The woman featured on the iconic Woodstock album cover hugging her boyfriend wrapped in a blanket during the 1969 festival has died.
Bobbi Kelly Ercoline died over the weekend after a long illness, according to her 54-year-old husband Nick Ercoline, who had been with her for just a few months at the time of the picture.
The exact cause of death was not disclosed, but Nick wrote that his wife was surrounded by her family when she died.
Their ages were also not disclosed, but the couple were both in their 20s when they were photographed at the iconic festival, which took place over the weekend of August 15-18, 1969.
In a Facebook post this weekend, Nick wrote: “It is with immense sadness that I tell my FB family and friends that after 54 years of life together, my beautiful wife Bobbi passed away surrounded by her family last night.
1970’s ‘Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More Album Covers
The picture of Bobbi Kelly Ercoline and Nick Ercoline was featured in Nick’s Facebook post announcing her death
“She lived her life well and left this world in a much better place. If you knew her, you loved her. She lived by her motto “Be kind”.
He added: “She doesn’t deserve the nightmare of the past year but she’s no longer suffering from the physical pain and that’s some consolation.”
The couple was photographed by Burke Uzzle of Magnum photo agency in a shot known for capturing the spirit of the festival.
It shows Bobbi, wearing thick yellow sunglasses, on a hilltop teeming with revelers, wrapped in a pink and white blanket that Nick is wearing, looking towards the camera.
The photo became the cover of Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More – a vinyl 3-LP set released in May 1970 to accompany a festival concert film.
Bobbi and Nick heard about the festival on the radio in 1969.
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair was held at Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, New York, about an hour from her home in Middletown, New York.
The next day, her boyfriend borrowed his mother’s white 1965 Chevrolet Impala station wagon and they filled it with alcohol before hitting Route 17. They eventually abandoned the vehicle about four or five miles from the festival site after a full drive in traffic jams.
“As we walked in, I grabbed the blanket because I figured we needed something to sit on,” Bobbi said. “It just got thrown away, so I pieced it together and that’s how the pink blanket came about.”
View of part of the audience at a performance at the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, Bethel, New York, August 1969. The festival ran from August 15th to 18th
People applaud at the Woodstock Music Festival, New York, USA, August 16, 1969
People on their way to the Woodstock Music Festival, 1969
In a 2015 article for the Guardian, Bobbi wrote: “I remember the atmosphere vividly: the sky was orange-pink with the lights and it was foggy.
“I could hear the music and the announcements from afar. Around us were families, couples, people yelling, babies crying, yodels, banjos, bongos. The air was humid and smelled of campfire and weed. I had never seen anything like it.’
The couple also noted that the sound from the hill was spectacular.
The festival became a landmark of the 1960s counterculture, with performances by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone and Janis Joplin.
The couple met in 1969 while Nick was bartendering at Dino’s Bar and Grill in Middletown, New York.
They started seeing each other in May this year, just months before the festival.
Nick and Bobbi became engaged on Christmas Eve 1970 and were married on August 27, 1971, just after the second anniversary of Woodstock, at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Bullville, New York.
Nick and Bobbi Ercoline, the couple who appears on the Woodstock album cover, pose together at the location where the photo was taken 50 years ago in Bethel, New York, U.S., June 12, 2019
They have two sons: Matthew, born in 1979, and Luke, born in 1981.
When the record came out a few months later, they noticed the orange and yellow butterfly flag on the cover.
“The five of us gathered at Corky’s apartment to listen to it. Suddenly he recognized the yellow butterfly staff on the left, which belonged to this guy Herbie, who we took care of because he tripped pretty badly and lost his friends,” Bobbi said. ‘But then he said, ‘Whoa! That’s you and Nick.’
Bobbi added, “Woodstock has grown in importance with each passing year. It was a very special event: half a million people gathered in the name of peace, without violence. It took place on the cusp of major changes in America—the civil rights movement, the pill, Vietnam.”
On the 20th anniversary of Woodstock in 1989, the couple was publicly identified as the people depicted in the photograph. They visited the place in 2019 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the festival.
Kelly said they want the Woodstock photo to inspire a message of peace, love and hope for future generations.
Nick said that when Bobbi was in hospice, she made three promises from her husband before she died.
These were: “1. No more hospitals 2. Home is where she will stay 3. When her time came to die I would hold her.’
“I was able to fulfill those three promises when my sweet Bobbi of this world died while I was holding her with our sons beside us,” Nick wrote in an emotional follow-up post.