorf.

Reading and editing the stories of the founders – builders and board members, teachers and parents – of the Waldorf School on the Roaring Fork, I am struck by two things: how different their stories are from my own. And how familiar they are.

When my wife Candice and I placed our daughter Olivia in the Waldorf School on the Roaring Fork kindergarten, there were no questions of the school's stability or its structure, its history or its future. What we saw was a stunning building, capable and caring teachers like Brian Sweeterman (could a kindergarten teacher have a better name than Sweeterman?) and Verita Malin her class teacher, and an atmosphere of serenity that comforted our daughter and ourselves. The thought of where the school had come from, what sort of effort it might have taken, never crossed my mind. It was a school, and schools just happen, right?

Reading about Patty Fox's Waldorf classes at Colorado Mountain College and the first Mayfaires, dwindling enrollments and the failed initiative with the public schools, teachers going off to be educated and parents raising the Waldorf School on the Roaring Fork buildings, I learned how wrong I was. I am dumbfounded by the effort, audacity, generosity and sheer will of those who made this school. It makes me think I got off easy, and that I missed something infinitely valuable as well. Could I have found the fortitude to stick with something so idealistic and difficult?

If I could have had such faith, I would owe it to Patty Fox and CP Kanipe. The way our family came to these two wise, wonderful women is what resonates with all the other stories in this book. Waldorf seemed to have found us, just as it did so many others.

"Could I have found the fortitude to stick with something so idealistic and difficult?
If I could have had such faith, I would owe it to Patty Fox and CP Kanipe."