Special events

Memorial Celebration for

Conny Taylor

Co-Founder of FAC

Many thanks to all who joined the Taylor family and friends on December 10, 2006 for the memorial service and folk dance in honor of Conny.

Donations made in Conny’s memory to the Folk Arts Center go to the Conny Taylor Scholarship Fund, which provides scholarships to FAC’s annual Oktoberfest Weekend in Fairlee, Vermont.

Cornell Sawyer Taylor, 1921-2006

Conny Taylor died on November 3, 2006 at age 85 after a long battle with lung cancer. He served in the Navy during World War II and went on to receive his bachelor’s degree in Recreation from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He began teaching international folk dance and Scottish country dance in the Boston area in 1953. At the Cambridge YWCA in 1955 and ’56, he and his then-wife Marianne started the international folk dance classes and parties that later became the Thursday, Friday, and monthly Saturday series still run by the Folk Arts Center.

Conny taught folk dance workshops and school programs all over New England, in Virginia and Quebec, and at Oquaga Camp in NY and Texas Folk Dance Camp. He was a frequent leader at Ralph Page’s East Hill Farm and Year End Camps and served on the New England Folk Festival Association’s planning committees in the 1950s.

In 1975 Conny co-founded the Folk Arts Center with Marianne and served as its President and Technical Director. He ran the Copley Square outdoor summer folk dances in Boston and the Oktoberfest Folk Dance Weekend in Stowe, VT for many years and helped initiate FAC’s Pinewoods Camp sessions. In recent years, he was a guest at FAC’s Pinewoods and Oktoberfest camps and at the San Antonio Folk Dance Festival. In his “retirement,” he volunteered for the Pepperidge Farm Outlet, delivering bread to food pantries in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

Download a printable PDF version of the Conny Taylor Memorial Celebration flier.