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Jogger John
Kaleigh Griffin grew up in Woodstock and Olive, graduated from Onteora, and then SUNY New Paltz with a double major in English and Media Production, served as an intern at Beacon’s Beahive last summer, and is currently in between jobs living in New Haven. She’s an aspiring journalist and film producer whose first video production, a documentary, created so much buzz following its showing in a senior thesis classroom presentation that she’s been asked to take it down from the Internet…at least until it gets its first festival screenings and distribution deal.
John Synan was born and raised in Amityville, Long Island to a huge family with 9 brothers and sisters. He was an ace in school, with a genius-level IQ, and became a technical illustrator for NASA after which he spent some years in the military, eventually ending up in Vietnam…from which he was honorably discharged and sent home. And eventually made it to Woodstock, riding north from New York on a bike, following some time in mental hospitals.
Griffin’s film, First Name: Jogger, Last Name: John, is a 20-minute exploration of this sweet man Woodstockers have known as one of their own for years now…but never as well as they will once they see this filmed portrait of him. We see him riding his bike in the cold and rain, dancing wildly, sweeping dust from Tinker Street, and meeting the many who are his friends all around town. Most poignantly, we learn a bit about how his fellow town residents have long seen him — challenged by the elements but happily engaged in living fully in the now; and then watch as he wins one of the rentals at Woodstock Commons, the long-fought-over but instantly-accepted new affordable housing village off Playhouse Lane behind Bradley Meadows.
“You don’t have time to stop…you don’t even realize, after a while, that your hands are dirty,” he says at one point before the big move.
Then he’s in his own domain, filling its walls with his beautifully gentle drawings of spherical abstractions, playing guitar, and enjoying the bits and pieces of furniture he gets given
“The timeline of his life was incredibly challenging to piece together so the order of these facts may be askew. Even the reasons for his military discharge are still a little fuzzy to me, his family and I think even to himself,” Griffin said of her subject, who she knew and was intrigued by while growing up around town. “After visiting the town he decided to stay and make Woodstock his new home and he says it himself — the town saved him…He had a stroke and overcame his health issues by running. He even ran, once, from Windham to Woodstock!”
