X-Message-Number: 29289 Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2007 16:47:53 -0800 (PST) From: david pizer <> Subject: Need Your Help! --0-1372952819-1173487673=:24426 Your support is solicited to help a fellow long-time cryonicists. Please take a few minutes to read the following report by Mike Darwin. David Pizer, for The Venturists. =========================================================================== Our Share of Night to Bear Our share of night to bear Our share of morning Our blank in bliss to fill Our blank in scorning Here a star, and there a star, Some lose their way! Here a mist, there a mist, Afterwards Day! -- Emily Dickinson Cryonics. What does the word bring to mind? What other words? What images? What feelings? What people? For me there are a lifetime of words and images, emotions and people. It is 1968 and I am 13-years-old. I have just come home from school on a cold gray winter afternoon and I am eagerly reaching into the mailbox through the fog of my breath hoping that there will be another issue of Cryonics Reports there. When do you date the start of cryonics? Is it 1962 when the first steps to disseminate the idea were taken? Is it 1964 when Robert Ettinger's book The Prospect of Immortality was commercially published? Or, was it in 1967 when the idea seemed realized with the freezing of the first man, Dr. James H. Bedford in Glendale , California ? Those dates, or any others you choose, speak to both your knowledge and your perception of history. Forty-three years have passed since 1964 45-years since 1962. Almost all of the men and women who created cryonics were of the same ages most of you reading this are now mid-20s to mid-40s. I, and perhaps a few others, were much younger when we were seduced by the idea of a world without death. Cryonics was already a central part of our world by 1968. It was a world we shared with people, most of whom have grown old and died, or are dying. I use the word died with painful deliberateness because if you go back in time, or simply go to the pages of the cryonics newsletters and magazines of those days and follow the histories of the people whose names appear there, you will find that most are dead. Dead not cryopreserved, not cryogenically interred, not even in cryonic suspension. To almost everyone who reads this they are just names now; the rich details of who they were are gone, presumably forever. When I (very rarely these days) walk amongst the cryonicists of the present I am haunted by the familiarity of it all. Your voices, your faces, your words, your dreams, your expectations, they are really no different than those of the dead who preceded you and who wanted what you want, and expected what you expect. I see them in you and you in them because it is impossible to do otherwise. And so, I make a prediction: most of those cryonicists around you now will also pass away into death, and in so doing will forever take a part of you with them. This is a fearsome thing to say, but it is true, because whether the Singularity' comes tomorrow, or there is control of aging in 30 years, most of those now living will die. This is so because chance as much as choice decides who lives and who dies. Neither is omnipotent, but each has its undeniable and inescapable role. Plan as carefully as you will, but understand that the real world is a dynamic and unpredictable engine of destruction. The best laid plans of men are oft for naught and we are still men. Do not forget that we are still mortal. It is early in January of 1964 and in Huntington Beach , California a 35-year-old housewife named Marcelon Johnson has just finished filling out her cryonics paperwork, paid her first cryonic society dues, and dropped her application for a Medic-Alert bracelet in the mail. She has six children and a busy, happy, life which has just gotten better because she now believes, for the first time, that she might never have to die. She is haunted by the death of her mother who was in her mid-50s when she succumbed to Alzheimer's disease. She does not want to die that way, or any other way, for that matter. Within a year Marcelon Johnson, or Marce as she is known to her friends, would become increasingly involved in cryonics. By March of 1967, 3 months after Dr. Bedford began the journey which he continues to this day, Marce Johnson was the Secretary-Treasurer of the Cryonics Society of California (CSC). She opened her home to cryonics meetings and catered them superbly. She answered countless information requests and filled countless orders for books and literature. On October 11, 1974 Marce reluctantly accepted the Presidency of CSC, not suspecting that she had stepped into a nightmare that would go on for almost eight years. Russ Stanley, who had welcomed Marce to her first cryonics meeting on September 30th in 1966, had been frozen (or so it seemed) for 6 years. Two of the other pioneering CSC members whom she had met and befriended were also (presumed) in cryonic suspension at CSC's Cryonic Interment Facility in Chatsworth, CA. In the 45 years she has been actively involved in cryonics I have never heard anyone say a bad thing about Marce Johnson. That is an extraordinary achievement for anyone involved in cryonics, but it is made all the more extraordinary by the fact that Marce was the de facto President of CSC when it came to light in 1979 that all of the patients in the Chatsworth facility had been allowed to thaw and decompose. No, Marce had no complicity in that horror beyond that of being loyal and trusting. The very qualities that made Marce an exceptional human being, her readiness to help, her willingness to trust the words of a friend and colleague, and her quiet and nearly unshakeable loyalty had set her up to be in the crosshairs of the litigation and enmity that followed. The very public disintegration of CSC was not only financially costly to Marce and her husband Walt (not to mention their 6 children), it was a deep personal humiliation and loss. Three of the people who had welcomed her into cryonics were now gone lost to a gruesome and disgraceful fate. There was no immortality for them; in fact, there was not even the dignity of a decent burial. Many of the people who were cohorts of Marce at that time walked away from cryonics and never looked back and most of them are dead now, or are beyond help in nursing homes, or dependent upon their indifferent children. I have watched as those who died passed, and I have spoken with those who remain, helpless and dying. Chatsworth was not a pretty business. Marce Johnson did not walk away. She joined Alcor, and at a very bad time for Alcor in 1981, she quietly pulled me aside at a meeting and asked me if I would assume the Presidency of Alcor. I didn't know Marce very well then and I was completely taken aback. I was even more surprised when Marce told me that she was asking this of me because she had seen her cryonics organization fail before and she had not known what was happening until it was too late. This time she was not going to stay silent. So, it came to pass that I did become the President of Alcor later that year, and it was largely due to the quiet initiative of Marce Johnson. Over the next ten years Marce hosted more Alcor meetings than anyone else has before or since. She and her husband Walt were a dependable source of contributions, and Marce would often make the hour-long drive (often closer to 2 hours when the traffic was bad, which it not infrequently was) from Huntington Beach to Fullerton to help with various volunteer activities at Alcor. Her gentle, intellectual decency served as a welcome beacon of normality and warmth at cryonics get-togethers that were often marred by partisanship and extremes. Marce's home was one of the least conveniently located in Southern California , but the meetings she hosted there were among the best attended. In 1985 Alcor faced a seemingly insurmountable crisis. For 7 years Alcor had been the guest of Cryovita Laboratories in Fullerton , California . Cryovita was the creation of cryonics pioneer Jerry Leaf and it was a costly drain on Jerry and his family. Jerry not only paid the rent on the facility in Fullerton , he covered all the other operating expenses out of his pocket, including the liability insurance required by the landlord. In the early 1980s the explosion of litigation in California and elsewhere resulted in skyrocketing premiums for basic business liability coverage. By 1985 coverage at any price was no longer available for businesses with a high, or impossible to estimate degree of risk. Alcor, and thus Cryovita, became uninsurable and with that came the inevitable edict from the landlord to vacate the premises. With the help of a long-time friend of Alcor, Reg Thatcher, a potential solution was identified. A small park of industrial buildings was going to be built in nearby Riverside , California with completion expected in about 10 months. We negotiated with the landlord and began trying to raise the impossible sum of $150,000 plus closing and other costs. I had from April 4th to June 20th, 1986 to do just that a little over two months. At $149,000 I stalled out. All the deep pockets had been tapped and Alcor only had 75 members in April of 1986, and finding the additional $5,000 in cash required to cover the closing costs appeared hopeless. As it was, an additional $37,500 had already been pledged to cover the 2-year note carried by the developer. When Marce heard of this situation she quietly opened her and Walt's check book and wrote out a check for $5,000. In the years that followed, Marce was always there for cryonics and it wasn't easy. She and Walt had to buy life insurance late in life and the premiums were punishing, even for neuro. Sometime around 1997 Marce asked me to meet her for lunch in Huntington Beach . That was an unusual request, but one which I was happy to oblige. It was an unexpectedly emotional and difficult meeting. As we sat in a little Italian restaurant in an anonymous strip mall Marce repeated the story of her mother's death and asked me to promise that I would not abandon her should such a fate befall her. She told me a number of deeply personal things and she asked me to dispose of some unfinished business should I outlive her. It was easy to say yes. Marce was healthy and had every prospect of living many years longer in good health. It takes extraordinary courage to confront not only your own mortality, but also the prospect of closing your life in the darkness of dementia. Nothing in my experience of Marce as a relentlessly positive and optimistic person had prepared me for that meeting. In 2001 I was alerted by Joan O'Farrel of Critical Care Research that Marce seemed both forgetful and inappropriate on the phone (Marce was, as usual, doing volunteer work, this time for Critical Care Research (CCR) and 21st Century Medicine). A call to Walt confirmed Joan's suspicions and shortly thereafter Dr. Steve Harris and I visited Marce. Steve did a thorough exam, including an assessment for Alzheimer's. Marce did well on this assessment, but Steve suggested she go to the Memory Clinic at UCLA for a more comprehensive evaluation. Shortly thereafter, I left CCR and began what was unarguably the second most difficult period in my life to date. I tried to call Walt and Marce over the following 2 years and always ended up getting Marce's voice on their answering machine. In the chaos that was my life at that time I had neither the inclination nor the ability, truth to tell, to worry about anyone but myself and my partner. Finally, in 2003 Walt picked up the phone and we talked. I learned that Marce had been placed in a nursing home some months prior, and that she had moderately advanced Alzheimer's. That news was devastating enough, but what followed shook me to the core of my being. Walt told me that Marce no longer had cryonics arrangements and that she was to be cremated. I visited Marce twice in the subsequent months and found her still oriented enough to recognize me and carry on a very basic conversation. From these two visits I learned that Marce still believed she was going to be cryopreserved and that she felt that she had done something wrong, perhaps by getting sick, which had caused her cryonics friends to stop coming to see her. I learned that Saul Kent had been down to see her and Walt and to try to get Walt to reinstate Marce's arrangements, but to no avail. Walt had never been a cryonicist and his concern was, understandably, with ensuring that Marce got top quality nursing home care. Walt and Marce were confronted with spend down in the face of monthly nursing home bills of over $5,000. Medicare does not begin to cover these expenses until the patient has $2,000 or less in total assets not even enough for burial. Marce's and Walt's cryonics insurance policies had been cashed-out and used for her nursing home care. In the four years that have come and gone since then I have continued to try to find some way to rescue Marce from this situation. Marce did everything right, everything that cryonics organizations asked her to do, including giving them ownership of her policy. Unfortunately, Marce fell ill just as CryoCare was closing down and she never had the opportunity to transfer her arrangements to the Cryonics Institute, or Alcor. Recently, Dave Pizer of the Venturists stepped forward to organize a fund raising effort for Marce. Dave believed, as I did, that the primary obstacle to getting Marce cryopreservation arrangements was money, not any unwillingness on Walt's part. A few days ago Walt confirmed this by consenting to have Marce cryopreserved at CI when the time comes. CI graciously agreed to accept Marce as a member and her future now rests on the ability of the Venturists to raise the $35,000 required to cover CI's costs and to transport Marce to CI from Southern California . Of the twenty or so people who attended that original LES meeting at the home of Russ Stanley in 1966, only Marce Johnson and Robert Nelson remain alive. The others have all perished, some at Chatsworth, some later. Nothing can be done for them, but Marce endures, and she still has some chance of rescue. Marce's situation is now extremely tenuous. She has been moved to a highly skilled nursing facility a short distance from her home in Huntington Beach . Death could come at any time. Marce asked me to help her, to stand by her, and to never abandon her. The burden of that ready and unreservedly made commitment has proved far heavier than I ever imagined possible. I ask you, on behalf of all that Marce has done to make cryonics possible for you, to please, please help her. Mike Darwin March 8, 2007 If you would like to help, please make your check or money order to The Venturists and mail it to: The Venturists, C/O The Creekside Lodge, 11255 State Route 69, Mayer Arizona 86333. Also, feel welcome to pass Mike's article to friends or to reproduce it in other cryonics' forums. Thank you for your financial help and other support. David Pizer, for the Society for Venturism. (Overseas, please airmail money order in U.S. funds. All contributions to The Venturists for this project are tax decuctable. If for some reason the suspension is not done, all money will be returned to contributors.) Don't be flakey. Get Yahoo! Mail for Mobile and always stay connected to friends. --0-1372952819-1173487673=:24426 Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=29289