X-Message-Number: 29307 Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 00:10:26 -0700 From: Kitty Antonik Wakfer <> Subject: Re: Need Your Help! --------------020708030300060000040606 I forwarded Dave Pizer's message to Paul without first telling him who had written about Marce Johnson, whose name I new from his telling me of her a few times since we became a team in mid-2000. His response follows. Paul Antonik Wakfer wrote: Even though we worked together for many years and did not have the best of relations (to put it mildly :), particularly at the end of our time working in the same physical location, I could not help but read Mike Darwin's report with great interest. Apart from Mike's always well constructed prose and his always interesting (if not always valid, IMO) ideas on cryonics and cryonicists, my interest was, of course, Marce Johnson. Here are some of the thoughts which went through my head as I read it and the final result of those thoughts. I don't remember exactly when I first met Marce, because I tend to not regard such details as highly important. However, it must have been soon after arriving in Southern California in Jan 1992 from Toronto Canada and locating myself as near as to Alcor's facility as possible, so that I could start what I came and brought my money for - to help enlarge the size of cryonics and particularly to promote cryonics research aimed at perfected suspended animation. During my time in Southern California (until June 1999 when the INS decided that my activities of spending much of my past accumulated assets in the US constituted illegally working there and banned me from reentry - which was rescinded in 2002), I went to Marce's home in Huntington Beach several times. Some were for gatherings of cryonicists, but a couple times were at her invitation to dinner because she knew that I was all alone and would welcome a home cooked meal and a visit with always friendly people - her, Walt and perhaps a few others. The rumor that I later heard was that Marce had Alzheimer's and now wished to be cremated or perhaps that her husband Walt (never a cryonicist) having now power of attorney over her health care had decided that she should not be cryopreserved. I am very pleased to hear Mike's account of the reality of the situation, which sounds much more credible from all that I knew about both of them. The only fly in the ointment of Mike's report that I first perceived on reading it was that my disagreement with his following reasoning: > 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 ....... 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. Much as I like and respect Marce Johnson and agree that she had no complicity (if defined as mere "participation in a harmful act") in the Chatsworth cryonics disaster, I cannot agree with the reasoning that she as President of CSC was entirely blameless as Mike appears to be attempting to imply above. It is one thing to be loyal and trusting with respect to personal dealings with friends, but it is quite another to ignore one's fiduciary obligations as President of an organization to personally check and inspect everything that is being done by officers, employees and contractors for that organization, particularly those things that are of critical importance to the prime purpose of the organization. However, enough of this relatively minor criticism, particularly since possibly no one ever explained to Marce at that time just what were the critical obligations of being President of an organization, and she, being a very trusting person, did not imagine that anyone could be doing (actually not doing) any such thing as it turned out was going on. So after reading the appeal from Mike, two thoughts entered my head. 1) Marce should be cryopreserved at Alcor for whom she had worked so tirelessly and faithfully for so long, and donated considerable money, only joining CryoCare because she thought (as did many other major figures in cryonics, all of whom came from Alcor) that it was creating a far superior method of cryonics operation to any other existing organization. (And BTW, I am still convinced that this is true, which is the major reason why I do not support either CI or Alcor, even though I am signed up with the latter. I still hope for the eventual return of a cryonics organization modeled on the CryoCare structure and I retain all the contract and other documentation that I had worked out for various aspects of it - some of which were never implemented.) 2) I know that my very good friend Bob Krueger (now cryopreserved), who knew her much better than I, held a very good opinion of Marce and would want to ensure that she was cryopreserved. Therefore, for both Bob and myself I would send a check for $1000 to help get Marce cryopreserved hopefully at Alcor, but if at CI, not as good as she deserved, but still better than nothing. Then I began to think about the Alzheimer's problem - about how much of Marce may be gone and irretrievable perhaps with *any* technology. This last thought reduced the potential of my ever seeing the Marce Johnson that I knew once more, to a sufficiently lower amount that I decided in the end to send only $500. It will go out in Monday's mail. If anyone can convince me that the devastation of AD may still be reversible given sufficient technology, then I may yet send more. --Paul Wakfer -- **Kitty Antonik Wakfer MoreLife for the rational - http://morelife.org Reality based tools for more life in quantity and quality Self-Sovereign Individual Project - http://selfsip.org Rational freedom by self-sovereignty & social contracting --------------020708030300060000040606 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=29307