Family of Ken Kesey Launch Campaign to Restore FURTHUR Bus

Furthur Bus

The psychedelic 60s were a pivotal time in the culture of music and the awakening of a generation.  Ken Kesey and the “Merry Pranksters” were an influential group of forward thinking hippies in Northern California/Oregon who, along with their bus FURTHUR, attempted to create not just ripples but a full on tsunami of cultural change.  The bus was featured in Tom Wolfe’s book “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”.

Kesey, author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, passed away in 2001 and left behind a legacy that his son Zane has picked up and ran with.  The bus restoration, a project started by Stephanie Kesey (wife of Ken’s son Zane), needs your help to restore FURTHUR to it’s former 1960s glory.

Infamous hippie clown Wavy Gravy had this to say about the bus restoration project: “THANK YOU TO EVERYONE HELPING— Keep in mind that the Kesey’s are donating the bus to YOU, the people. The Furthur Down The Road Foundation will OWN the bus…no money is going to the Kesey’s! It is up to the PEOPLE to raise the money and take care of this “Icon of History“!

Here’s the text from the funding page:

The Furthur Bus is rusting away and needs to be saved and restored!
Any donation amount, no matter how small, will help us help Furthur.
Ken Kesey’s Furthur Bus, featured in Tom Wolfe’s popular 1968 book, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, is one of the seminal cultural icons of the 20th Century and a project that Kesey considered one of his “best works,” along with his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. The bus played a huge role as a symbol of the counterculture movement of the 1960s. It was the “prime mover” for Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, and can even be said to have had a role in the launch of the Grateful Dead, perhaps the greatest band to have grown out of that era.

Founded by Stephanie Kesey, the Furthur Down the Road Foundation is an Oregon 501c3 nonprofit corporation established to “restore the original Furthur Bus to it’s 1960s condition, and to promote and preserve the legacy of author Ken Kesey.” The bus is currently rusting away and we’re in danger of losing this important artifact forever.

The Foundation was founded in 2012 and is in need of seed funding to help with start-up costs so we can raise the money to tackle this huge project. We estimate that it will take several million dollars to restore the bus, pictured above, to it’s original splendor by a team of artists, automotive restorers and other experts. We aim to involve the original Pranksters in the effort and have the support and involvement of the Kesey family, including Zane and Stephanie (Ken’s son and daughter-in-law), Caleb (his grandson), and Faye (Ken’s widow), who all have roles on the board of Furthur Down the Road.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE DONATE PAGE AND HELP THE CAUSE!

We’ve already completed our corporate filings, filed for tax-exempt status with the IRS, and are building a website. These things cost money, but they’re absolutely necessary to do this project right. Won’t you help us raise this first $10,000 for this important effort and become one of the first “Neo-Pranksters” to get “on the bus”?

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE DONATE PAGE AND HELP THE CAUSE!

Even $5 will help us reach this first $10,000 goal to get things moving. Donate $25, $100, or $250 to get special recognition from Zane and the Foundation.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.