N.J. Folk Music Fest to Honor Guthrie

Monday, May 2nd 2005, 9:54 am

By: News On 6

PARSIPPANY, N.J. (AP) _ A summer folk music festival on the grounds of Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital will pay tribute to one of its most famous former patients: Woody Guthrie.

The August concert will also celebrate the acquisition of 300 acres of former hospital land as Morris County parkland.

``We thought that a folk festival might be a good transition from the past to the future at Greystone,'' Denise Lanza, assistant deputy director of the Morris County Park Commission.

Tentative plans call for concert to be held Aug. 14. Guthrie, whose best-known song was ``This Land Is Your Land,'' was a patient at Greystone in the 1950s.

Only about 500 patients are now living at the hospital, which once held more than 8,000 patients.