:: Dr. Timothy Leary Ph.D. | « back | next » |
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Full Name: Timothy Francis Leary Born: 22-Oct-1920 |
Father: Timothy Leary, Sr. Mother: Abigail Ferris Daughter: Susan Leary Martino (with Marianne; d. 1990, murdered her boyfriend, suicide in jail) Son: Jack (with Marianne) Son: Zachary (with Barbara) Wife: Marianne (m. 1944, d. 22-Oct-1955, suicide) Wife: Nena von Schelbrugge (m. 1964, div.) Wife: Rosemary Sarah Woodruff (m. 1967, div.) Wife: Barbara Chase (m. 1978, div. 1992) University: Holy Cross College University: West Point University: AB, University of Alabama (1943) University: MS, Washington State University (1946) University: PhD, University of California at Berkeley (1950) |
The government was indeed alarmed by how quickly teenagers flocked to Leary in the sixties and seventies. At the time, television and newspapers were filled with sensationalist tales of young people having horrible, deadly drug experiences. Politicians, police officials, and institutional psychiatrists all denounced LSD and marijuana as the most horrific threats ever confronted by the human race. When Leary sat before Ted Kennedy at a 1966 Senate hearing on LSD, he expressed disappointment at the media's complete absence of stories involving alcohol abuse, or the deaths resulting from Henry Ford's shitty automobiles.
Meanwhile, Marianne had been suffering from post partum depression, and she began to drink heavily. She and Leary fought with regularity. On his 35th birthday, he awoke to find Marianne in a closed garage with the car running. She was dead, the first in a series of family tragedies. Leary would later experience two more divorces, and the suicide of his daughter.
A trial in the most conservative county in California (and home of Richard M. Nixon) yielded a sentence of thirty years in prison for Dr. Leary, an offense normally warranting six months probation. During the appeal process, Leary was sent directly to jail. Astonishingly, he was given a prison psychological test largely based on his own research, and experts came to the conclusion that Leary appeared "healthy" enough to be transferred to a minimum security prison in San Luis Obispo. Leary promptly escaped. He hoisted himself to the rooftop, climbed up a telephone pole, shimmied along a cable across the prison yard, and dropped over barbed wire to the highway below. He was smuggled out of the country with a fake ID. He was arrested Upon release, Leary discovered his popularity had waned. He entered the lecture circuit as a self-proclaimed high priest of the psychedelic movement, and continued to evangelize recreational drug use. Joining him at the podium was convicted Watergate felon G. Gordon Liddy, and together the two embarked upon a modest debating tour, appearing on college campuses from coast to coast. The reviews were mixed, and critics lamented the fact that Leary, a former Harvard professor, was now a nightclub comedian. He was fifty-six years old with no home, no job, no credit, and dwindling credibility. He moved to Los Angeles, and started socializing in Hollywood circles, a natural evolution for those attempting to alter perception. He believed that Hollywood and the Internet would be the LSD of the 90's, empowering people on a massive scale.
Dr. Leary died of inoperable prostate cancer, and he'd planned an elaborate death ritual for himself. He'd set up webcams where fans of his work could watch him commit suicide in real time. Instead he died in his sleep, uttering the last words: "why not." Later, his ashes were loaded into the same 9x12 inch canister containing the remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and blasted into space on the Pegasus Rocket. |
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