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She has lived in Canada, Central America, South America and Europe. He never left a 100-mile radius of his home. But Ellena Vasquez and George Hood were brought together as neighbors in Mount Airy — a situation that led to the preservation of history and a voice from the past.

Of all the places Vasquez, a New Zealand native, has made her home, she said her current spot might be the closest knit.

"I never lived in a place where we knew our neighbors so well," said Vasquez, who found herself along with husband Steve, California native, on Buffalo Road in Mount Airy eight years ago.

Their house, bought uninhabitable, slowly was taking shape when the couple needed a few things done —molding around bottom of walls and construction of a shelf and bench.

A neighbor suggested contacting fellow Buffalo Road resident Carl Hood — known as "Hoodie" to many, a local retired man whose wife recently had died after 56 years of marriage — who also had built his daughter's house. Vasquez called five houses up the road to the house where Hood was born and lived his whole life; a two-story white farmhouse overlooking the same road.

"He was very soft spoken, very pleasant," Vasquez said, recalling the "nice looking" man in his 80s who poked around the house a few days, cleverly designing a bench to fit into the tight kitchen.

Hood completed odd jobs for the couple, but it wasn't until last year on a North Carolina vacation with neighbors, including Hood's daughter Portia Hood, did Vasquez become more involved with the pleasant retiree.

"While we were at the beach, Portia was saying he's getting older and he's got all these wonderful stories. I should really get them down before he's gone and they're gone," Vasquez said. "I said ‘Well, I have a camera.'"

As a graphic design student at Frederick Community College, Vasquez was required to take a video editing class. Her last assignment for the semester was a 4- to 5-minute video about any subject. Vasquez chose Hood, getting him in her home with other neighbors for an afternoon, to chat about the area.

"Everybody asked him questions and talked," she said. "Once you got him started he just had stories, and he told the stories so well."

She said when attempting to photo or tape older people, she often encounters resistance. "I have an incredible numbers of pictures of her sticking her tongue out at me," she said of her mother, but with Hood, he had no problem being natural in front of the camera.

According to Vasquez, Hood was the only one left to remember things from the past — a map he drew of the area 1920 to 1940 includes a diverted waterway for a mill, family farm names and long-gone businesses in the area that acted as a town.

Vasquez said Hood was the person who remembered when some country roads were a farming community, the person that could identify an unsightly blocky corner building as an old store, a quaint old house as a former bar, or "beer joint" as he said.

In the video, Hood recalled a "girly house" and the three "beer joints" at the crossroads of Buffalo Road and Harrisville Road.

"He was a character," she said. "They used to kid him and call him the ‘mayor of Harrisville.'"

Vasquez, who speaks with a faint New Zealander's lilt, said she loved listening to Hood speak.

"Carl's accent is a very old-fashioned accent," she said, noting his use of "onced upon" delightful.

"He was a child of his times, he stayed true to who he was," she said. "When he said things like ‘onced upon' it sounds much more interesting, it sounds like a story...I thought this needs to be a story."

So she worked hard on his story, editing the video on nights and weekends on the editing program only available on her work computer. "All the time I wasn't at work I was doing this stuff," she said.

"It's incredibly difficult in editing to take stuff out," she said. "The first run through I had a 20-minute film to take down to four to five minutes."

She said though she was pleased with the final product, she was surprised when her instructor said she should take it to the Frederick County Historical Society.

"I was quite flattered that he thought it was worth passing on to others," she said.

She told neighbor Ellie Bonde, a member of the Mount Airy Main Street Association who puts on the annual History 101 celebration in town, about it, and Bonde incorporated the video into the town event this past week. The original plan was to show the short video and Hood would talk about his experiences, but he died the beginning of August at age 87.

"Now that he's not around I feel like I should take some more of his stories and put it together," Vasquez said, who created additional footage for the event.

At the event, Hood's pastor Ross Kirk, talked about the character of a man he knew for decades, a rare person that was content with not complicating life, being hospitable to friends and a stickler for fresh iced tea.

"He was a simple man who enjoyed himself in the area God put him," he said.

"He never even saw the ocean," said Portia Hood. "He was pretty content on Buffalo Road."

Mount Airy resident Ron Rudy knew Hood for 32 years as they attended and served at the same church. He came to the presentation because he had been unable to attend the funeral. "I want to relive his life," he said sitting before the presentation, with more than 65 people milling around. "He was a well liked individual that got along with everyone."

Vasquez said when you know the area and you know the people involved, the information becomes fascinating. Her own house sits on land that used to house a barn and orchard.

"It just came alive, it sort of went from being theoretical, it became much more personal," she said.

The Mount Airy Main Street Association will celebrate History 101, an annual event designed to commemorate the history of the town and the area. The fourth annual weeklong event continues through Tuesday.

-7 p.m. today: Bob O'Connor, an author who focuses on the Civil War, will speak on genealogy at the Mount Airy Branch Library, 705 Ridge Ave.

-Tours of Howard Parzow's Mount Airy Country Store Museum, 10 S. Main St., will be available Sept. 9 and 10 for $8 per person. The one-hour tour will be on the hour 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The tour is available by reservation only. Contact Parzow at 301-351-6544 or hparzow@aol.com.

-Friday and Saturday: Re-enactors from the Signal Service, Living History Unit of Central Maryland will be at Pine Grove Chapel. The re-enactors, who will be in character all weekend, will camp on the grounds and provide demonstrations. They also will be available to speak to the public.

-1:30 p.m. Saturday: Longtime residents Oscar Baker and Helen Simpson will discuss the history of Mount Airy at Town Hall, 110 S. Main St.

-7 p.m. Sept. 14: George Wunderlich, executive director of the National Civil War Medicine Museum, will speak at Pine Grove Chapel, located on South Main Street.

-Self-guided walking tours of downtown and a scavenger hunt will take place all week.

For more information on this or future activities, visit the Mount Airy Main Street Association's website, www.mountairymainstreet.org.

acochrun@gazette.net