Almost two years after Coleman Jewett’s death, friends are closing in on their goal of building a memorial to the popular retired teacher and Farmers Market vendor. Marsha Chamberlin, the former Ann Arbor Art Center CEO who’s volunteering her time to the project, says they have raised $30,000 of the $45,000 needed to create two bronze replicas of the Adirondack chairs that were Jewett’s staple at the market. She hoped to raise much of the res at a September 28 fundraiser at the market.

Jewett was teaching at Tappan when he started selling his handmade furniture at the market (he was later assistant principal there) and became a constant presence after retirement. He kept two chairs at his stall; he would sit in one, while the other was almost always filled by someone who’d stopped to chat. Jim Lounsbury, an artist and woodworker whose stall was next door, spent countless market days with him; he recalls Jewett as “the most honorable, self-effacing person I’ve ever known.”

The city is contributing the site and $5,000 toward the installation. Raising the rest “has been actually fairly simple,” Chamberlin says. “Coleman has such a following of former students and colleagues who revered him.”