The following story was written by Mike Darwin for the charity fund the Venturists ran for Marce Johnson, who sadly was unable to be preserved. A second cryonics charity fund was run by the Venturists for William O’Rights shortly after Marce Johnson passed away. The Immortality Institute jointly assisted with raising funds. William O’Rights was a cryonics advocate who had contracted cancer at a young age, he was successfully preserved at Cryonics Institute in 2009. Please read the following story to get an understanding of why donations to cryonics charity cases are needed.
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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
Marce
By: Mike Darwin
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 was 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
