A Thanksgiving Day Opinion Piece from a Vista's perspective
Gary
Gary
Maske was the toughest guy I ever knew. He showed his stuff early on as an athlete and carried on most righteously when he and I first shared the back room of a tiny wooden house in Camp Blanding, Florida, before we moved a couple blocks east into Dania. Though shorter than my 5’11” by a couple of inches, he was a major league pitching prospect and, if I recall correctly, all-conference or all-state in Michigan as a safety in football. We lost Gary to cancer in January, 2004.
Federico Santi has a biography of Gary, contributed by his son, Fred, on his Vista site. The photos on this page were taken by Frederico who came to Vista in 1969.
In 1968-69 Gary and I worked in Camp Blanding, Florida, then an unincorporated piece of Broward County. See Camp Blanding for a few details and a link to photos.
Gary, world class teacher. One of Gary’s greatest gifts was
working with kids, especially the younger ones. He was a devotee of the Summerhill
approach, but he could adapt to suit any situation. One of our projects was
an afterschool tutorial program, which Gary christened Camp Learn-a-Lot, after
a program he had worked on in Idaho. Since there was a tomato processing plant
on the north side of Dania, the local school was eligible for funding through
a migrant program. We worked with the local school and paid one of the teachers
to oversee the curriculum. Gary was the Mr, Rogers of Dania/Camp Blanding.
The kids loved him and trusted him. All summer long kids kept asking if we
were going to start Camp Learn-a-Lot again.
While Gary was the charismatic leader, I did the funding paperwork. I remember that the night before I left Vista in fall `69, I worked into the wee hours at the EOCG (Economic Opportuniy Coordinating Group of Broward County) office with stacks of grant application forms strewn about a conference room.
A nurturing guy. Gary loved all creatures great and small,
once introduced to them, that is. Early on in 
VISTA, the former Camp Blanding
VISTA, Susan Freeman, wanted to give us a cat. Gary was all agin’ it. Didn’t
like cats, said he. Well, once the cat became a member of the family, Gary
was the world’s most doting uncle. He developed a life-long love of felines,
for which his wife, Jane,
will never forgive me. In Chapel Hill, where Jane and Gary lived for about
30 years before his death, he amassed quite a menagerie. Gary treated the little
beasties as royalty and gave them all a warmed breakfast every morning. Gary
left Jane with the whole furry family but, she being an ace social worker,
has since found foster homes for most. Or so I believe.
Star of the Redbirds. In high school in Michigan, Gary had
the second best record in the conference. Gary had been invited for tryouts
in the big leagues where they said his stuff was great but he was too small
to make it. I once had him throw me a few pitches and I’m here to 
say I didn’t see a thing. Where
that ball went ten feet away from the plate I’ll never know. Applejack and
some of the other Trojans, a young men’s community service group, commandeered
Gary into pitching one season and he was pretty much unhittable.
Gary and the north side guys. One night I came home and Gary was cooking up dinner. In general, he was the cook and I was cleanup. We did our usual bull and banter and it wasn’t until we sat down that I noticed he had a black eye and some other scuffs. Turns out that some kids a little north of us toward Old Griffin Road didn’t take to white interlopers and thought to teach him a bit about the ways of the world west of the CSX RR tracks. Gary took his lumps, walked on home and didn’t feel it worthy of mention, I guess. Later, when the kids were told Gary was VISTA, they came to apologize but our neighbor, Andrew, miscontrued their intentions and chased them off with some firearm. The situation did not escalate though.
Our second night in Camp Blanding. There were a lot of guns around and folks would make pretty frequent use of them. Two nights after we arrived in Florida, Gary and I were walking up Tigertail to Ms. West’s place in Camp Blanding when four kids about 50 yards back started shooting in our direction. We could hear the bullets whizzing by. (Never heard that before, and not since). We got home and spent the next couple of weeks on the nervous side of the emotional spectrum. We learned it was just Scooter and the guys having a little fun, no harm intended. We didn’t tell any of the other new Vista volunteers in our group so as not to freak them out.
Well, there are many more stories, but I’d better get these pages posted and go from there.
We miss you brother. Yes we do.
Joe Muldoon, Vista 1968-69