Category: Obituaries

The mid to late sixties were a magical time. Everything was changing. What was once popular was now “in,” the new word to describe what was current and fashionable. Mini skirts and Nehru jackets were in. Also in: the birth control pill, anything from London's Carnaby Street, long hair on on men, and plastic clothing. Oh yes, so were the Mamas & the Papas – although many of us weren't to realize this fact until after the groups demise.

Memory is a funny thing, not just because it plays tricks on you, but because it's so selective. For example, a couple of weeks ago when I heard the news of Bob Keeshan's death at 76, I suddenly remembered that I was there for the very first airing of Captain Kangaroo.

I became infatuated by Johnny Cash when I was only eight years old. The year was 1959 and my father had brought home a copy of the album The Fabulous Johnny Cash. The cover pictured Cash wearing a white shirt and black suit jacket, sitting on a stool, leaning on an acoustic guitar that was balanced on his knee. One hand was laying flat on the guitar, the other was balled into a fist with the thumb sticking out and placed beneath his chin, a common pose often used by family portrait photographers.

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If you were born after about 1963, the announcement of the passing on August 16th of one-time Ugandan dictator Idi Amin probably held little meaning. To those of us who were at least in our teens or twenties during the decade of the 70s, however, just hearing this name again in the news was like being visited by a ghost from a long forgotten past.

When Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada for sixteen and a half years, died on September 28th of last year, I was more disappointed than surprised that his passing received scant attention from the American media. After all, it'd been more than sixteen years since he'd left the stage of international politics and very few of his policies had directly affected the United States. But having lived under Trudeau's government for nearly five years, I know that we have lost one of the great statesmen of the twentieth century.

The Canada that Trudeau inherited was deeply divided over the issue of language and culture. The French speaking people of Canada had long complained that the country's English speaking majority was slowly destroying their heritage, and a movement was afoot to split Quebec from the rest of Canada. When Trudeau, a French-Canadian, took office in 1968, one of his first accomplishments was the passing of the Official Languages Act, which made Canada a bilingual country. The law was unpopular in English speaking Canada and did little to appease the French, who saw it as a Band-Aid approach.

Carlos Castaneda was a pioneer of the consciousness movement that began with people like Dr. Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. He died in 1998 of liver cancer there was hardly a ripple in the press.

His work may seem somewhat tame today, but he created a stir back in 1969 with the publication of his first book, The Teachings of Don Juan, A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. The book, supposedly true, was written like a novel and told the story of Castaneda’s trek south of the border to apprentice under Don Juan, an old Yaqui Indian shaman or “brujo,” who was said to possess the powers of a sorcerer. Many hippies and communal types of the day found this approach to expanded consciousness more appealing than eastern meditation, for Don Juan didn’t require a vegetarian diet. He also knew about the peyote cactus and how to use it.

Like his name, Maury Maverick Jr. was a maverick. In fact, he came by his name honestly. His great-grandfather, Samuel Augustus Maverick, who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836, was a rancher who refused to brand his cattle. After that, all unbranded cows came to be known as mavericks, a term that quickly came to be used to describe non-conforming people as well.

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Maury Maverick Jr.

Another pioneer from the “expanded consciousness” movement of the 1960s died last year. Terrence McKenna, a passionate promoter of the power of hallucinogenic drugs for mind-expansion, died of brain cancer at the age of 53. The announcement came in the form of a simple statement on McKenna’s web site: “Terence McKenna relinquished his body at 2:15 a.m. Pacific time today, April 3, 2000. He died at peace and with people whom he loved and who loved him.”

To understand Linda McCartney’s importance to the alternative community, it’s first necessary to grasp the role of the Beatles. Even though she came along at the end of the group’s tenure, in many ways she (along with Yoko) was a member of the band. Some, in fact, blamed her for the demise of the band. In any event, she would be destined to live the last 29 years of her life in the shadow of the group’s memory, and in the shadow of her husband Paul - even though she was an accomplished person in her own right.

John Phillips, 65, founder and songwriter of the Mamas and the Papas, died of heart failure on Sunday March 18th at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.

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