I’m going to set down here in a single blog post my personal interactions with Star Trek icons to have them all in one place. These will just be thumbnail sketches because it would take much more time than I want to invest today.

DeForest Kelley

I have written about my friendship with DeForest Kelley and his wife Carolyn extensively. No way can I thumbnail the 30 years that I enjoyed being in their orbit.  For those details, get my book (link above).

Leonard Nimoy

Because Dr. McCoy and Mister Spock were my two favorite Star Trek characters, I sought out opportunities to meet them.

I met Leonard twice, both times in Seattle. He was very business-like but friendly. He listened patiently to a Mission Impossible audiotape that my friend Sandie Lanning and I had concocted, asking him if he could get us into the TV studio to watch the Variety Club Telethon live from studio seats.  He begged off in a very kind way, saying he didn’t have enough clout to decide who would be allowed in.

Sandie and I met him as he came off the plane from LA and I gave him love beads, which he wore during the interview he gave there at the airport.

At De’s star ceremony Dec. 18., 1991

At the Seattle airport about 1972

At the Pasadena Convention about 1995

William Shatner

Alas, there is nothing positive that I can say about my three brief interactions with William Shatner. I never saw him interact with fans (even leg-wiggling little girls) with any degree of kindness or empathy. Best to leave these memories on the cutting room floor.  De loved him, even though he admitted at conventions that “I had to straighten his ass out a couple of times.”

That’s as kind a way as possible to say that Shatner (at least until  later in his life) was not the warm and fuzzy kind.  He wasn’t polite, professional or business-like in the way Nimoy was, and he certainly wasn’t approachable, personable or reassuring in the way Kelley was, but then… not all that many celebrities are.  Gene Roddenberry hit the jackpot when it came to employing  actors who, for the most part, did not disappoint their fans.

George Takei

Unless I’m mistaken, George Takei is the first Star Trek icon I met. My nephew Phil was about three years old and George was going to appear at the Seattle Space Needle at an event, so I took Phil to see him.

Takei was charming, funny, kind, and extremely invested in his fans. He has continued to be that way.  I adore him.  He tells it like it is, which turns some fan off, but that’s bound to happen, depending on the political leanings of Star Trek fans. We aren’t ALL IDIC-focused, as you well know!

Nichelle Nichols

I met Nichelle Nichols twice or three times. She was a vivacious, serious, intense individual who wanted her legacy to be more than her role on Star Trek.

The first time I met and spent quality time with her was while De was in the hospital during his final months of life.  Nichelle came by to visit him. I left them alone to chat and waited in the hall so they could do whatever they felt they needed to do to say their final goodbyes.

After that, she invited me to lunch there at the hospital commissary, where she shared that, “The rumors had it that De and I had an affair.  That was not true, although he is the sexiest man I have ever met in my life!”

I hadn’t heard the rumor, which I would not have believed anyway.  Then she told me about meeting a psychic who said her legacy would not be Star Trek but the many other things she had done during her life to encourage women in STEM careers, support the space program, and more.  It was a lovely conversation.  She thanked me for being there for De, too.

After De passed away,  he received several awards, one of which was the Gene Roddenberry Award.  I was invited to the presentation ceremony and was absolutely floored when Nichelle mentioned how I had dedicated the last several months of De’s life TO caring for him.  Then she sang — in my honor, she said — the song I DON’T KNOW HOW TO LOVE HIM from Jesus Christ Superstar!  I leaked plenty of tears.

The presenter — maybe Rod Roddenberry or Richard Arnold? (I don’t recall now) — handed the Gene Roddenberry Award to Walter Koenig, who brought it to me to give to Carolyn (because by this time I had become Carolyn’s caregiver, too).  He was soft-spoken, gracious and kind.

De also received, posthumously, a Golden Boot award, which AC Lyles accepted on his behalf and then passed to me to carry to Carolyn. Alas, I don’t have an image of that one.  Autumn McKenzie might in her stash of images.  I know she has the program from that event.

Sadly, the last time I saw Nichelle was in the Seattle Space Needle several years after we had spent an afternoon visiting with each other at De’s hospital.

When I saw her, I stepped over and said, “Hello, Nichelle!”  Her face was vacant. She had no recollection of ever having met me before or of sharing almost two hours together.  I realized then what appeared to be early signs of Alzheimers or some other cognitive impairment.

Of course, it saddened me. Not because she didn’t recognize me — I was one of a million fans she had met in her life —  but because she was so compromised. She had fellow Trek stars with her, helping her get around, though. And that was a comforting vision.  They were one big happy family.

Walter Keonig and Mark Lenard

In addition to the memory shared above about Walter Koenig, I was also lucky enough to see both of these fine actors on stage in a play in Hollywood while I lived there. The play was called The Boys in Autumn and was about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn as middle-aged men.  As a huge Mark Twain fan, I knew I wanted to see it.

Despite the excellent acting by both gentlemen, the theme was a far cry from what I expected of Tom and Huck as middle aged men.  I was disgusted by what the playwright had done with these two iconic characters. I left there with a bitter taste in my mouth.

I also met Mark Lenard at the 20th anniversary Star Trek convention in 1986 in Spokane, which is when I reconnected with the Kelley’s for the first time in 18 years. Mark appeared to be a shy, reserved, but very nice human being. I took a picture with him but it’s on a slide, so I can’t share it here. Got a photo with Majel Barrett Roddenberry, too, at that convention, and of course one with De:

Grace Lee Whitney

I kept bumping into Grace Lee Whitney in various places — at studio commissaries, various Star Trek conventions, and each time she she would give me that “I know you from somewhere, don’t I?  Where do I know you from?!”

I knew that she didn’t know me because I had never met her formally, so I kinda dodged her inquisitiveness, as I didn’t want to embarrass her.

But then I remembered that Carolyn had mentioned to me that De had been sharing pictures of Deaken and me at the studio with his castmates, and I was pretty front and center at his star ceremony, at which Grace Lee spoke…

So, the last time it happened, at Planet Xpo in Seattle,  I said, “Hello, Grace.  I think I’ve finally figured out why you think you know me!”  And I told her about the serval cat photos and my presence at De’s star ceremony and other Star Trek conventions. “That’s it!  she exclaimed.

She was a lovely, lively presence in each instance. It felt great to be “recognized” by a Star Trek star, even though I didn’t know for the longest time how she “knew” me!

Patrick Stewart

I first encountered Patrick Stewart (later Sir Patrick Stewart) when he appeared at a Star Trek convention in Denver, at which DeForest Kelley was also featured.  He was magnificent.

In fact, one of my friends, Jackie Edwards (also a huge De fan), was so besotted by him that she looked like she had gone into a trance when he stepped onto the stage, and she stayed there the whole time.  She was mesmerized.

She told me later, after she became Patrick’s assistant, that she would kill me if I ever breathed a word of this to anyone on Star Trek.  I pledged my silence.  Now I can tell it. I’m broken-hearted for her. (Jackie also served as Carroll O’Connor’s assistant when he was filming IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT in Conyers, GA.)

One time, I was at Jackie’s when she got a call from Patrick asking if she could come up to his place.  She said yes and asked me if I wanted to ride along.

Is the Pope Catholic?

Most certainly YES!

So, we jumped in her car and  she drove us to his place.

When we got there, she rang a bell or in some other way indicated we had arrived, and his deep. sonorous, world-famous but disembodied voice said, “Come on in. I’m back by the pool.”

We walked to the pool area and there stood Patrick Steward, bare chested and in swim trunks.

Now, I’m trans, but I appreciate the male physique every bit as much as I do the female physique.

I was stunned.  I had a hard time acting normal when Jackie introduced us.

Patrick had some materials that he wanted delivered, so we didn’t stay long, but long enough for me to get a sense of the man. He treated her like a professional equal, with respect and appropriate humor.

So, this week when he passed away I thought of the people I know who knew him well — Amy Ulen and Jackie Edwards — and my heart aches for them.  I feel bereft (and was never a Next Generation fan or watcher) but I know what and who they are missing now.

I also saw Patrick Stewart live on stage the first time he did A CHRISTMAS CAROL. It was magical although I was a long way back in the nosebleed section of the audience.

I also loved how much he loved Sir Ian McKellan and how he stood against violence against women.  I followed him, not his career, and adored what I saw.

James Doohan

I met Jimmy Doohan when I visited the Star Trek set while Star Trek VI was being filmed. He was a card.

My friends and I got to the studio before De was finished in makeup and wardrobe, so we hung around while the other actors ran their lines or just shot the breeze.

We visited with Walter some — he spoke lovingly about his wife, Judy, as I recall.  Then Jimmy stopped by and interrogated us: who were we here as guests of? Where were we from?

I was sitting in De’s director chair when De finally came on the scene.  He was dressed in the deerskin costume and looked fabulous from 40 feet away.

By now I had been bantering with Jimmy for a good five minutes so I said, “When De gets here, pretend you’ve known me for years” because Jimmy spent a lot of time in the Pacific Northwest, where I’m from.

As De approached, Jimmy threw his arms around me and embraced me as if we were lovers, almost cupping my breasts!  I flushed bright red — having zero idea he would do that!

De looked at us and asked, “Do you two know each other?”

I laughed, “Not this well!” and peeled Jimmy off me.

Goodness gracious sakes alive!

Jimmy was a fun man.  He was also a fine actor. I miss him, although I didn’t know him at all well.

Harve Bennett

Producer Harve Bennett practically adopted me after De died. He was so appreciative that I had quit my job to care for De and Carolyn for more than a year. He graciously accepted the interviews that Terry Rioux and I wanted to schedule with him after De’s passing to get his perspective on the man.  One of the audio clips that are in my audiobook of De are of him accepting the interviews in the most gracious way imaginable.

When we were almost 90 minutes late for the first interview (there being two crossroads with the same crosstreet names in Los Angeles), he graciously agreed to wait while we drove from the wrong address to the right address.  After that, we were invited to his home in the Pacific Palisades for an additional interview.

He sat with us for hours. He was kind, thorough, and utterly delightful. You can read what he had to say about De in Terry Lee Rioux’s book FROM SAWDUST TO STARDUST

Karl Urban

Lisa and I met Karl Urban in Seattle at a ComicCon eight years ago. Click the link above to read my account of that wonderful experience.

I think that’s all I can recall now. If I think of something later, I will add it below, or incorporate it above.

I was blessed to rub shoulders with my favorite Star Trek icons.  I hope you were, too.