December 1998

1998 has been yet another wild and crazy year in the Gibson-Smith/Martin household. It seems to have flown by at a terrifying rate, but as we started to write this letter, we were surprised at how much we actually did this year.

Things started out with a bang with our annual New Years Eve get together with friends. Usually we go out to a nice restaurant for dinner and end up back at our place around 11:30 p.m. to ring in the New Year. This year, however, we decided to do a buffet at the house…Big Mistake! By 10:00 p.m., everyone was legless, we forgot to start the oven, no one ate, and we started the year in a great deal of pain (for 1999, we are going back to the "Let's all meet at the restaurant" plan!)

In January, Thom was in Chicago for the World Retroviruses Conference. His business has been growing by leaps and bounds and he anticipates having four employees by the end of the year (including Julia! - but more on that later). He has just landed a large contract to write a newsletter and analysis of HIV infections in prisons and he is working on a bunch of conferences, most of which will occur in 1999.

At the end of February, we finally made it to Australia for three weeks during the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. What a trip! It is without a doubt one of the most amazing, gorgeous, and friendly places we have ever been. We met up with many old friends, including Roger and Diana Shellard and the Marando's in Sydney and made many new friends. Sydney is truly incredible and Val and Cliff are planning a trip there next year (Thom and I are frantically saving frequent flyer miles so that we can return in 2000!). If you have never been there, the only thing we can say is - GO!

At the end of March, we went to Amsterdam with Val and Cliff and some other friends as Hydraudyne (one of Cliff's old clients) was throwing a formal "Thank You" dinner for all the work he has done for them over the years. We arrived in Amsterdam during Queens Day, a non-stop street party, and managed to show Val and Cliff our side of Amsterdam (which was definitely parts of the town that they had never seen before). They certainly enjoyed themselves and partook of some of the purely Dutch amenities, which cannot be (legally) partaken of elsewhere in the world (enough said!). The dinner for Cliff was wonderful and he was touched by the number of people who thanked him for all his work.

We returned home and immediately started in on putting together a fundraising Champagne Tea for the Contemporary American Theatre Festival. Having taken some time off from all the charity work we do, we decided it was time to get back into the swing of things. I am now on the board of the Festival and we both sit on the board of the Aids Network of the Tristate Area. We threw a Blazers and Bonnets tea which raised $5000 for the Festival and went very well, so we think that we will make this an annual event (Warning - that means we may be hitting everyone up for money next year!).

At the end of June, the whole family headed back over to the UK for a wedding which reunited Val with a bunch of her old dancer friends (somehow, that definitely doesn't sound right!) and we ended up in London for a few extra nights. Dominic Ross, son of Voake and Peter Ross, with whom I used to spend many school holidays, married his long time girlfriend. From there, Thom and I headed over to Geneva for the World Aids Conference, which was a bit like old home week as we knew so many of the attendees. Geneva was not too thrilling, primarily because we were working, but we did manage to get up to Zurich to visit an old school friend of mine while we were there. Zurich was wonderful and the train trip through the mountain was spectacular. The only problem was that I had written the wrong return dates in the Daytimer and we found ourselves stranded in Geneva being 24 hours late for the plane. After many trials and tribulations, we did manage to get home to immediately become involved in the opening of the Theater Festival, which ran for three weeks and got some very good publicity.

In July, Julia, Gary, and the kids finally moved up here. They have a lovely home (about twice the size of the old one) 6 miles from us, so we have been seeing masses of them and enjoying time with Collin and Duncan. Gary is working with a computer company not far from here, and Julia's company, the National Forest Foundation, finally went under, leaving her stranded. This has actually worked out for the best as she and Thom get along so well together and have been talking about working together for years. Once this new contract of Thom's comes through, she will start working for Thom, which he is looking forward to. His office is just up the street in Martinsburg. It is absolutely gorgeous, and after being totally jealous of this, I decided to build another building on our property for ADI. We are telling the neighbors it is a garage, but it is a 2000 square foot, two-story structure that will be used for storage, shipping, etc. We have done a great deal on the house and land this year - four new flowerbeds included a large dahlia and rose bed, outdoor lighting, steps and paths down to the barn, and we finally sold the horses, as we never seemed to have enough time to ride. We ended up donating Buck to a home for teenage girls and we sold Jack. We then tilled up the pasture and seeded the whole thing with wildflowers. By midsummer, it was a mass of blooms and utterly magnificent.

At the end of the summer, we took Julia, Gary, and the kids up to Fire Island for a week. We always have a wonderful, relaxing time there and they did too. We returned from there only to go on our annual camping and whitewater-rafting trip. Things were a little more dangerous this year and we actually tipped the whole raft over while going though a large rapid and got stuck under the raft. Just as we managed to escape that, another raft came round a bend from behind and landed on top of us. Things were pretty scary for a while and by the time we got out of the water, we were all bruised, battered and exhausted. Next year, we are thinking about using a guide!

At the beginning of September, my old school friend, Seileen, got married in the back of Cliff and Val's house. We had the rehearsal dinner at our place and the reception was at the Bavarian Inn. While I see Seileen regularly, it was the first time I have seen many of the folks I went to school with. No one had changed too much (with the obvious exceptions of being fatter and balder - oh well!) and it was nice to catch up. We then headed to New Orleans with friends for a few days of decadence and debauchery and then I zipped over to London to meet Cliff and head to the Fanrborough Air Show on business.

Since then, we have been concentrating on getting ready for the holidays. December 1st was World Aids Day, so we organized a candlelight vigil and speakers in Shepherdstown which attracted about 150 people and got some press coverage. We have been doing quite a bit of work on Aids in this area, and, as mentioned, are now on the board of the local organization. Val and I did a number of radio and newspaper interviews which came out well and we are now being asked to speak to all sorts of different groups.

We just finished our annual Holiday Party. We had about 180 people and even though the invite read from 6 until 9 p.m., the last bunch left at 5 a.m. Upon waking the next morning, I asked Thom whether it would be easier to simply sell the house rather than clean it, but after copious amounts of coffee and aspirin, we settled down to tidy up.

The family, as you can tell from the above, are all well. Cliff spends mornings in the office with me and his afternoons are spent doing his woodwork or golfing. Val is involved with more and more charities every day (which of course means that we are too! - aargh!). She has her own computer now and is e-mailing half the world - sometimes the letter even gets to the correct recipient (technology and Val have never been an ideal match). Collin is settling into the new school, making new friends and playing soccer, etc. They are thinking about bumping him up to the next class as his old school was more advanced than this one. The big star of the family, however, is Duncan. He has been doing all sorts of adverts and had a small part in the TV show "Homicide" (he played a body and had to lie very still inside the "sleeping bag". Julia wasn't going to call it a body bag). When the director called "action", the bag started writhing around and he shouted, "cut". The bag unzipped itself, Duncan sat up and said, "It's me, Duncan - I had an itch!". He then zipped himself back in again while the cast and crew fell about laughing. His latest role is in the new Julia Roberts/Richard Gere movie called the Runaway Bride and he gets dragged all over on the train of Julia Roberts' dress. They have been filming for the last couple of weeks and will be waiting for his first screen credit when the film comes out next year. Julia keeps thinking that she will be "discovered" on the set, but so far has had no luck (shrieking "I'm ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille" only irritates the director, it seems). It is pretty heavy stuff for a 5 year old to have his own trailer, makeup artist, etc. At this rate, we are all going to stop working and just become his personal entourage! "More champagne for Mr. Lam!" He is enjoying himself and only does the roles he wants to do.

Health wise, we are both doing fine. Thom lost a bit of weight over the summer, but put it back on and looks great again. I never seem to change. We are going to be taking things easier in 1999 as this year got a little too crazy at times and are looking forward to just having friends visit us for quiet time at home. We both hope to see you in the New Year and hope that your holidays are fun and fabulous.

All our love