Back to Main
News Summaries Daily News Quiz Word of the Day ... Job Opportunities
June 1, 1996 OBITUARY Timothy Leary, Pied Piper Of Psychedelic 60's, Dies at 75 By LAURA MANSNERUS Timothy Leary, who effectively introduced many Americans to the psychedelic 1960's with the relentlessly quoted phrase, "turn on, tune in, drop out," died yesterday at his house in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 75. However indelible his connection with another era, Mr. Leary was very much a man of the moment, and made his death a final act of performance art by having video cameras record it for possible broadcast on the Internet. He had planned a celebration, and Web sites had collected Leary memorabilia texts of his books and lectures, tributes from friends, a listing of his daily drug intake, legal and illegal from the time he was told last year that he had prostate cancer. Carol Rosin, a friend who was at Mr. Leary's bedside, said his last words were: "Why not? Why not? Why not?" Mr. Leary's stepson, Zachary Chase, said that until the end, "he was maintaining his rascal quality." And R. Couri Hay, another friend who joined a small gathering around Mr. Leary on his last night, said: "Tim told us, 'Don't let it be sad. Buy wine. Put soup on the stove.' Tim loved life." In his long and extravagant public career, Mr. Leary was an accomplished clinical psychologist at Harvard University, a dabbler in Eastern mysticism, a fugitive and convict, a stand-up comedian and actor, a writer and a software designer and an exponent of cybernetics. | |
|
