Tribute to a FriendALAN DUMAS
1954-1999A good friend of mine and a splendid human being, Alan Dumas, died on April 17, 1999 of a sudden heart attack. I was asked to put up a Web page to post information about the memorial service, which I did, and I also decided to make this a permanent tribute to Alan and his spirit. I've written my weekly Nikkei View column about Alan and also have posted it here. Anyone who has stories to tell (and Alan was a goldmine of great stories since he was such an outrageous liar about his own damn life), can e-mail them to me at gil@gillers.com. I'll be happy to post them here (they're in chronological order with the most recent submissions at the bottom). This will be a work in progress -- I'll try to add some graphics to it as we go. A posthumous home page for a guy who finally gave me his work e-mail
address just a couple of days before he died, after I hounded him
for four years about going online -- somehow I think Dumas would have
found that hilarious, and I can hear him chuckling about it now. April 22, 1999: After the Service and Wake Afterwards, a wake was held in the cozy confines of the Source Theatre Space at the Denver Center for Performing Art, a home to experimental and homegrown productions, including ones that Alan acted in (former Rocky Mountain News theater critic Jackie Campbell recalled a hilarious Dumas performance, puking into a bucket as part of "Macbeth"). Phil Murray supplied the music, which included a lot of Alan's favorite Dead music. We also played the Monkees hit "Last Train to Clarksville" and the Dead's "Ripple," which Dumas had often told friends he wanted played at his funeral. And, we all sang a raggedy version of the pretty Grateful Dead dirge, "Brokedown Palace." A bunch of us, including former Westword staffers and Alan's sister Cathy, brother John, longtime friend Stewart Dyson and ex-wife Pam Clifton, told wonderful stories and anecdotes about Alan. I hope I can compile some of them here. September,
2000 -- Update During the past year, we, Alan's friends, have managed to distribute his ashes in a properly Dumas-ian fashion. Last fourth of July, we shot some up into the sky above I-25 attached to a bottle rocket. Some pals got permission to sprinkle some of Alan into Bob Weir's guitar case during a concert by Weir's current band. There have been other distributions both in nature and indoors. And I, along with Leland Rucker, another "Commissioner," tossed out a chunk of Dumas over the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza, near the former Book Depository building in Dallas, Texas. It's where
JFK was assassinated, and I stood on the concrete pedestal where Abraham
Zapruder stood when he filmed the death with his 8mm camera. We thought
Dumas would like that.... December
2000 update May,
2002 May, 2003 To be continued, of course.... March,
2003 September,
2004 BTW, if
anyone wonders, the link below really was an all-Dead, all-the-time
Internet radio station but it went dark in 2000 or 2001. I just didn't
want to take the link off, for Alan's sake. January 11,
2013 July 6,
2013
April 25, 1999 Cultural Currents:
A Storyteller's Tale Comes to an End Ordinarily I use this space to write about whatever irritated me or inspired me in the past week, but today I'm going to do something different. I'm going to write about a friend and colleague who died of a heart attack last weekend and whose presense we at the News and many readers will surely miss.
Maybe you didn't know Alan Dumas personally, but if you've read Sunday Spotlight with any consistency over the past 10 years, you know his work. In the past four years Alan wrote more than half the cover stories in this magazine. He was a born storyteller. Today's cover story, for example, was a piece he spent months researching and looked forward to writing. He never got that chance. But hundreds of pieces like it are stamped with Alan's inimitable touch: stories about authors and poets, playwrights and farmers, children, adults, priests, atheists -- there was hardly a subject he didn't know a little something about or show a willingness to learn about. Ironically, journalism was only his third or fourth career. He'd been an actor, a radio and TV personality and a producer before becoming a reporter. He finished his career here at the News, but before that he worked at Westword. He also taight introductory journalism classes at Metropolitan State College of Denver, a job he called one of the most rewarding he'd ever had. Alan loved teaching young people. Even more, he loved learning from them. You can't be a journalist in this city for 20 years without getting to know a lot of people, and Alan knew too many to name. He knew experts on everything from the Old West to millennial prophecies, from Star Trek devotees to elderly ranchers who pioneered irrigation techniques. Most of all, he knew how to tell a good story. That's no small feat in this sound-bite age where people are conditioned to just want the facts. Alan excelled at going deeper. He wasn't just interested in facts; he was interested in people. To Alan, they were the story. When we remember Alan, we remember the range of subjects that interested him. His most recent magazine covers included Colorado filmmaker Robert David's re-creation of Thomas Edison's silent film Frankenstein; a profile of Marie Greenwood, the first black teacher in the Denver Public School system; the Prairie Wind Wild Animal Refuge, where rescued tigers, bears and wolves find a place to roam. While Alan is rightly remembered for his love of the arts -- when it comes to publicity, he was an independent filmmaker's dream -- he had an equal passion for history, Colorado and the world's. Two stories in particular stand out, nearly 30 months apart. In September 1996, he profiled Dr. Fu Hua Chen, who helped build the 700-mile Burma Road across China during World War II. It was a fascinating tale. And in February of this year, Alan profiled five survivors of the Holocaust, men and women who either fled Germany during World War II or endured the Nazi atrocities. It didn't matter what he wrote about -- he lent the same compelling touch to all subjects. That's why even if you didn't know Alan Dumas, you knew him. He was the guy with the booming voice and quick laugh who knew how to listen and pick out the gems in what he heard. There will be other captivating stories in this magazine. But there will be only voice that was singularly Alan Dumas'. Mike Pearson is the Sunday Spotlight editor for the Denver Rocky Mountain News, and was Alan Dumas' editor. You can read the newspaper online at InsideDenver.com April 20, 1999 Blithe Spirit
Dumas a Resonant Memory I wrote in July 1988 that Alan Dumas had a radio voice like a malfunctioning foghorn.
One of his close broadcasting pals said Dumas sounded like the late Tallulah Bankhead with a bad cold and clothespin clamped on her nose. This was Alan Dumas, the radio performer. I recall Dumas calling and laughingly saying he was delighted his mellifluous broadcasting voice wasn't being overlooked. That was Alan Dumas, the marvelous human being. Those who enjoyed Dumas' thoughtful, often poetic writings in the Denver Rocky Mountain News and earlier in Westword might have forgotten or not even been aware that Dumas' unmistakable voice was a highlight of Denver radio in the '80s. Dumas, who died Saturday of an apparent heart attack, hosted a morning music show on KBPI-FM (106.7) for two years starting in 1984. The operative broadcasting word here is disc jockey. Somehow that term doesn't fit Dumas' broad-based resume. Host is much more appropriate. Dumas also served as a producer of Peter Boyles' show on KNUS-AM (710). Both properties were then owned by Sandusky Broadcasting. But Dumas' broadcasting star really brightened when he joined KNUS in October 1987 as an afternoon talk show host, replacing Ken Hamblin, who left following a dispute with the station. Dumas' voice was a refreshing talk-radio breeze. While other talkers were dealing, often in noisy, nasty style, with politics, race relations, school issues and Denver's economy, Dumas talked about topics that were obscure, whimsical, even cockeyed. Notice the word silly isn't used. Both as a journalist and talk-radio host, Dumas could deal with off-the-wall topics and never be silly. That was one of his gifts. Dumas once wanted to know what bugged people -- literally. So he spent an hour with an expert on bug control and invited listeners to call about what bugged them. Not all his talk-radio work dealt with what Dumas called "the fun stuff." He often delved into politics. A proud liberal, Dumas would book Republicans on the air to discuss issues, sometimes in humorous style and minus the screech and rancor that often goes with such talk-show appearances. Dumas once joked: "I'm kind of a secret weapon for the GOP. I make their candidates sound fun on the radio. I bring out their sense of humor." Dumas also found brief success in television, working on Sunday Today as an occasional contributor with Out-West lifestyle pieces. He also provided entertainment features and reviews on KCNC-Channel 4. His talk-show career came to an end in late 1988 when KNUS abruptly was shut down as a talk outlet. Of course, broadcasting was just one of many of Dumas' creative outlets. You'll read and hear about his newspaper and acting careers, his love of the arts and literature, and his ability as an instructor at Metropolitan State College of Denver. In a radio world too often crowded with hosts who shout rather than listen, who lecture rather than communicate, Dumas was special. He never lost his affection for radio. His office desk was near mine and we'd regularly converse about the medium's assets and liabilities. And then Dumas would move on to one of his many other interests. He'll be missed -- this Renaissance teddy bear of a man with the foghorn voice. Dusty Saunders is the television and radio critic for the Denver Rocky Mountain News. You can read his columns online in the newspaper's Web site, InsideDenver.com April 22, 1999 A Master Storyteller's
Final Chapter Alan Dumas had a big heart. Coincidentally, that's what killed him Saturday. But not before he gave Denver two decades of wonderful memories, energizing the town with his ebullience, his wit, his imagination, his generous spirit and, above all, his stories.
Some of the best never made it to print. Since his death, people have been swapping Dumas stories the way collectors share precious items. The time he argued with a usually dead-serious writer over whether The A-Team or Star Trek represented the "apotheosis" of civilization. (A clue to Dumas's position: What do you think the "A" in A-Team stands for?) The time he told us about his date with John Wayne's daughter, which ended with the Duke himself coming out to chaperone. The time he became an ordained minister, just so he could conduct the marriage ceremony for a friend who tap-danced down the aisle. ("All the stories I remember are funny or nice," that friend marvels. "He didn't have a mean bone in his body.") The time he became a member of Maria Shriver's "posse" of wacky reporters -- necessitating the purchase of a safari jacket -- for a short-lived NBC show. The time he reprised his high school Henry Higgins for the Westword Christmas play, My Fair Sales Rep, and bellowed out, "The pantyhose goes mainly on the toes." The time he told us that he was descended from a very aristocratic French family, and the way you could tell was because all male members had three testicles. (You should have seen the coroner's face when I asked about that.) The time he turned down a morning drive-time gig at a rock station for a full-time job at Westword that paid about one-tenth as much. It was principle, he said. (He'd later leave us to follow another love, talk radio, before landing at the Rocky Mountain News a decade ago.) I've been collecting Dumas stories since September 1, 1977, when he wrote for the debut issue of Westword. He was our first theater critic -- netting us our first libel suit when he wrote that a certain dinner theater served up "theater by and for morons." But although he loved the theater and acted some himself -- Dumas's local performances, particularly a lengthy pukefest at the start of Macbeth, are understandably the stuff of legend -- he didn't limit himself to such esoteric fare. He tackled topics ranging from why he hated summer -- among other reasons, "overweight girls clad in hooter bags and cutoffs," a comment that earned us our first angry-letters campaign -- to James Bond to UFOs to Blinky the Clown. He even did some investigative reporting. Or so he told us. But Alan Dumas was at his best when he was telling a story. And he rarely let the truth get in the way of a good one, particularly if he was the central character. Feeling in the holiday spirit in December 1983, he decided to go undercover as Santa. So he contacted a local Rent-a-Santa program, which surely had no idea what it was agreeing to, and began brushing up on his acting exercises: testing out his transference, searching for subtext, retrieving "sense memory." The result was "I Was a Method Santa": Like many other young men, when I was 18 years old I wanted to be an actor. In pursuit of that dream I was fortunate to be accepted as a member of the Actor's Studio West in Los Angeles. I would probably still be there if [Lee] Strasberg himself hadn't taken me out one night for a cup of coffee and advised me to look for another line of work. I was young and impressionable, so I took his advice. I have always regretted it, although there's not a whole lot you can do when the head of the Actor's Studio tells you to take a hike. Nevertheless, in the years since my brief career on the stage ended, I have always said I would return if I found a role I felt worthy of my misjudged abilities. Enter Santa. The moment of truth arrives. I take my chair and a little boy climbs on my lap, his mother beaming at us and snapping pictures with her Instamatic. "Hello, Santa," says the boy, smiling. I am silent. A feeling of panic has overtaken me. The boy looks disconcerted. "My name is Billy," says the child. "Aren't you going to say anything?" "I just don't understand my motivation," I say, shocked to realize I've spoken aloud. "What's motivation?" asks the boy. "Well, son, motivation is the subconscious drive of a character that an actor must understand before he can give a believable performance." Billy is getting suspicious. "Are you really Santa Claus?" he asks. "Of course I'm Santa Claus. Ho Ho Ho," I reply. The show must go on. "What do you want for Christmas, Billy?" "A GI Joe set," he answers promptly. At last a break. I played with a GI Joe when I was a kid, at least until my mother caught me having Joe make time with my sister's Barbie. This was a memory. I could hear Strasberg whispering in my ear: "It's a memory. Use it." "A GI Joe," I say. "That's a fine present, Billy. Does your sister have any Barbie dolls?" But even this experience was not enough to send Dumas's Santa packing. Years later he was playing the Jolly Old Elf on a radio broadcast when a kid in the studio was having trouble coming up with a wish list. So Santa offered a helpful prompt: "Might you be interested in any rubber goods?" In November 1988, Dumas wrote a story about a guy in a Santa suit picketing an insurance company that was so disgustingly heartwarming I typed this note for the proofreader at the story's end: "I can't decide whether to puke or laugh. Do what you will." What she did was somehow let that editorial comment slip into print. Every day was Christmas when Dumas was around. You just weren't sure what the next package would contain. In early July 1987, it was a very smelly Dumas, fresh from a week on the Green Tortoise. Here's how Dumas found himself on the bus: I was getting old. I was getting stodgy. We had moved to a house in what might as well be the suburbs, and I was pricing weed trimmers. One night the phone rang. I tripped over some upholstery swatches and grabbed it. My little brother, an unreconstructed hippie, was babbling away about a bus ride some of his friends had taken aboard the Green Tortoise, a secret relic of the Seventies that still crosses the country eight times a year, passing through Colorado. While he spoke of love-ins and scenic sunrises, I eyed my new shag carpeting. I decided a needed a vacation. Dumas got on board in Glenwood Springs. Nothing in my experience has prepared me for the cramped, muddy, squalid, claustrophobic horror before me. These are the guts of the Green Tortoise. The seats have been ripped out and replaced with a plywood platform that extends two-thirds of the length of the bus. This is fronted by a couple of tables with (as I discover) excruciatingly uncomfortable benches. Although there are a few overhead racks for luggage, every square inch of the place is piled high with dirty clothes, packs, purses, sleeping bags, dirty socks, old shoes and miscellaneous garbage. Enjoying this feculence are dozens of large black ants. I wake up at dawn with my arms around a 200-pound German who looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger's little brother. Pressed against my back is a mostly naked teenaged girl whose nationality escapes me. Since there's no privacy on the Green Tortoise, such civilized concepts as modesty disappear. Snuggling a little further away from Arnie Jr. and a little closer to person unknown, I wonder if what we have here is a rolling version of Lord of the Flies. One by one the layers of civilization are being stripped away. When the bus reaches California, will it disgorge a bunch of savage aborigines? There's no time to pursue this theory. I've noticed that as we slept, the army of black ants has grown larger. I point this out to one of my fellow Americans. "It's true, man," he says. "We pick up lots of companions on this trip." The year before, Dumas--and through him, Westword readers--had made the acquaintance of a man who didn't need much companionship. Brain researcher T.D. Lingo could take care of himself: Some night in the mountains around Blackhawk, you might hear a terrible sound. It is a huge, hoarse bellow that builds to an ear-shattering crescendo, then tapers off to a whimper: rrrAWWWWWWWWWrrrr. This tortured noise will echo over and over for an hour or more. But do not be afraid. It is not a wild beast or some terrible mutant caused by radiation from Rocky Flats. It is just T.D. Lingo having 250 orgasms. Mankind has never come to grips with two sad, incontrovertible facts. The first is that human beings only use about 10 percent of their brains. The second is that human males reach their sexual peak at the age of seventeen. We tend to tuck these facts into the unused part of our minds because they're a little depressing, and because we believe there's nothing we can do to change the situation. But here is a man who says we can learn to use all that dormant grey matter sitting inside our heads, in the process undergoing a physical metamorphosis that allows men and women of all ages to experience up to 250 orgasms every time they engage in sex... Dumas was very interested in the Lingo story. But he also loved writing about grime, gloom and impending doom. Although he was quite certain he'd die from an unexpected attack of appendicitis in a remote area--say, aboard the Green Tortoise--he explored alternative, equally ghoulish deaths. Being eaten by bears, for example. (He revisited that subject many times during his years at Westword.) Or succumbing to the plague, a pressing issue he pursued in March 1987: It's springtime in the Rockies. People gratefully leave their homes to walk in the sunshine, trading their skis for hiking boots. The parks fill up and backyard barbecues blaze. Around the city, animals come out of hibernation, too. Squirrels climb down from their trees, rabbits emerge from their burrows, chipmunks, mice and other creatures of the field begin foraging in the warm grass. But below ground, in those rodent burrows, something more sinister lurks. Kept alive through the winter in the dark, humid dens of hibernating animals, it awakens to its grim task, a task it has ruthlessly and efficiently accomplished for many thousands of years: Death. Springtime in the Rockies is plague season. The Bubonic Plague. The Black Death. Man's oldest and deadliest enemy... Dumas was quite proud when one of the scientists quoted in that story called to complain that it was most irresponsible piece of journalism he'd ever read. The poor man had no idea. Nor did we, when in June 1979, the Duke-worshiping Dumas came to us with a hot, hot news tip about his recently departed hero: John Wayne's death-bed conversion to Roman Catholicism has caused a stir among Catholics nationwide. To have a man of Wayne's stature join the ranks of the faithful was considered a great boost to the Church's prestige in this country. So it is not all that surprising to find a Denver group lobbying for Sainthood for the Duke. James Sullivan, of Our Lady of Lourdes parish, is leader of the movement. "We are not asking for Mr. Wayne's veneration because we want him canonized," said Sullivan, "although we would eventually like to see this happen if he meets the requirements for Sainthood. We just think the Church should bestow some special honor on a Catholic of such importance and stature."... It is possible the Church needed John Wayne as much as John Wayne needed the Church. At the last minute, maybe the Duke accepted a commission in the greatest army of all. Puke or laugh. A few days later, Gene Amole, then just at the start of his long career as the Rocky Mountain News's lead columnist, wrote a piece based on Dumas's scoop. And a few days later, Time magazine called. They wanted to follow the story, too. Could we put them in touch with the priest? Since Westword was still in its infancy, we thought getting noticed by Time was the bigtime. We called Dumas, told him the great news and asked for the priest's number. "I'm afraid I can't give it to you," he said. At the time, Dumas was very tweedy, very Bob Woodwardly, and we understood his reluctance to give up a source. But this was for Time, we stressed; sharing the information would be a professional courtesy. "No," he replied in that basso profundo voice, taking off his glasses and giving us the most sincere look possible with his big baby blues ("the color of spit," he'd say, being a fan of Travis McGee). "No, I can't give it to you because I made it up." Our shrieks pierced glass. His giggle reached the same level. Like John Wayne, Alan Dumas was no saint. But he had a heart so big you could forgive him anything. Denver is a better city because he shared it with us. He brought us nothing but joy, laughter and stories. Never-ending stories. Patricia Calhoun was Alan Dumas' friend and boss for many years. She's the editor of Westword, Denver's alternative paper where Dumas worked when I first met him. April 18, 1999 Sleep Well,
Commissioner I guess I'm lucky. I haven't had to deal very often with death in my life.
The first time I knew someone who died was a couple of years after our family had moved to the United States. I heard from my mother that Victor, a slight boy who was a friend of mine in first and second grade in Tokyo -- and who was the first person I knew who used an inhaler -- had died from an asthma attack after running to catch a school bus. I remember feeling remote sympathy, but didn't know otherwise how I was supposed to act. Yesterday, a very good friend of mine, Alan Dumas, died suddenly of a heart attack in the parking lot of a local shopping center. Dumas was a writer, an actor, a radio personality, a music fan, an avid reader, an art appreciator, an intellectual, an everyman, a wonderful human being and a terrific liar. Which is to say, he was a great storyteller but sometimes a scary reporter. Unfortunately (or fortunately for the world), he was a reporter by trade -- he was an entertainment reporter and feature writer at the Denver Rocky Mountain News. I first met Dumas when I was a fledgling music critic at Westword, Denver's alternative newspaper. This was back in 1980, when the paper was still a struggling bi-monthly publication. Alan had been writing for Westword since its very first issue in 1977. He had written about the Grateful Dead -- a hippie rock band that I despised at the time. He was an awful speller all his career, and he even managed to misspell his favorite band as the "Greatful Dead." In the early '80s, after I had been hired fulltime as music editor by Westword and the paper had become a weekly institution, I wrote one of the first articles that got me a bit of local notoriety. It was titled "My Dinner with Dumas," and it was a transcription of an argument Alan and I had about the Grateful Dead while we ate pizza at the Wazee Supper Club. The bar was on the ground floor directly beneath Westword's offices at the time, and we held many staff meetings there. Alan wrote for Westword through much of the 1980s, and also flirted with a series of high-profile (and better-paying) radio jobs, including as the morning host on one of the most popular FM rock stations in town. He later hosted a late-night talk show on the same station, and had me as a guest a couple of times. I thought it was ironic that Dumas -- a somewhat square, balding and overweight avuncular professor (for the past few years he taught journalism at Metro State College) who was blessed with a booming, stentorian voice -- was giving out advice to pimply-faced teenaged listeners who wanted nothing more than to "Rock the Rockies." When he got a job at the Rocky Mountain News, Alan found his pace. In fact, he really increased his pace. He would readily admit to being a lazy writer, but you'd never know it from the amount of work he cranked out week after week, interviewing writers, musicians, artists, anyone coming to town who needed to promote a performance, any number of quirky local subjects who would otherwise not have gotten the exposure a daily newspaper article guaranteed. Alan did a thousand good deeds this way. He had a big heart, and he loved his craft. He also loved popular culture of all types: Science fiction, "Star Trek," "Bonanza," James Bond, John Wayne (he told a funny story about dating John Wayne's daughter during his childhood in southern California). And he loved obsessing about JFK and the president's assasination. He wasn't alone -- a handful of us called ourselves "The Commission" and read every book and watched every video about JFK ever released, just so we could get together and solve the conspiracy. After several years of this silliness, some of us finally decided Oswald did it alone after all. In between, Alan acted, directed, and even officiated the wedding for my wife Kathi and me (he was licensed to officiate weddings through a mail-order church he had written about). We returned the favor by taking part in his wedding, one of the most fantastic parties I've ever attended. He and his fiancee Pam booked the Mercury Cafe, a funky nightclub, and turned their ceremony into a night of comedic performance art on stage. The marriage sadly failed, as did Alan's health. For a couple of years, he seemed to be breathing hard and sweating profusely every time I saw him, and we all worried about him. He was hospitalized last year with a series of ruptured hernias in his chest. When I saw him at our friend Phil's house to watch Broncos football games last fall, he explained he had almost died at the hospital -- a priest was reading the last rites when he awoke -- but now felt fine. I even spoke with Alan just a few days ago, and learned he had been hospitalized again with a ruptured hernia in his chest, but that he was happily back at work. He called because he found out that while he was in the hospital, the writer T.R. Reid had been in Denver to speak at a luncheon for the Japan America Society of Colorado. Alan was disappointed, because T.R. Reid was one of his heroes, and he had just been reading and enjoying Reid's latest book, "Confucious Lives Next Door." Because I've become friendly with Reid -- the former Tokyo Bureau Chief and current London Bureau Chief for the Washington Post had lived in Colorado, and was a member of the JASC -- I promised Alan that next time Tom was in town I would introduce him. Alan died just three days later. His death at age 44 comes as a shock, of course, but I'm somehow not saddened. Unlike my childhood friend Victor, though, whose death seemed remote, Alan's is palpable. Yet, I'm not saddened because thinking of Alan, I can't help but think of a vibrant, joyful spirit. Alan may be gone, but that spirit lives on in everyone he touched. Sleep well, commissioner. Breath easy. And say "hey" to Jerry Garcia when you see him -- thanks in part to you, I don't hate his old band's music as much as I used to. April 19, 1999 The Family
Scallawag More than Frank Sinatra, perhaps, Alan Dumas was The Voice. Anyone who worked or strayed within 100 yards of him couldn't escape it. Stentorian, booming, perfect radio fodder whether he was conducting an interview with whatever oddball or outcast had caught his fancy, appeasing an irate caller or just cranking out another thumb sucking assignment thrown at him by the Rocky Powers Who Must Be Appeased. I relished talking with Alan. There was no subject he seemingly didn't know at least a little about and many more that he was an authority -- or sounded as if he was an authority -- on. Anime, the Grateful Dead, punk rock, Shakespeare, Eugene O'Neal, Voltaire, Ken Kesey, baseball, clinical depression...anyone whoever spent five minutes with him can also add to the list. Alan could stretch the truth, of course. It was charming and it may have been genetic. In a random conversation with Alan about William Manchester I once had, I was able to inadvertantly trump him and actually tell him something about himself he didn't know. Alan loved tales of con artists, and Manchester had written a World War II memoir called "The Man Who Spoke Japanese" about a fellow U.S. Marine named Harold Dumas who conned his way through the service (and life) with a variety of scams, including one that he could read and speak Japanese. I jokingly asked Alan if he was related to the Pvt. Harold Dumas in Manchester's story. It was the first and only time I'd ever seen him look truly surprised. Harold Dumas was Alan's uncle. A rounder, scallawag, liar, brilliant storyteller and family black sheep. Alan had tried for years to gather stories about him but hadn't found much due to the "shame." Manchester's write-up was the closest he'd come yet to a full-blown account. Although they never met, I hope they're now swapping lies. April 20, 1999 A Message from
Dumas “Oh hey Vicki, it’s Alan. "I’ve been thinking about what you were talking about last night, what we were discussing, and I'm very intrigued. In fact, I really like the idea about a movie where young people like to work. (Kind of the opposite of what I was showing you, although I love that film, it’s a depressing movie and I don’t think we need too many more of those.) "So you know the experience, the experience you had in Juarez would be a template for what we might do. But I think it’s uncommercial, you know, to say the least. But I want to hear the rest of your ideas. And I think it’s possible to actually come up with a movie with young people who are interested in working. And who are enthusiastic about working. And just want to work under fair circumstances. "It’s... it’s almost revolutionary, you know. It’s a great idea. The more I’ve thought about it, the more enthusiastic I’ve been. "So anyway, I’ve got two appointments in Boulder next week. I’ll be up there twice. I’ll just give you a call on Monday to let you know when I’ve got a couple of hours to talk. And we’ll continue this, but I think it’s a very promising idea. "Anyway I just wanted to tell you, you’re not out of your mind. And I’m sure you didn’t answer the phone, because you’ve been taking new drugs and you’re probably off somewhere in wonderland. Anyway I’ll talk to you soon.” This is a phone message from Alan Dumas which I put on skip. I’d listen to it to cheer up. I’d fractured my ankle and Alan visited me after surgery, though I never visited him. He was helping me with a film project. Whether I articulated or misarticulated my thoughts, he understood what I was saying. I felt less alone in the world. I’m left wondering how I could have done that for Alan. April 22, 1999 Gone but not
Forgotten Alan Dumas could quote whole passages from the corny, miserable, scenery-chewing scripts of the originial "Star Trek" (one of the many things about him that truly impressed me). I don't know if he ever watched or cared for "Star Trek: The Next Generation," which professed to "boldly go where no ONE had gone before." (Perhaps a bit too egalitarian for his tastes, and never quite as hokey.) This quote comes from an episode of that series, where it appeared as part of a requiem for a deceased crew member: "Death is that state in which one exists only in the memories of others -- which is why it is not an end." Gauging by the memories shared at his wake, Alan continues to exist vividly among those who had the good luck to know him. He was unique. May he find his ride into the sunset vastly entertaining. April 24, 1999 Critical Mass I have lots of Alan stories. We seemed to find each other at media events over the past 20 years, toasting some opening, appearing side by side at the trivia bowl for the DPS annual Shakespeare Festival, philosophizing and swapping tales amidst the free food, making tacky comments about aging Denver celebs. But this is my personal favorite. When I told my daughter about Alan’s passing last Sunday, she was appropriately surprised, and said, “The critic?” Well, yes, I thought. Alan was a critic. And a writer and a journalist, and a radio person, and a theatrical person, a pundit of cosmic proportions. But she remembered him as a critic with good reason. In her first major role that might catch a reviewer’s eye, she appeared in a production of “Little Women” at the Denver Civic Theatre that opened around Thanksgiving, 1996. Unbeknownst to me, Alan got the call to review it for the News. When I saw his byline that Friday morning, November 29, before the rest of the house awoke, I gulped. “Little Women Delights Girls,” said the headline. Oh brother, I thought. They made Alan go see a goody-good play and he’s going to cut loose. I could feel sweat forming in my houseshoes. I braced for the worst. “...the brave and generous girls of the March family giving away their Christmas money, their Christmas breakfast and their Christmas holiday to help those less fortunate. They do it with so little complaining and with such open hearts that they make you want to throw up.” Oh God, I thought. Sarah’s going to be devastated. Quick, can I buy every News before she awakens and burn them, then go get some cinnamon rolls? I read on. And suddenly, the tide changed. “The afternoon I saw it, the place was full of little girls gasping with surprise, squirming with suspense and crying at the thought of potential tragedy. They were having the time of their lives.” I shouldn’t have worried. As usual, Alan got it. And then, in the next column: “Sarah Flanagan is a luminous Beth, the perfect sister. Flanagan has charisma that shines like a klieg light, and the skill to channel it into a delicate and understated performance of real power.” Wow. I woke Sarah up. She walked on air for weeks. But, of course, being a cynical teen, she soon suspected a favor from the critic. He just said those nice things because he was my friend. I assured her that wasn’t the case, that Alan would never pull a punch for anybody. I thought about it for a few days, by which time I was so curious I couldn’t stand it. So I called him. “Alan, my daughter loves the review you wrote.” “What review?” “The review for ‘Little Women.’” “Oh yeah? Why did she like it?” I paused. “Well...she’s in it.” “She’s in it? What’s her name?” “Sarah Flanagan. You wrote it.” “What did I say?” I couldn’t believe it. “You said she was as luminous as a klieg light.” “Oh, now I remember. She was great. That’s your kid?” Man, I thought. He’s given her a review she will carry in her head well into the next century and he doesn’t even remember it. This was pure Dumas. Speak the truth and move on. I told Sarah to rest herself on this one. The review was valid. It was from the heart, from the brain, from the singular magnificent perspective of Mr. Dumas. She could take it to the bank, it was as good as gold. On the same page as the “Little Women” critique is a second review by himself, proof positive that Dumas always spoke his mind. It starts like this: “'Was He Anyone?' is one of those plays that makes you wonder why anyone bothered to write it. And once written, how anyone could possibly stand to read it all the way through. And having read it, how anyone could be possessed to actually produce it. "Against these seemingly impossible odds, this thin and obvious political farce has ended up onstage in Denver, and it’s a dreadful 90 minutes of theatre...” I will cherish this sheet of newspaper forever. The first review makes me glow with pride. The second one makes me laugh until I cry. It yanks me in so many directions, and leaves me just another reader on the shore, blown away by Alan Dumas meeting another deadline. September 20,
2000 Dear Mr. Asakawa,
It is with shock and sadness that I write this. I am a very old friend of Alan's from high school days. In the early `90s, after years in acting, rock/punk, and other diversions, I returned to my great love - painting. Recently I had postcards made of some of my paintings to send to galleries, L'monde d'art, and friends. Alan was always fond and encouraging of my art, and I thought he might enjoy seeing what I was up to. Not knowing Alan's whereabouts, but knowing that he had spent the last 25 years or so in Denver, I thought I might try locating him by way of searching the net. And locate him I did...today...via your lovely obituary and tribute. Alan was the coolest boy in high school. Not by today's conventional standards, but by the new, liberated standards of the early `70s he was most definitely. He was an exceptionally gifted artist, a sage beyond his years, a 17-going-on-40-year-old Richard Burton who, as a result, attracted quite an audience in sleepy, stilted and uptight Newport Beach, CA. A pearl among ______, if you will. As a result, many people tried to covet him. After college and a subsequent move back to my birthplace in Hollywood to be around liberal kindred's such Alan, I basically lost touch with him but for a few brief telephone conversations. I met Alan when I was cast as Doolittle opposite Alan's Henry Higgins in a typically bad high school production of "My Fair Lady." But Alan played Higgins impeccably: a hot Richard Burton as opposed to an icy Rex Harrison. For the next two years Alan and I were very close friends. We set up a very drugged-out yet smart "young gentleman's" club in his spacious ocean-view bedroom and indulged in a right of passage beyond any of the "pap" you will see in Cameron Crowe's new film, e.g. Remembrances Listening to the Rolling Stones first and foremost. In 1971, no one in rock was greater (except Faces, our second choice). When "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" off of "Sticky Fingers" would come on the radio, Alan would rejoice, "Keith Richards is the greatest guitarist alive." Alan didn't become a true Deadhead until later. But he was a big fan of Commander Cody ("Hot Rod Lincoln" was one of his faves); Downing vast quantities of pot, hashish, acid, peyote, gin, Lucky Strikes (which Alan chained smoked - to quote Nunnally Johnson: "He's not scared") while listening to the above; Alan borrowing an old VW stick to drive up to Hollywood to see Clint Eastwood's "High Plains Drifter" - Midway up the 405 freeway, Alan admitted that he didn't know how to drive; Lighting a fire in a beach cave one midnight while tripping our brains out. As the fire's orange light extended out to sea, all of the wired-for-light-and-sound Republican stronghold houses along the cliffs turned on, and Newport's finest hunted us down in their most unseemly police helicopters. We escaped to one of the many all night joints where we would reminisce about the just-ended `60s (an era we just missed in the age department) and encouraged ourselves that the present time was just a temporary impasse and that things would soon return to vivid 1967 normalcy!; Alan's family: Mother: Strange birdwatcher-looking/overtly protective who hated all of us; Sister #?, who had a gorgeous poster of Castro above her bed: Father: I met him once (spooky - I was tripping and his vibe was quite dark) as he was dropped off in front the Dumas home by a menacing black Lincoln limo. He and Alan exchanged a few words and Father was off through the front door. This sad brief encounter was, according to Alan, quite typical. Father being away on "business' most of his life. Alan rather proudly told me that he was in the Mafia. He died in 1978 in a terrible PSA airline crash above San Diego airport; Sexual attraction: Even at 17, Alan had thinning hair (carrot orange), deathly white skin, a non-athlete's body if ever there was one, and a wardrobe basically consisting of rumpled shirt, P-coat with the stench of pot and cigarettes, and black suede shoes. The overall appearance resembled that of a bright, almost purposefully depraved young professor. But he brought out the sexual animal in every girl and many a boy who knew him. And to hear tell of his sexual exploits, he must have been jolly fun in the hay. Of course, this was because Alan was a giver - it was easy for him convince a lover into thinking they were more magnificent and appealing than they actually were. It was Alan's gift to effortlessly make people feel better about themselves. Out of his company they would often boast of his undying affinity for them and threaten others should they try to take him away from them. I should think that that was a lifelong gift or curse (or both) for him to be able to give it away for free. There were some who went mad when he left them - but Alan traveled light He opened doors for people that they never would have discovered on their own; Alan was an Anglophile!; Alan would have been special in any time - he just happened to have landed in the land of the `60s; It's highly possible that he dated John Wayne's daughter. They went to high school together, both were randy, and they traveled in similar circles; Alan claimed to be an ancestor of Alexander Dumas (why not); IN CLOSING I realize in writing this that there probably isn't much here that you didn't discover in Alan on your own. He was a completely mature adult by the time I met him. I'm overjoyed to read that he had such a rich life lived fully, integrally, and never on hold. And I'm not surprised that he got back to his Catholic roots. When we were both reading "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," he would wax slightly nostalgic about his childhood memories of the church. In 1995 I was down in my garden painting when I heard the telephone ring. Later I played my messages and heard that one of the calls was from Alan. Apparently he had attained my number from my grandmother who is listed in Beverly Hills. There was his voice, deep and dramatic as always, despite the phone booth static. One of his old friends was with him on the line, eager for him to hang up. Alan, hushing this person, cheerily called for me and said he was in town briefly and would call back. Of course, he didn't leave a forwarding number. And now that I've finally found him, it's too late. Au revoir, mon ami. Thanks, Gil. And to Michael Converse, old pal wherever you are - my deepest sympathy. I cannot fathom how hard this loss must be for you. Regards, Chris
Lissner December 21, 2000 It couldn't have been worse, just to the right of the TV, there was a case with Lucky Strikes inside; "An American Dream" it said. We've not fully honed the late 20th century attitude toward tobacco products here in Florida, despite the lawsuits and the rather definitive epidemiologic evidence regarding probable outcomes. So this is very old news, then (April 1999). So much for any thoughts about cosmic connectedness - and indeed Alan the rationalist would have been pleased with that. He would appreciate the lack of timeliness in a lost friend finding out about his death, and perhaps the way it resonated of something out of Kilgore Trout; a public post-wake in a medium that hadn't been thought of in our day. 'In the last year of the rerun, Chuck Miller discovers that his old high school chum Alan Dumas has died. He learns this for the second time on the Internet. The Internet was a communications medium that appeared toward the end of the 20th century. The Web, as the Internet was also known, was conceived as a means through which everyone might connect with everyone electronically, freely and democratically, even as everyone rapidly became less and less free, and less connected .... And so it goes... Alan and I drifted apart about 1975 or so, having been friends since 1970. He, Michael and I ran together a bit, a lot in fact, through what was my last year of high school and maybe his penultimate. He was indeed the coolest kid in school in that style of anti-cool that he had honed beyond perfection. I knew him again after he moved to New Mexico and we shared an apartment briefly, until we headed in different directions. I last saw him in 1984 very briefly, when he was already living in Denver and had come to visit Stuart in Albuquerque. Now the point of the eulogy is to talk about the deceased, but Dearly Bereaved, it's also good to be candid. Grieving is for us the living, and fears about our own mortality are something that I think Alan would have been happy to let us own. It's damn strange that this cultural form asks so much propriety when what we are about is facing down the end in sheer and abject terror. The urge is to scream as if watching a speeding, uncontrolled bus as it careens wildly past us for a split second then comes to rest quietly as dust settles from the inevitable collision. And yet we don't scream, but rather stand there muttering at most, just a bit dazed, maybe a "Jesus Christ" under our breaths before our mouths fall open for a good moment. Jesus Christ, Alan! Why all those Luckies, all that frigging booze that was calculated to cut short all your potential and talent? I know, this is some time for a lecture. And in a shopping center - couldn't you have done better than that? I would have liked to have talked with him one more time and maybe found out what he was about these days. It would be good to read some of his columns as he obsessed about getting eaten by bears, plague or expounded on the coarse realities of the cold, hard ground on which the outdoor set might camp. I actually went camping with Alan once, and know he was not one for discomfort. Indeed, a good part of his formation seemed to be a kind of living rejoinder to the ascription that something might make one live longer - 'Or does it just make it seem longer.' After explaining to him the folk logic of taking a cold shower after the hot, because it closed the pores, a piece of wisdom passed on by a gym teacher at some point, he responded quite succinctly: "Closing them is fine. You don't need to slam them." Aaaargh�Alan why did you check out so early? I know, Alan, "Piece of shit!" - but it's the best I could do and the exploitation of Speed the movie is inexcusable, bad habitus. How about you, huh? -- Death by Lucky Strike and Guinness (and jeez, you a walking cardiomegalomaniac to boot). But this is no place for moralizing. Alan seemed destined to be the serious ethnographer (or journalist's) dream and nightmare rolled into one, at once a maker of myth and the respondent for whom that boundary between myth and history was permeable. There's been some mention of his ongoing, pronounced relativism with respect to truth. It is understatement. Had he chosen philosophy, he would have developed his own school of epistemology. His flair, apart from the oral tradition (and the often fantastic), apparently remained critique, a curse in reality in that he could always gain plaudits and a living at that baser art. I still wince at the mere thought of crossing that threshold of his [occasionally refined] taste. It is good to know that he finally came to write, and write well. Certainly his work ethic was not prodigious when I knew him, and Denver must have been very lucky indeed when he caught his stride. And did he really still wear that herringbone jacket in the 1980s? I'd be willing to bet he never dated Aisa Wayne but probably Michael Converse could verify or falsify this. The veracity of this story is actually knowable. (Sorry to be such a spoilsport, I think now that my ideas about knowledge in some way developed in reaction to Al's praxis). He nonetheless attracted some beautiful women in his early youth. Dumas was very, very smart, and witty, and when you were around him you knew it. Those fine brains and effusive charm and stories carried the day, many days, and there should have been many more. I know he had very lucky writing students. I was lucky to know him for those few years I did. I can also hear that squeal when you found out he had manufactured the charismatic transformation of the Duke. Alan was the last person that ever made milk run out my nose. The obligatory story is in order, and I will stop as this has gotten disgusting: Alan did in fact go backpacking at least once in his life, and even slept on the ground in the mountains, hiking over 11,000 ft. passes as well. (Who knows it wasn't the trip that developed his phobia of bears and some reticence about outdoor life in general.) We had fun, though. One thing that we did was "rob" people of powdered fruit drinks and dried foods that were the fare for backpackers in those days. Now this really isn't as thuggish as it sounds. We had tarried too long hiking across the Sierra Nevada through Kings Canyon, mostly at a place called the Ray Lakes, and squandered our supplies to boot - it seems in retrospect, we were even on the cusp of running out of that miraculous staff of life, macaroni and cheese. Alan began reciting an ersatz history of the Donner party and frankly was beginning to scare me a bit, before coming up with a solution that was dramatic. We began shaking down other hikers, certainly without a hint of menace, but with high drama and an offbeat Robin Hoodesque script, and it worked. We played for our supper, and walked out of the mountains two days later, well fed with dried food to spare. The world is grown just a hint colder and less merry this day. Excuse me while I tear some hair out. Chuck Miller
May 10, 2002 My name is Mark Hetelson. Alan and I lived together in New Mexico for about three years until he moved to Denver. We were founding members of the Bugger City Poverty Players and acted together for years. Alan, Dyson and I did "The Homecoming" in the Humanities Building at UNM all on our own. It was one of the best productions I've ever done. My years in Albuquerque in college and acting and hanging out with Dumas and Dyson were some of the most fun times in my life. We "partied hearty" to say the least. We once crashed a Christmas party at the Air Force base dressed as priests. We pretended to be Irish and ended up stealing a bottle of whiskey. Dumas kept trying to hear girl's confessions. I saw him only once after college. I was doing a play at a dinner theatre in Denver and happened to see his byline in the Rocky Mountain News. I met him in a bar with his fianc�e Pam. This was '94. He told me he had stopped drinking and smoking. I was shocked. He loved his booze and smokes but I knew his health wasn't good. He had had a massive hernia operation around the time he left for Denver. He was nice enough to do an article about the dinner theatre I was in. It was "My Three Angels." I don't even remember the dinner theatre's name. His passing both shocks me and saddens me. He was a great friend and I will miss him. Your web page is a great tribute to him. Thank you. Mark W. Hetelson April 28, 2003 Fun at work This may not be much of a story about Alan Dumas but here it goes - I was an assistant manager at the Ogden Theatre and Al also worked there part time. When "THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW" was the midnight movie, Dumas and I would confiscate all the booze from people trying to smuggle it in, and then go to the office and drink it. Al would do Brando imitations on the message machine and we would get hysterical about all the guys in corsets and heels. Not much of a story but we had fun. We explored the Ogden Theater with flashlights, from the cat walks to the steam rooms beneath the proscenium stage. Dumas told me that Mark Twain had spoken from this stage. I loved that guy because he always was laughing about something. We had in common John D. MacDonald, (Travis McGee), loved scotch, etc.,. I figured he would be like Jimmy Breslin, with a working class ability to talk to absolutely anyone and make them laugh. I of course had read Alexander Dumas as a boy and now as a "grown-up". Al had the same ability to drink the wine and love the ladies and have a huge laugh at the ridiculousness and the greatness of it all. He did not have a mean bone in him, I know because he was nice to me. That's all. I was sorry that he died. James Tooley May 22, 2003 A brother's
memories I am Alan's younger brother Daniel; I spoke at his service and at his wake. There were a lot of funny stories told at the wake so instead of giving you stories that everyone knows about, I will give you some new information on my memories of Alan. Ever since high school, Alan liked to play pranks. We lived in Minneapolis and since my fear for tornadoes was well known, Alan would write letters on his manual typewriter claiming that a tornado was going to tear our house down (he would actually put our home address on the letter) and he would sign it Dave Moore (the local TV news anchor in Minneapolis at the time). Also, there was a scare of trichinosis, a disease caused by undercooked meat, at the time and at the dinner table, Alan would say, "please pass the trichinosis." Another idiosyncrasy of Alan's was to kick everyone out of the kitchen while he made pancakes. Of course he would never clean up after himself when he was finished and we were allowed to come back into the kitchen. Another trademark was to surround himself with cereal boxes at the breakfast table. Alan liked to play the guitar and sing the song "Tobacco Road." Once when I was visiting my cousin he put on a tape and the song "Tobacco Road" started playing. My cousin was furious and said, "Alan told me he wrote this song." My reply was, "you actually believed him?" I knew Alan well enough to know that in his mind he sincerely believed that he should have written "Tobacco Road," among other things. Therefore, he was not actually lying because he believed his own fantasies and even if he didn't believe them, he looked at these "lies" as "fibs" -- much like his fibs that there was a Catholic organization that wanted to canonize John Wayne or that anyone who wants to be a "real man" should model themselves after James Bond. Alan would tell fish stories with such conviction that you would think he believed it himself! My favorite fish story was when Alan worked in a hospital cafeteria, he told me that the freezers in the morgue broke down and that they moved all the bodies to the cafeteria's freezer. Alan liked natural hot springs and claimed that all his open wounds healed immediately after sitting in the springs. Our mother (who died on March 29, 2002) often said that Alan would be a great history teacher, but none of his teachings would be true. Alan did want to re-write history with his fantasy twist to it. Alan's college years when he would come home and visit were the best memories of all. Alan was a lot of fun and we would watch "Adam 12" on the television together. His favorite crime fighting duo was Reed and Malloy. We got a kick out of how Malloy was a terminal bachelor and how Reed kept trying to convince him to get married. Another cop show we watched together was "Hawaii Five-0." One of Alan's many wacky ideas was to make a rock band and have everybody in the band wearing black suits with white shirts and black ties and black wigs with curls in the front and he would call the band, "The Jack Lords." We would also watch "Monty Python's Flying Circus" together and fall down laughing. As far as movies go, Alan took me to my first Dirty Harry film on Christmas Day. Any "Trekkie" would have been impressed with his outgoing announcements on his telephone answering machine. One of the announcements had Star trek's Leonard Nimoy singing "Proud Mary" and another had William Shatner singing "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." Alan and I never saw eye-to-eye on popular music. As you know, he was a Dead Head and I will go to my grave with the sincere belief that the Grateful Dead sucks! On the other hand, my favorite rock groups, Van Halen and Def Leppard never interested Alan either. That's what caused diversity, people liking different things. What a boring world it would be if everybody were the same! The one time when we did connect with music was shortly before April 17, 1999. Alan and I had a discussion about classical music and I was awed to learn that he had witnessed Aaron Copeland conducting the Minneapolis Orchestra. We also passionately compared notes on Sergei Rachmaninoff, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Eric Satie. Alan was filled with culture and intellect. When I lived in Minneapolis, I would drive down to Chicago and we would go to Shakespeare plays and art museums together. I gave him a Shakespeare trivia game one Christmas and he said "I actually know people I can play this with." He also claimed that a Stephen King novel about vampires that he read was so scary, that he put it out on his porch when he went to sleep. Dan Dumas Feb. 8, 2004 Bereft My dear friend Andy just sent me the results of his google on Alan. Years ago that he died; decades ago that I knew him...and yet I feel bereft. I knew Alan when he, Andy Williams, Jim Stansbury, and Michael Converse used to hang out at my place in Newport Beach to drink, smoke, and make outrageous pots of spaghetti sauce with my tomato paste and anything they could steal from their parents' dinner tables. They were all in high school, I was a couple of years older. He starred in the school's production of "The Crucible" and was outstanding. He told stories about Ray Bradbury and about children who would enter a room smacking their lips and talking about tasty morsels. He chided me for my entanglement with his friend Michael...but he also found it highly amusing. The memory of Alan stayed with me all these years, and now it's stronger. Martha Welsh-Vasquez,
Aug. 20, 2004
Like Alan I was a reluctant and late participant in cyberspace, and only got an email address when I came to work here at the L.A. County Fair about two years ago. In the last couple of years it had never occurred to me to do a search on Alan until my daughter Alyson asked me if I knew if any of "Uncle Alan's" articles were available online. He had always teased us by saying that whenever he would visit us in California he would go back and write about our family in his articles in Denver. I told her that Uncle Alan was pretty much a pathological liar and probably hadn't written about us, but I encouraged her to check it out. Actually, I was in the middle of writing to her when I realized I didn't remember the exact date when Alan had died, so I did a quick search and up came your Tribute Site. Wow! I immediately sent Alyson the link to the site before I even read it myself. I'm pretty sure she will be sending you a posting of her own when she gets the chance. I hope she does. It's a nice testament to see how much this remarkable man has meant to several generations. I was especially touched by Mike Flanagan's story of Alan's supposedly objective review of his daughter's performance in Little Women. But, based on Alan's devotion to my own kids I believe that Mike was duped. There is no way that Alan did not know that Sarah was Mike's kid. It is one of the tragedies of Alan's life that he never had kids of his own, and from what I know he always made an extra effort to connect with the children of his friends. It would have been completely in character for Alan to write that review, recognize that it would be suspect, and then lie through his teeth if he were ever called on it. It really doesn't matter. Sarah Flanagan got the love either way. I just somehow take a perverse satisfaction in imagining Alan's stupid grin of smugness after speaking with his buddy Mike Flanagan. Sadly, it also falls on me to debunk one of Alan's greatest stories. He never dated Aissa Wayne. In fact, while she did attend high school with us, as far as I know he never even spoke to her. She was, however, close friends with my ex-wife Marsha Hooten who lived about five houses away from "Wayne Manor." Marsha told us stories of Aissa's wild parties and run-ins with her dad, the Duke, and apparently Alan couldn't resist the temptation to put himself in that company. But not all of Alan's claims were false. He was actually accepted into Lee Strasberg's west coast Actor's Studio class and was told by Lee himself to consider another line of work. Of course, Lee said the same thing to Sally Fields so maybe Alan shouldn't have taken it so much to heart. Chuck Miller's letter was another real treat. He had a lot to say, and it was revelatory to see both his sadness and his anger being exorcized in print for all of us to share. But his eloquence was at it's best with a simple statement that could have been made by any of us..."Alan was the last person that ever made milk run out of my nose." Chris Lissner's remembrances were a wonderful surprise. I haven't spoken to him in years, but his stories took me right back to that "gentleman's club" in Alan's bedroom in Newport Beach. Oh, for those cannabis-fueled days and the hours we spent debating the relative merits of the live version of "Sympathy for the Devil" off of "Get Yer Ya Yas Out!" versus the "Beggars Banquet" studio version, and other such matter of high import. In fact, this is the perfect place for me to say, with absolute certainty, that in Alan's mind the Rolling Stones were, are, and forever shall be The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World. There was just one problem. They only came through LA every 2 or 3 years for concerts. And in those days the rock and roll concert was the defining social event of our existence. Enter the Grateful Dead. Alan and I, along with my future wife Marsha and his stunningly beautiful girlfriend Sharon, attended our first Grateful Dead concert on December 15, 1972 at the Long Beach Arena and that, as they say, was that. These guys were great! I mean they were really kind of good! OK, OK, a lot of the time they really sucked! But they were always around. We began going to shows seriously in 1973, feeling like Newbies that had already missed the "real" Dead with Pigpen, and didn't stop until Alan's death in 1999. The Grateful Dead became our favorite band not because of their music, but because for over 25 years Alan and I would meet at least once a year, which meant he would come out and stay with my family, and we would go see the Grateful Dead, or one of their several post-Garcia variations. They became a really fun device whose primary purpose was to keep our friendship together, not to mention the bonus side-effect of driving most of our other friends crazy. But as far as being his favorite band, it was always The Rolling Stones. Actually, it occurred to me after the memorial service following Alan's funeral that I really blew it by not thinking to play "Moonlight Mile"..."I am just livin' to be dyin' by your side, and I'm just about a Moonlight Mile on down the road". I was also delighted to see the short posting from Martha Welsh-Vasquez. Those were high times indeed. I would love to get her email address and see if she could hook me up with Andy Williams, truly the coolest kid in school, who introduced Alan and I to the unique alchemy that is Keith Richards and Charlie Watts. I hope that somehow Andy has held on to the hilarious Super 8mm movie that he made in High School called "Dead Flowers". It was a parody of the Sonny Bono anti-drug after-school specials of the day, with Alan as the captain of the football team (which in itself was completely absurd) who gets introduced to the evils of "reefer" by Martha and her dealer boyfriend, Carlo Valduchi..."Here you go kid, try this...the first one's free". I would give anything to be able to see once again the opening sequence. A slow pan across upper Newport Bay, in all its affluent suburban splendor, with Alan's voiceover doing his patented hard-boiled detective..."This is the City. Things go on here every day that make Roman Holidays seem like school picnics". Truly a classic Dumas moment. But there were so many. At least it can be said of Alan that he found a way to get his singular voice and twisted perspective out to a larger audience, through a variety of media, than anyone that most of us have known. It is so gratifying to see that this gentle teddy bear of a man was so cherished by so many. And now, more than five years since his passing, I still find it difficult to find the words to express the depth of my feelings for my best friend. So in closing I will turn to the words of Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, and the closing lines of the poem he wrote for Jerry Garcia's funeral: So
I'll just say I love you Michael
Converse August 25, 2004 Why
I never became a refrigerator maintenance technician Although Alan was no blood relation, he was known to my siblings and me as Uncle Alan. My parents had been friends with Alan since high school and I grew up thinking of him as a family member. I believe my mom actually met my dad in the high school production of "My Fair Lady" that others have mentioned on the tribute page. My mom was friends with Aissa Wayne before she met Alan, and his stories of dating the Duke's daughter were generated from anectdotes he recieved from my mother. I, however, think of Uncle Alan mostly in terms of our phone conversations. I was a precocious child and when I was about in third grade, Alan started honoring me with prank calls. He would change his voice slightly and say he was so-and-so from the Refrigerator Maintenance School or the Air-Conditioning Repair Academy. The first of these calls were of a recruiting nature. He would encourage me to quit school, move to Ohio or wherever the alleged school was, live in the factory and learn the honorable trade of refrigerator maintenance. I would laugh and beg him to break character, but eventually I learned the only way to stop him was to try to convince him I needed to stay in school and stay living with my parents in Southern California. The calls escalated. He would say that my parents had already signed me up, that I was too smart for school and there was nothing left to learn there, my only hope was to learn to repair appliances. I learned to play along and I would try my best to give clever responses in my efforts to convince this repair school headmaster that I needed to stay in school so that I could go to college. Now, I realize this was the point of the game -- an attempt in reverse psychology to get me to succeed in school and go to college. As a child I viewed Uncle Alan as my intellectual savior. He would bring gifts of books every time he came to visit, and I would call him and ask for recommendations on what to read next. I loved him because he was educated, he was a writer, and he treated me as the intelligent adult I thought I was at the age of 8. To this day, I cite Alan as my source of motivation in my academic successes. I told the story of Uncle Alan's phone calls at a job interview when I was asked how I came to be the only one in my family to earn a degree. Although it had been years since we'd spoken, I was devastated when I learned of Alan's death five years ago. My mourning, I'm sorry to say, was for primarily selfish reasons. I was nearing the end of my Senior year in high school when Uncle Alan passed away. I was sad because he didn't live to see the many successes I knew I would have. When we learned of his death, my mom gave me a bracelet Alan had given to her. I have worn that bracelet at my high school graduation, my undergraduate graduation, my graduate school graduation, and at every job interview I had for teaching positions. Alan has been the one person I've most wanted to make proud. I know my parents will be proud no matter what; I've laways strived to earn Alan's approval. I never ended up at refrigerator maintenance school. Instead, I'm a high school social studies teacher and I will think of Uncle Alan and wear his bracelet on my first day of teaching in a few weeks. Sincerely, Alyson Converse P.S.
Alan teased my parents that he wrote a column about the dysfunctions
of our family. As I learn about Alan's tendency to create his own
truth, I'm beginning to think there was no such column. But just in
case there was, if anyone knows how to get me a copy, that would be
greatly appreciated. August 29, 2004 Go Bird Andy Williams So, whatever became of Alan Dumas? You know that type of question. It's the sort that used to make you pick up the phone and call, usually late at night, to old friends, flames, acquaintances. But, meetings, therapies, the years, family, the kids and other responsibilities have severely curtailed my participation in that activity. You know, "If you dig up the past, all you get is dirty." Still, I googled Alan's name and learned that he had left this planet. My immediate reactions were shock and dismay. Immediately, I e-mailed Martha. She's the only one that I am still in touch with from that time and scene, late '60s, early '70s Orange County beach town, way before the "OC" was cool. We shared the surprise and the grief via the Internet. After all, aren't we still young, bulletproof and immortal, smarter than anyone else, incredibly witty (he was at least), real smart-asses? Last night, or this morning, who knows, didn't we just go to the 24-hour Howard's Restaurant in Newport Beach, and play "Go Bird," the game Alan and Mike invented with the coffee sugar packets that were printed with pictures of gulls, pigeons, whatever? We laughed ourselves silly over that one. Hadn't we just hung out at Martha's, or rehearsed for the drama teacher at the high school? Hadn't Alan just gotten busted last week for smoking a cigar on campus? Didn't we just go to the Rock and Roll Revival at the LA Sports Arena? (I drove. Alan flew.) Yakked about Kurt Vonnegut novels? Wasn't it just a few months ago that Alan visited me in college, with a bag full of something that made me and a bunch of friends run around like wild animals in the hills outside of Pescadero? Sadly, some of them are gone now as well. I never saw him again after that trip. Nope, that was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Alan was the fastest with the quip and funniest with the insight or outrageous lie back then. Glad to know that he followed that path higher and farther than the rest of us. Alan didn't fit in with the Newport Beach of the day, the surfers, the young and old Republicans, the Jesus Freaks, those whose daddies bought them new cars. Where he ended up, on radio, in print, telling stories, slipping into a hip scene -- Denver, now there's a place for him -- all seems so logical now. That's where he should have been, unless he chose to be somewhere else or another place that he would have told us about, all fabulous lies, of course, but we would believe him despite our better judgment because, after all, he was Alan. Mike's and his daughter's notes represent particularly poignant memories. The movie no longer exists, unfortunately. Alan and I wrote that for a '60s-style high school class, "Social Problems." The teacher, Carol Tatro, asked that Alan and I show it at UCLA for a group of teachers who were trying to understand contemporary youth. When one of them asked Alan what the point of the film was (the hero ended up committing suicide on the beach), Mr. Dumas responded eloquently, "We were trying to make a movie about creative masturbation, but Miss Tatro wouldn't let us. So we made this one instead." Once again, Alan brought down the house. So, whatever became of Alan Dumas? From reading the tributes here, he touched many, was loved by many, made many laugh, and left us way too early. We went separate ways a long time ago, but I still feel the loss. Andy
Williams Photo sent by Michael Converse, Dec. 2004:
Jan. 27, 2006 I feel like I'm on the slo-mo google wagon train, heading to bad newsland. I've discovered your tribute to Alan and find myself with mixed emotions. I'm incredibly sad to learn of his death, but very happy to find the stories from friends documenting his genius.
I met Alan at U.N.M in the early 70's. In fact, it was Alan and Stuart Dyson's antics on the student radio station, KUNM, that jazzed me to get into radio. At the time I was of the righteous mind that radio and TV were the answer to informing, educating and motivating the masses - to right the wrongs of the world. As Alan might of said, "maybe true, but if no one's listening or watching, what's the point." On a daily basis, Alan and Stuart made the audience laugh and listen, while tossing in a little info in the process. KUNM was a wonderful sandbox, and Alan and Stuart were the high priests. Speaking of priests, I'm attaching a photo I dug up of Alan and some of the staff of KUNM in 1975. The station's studio was in the basement of the Student Union building, it's antenna on the roof. There were large areas of Albuquerque that couldn't pick up the signal. But in 1975, the FCC allowed the station to transmit its signal from the mountain crest nearby, making the station's signal available to most of the state. In the photo, Alan (if memory serves, better known as The Reverend Herbert Stencil) leads some of the staff in a ceremonial blessing of KUNM's new transmitter. (Annette Griswold (program director, Alan's girlfriend at the time (I believe), and another big reason I got involved in radio) is standing in the back row, second from the left. I'm kneeling in the back row with sunglasses.) I'm curious Gil, did you know of Annette? I remember she and Alan moving to Denver, but I lost touch with them. Any stories from her? Also I wish Stuart would post something, they were brilliant and inseparable, and while my memory gushes with a blanket smile and total reverence it is fading with details.
Anyway, thank you for the memories; I hope there will be more to come. Bill Abbott October, 2006 NOTE: This reminiscence, which I'm posting months after it was sent to me, was written and posted on a blog, The Shoewhorse, written by Josh Tyson, a former student of Alan's. Sorry, Josh, that it's taken me so long to add this to the page! I had this whole intro worked out in my head where I was going to compare the venerable Duffs Gamblers to Steven Segal, in the sense that they are/were both hard to kill. Silly, right? The whole dumb idea reminded me of a professor I had in college named Alan Dumas. I was a student of journalism some years ago, and Dumas taught a class I took on feature writing for magazines. Dumas (in the habit, far right) had indeed written features for magazines, but he'd also worked as an actor, a television producer and a radio show host, and the class was more about being resourceful and creative in approaching whatever you were doing. A good example of the kind of homework Dumas gave would be an essay he assigned around the holidays. Dumas' was the only class I ever felt shitty about missing. About a year after I finished school, I found out that he died in April of 1999 of a heat attack. It was especially upsetting because he was a young guy. He taught me ways to hone passion subtly and cut corners gracefully, and he got me truly excited about writing. I remain indebted. Jan. 10, 2007 Radio Daze Hello Gil,
And I was, in a word, shocked. He was decidedly overweight, dressed in a sloppy, baggy wool sweater on a warm summer night, had odd moles on his face, and appeared at least 10 years older than his then 25 years. In truth, I thought he was one of the homeliest men I had ever met! And I couldn't understand why Annette would be with him... January 9, 2013 Hi Gil, I found your tribute page to Alan Dumas and wanted to write.
From '84-'88 my father was stationed at Lowrey Air Force Base and my family lived in Aurora. This was through middle and the first two years of high school (I am now 40). That age can be rocky for anyone and particularly at that age you just want to feel some connection with people who understand.
I remember a radio show that I think was called "Lay It On The Line" that he hosted for a time, though I forget the station (it was on KBPI, I think on Sunday nights ... he had me on a couple of times as a guest -- Gil). It was a 2-hour, weekly talk show for teens that had a fairly open format.
In the days before Facebook this provided an important service to kids around Denver to connect and hear other voices. I listened to Alan faithfully and was fascinated by his ability to connect with adolescents and even called in and spoke with him a couple of times on the air. I remember a few regular callers, I think one called himself "The 'Woe' Dude," there was another guy who I think was "Poet John" maybe.
I loved Alan's show. And remembering the busy signal I would frequently get (remember busy signals?) so many other folks caught in the middle of growing up loved his show as well.
I remember him being humorous, gentle, smart, and calming. He could easily cut to the core of the issue his young callers were calling about, and provided such good advice. All these years later I remember that show of his.
My 8-year-old son loves when I tell stories about myself growing up and during one recent story telling session about living in Colorado the memory of the show and Alan's name popped right into my head. I told my son about the show and how great it was knowing that there were amazing people like Mr. Dumas out there, who cared what kids thought. So, I googled his name and found your site.
I was hoping he was still out there doing the show. Though he is gone, he still puts smiles on faces even today, so many years after his death. And at least one more kid, born after Alan passed, still knows and is hopefully influenced by him. I just wanted to let you know, July 6, 2013 The recent move of Peter Boyles around the radio dial made me think of other classic Denver hosts, and in particular, Alan Dumas; despite never meeting him; the on-air style made me ( and apparently many others ) feel like we were good friends. I don't remember the station; perhaps KNUS or its predecessor. ( I'm an incurable radio-phile, searching the airwaves and now the internet. )
At any rate, Alan was doing a morning business-oriented show; and somehow would attract and interview national and international figures to do live radio interviews at a time when Denver was still something of a provincial town. Among the interviews may have been Alan Greenspan and even Henry Kissinger if my memory serves me right; and I kept thinking how did he get them?
Alan would bring the show down to earth by regularly interviewing Walt the barber from Colfax who always had an opinion on everything; and so the show left once very satisfied with a mix of hard information; local color; bound together with Alan's personal warmth and tongue-in-cheek humor. Although I cannot comment on his acting or print journalism careers, Alan Dumas certainly had a gift for the radio medium which makes one think of Alan Shepherd ( WBAI New York ) and even Orson Wells before.
Thank you for the site dedicated to Alan Dumas; a man whose contributions to the Denver community certainly live on. |
