What a cliffhanger of a day. I never want to go through anything like this ever again. I think my blood pressure skyrocketed. (Thankfully, my blood pressure is usually spot on!)

 

Celestis didn’t mention DeForest Kelley (except in passing) until the very last person they mentioned — LONG after the other Star Trek celebrities were mentioned.

Needless to say, I was fit to be tied.

 

This morning they mentioned his name (DeForest Kelley, not Jackson DeForest Kelley) as a passenger aboard the Enterprise flight in a list of the second 80 other names… and a little later Colby Youngblood or Charles Chafer mentioned that I had provided a lock of De’s hair to get his DNA so he could be on the flight…

 

Marc B Lee told me earlier in the day that they couldn’t get the two-minute video that I sent them to work, so I suggested they use the longer one from De’s memorial page at Celestis. I also sent the script to Marc again (since he said it didn’t download for him when he tried to download it) but I didn’t hear back as to whether he got it, and I sent it the same way, so I wasn’t sure he’d get it the second time, either.

 

And that’s where everything stood all day long through hours and hours and hundreds of tributes, including the Roddenberrys, Nichelle Nichols, and James Doohan. Then they said they were leaving science fiction and going into science fact — so I was utterly destroyed, thinking they were going to overlook mentioning him at all. (It has happened so many times during Star Trek events that I was anicipating it would probably happen again. I was sooooo freaking frustrated!)

 

But at the very last possible moment, Marc Lee read the script that I sent him. 

 

I gotta tell you, I bawled, I was so relieved.

 

That was  absolutely cruel.  I should have been told it would happen in that way.  Not doing so was like pulling the wings off a fly and having it buzz around mortally wounded. I was that fly all day and evening long!

 

But at least it happened.

 

I will never do anything like this again. My nerves can’t take cliffhangers like this anymore.

 

POSTSCRIPT:  I’m aware that De’s being named and honored at the very end of the day’s two extensive memorial services was a very high honor indeed.

I simply didn’t know (wasn’t told) that was the plan  when I IM’d Celestis and Marc, trying to confirm that he WOULD be honored despite the fact that my video didn’t work.  As one of the few remaining Kelley legacy promoters, I felt I would have somehow let De down during this special event by not showing up in person to say what I wanted to say. I searched for weeks for the just right anecdotes to share so people would get a sense of the real DeForest Kelley and to have all that effort wasted because of a technical glitch felt like the most horrible of outcomes.

 

My beef is that I wasn’t told this was the plan by the Celestis responders or Marc.  I spent all day and all evening fretting after they said they couldn’t use the video! And Marc didn’t confirm receiving the transcript of my abbreviated letter to De other than to say the one I sent months ago wasn’t received legibly on his phone. So when Charles segued from the spoken words of Rod Roddenberry, Kyle Johnson and Wende Doohan about their Star Trek relatives on the Enterprise Flight and said,”Now, we’re leaving science fiction and going into science fact” and they spent 30 minutes on the mission ahead, I was 99.99% sure they had overlooked mentioning De in the hustle and bustle of the event, so I was feeling absolutely devastated.

 

This morning I recognize that De’s placement on the program was the only place it SHOULD HAVE BEEN. It was perfect placement.  I just wish I had known this was the plan all along.  I woudn’t have been in such a tizzy all day freaking out about the missing video and (possibly) the absent transcript of my letter to De.

 

All’s well that ends well.