X-Message-Number: 18821
From: "Trygve Bauge" <>

Subject: FW: Denver post article: major of Nederland confirms his offer to take 
in the Martinots
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 23:20:58 +0100

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----- Original Message ----- 
From: Trygve Bauge 
To:  
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2002 10:51 PM
Subject: Denverpost article





Offer to host dead couple gets cold shoulder

Nederland mayor says frozen pair in France welcome to join "Grandpa'
ByJim Hughes
Denver Post Staff Writer

Jim Hughes, Denver Post Staff Writer

Friday, March 15, 2002 - If a pair of frozen French citizens can't stay on ice 
in France, Nederland Mayor Jim Miller says they are welcome in his town, even 
though actually accommodating them would require voters to overturn a town 
ordinance. 


Especially now, after last weekend's Frozen Dead Guy Days festival, the Boulder 
County town is known best as the home to a frosty Norwegian, "Grandpa" Bredo 
Morstoel, who died in 1989. His grandson, then a Nederland resident, had him 
frozen, shipped to Nederland, and stored in a shed, where he still waits for 
science to come up with a way to reanimate him. 


Townspeople celebrate Morstoel as an absurdist's ice-packed mascot for their 
bohemian mountain town, but Morstoel's arrival was not welcome news at first. 
That's why local officials passed an ordinance banning storage of dead people on
private property in town. Morstoel was grandfathered in. 


This week, a French court ordered that a cryogenically frozen couple there, 
Raymond Martinot and Monique Leroy, must be buried, cremated or their bodies 
donated to science. 


Miller made his offer, he said, to try to get France to have a sense of humor 
about the couple's situation. 


"I guess what I'm really doing is offering some advice to the local French 
authorities," he said. "My real message is: "Just lighten up.' This doesn't harm
anyone. It does not disrespect the dead. Quite the contrary - it shows much 
love and consideration." 


While Miller says his offer "was meant very much tongue-in-cheek," he says that,
if an appeal of the French ruling fails, he'll back a referendum to host the 
couple in Nederland. The French government may order the couple defrosted, 
though, before the town has time to vote. 


Jeanne Freud, who works in the press office of the French Embassy in Washington,
said that while the refrigeration of Martinot and Leroy had been accepted in 
their small village in central France, the French courts didn't want it to set a
precedent. 


"I think the French courts thought it might give ideas to other people," she 
said. "That's why they don't want to do it." 


And the state of the French sense of humor is just fine without Miller's input, 
she said. 


"We have quite a lot of weird people, too," she said. "It's everywhere. But 
right now, people have other problems. We have elections. This is of no interest
to the public. They're more interested in the campaign for presidential 
election." 


Miller said his offer had attracted much media attention from Europe, 
particularly in England. 


In Nederland, Bo Shaffer, the man responsible for keeping Morstoel packed in 
ice, was wondering Thursday morning where he was going to find room for two more
bodies. "I'm the guy who knows how much space there is to store other bodies 
in, and nobody said a word to me about nothing," he said. "You'd think Mayor 
Miller would ask me before he goes giving away our storage space, wouldn't you?"


Miller said Thursday he was trying to reach Shaffer, to let him know that 
wouldn't be a problem. 


"I haven't offered space next to Grandpa," he said. "I don't have the right to 
do that. That's private property." 


Incidentally, Shaffer's looking for an assistant. The notice he has posted on 
the jobs page of the University of Colorado website seeks a "strong, flexible 
subcontractor to help with transportation of 1,500 pounds of 100-pound boxes 
once a month from Boulder to Nederland. Tolerance of cold and corpses a must." 


"It takes two people to do this ice job," he said. "But it's only once a month. 
So it ain't like it's a job for anybody. A student is best for this." 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


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