"An Action In Equity"
After two summers of operation, due largely to financial pressures, the original program folded. Several people, including Sarita Cordell and her son Rusty, Bill and Gail Brown, Frank Ress, Tom Rue, and others lived at Innisfree in an effort to continue, as an intentional community, what was called the "Innisfree Learning Environment."
Bud wanted to remain in Milanville and not return to New Jersey to live, but he was licensed to teach in New Jersey public schools. To be licensed in Keystone State would have required him to take additional graduate classes (including one in the history of Pennsylvania, and some others). He concluded that traveling for additional post-graduate education was not practical for him by long-distance, and it also would have meant splitting his teacher's retirement plan between two state systems. A decade later, in 1989, Bud took the earliest retirement from which he was eligible and finally moved to Innisfree with his wife Ann Rue.
Innisfree Learning Environment
For a brief time Innisfree became something of a commune, a year-round intentional community. Most residents were adults, but the few kids who lived there off-season either attended school in Damascus, or were truant with no formally approved home-schooling in place. As a young teen, I did both.
The April 31, 1972 issue of the weekly New Schools Exchange Newsletter, published in Santa Barbara, Calif., listed the announcement appearing above and to the right on their page 10.
There was talk an Innisfree board of trustees meeting of a residential school "for pre-delinquent boys". Some steps were taken in that direction. Although an Application for a License to Conduct a Private Academic School or Class was completed, the idea never got off the ground.
During these years, Milanville residents Andrea Henley and Michael Gutterman rented the Innisfree chicken-coop to house the factory of the Hawkeye Candle Co., which consigned their products locally and job-lotted candles to the city. The company later outgrew the chicken coop and rented space in the old Milanville creamery.
In July 1973, Innisfree's board of trustees discussed offering the facility to the Wayne County Commissioners, and Bud Rue contacted the governor's office seeking "seed money" for a proposal to dedicate the Innisfree property for use as an adolescent group home. State funds were reportedly "dry" that year for the development of new child-welfare group homes, according to an official in Harrisburg who spoke to Bud Rue about the idea of a county group home for delinquent and dependent youth (which did not then exist) being housed at Milanville. Board members present who took part in that 1973 discussion of a group home included: Bud (president) and Ann Rue (vice-president), Tom Rue (secretary), Rob and Margie Copeland, Jerry Boyer, Frank Ress (treasurer), Rosana Raspa, and Howard Fink. Rather than choosing the Innisfree proposal, the Wayne County Board of Commissioners opted to renovate the old poor farm in Beach Lake for the purpose (most likely a wise choice). Several years later, when I moved to Innisfree in 1985 having completed graduate school in counseling at Rider University, I accepted a job as a houseparent at the Wayne County Group Home in Beach Lake and worked in that capacity for a year.
From 1976 to 1980, at college and the US Air Force in some western states and therefore not an eye witness to events at Innisfree during those years, when I came back east in October 1981, Frank Ress had recently filed a lawsuit against Innisfree Corporation and Bud and Ann Rue, seeking reimbursment for alleged amounts, with a goal of taking title to the Milanville property. For varying reasons, most of the people who had lived at Innisfree since 1970 had drifted on to other chapters of their lives. Ress, a New York City accountant who came to Milanville in 1971 to recover from a motorcycle accident, stayed on. As others moved away, soon only Frank remained. With the Rues tied to jobs in New Jersey, in 1981 he thought the property was up for the taking.
In September 1981, through a Lords Vallet attorney named John A. Wittmaack, who was later disbarred and imprisoned for dishonesty, Frank filed a lawsuit alleging breach of an oral contract to pay him for caretaking, custodial, and bookkeeping services dating back to September 1, 1971. In his suit, Frank alleged that "a reasonable fee" would be $52,400. This claim was not based on any promise or contract, but on an obscure legal theory of Quantum Meruit which, because it could not be applied in a court of law, was filed on the Equity side of the Wayne County Court of Common Pleas (No. 14, Civil Term of 1981). Moreover, Frank asserted a "breach of [oral] contract to repay monies lent," for an additional alleged $43,826.50 in mortgage payments, and for reimbursement of all bills, including for cable tv, from the date he moved in. In satisfaction, Frank's lawyer sought an "equitable lien" against the Milanville property. He did not get it. The complaint asserted, "In the alternative, Plaintiff claims that from 1971 until date, the Plaintiff paid on behalf of the Defendant corporation or lent the Defendant corporation the sum of... $36,535... which sums were sued by the Defendant corporation to pay a Mortgage... if not repaid to Plaintiff will create an unjust enrichment on the part of the Defendant corporation and the Defendants, Clyde B. Rue and Ann Rue, his wife."
The proceedings drug on for over a year. My contribution to the defense was to compile and organize every document that I could locate through correspondence, phone calls, and personal visits pertaining to Innisfree between the years 1970 to 1982, including not just writing to obtain copies of all government filings that I could think of ever filed by Innisfree, as well as commercial account records of transactions with local businesses and people whose business records were important to the operation of Innisfree Corporation. This activity assisted the Innisfree's two attorneys on the matter, since, as former treasurer, Frank had possession of the books and business records of the corporation. My unpaid efforts, which amounted to a voluntary part-time job for two years while I was a full-time college student and and working part-time at the New Jersey State Archives in Trenton, were described in a later college recommendation dated December 6, 1982, by Innisfree's New Jersey attorney, James F.X. Rudy Esq. of Trenton:
Some (those who could be located) who remembered first-hand the intentions and living arrangements in 1970 and 1971 responded to my outreaches. Gail Wilson Brown (a reporter and photographer for The Montclair Times, and married at the time to Bill Brown) and others, gave me photos and some negatives from early summers at Innisfree, as well as other historical information. For instance, Lenore Migdal physically handed me the following affidavit during a visit I made to her Manhattan apartment for the purpose of securing her testimony.
These historical details might have been adduced in more detail had there been a trial, but there was a settlement instead. A break seemed to occur when I requested all records that Wayne County Bank & Trust Co. had on file regarding Innisfree Corporation and they provided copies of a bank loan application completed by Frank and his girlfriend (and later wife) in September 1980. Frank signed the loan application as Treasurer, and his girlfriend signed as Secretary, and did so falsely under the name of Innisfree Corporation. The application was accompanied by a false corporate resolution, dated June 16, 1980, certifying that Innisfree's board of directors had approved the loan. In reality, no such meeting of trustees was ever held, and the other principals did not support the taking of the loan.
In a "Reply to New Matter" filed in response to the bank's petition (No. 1402 of 1981), Wayne County Bank and Truste Co., Innisfree stated: "It is denied that Innisfree Corporation held a meeting of its Board of Directors on the 16th of June 1980, and further denied that the resolution in question was ever voted on or considered at any meeting of the Corporation or its Directors. It is likewise denied that Ellen Blitzer attested to 'said resolution... as Secretary of the Corporation," since Ms. Blitzer was never elected to that office, and indeed neither had not has any formal or informal relationship or connection of any kind with Innisfree Corporation.
The discovery of this discrepancy (which might not have come to our attention had it not been for my exhaustive fishing expedition, sending letters to businesses and people throughout the tri-state area whom we knew Innisfree had done business with, but Frank had taken possession of the books and records of the corporation and attempted to lock the Rue family out of the house. The information about the false corporate resolution seemed to help expedite a settlement to an unpleasant action brought by Mr. Ress and his felonious attorney. On September 10, 1982, Frank Ress was paid approximately $15,013 by Innisfree Corporation for funds he laid out for property-related costs over the years. Frank and his new bride, the former Ms. Blitzer, went away.
