About Losing Star Trek Icons…

Suddenly, just two Original Series stars remain: George Takei and William Shatner.

The First to Die Was My Personal Favorite

…and I was at the man’s bedside when he took his final breath, so DeForest Kelley’s death hit me hardest.

It also rocked the planet.  It was fandom’s first experience of losing a deeply cherished Star Trek icon.  In the days and weeks that followed, over 100,000 tributes poured in over the internet expressing shock, grief, horror and something even more surprising: the understanding that our icons were mortal, vulnerable and more deeply cherished than even we ourselves knew until they were suddenly, surprisingly no more.

Every McCoy fan across the globe suddenly realized that they were far from alone in their grief, nor were they few in numbers. Even the “Kirk and Spock First” fans were gutted. Fans who had never even met De or seen him on stage knew, to the core of their being, that this man was salt of the earth, unrepeatable, irreplaceable.

Four years later, Jimmy Doohan died, and the situation repeated itself. The people who had known and met Jimmy poured their hearts out, remembering the countless ways in which he had touched their lives.

As the years passed, more Star Trek icons passed away

…Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, Grace Lee Whitney, Mark Lenard, and more.  And each time, tributes and memories poured from those of us who loved them, fought for them when the original series was threatened with cancellation, and clamored to conventions to spend precious time with them.

Then, two days ago, Walter Koenig died

The people who knew him best knew the moment would arrive sooner rather than later. His friends, coworkers and loved ones were prepared.  The rest of us were not.

He was, to us, the eternal youth Pavel Chekov, or Bester, or another professional (but somehow super personal) beloved icon. It simply wasn’t possible that he could have been 90 years old.

“McCoys, Spocks, Scottys,

Uhuras, Chekov’s

Simply Do Not — Cannot — Die!”

So we soothe our wounded psyches by reminding ourselves of Dr. McCoy’s line when Spock died: “He isn’t really dead as long as we remember him.”

And that’s true!

As long as a single one of us remains alive to resurrect the people we personally and profoundly loved to the core of our beings, we will always be the tellers of the tales, the reflector of their kindness, and the keeper of their flames.

Dan Madsen, Larry Nemecek, Terry Rioux, The Okudas, the Roddenberrys.

But we’re getting pretty long in the tooth, too

…so some of us have begun bequeathing our archival materials to the people and institutions that we feel the most comfortable leaving them to.

The Next, Newest Keepers of the Flame

The vast majority of my massive Kelley archives was shipped to Autumn McKenzie in Texas last year just before I moved to Costa Rica.  Autumn has taken, catalogued, and turned them into almost daily snippets called This Day in De History. You can find them at The DeForest Kelley Legacy on Facebook.

I am beyond impressed with what she is doing to keep his memory alive. I made the right choice there, for sure. They aren’t sitting in a museum where only research buffs will seek them out. They are available to every new fan who discovers De and wants to find out as much about him as they can. PERFECT PLACEMENT.  His fans deserve to have access to these treasures.

Other inheritors of my Kelley stuff include younger Star Trek fans (25 to 30 years old) who reached out to me after reading my books and stuck with me long enough that I knew their interest in De was resilient and not just a passing fancy.  These fans, too, received something that belonged to De. I won’t name them because it might not be in their best interest, but you know who you are! Thank you, too, for being keepers of the flame.

Other inheritors include the late, great Thorsten Walch and his wife Sabine, who received a couple of De’s neck dickeys. Thorsten spent years translating my book into German so De’s German fans would be able to live with the REAL McCoy as intimately as his English-speaking fans did within its pages. I will be eternally grateful for that.

I have every confidence that I have done absolutely everything I can to preserve and bequeath my archives and memories of DeForest Kelley to people who will carry the flame and pass it along to whomever proves to them that, they, too, will pass it along to the next generation of DeForest Kelley fans.

So, you see, our Star Trek icons are going to outlive us by many generations if we can manage to keep the powers that be from blowing our species (and all others) to bits.

“Star Trek lives, it will not die

And YOU (the fans) are the r ones who made (still make) it fly!”  — DeForest Kelley

You got THAT right, De!  We got this!

We won’t let our Star Trek heroes down!