It looks like the good doctor's passing was somewhat dignified. This helps.

Thompson 'made this choice'

Family says writer didn't kill himself out of desperation

By Jeff Kass, © 2005, Rocky Mountain News
February 24, 2005

ASPEN — Hunter S. Thompson died Sunday as he planned: surrounded by his family, at a high point in his life, and with a single, courageous and fatal gunshot wound to the head, his son says.

His son and daughter-in-law could not be sadder. And they could not be prouder.

"Hunter did not do this in a moment of fear, desperation or despair. He certainly had those moments in his life," Juan Thompson said Wednesday night as he sat on a couch next to his wife in the guest cabin adjacent to his father's house.

But, he added, "He decided he'd done good work and was respected. His reputation as a serious writer has solidified."

Juan Thompson and his wife, Jennifer Winkel Thompson, were up from Denver at the property known as Owl Farm for one of their weekend visits. It was typical: They went sledding and watched The Maltese Falcon Saturday night. They were with their son, 6-year-old Will.

The couple chose to speak out for the first time since Thompson's suicide because they believe the act has been misunderstood.

"Some people said, 'How could he do this?' And we tell them, and they say, 'Huh?' " Juan Thompson said.

Dating back at least 10 years, Thompson had told his son and daughter-in-law that he planned to commit suicide. Even then, when Thompson would have been 57, the rollicking writer had outlived his own expectations.

"He thought he'd be lucky to make it to 21," Juan Thompson said.

"Then 30 was a big deal," Winkel Thompson added. "Forty was a big shocker."

From the time Thompson took an artful machete to literature in the 1970s, he has been seen as an icon, outlaw, dope fiend and singular genius. Those words begin to explain his suicide.

Few, if any, can conceive of Thompson's reasoning in committing suicide, according to his relatives. But it is a thought process with its own beautifully dark logic, they say.

"I've known for many, many years that this is how Hunter would go," Juan Thompson said. "There was just no question that when the time came he would choose to do it himself. The idea of Hunter lying in a hospital bed with tubes, gasping for breath, is so contrary to his whole life and purpose and drive.

"It was just a question of when. This was a big surprise and I didn't expect it to be now, but the means was exactly as we expected."

"Hunter lived by his own rules," Winkel Thompson added.

While Hunter Thompson had said that he would take his own life, he did not mention any date. And at least one detail will not fit into a neat and tidy box.

"I don't know why he chose this moment," Juan Thompson said. "But he was quite clear about what he was doing and he was going to go out on his own terms on his own time."

Thompson may have been content with his station in life, but why not push for more?

"There's always more to do, and this is just speculation, that he decided it was time for other people to take it up," Juan Thompson said.

"He'd done his work," Winkel Thompson said, adding, in Hunter Thompson's own words, "He was a road man for the lords of karma."

Juan Thompson added, "And you couldn't ask him what it meant."

But, said Winkel Thompson, it is the idea that her father-in-law watched over the powers that be and meted out literary punishment to "wrong people" and "wrong deeds." Now, it will be someone else's time behind the keyboard.

"I think maybe he wanted to go out before it stopped being fun," said Hunter Thompson's only son.

The fact that the relatives see Thompson's suicide in a different light has not lessened their pain — as evidenced by the roll of toilet paper on the couch filling in for the tissues they have used up.

Juan Thompson was dressed in jeans and a French blue, button-down shirt; his wife wore jeans and a black T-shirt with the Hunter Thompson "Gonzo" slogan and raised fist. The nearly two-hour interview was one of the longest stretches they had gone without breaking down.

"It's a tricky mix of sad, we're happy for Hunter. This is what he wanted," said Winkel Thompson. But, she later added, "I can't say it wasn't disturbing."

Thompson died behind his typewriter in the kitchen — the area that doubled as his work space and tripled as a salon of ideas and celebrities who would drop by for a whiskey or call in on the famous speakerphone.

When Thompson fired his .45-caliber handgun at 5:42 p.m., Winkel Thompson was with Will in the adjacent living room. Juan Thompson was in a nearby office. Both thought the explosion was a book falling.

Winkel Thompson continued playing 20 questions with Will. Juan Thompson continued taking a photo.

Until a few minutes later.

"When I found him, he was in his chair, his head was slumped forward," Juan Thompson recounted. "It looked like he had fallen asleep. I saw him. I thought, 'Oh, did he fall asleep in his chair?'

"You never describe a gun as peaceful, but it wasn't violent."

Juan Thompson called Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis.

Was that because Braudis was a longtime friend of Thompson's or because he was the sheriff?

"For both reasons," Juan Thompson said.

Juan Thompson recalled that he said to Braudis: "Hunter shot himself."

Braudis, on his cell phone, replied, "I'm on my way."

Did Hunter Thompson have his favorite liquid sidekick, a glass of Chivas Regal on the counter?

"Of course he did," Juan Thompson said.

But he emphasized that his father was not in a state.

"He was rested," he said. "He got a night's sleep. He was calm. A lot of people figure it was the end of a five-night binge. It was a deliberate choice. It wasn't something made in a drug or alcohol fog.

"The guy was a warrior, and he went out like a warrior."

"He had a lot of courage, and he wasn't afraid to direct his life," Winkel Thompson said.

Guns were a Hunter Thompson trademark — he even used some of the approximately 20 firearms he kept in the house to make his own brand of artwork — and he had said he would use a firearm to end his life.

"It's fast," Winkel Thompson said. "He did not want to suffer. He wanted to control. This way was a sure bet."

"Hunter didn't always want a sure bet," she added, noting that he would make an outlandish, $1,000 bet with his now-deceased mother just for an excuse to send her money. "But this time he did."

Juan Thompson did not know why his father chose the particular gun he did. It is now in police custody, he said, given the cursory investigation. Juan Thompson expects to keep the gun, although he does not plan to fire it.

Juan Thompson has been firing other guns, however, for therapy over the past couple days. The support from friends and family also gets him through.

And there is one other thing.

"He made this choice," he said. "It's much easier than if he had been extremely depressed or unhappy and he had done this out of desperation."

Thompson was cremated Tuesday in the nearby town of Glenwood Springs. His son took care to put a portable radio in the car and play a compilation disc of Hunter Thompson's favorite songs on the trip there.

A memorial service for friends and family — "you know who you are," the family says — is planned for March 5 at The Belly Up club in Aspen. A public commemoration is planned for spring or summer.

Thompson's ashes are now in a wooden box in front of the typewriter in the kitchen. But like the writer himself, they may have a shocking future.

Hunter Thompson had spoken of having his ashes formed into a ball and fired from a cannon as far back as the 1970s in a BBC documentary, according to the family.

And over the years, somewhere between solemnity and humor, Hunter Thompson would take care to remind his loved ones about "the cannon."

Of course, this is no typical cannon: Thompson had talked of a 150-foot-long boomer in the shape of the gonzo fist. The family is still looking into the details.

Juan Thompson says the idea is "totally fitting. I was thinking the other day of Hunter lying in a coffin with ministers over him. Good God, that's wrong."

There might also be some issues to think about. "If it were realized exactly as Hunter described it, there could be something with low-flying airplanes," Juan Thompson said.

While Hunter Thompson's ashes would be scattered to the winds, his family said Tuesday that his house and property will stay. If his wife, Anita Thompson, does not stay on the place alternately called Owl Farm and a "fortified compound," they will preserve the house, land and cannon.

"It will be a permanent installation," Winkel Thompson said. "You don't dismantle it, then put it in the garage."

Previously unpublished works by Hunter Thompson also may be printed.

"That's all stuff to be decided," Juan Thompson said. "But the key is we'll try to determine to the best of our ability what Hunter wanted and what was up to his standards."

Details on the public celebration of Hunter Thompson's life are still open, but Winkel Thompson referenced his proclivity for a bit of cross-dressing.

The event could include music, readings and, she said, "lots of lipstick."

http://rockymountainnews....97,00.html

Hhmm ... interesting

Mach said:

R u thinking cover-up? i might be persuaded.

Stax said:

could be ... could be alittle sugar coated to make it seem less "tragic"

no one will really ever know

just made me go "Hhmmm ... "

Mach said:

Yeah, I kinda think that could be the case too.

Okay, so this guy shot himself when a five year old was in the next room and could have walked in at any time? Yeah, that sounds considerate to me and peaceful!

ShySlantedEye1 said:

yeah

Hunter ... I can't forgive you.

There's no fucking excuse. And your ultra-romantic notion of killing yourself because you wanted to leave on a high point is the ultimate in self-indulgence.

I expected more from someone who surfed The Edge for so long.

You bastard...

More Details From The Family....

'Loving' farewell to writer
Wife details family gathering with Thompson dead in chair

By Jeff Kass, © 2005, Rocky Mountain News
February 25, 2005

ASPEN — Hunter S. Thompson heard the ice clinking.

The literary champ was sitting in his command post kitchen chair, a piece of blank paper in his favorite typewriter, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot through the mouth hours earlier.

But a small circle of family and friends gathered around with stories, as he wished, with glasses full of his favored elixir — Chivas Regal on ice.

"It was very loving. It was not a panic, or ugly, or freaky," Thompson's wife, Anita Thompson, said Thursday night in her first spoken comments since the icon's death Sunday. "It was just like Hunter wanted. He was in control here."

Anita Thompson also echoes the comments that have been made by Hunter Thompson's son and daughter-in-law: That her husband's suicide did not come from the bottom of the well, but was a gesture of strength and ultimate control made as his life was at a high-water mark.

"This is a triumph of his, not a desperate, tragic failure," Anita Thompson said by phone, recounting that she was sitting in her husband's chair he called his catbird seat in the Rockies.

She added: "He lived a beautiful life and he lived it on his own terms, all the way from the very beginning to the very end."

Anita Thompson, like her husband's other close relatives, understood how Hunter Thompson wanted to make his ultimate exit.

"I always knew that Hunter was going to die before me," Anita Thompson, 32, said of her 67-year-old husband. "I'd accepted that. I just did not know it was going to be like this. I would rather have him back."

Yet Anita Thompson quickly came to embrace Hunter Thompson's gesture with a .45-caliber handgun.

She was at the gym when her husband took his life. And when family friend and Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis confirmed the news, her mind raced. "I have enough will power," she thought. "I can turn back time. No, no, no. This is not right. This can't happen."

But upon seeing Hunter Thompson's body, she embraced him. "Since he'd done this, I did not want to make it difficult for his spirit," she said. "I wanted to make it loving."

Anita Thompson believes she will stay on at the expansive property and famous house that was an ever-changing archive of political, literary and name-your-category items. And she will continue to help administer Hunter Thompson's works.

"I'm going to keep on working for Hunter," she said. "He wanted this. He made sure that I was in place to continue on. I'll just do my job until I can be with him again."

She adds, citing the property's nickname: "It will remain Owl Farm. It will remain Hunter Thompson's Owl Farm."

The last book they had read out loud together was parts of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, a dense classic that explores the fragility of civilization by one of Hunter Thompson's favorite authors. Yet, said Anita Thompson, "He thinks Conrad is funny."

Anita Thompson and her husband had a small tiff that afternoon. Hunter Thompson told her to leave the kitchen that was known across the world as his funky and sacred work space. A weird look came across his face.

"I don't know why he wanted me to leave the room," she said. "It's all speculation. He'd never asked me to leave the room before."

But Anita Thompson did not go to the office with Hunter Thompson's son, as he had requested. Instead, she left the house.
"I'm going to get my gym bag. I'm going," she recalled. "He said, 'I don't want you to leave the house.'"

But she went to the gym. At 5:16 p.m., according to her cell-phone display, she called and spoke with Hunter Thompson for 10 minutes and 22 seconds.

Hunter Thompson put almost everyone on speakerphone. But he picked up the handset to speak with his wife.

"I knew it was odd, first of all, that he picked up with the handset ... I thought, 'That's sweet,'" she said.

The talk was good.

"He said, 'I want you to come home after you work out. Come home and we'll work on a column,'" she recalled.

The conversation, however, never really ended. Before formal goodbyes, Anita Thompson heard a clicking sound. She thought Hunter Thompson might have put down the handset and was typing. Or maybe it was the television. She waited. Maybe a minute passed.

"He did not say anything about killing himself," she said.

The official time of death is 5:42 p.m.

But did Hunter Thompson shoot himself while on the phone with his wife?

"I did not hear any bang," she says, noting that Hunter Thompson's son, who was in the house at the time, believed that a book had fallen when he heard the shot.

Anita Thompson can imagine what was going through Hunter Thompson's mind before the fatal shot: My beloved son, grandson and daughter-in-law are here. I'm in my perch. The fireplace has fire.

"I don't know if it mattered if I was here," Anita Thompson says. "I just like to think, and believe in my heart, he felt happy in his life."

A woman at the gym saw Anita Thompson in the bathroom. She asked if Hunter Thompson was OK. Anita Thompson pretty much blew it off. Rumors about Hunter Thompson were always in the air. Anita Thompson replied, "Oh yeah," but added, "he's been pretty stressed out lately."

A strange look was on the woman's face. She told Anita Thompson to check her phone messages. The woman said she would stay at her side.

Now she was shaking, and could barely dial.

There was a message from Juan Thompson, Hunter's son. "Anita, you have to come home now, he's dead."

Anita Thompson then spoke to the sheriff on the phone.

Had Hunter Thompson intended for his wife of two years to be in the house?

"I don't know, and it's not that important," Anita Thompson says. "I know he loved me. There's no question ... I know he did not want me to find him alone. He knew I was opposed to it."

After wading through the police officers outside, Anita Thompson recalls seeing her husband's dead body for the first time. "He was sitting in the chair when they brought me in, and I got to hug him and kiss him and rub his legs," she said. "All the anger was gone when I saw him."

Anita Thompson does not know why Hunter Thompson chose the .45 from his vast collection of guns. But he was deft with his death. "He did not destroy his face," Anita Thompson says. "He did it in his mouth. His face was beautiful. It was quick. It was not grisly or gruesome by any means. That's probably why he took that gun. He spared us a gruesome scene."

She adds: "His face did look calm and peaceful. He looked content. Like he wanted it."

For Tuesday's cremation, Anita Thompson dressed her husband. He was wearing a light blue, seersucker suit, a Tilly hat and his reading glasses, which he had on when he died. He had asked her to include a lock of her hair with him on this occasion. She complied, and more, cutting off her one-foot long blonde ponytail.

Anita Thompson is depending on mundane chores, but also family, friends and the estimated 50 messages a day.

"Being alone with Hunter in our bedroom, and I've been reading his letters to me," she added. "They have a different charge now. He wrote the most beautiful love letters I have ever seen ... I'm so lucky."

Then there was the flag. Hunter Thompson is an Air Force veteran. And following protocol, according to Anita Thompson, a deputy coroner from neighboring Garfield County presented her with a U.S. flag. It now hangs on a storyboard in the kitchen area, normally used for Hunter Thompson's works in progress. A white, silk scarf that the Dalai Lama presented to Hunter Thompson — the two men looked alike — drapes over the flag.

The house is filled to the brim with flowers — especially orchids, Hunter Thompson's favorite.

"It's nice in here," says Anita Thompson. "He would like it. He does like it, I guess."

Yes, Anita Thompson says, the landmark writer is nearby. "Mainly in moments when you're quiet, you can feel him; it's a different energy than when he was in his body," she says. "It's in the chest. It's all encompassing, but just for a second. It's beautiful."

Hunter Thompson was huge on swimming for his exercise. But he was also known for his love of fine whiskey, and to put it far too mildly, for experimenting with most every intoxicant known to man.

"He loved his body, look what he did to it," Anita Thompson jokes. She then adds a line that maybe even she fails, on its face, to grasp the significance of: "He gave his body everything it wanted."

http://www.rockymountainn...06,00.html