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-- 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 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.
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.
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.
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