Our Share of Night to Bear

8/14/2019 Our Share of Night to Bear

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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 fromschool on a cold gray winter afternoon and I am eagerlyreaching into the mailbox through the fog of my breathhoping that there will be another issue of CryonicsReports there.

When do you date the start of cryonics? Is it 1962 whenthe first steps to disseminate the idea were taken? Is it1964 when Robert Ettingers book The Prospect of Immortality was commercially published? Or, was it in1967 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 since1962. Almost all of the men and women who createdcryonics were of the same ages most of you reading thisare now mid-20s to mid-40s. I, and perhaps a fewothers, were much younger when we were seduced bythe idea of a world without death. Cryonics was already acentral 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 diedwith painful deliberateness because if you go back in time, or simply go to the pages of thecryonics newsletters and magazines of those days and follow the histories of the people whosenames appear there, you will find that most are dead. Dead not cryopreserved, notcryogenically interred, not even in cryonic suspension. To almost everyone who reads this theyare 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 thefamiliarity of it all. Your voices, your faces, your words, your dreams, your expectations, they arereally no different than those of the dead who preceded you and who wanted what you want, andexpected what you expect. I see them in you and you in them because it is impossible to dootherwise. And so, I make a prediction: most of those cryonicists around you now will also passaway into death, and in so doing will forever take a part of you with them. This is a fearsome thingto 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


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decides who lives and who dies. Neither isomnipotent, but each has its undeniableand inescapable role. Plan as carefully asyou will, but understand that the real worldis a dynamic and unpredictable engine of destruction. The best laid plans of menare oft for naught and we are still men.Do not forget that we are still mortal. It is early in January of 1964 and inHuntington Beach, California a 35-year-old housewife named Marcelon Johnsonhas just finished filling out her cryonicspaperwork, paid her first cryonic societydues, and dropped her application for aMedic-Alert bracelet in the mail. She hassix children and a busy, happy, life whichhas just gotten better because she nowbelieves, for the first time, that she mightnever have to die. She is haunted by thedeath of her mother who was in her mid-50s when she succumbed to Alzheimersdisease. She does not want to die thatway, 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 tothis 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 answeredcountless information requests and filled countless orders for books and literature. On October

11, 1974 Marce reluctantly

accepted the Presidency of CSC, not suspecting that shehad stepped into a nightmarethat would go on for almosteight years. Russ Stanley, whohad welcomed Marce to her first cryonics meeting onSeptember 30 th in 1966, hadbeen frozen (or so it seemed)for 6 years. Two of the other pioneering CSC memberswhom she had met andbefriended were also

(presumed) in cryonicsuspension at CSCs CryonicInterment Facility inChatsworth, CA.

In the 45 years she has beenactively 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 moreextraordinary by the fact that Marce was the de facto President of CSC when it came to light in1979 that all of the patients in the Chatsworth facility had been allowed to thaw and decompose.

Letter from Russ Stanley to Marce after she attendedher first cryonics meeting in 1964.

Marce Johnson (center) with Jeff Hicks (left) and Robert Nelson(right) circa 1966.


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No, Marce had no complicity in that horror beyond that of being loyal and trusting. The veryqualities that made Marce an exceptional human being, her readiness to help, her willingness totrust the words of a friend and colleague, and her quiet and nearly unshakeable loyalty had sether 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 husbandWalt (not to mention their 6 children), it was a deep personal humiliation and loss. Three of thepeople who had welcomed her into cryonics were now gone lost to a gruesome and disgracefulfate. 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 havespoken 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, shequietly pulled me aside at a meeting and asked me if I would assume the Presidency of Alcor. Ididnt know Marce very well then and I was completely taken aback. I was even more surprisedwhen Marce told me that she was asking this of me because she had seen her cryonicsorganization fail before and she had not known what was happening until it was too late. Thistime 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 oftenmake the hour-long drive (often closer to 2 hours when the traffic was bad, which it notinfrequently was) from Huntington Beach to Fullerton to help with various volunteer activities atAlcor. Her gentle, intellectual decency served as a welcome beacon of normality and warmth atcryonics get-togethers that were often marred by partisanship and extremes. Marces home wasone of the least conveniently located in Southern California, but the meetings she hosted therewere 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 inFullerton, he covered all the other operatingexpenses out of his pocket, including the liabilityinsurance required by the landlord. In the early1980s the explosion of litigation in California andelsewhere resulted in skyrocketing premiums for basic business liability coverage. By 1985coverage at any price was no longer available for businesses with a high, or impossible to estimatedegree of risk. Alcor, and thus Cryovita, becameuninsurable and with that came the inevitableedict from the landlord to vacate the premises.

With the help of a long-time friend of Alcor, RegThatcher, a potential solution was identified. Asmall park of industrial buildings was going to be

built in nearby Riverside, California with completion expected in about 10 months. We negotiatedwith 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 20 th, 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 inApril of 1986, and finding the additional $5,000 in cash required to cover the closing costsappeared hopeless. As it was, an additional $37,500 had already been pledged to cover the 2-


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year note carried by the developer. When Marce heard of this situation she quietly opened her and Walts 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 Walthad to buy life insurance late in life and the premiums were punishing, even for neuro. Sometimearound 1997 Marce asked me to meet her for lunch in Huntington Beach. That was an unusualrequest, but one which I was happy to oblige. It was an unexpectedly emotional and difficultmeeting. As we sat in a little Italian restaurant in an anonymous strip mall Marce repeated thestory of her mothers death and asked me to promise that I would not abandon her should such afate 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 andhad every prospect of living many years longer in good health. It takes extraordinary courage toconfront 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 hadprepared me for that meeting. In 2001 I was alerted by Joan OFarrel of Critical Care Research that Marce seemed bothforgetful and inappropriate on the phone (Marce was, as usual, doing volunteer work, this time for Critical Care Research (CCR) and 21 st Century Medicine). A call to Walt confirmed Joanssuspicions and shortly thereafter Dr. Steve Harris and I visited Marce. Steve did a thoroughexam, including an assessment for Alzheimers. Marce did well on this assessment, but Stevesuggested she go to the Memory Clinic at UCLA for a more comprehensive evaluation. Shortlythereafter, I left CCR and began what was unarguably the second most difficult period in my lifeto date. I tried to call Walt and Marce over the following 2 years and always ended up gettingMarces 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 ina nursing home some months prior, and that she had moderately advanced Alzheimers.

That news was devastating enough, but what followed shook me to the core of my being. Walttold me that Marce no longer had cryonics arrangements and that she was to be cremated. Ivisited Marce twice in the subsequent months and found her still oriented enough to recognizeme 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 somethingwrong, 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 reinstateMarces 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 Marcewere confronted with spend down in the face of monthly nursing home bills of over $5,000.

Medicare does not begin tocover these expenses untilthe patient has $2,000 or lessin total assets not evenenough for burial. Marcesand Walts cryonics insurancepolicies had been cashed-out

and used for her nursinghome care.

In the four years that havecome and gone since then Ihave continued to try to findsome way to rescue Marcefrom this situation. Marce dideverything right, everythingthat cryonics organizations


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asked her to do, including giving them ownership of her policy. Unfortunately, Marce fell ill just asCryoCare was closing down and she never had the opportunity to transfer her arrangements tothe 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 arrangementswas money, not any unwillingness on Walts part. A few days ago Walt confirmed this byconsenting to have Marce cryopreserved at CI when the time comes. CI graciously agreed toaccept Marce as a member and her future now rests on the ability of the Venturists to raise the$35,000 required to cover CIs 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 Stanleyin 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 stillhas some chance of rescue. Marces situation is now extremely tenuous. She has been moved toa highly skilled nursing facility a short distance from her home in Huntington Beach. Death couldcome at any time. Marce asked me to help her, to stand by her, and to never abandon her. The burden of that readyand unreservedly made commitment has proved far heavier than I ever imagined possible. I askyou, on behalf of all that Marce has done to make cryonics possible for you, to please, pleasehelp her. Mike DarwinMarch 8, 2007 Please Send Contributions to: The Venturists

Make checks or money orders to: The Venturists Overseas, use money orders in U.S. funds Mail to: The Venturists

C/O The Creekside Lodge11255 State Route 69Mayer Arizona 86333

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Our Share of Night to Bear