Issue link: http://maconmagazine.uberflip.com/i/1536125
June/July 2025 | maconmagazine.com 87 and lived there for a couple of years, and then moved to Connecticut and got into the insurance business there in Hartford. I had about a 25-year insurance career from Hartford to ultimately Chicago. I got divorced in 1988 and then I met Kirk [West] in 1991, and he was working for the Allman Brothers Band. I honestly couldn't name an Allman Brother other than Greg Allman, but I knew a lot about music. Music was my passion, you know, for my entire life. We met in February of 1991 and got married in September, and he was traveling with the Allman Brothers as their tour manager. Kirk came down here to Macon from Chicago in the fall of 1992. This was before GABBA [Georgia Allman Brothers Band Association], but there was a group that was meeting around the anniversary of Duane Allman's death. A lot of them were collectors, a lot of them were tapers – where they would tape shows and trade tapes. Kirk came down with the idea of just hanging out with other fans. While he was down here, one of Greg Allman's best friends, Chank Middleton, told him that he had befriended the family that lived in the Big House. The Big House was the Allman Brothers home from 1968 to 1971. It was kind of a communal place. Chank told Kirk that he thought he could get a little tour of the house for a selected few number of people. Kirk went through the house with the Leslies. Cedric and Helen Leslie lived in the house. He came home from Macon telling me about it. What made you decide to take the plunge with The Big House? He showed me some of the pictures and I just looked at the whole thing and said, "Oh my God, we could have a rock and roll bed and breakfast." I was ready to do something else. I had a long career in insurance. I could have cared less about it. I just was ready for something new and different. We made plans to come to Macon in January of 1993. Since the idea was to have a bed and breakfast, we decided to stay at the 1842 Inn just to check out what was a bed and breakfast. Literally at that time, the only bed and breakfast in Macon. There were no Airbnbs. We went through the house, and I was just blown away. I said, "This is an amazing place." I had some money, and I thought, "Well, let's have a rock and roll bed and breakfast. Let's buy this place." It needed a new roof. There was no heat or air. It needed a lot, and the appraisal was so low. I thought we could buy the house for what it appraised for, and then the rest we could spend renovating it. Well, the owner had other ideas and said, "I'm not selling this house for anything less than $150,000." The money that we were going to spend fixing it up, we had to spend putting it down. Because the house was such a mess, we had to get a construction loan. We set a closing date around the 4th of July. Right away we thought about creating a little archive room. Right off the front entrance to the front door was a couple of rooms that were adjoining, and we put all of Kirk's memorabilia in there. Kirk started publishing a magazine called "Hittin' the Note." I was the publisher, but he had all the contacts, he had all these fan lists of names and addresses. So I went from being an insurance executive, to publishing a magazine and being like a general contractor for the renovation of the Big House. Now, the fans started coming to help. We had fans from, oh gosh, Virginia and California that came and said, "I want to help you work on the house." And they did. They labored. They lived with us. Meanwhile, Kirk is gone, and I was cooking three meals a day for anywhere from six to eight people. Because the house was in a historic district, we had major issues with what they call the historic review board. We called it the hysterical review board. I had arguments with contractors, and meanwhile, I'm a Chicago businesswoman. I'm not Southern. Kirk and I would play good cop, bad cop with some of these contractors to get them to do what we needed them to do. Slowly but surely the house needed all new windows, all the floors needed to be redone. We had to have a furnace, we had to have central heat and air put in, and there was knob and tube electric. It didn't take us long to realize that local planning and zoning laws would not allow us to have a B&B in that house. You would have to put in either a fire escape or a sprinkler system. Honestly, I thought... We'll live here for about 5 years and then we'll move on. We'll go somewhere else. We love New Mexico, New Orleans. I did run out of money. A friend of ours suggested that we create a non-profit and raise money and turn the house into a museum. Kirk, through his amazing connections in New York City – because the Brothers would play in New York City every March for two to three weeks at the Beacon Theatre – these Wall Street guys who were all multi-millionaires just picked up the ball and ran with it to help us raise money for the museum.