Walter Koenig we love you madly

If you are reading these lines expecting to read an article from a star trek fan girl you will be sorely disappointed.  Yes, as our regular listeners know, I am indeed a Star Trek fan as is my sister and co-host, Sister Frances.  In fact, that is how we met. 

But that is not why I am writing this. 

I am writing this because the death of this man’s son touched me deeply and more profoundly than few things in my life ever have…

More than waiting with someone as the last hours of their life ticked by….

More than the death of my own mother…

More than standing, watching, unbelieving, the words “Oh my God it’s gone” escaping my lips as the second of tower of the world trade center collapsed.

Perhaps stranger still is where this all happened – at the 2010 Chicago Comic Con.

Fandom is a strange thing, no matter what level it is on. There are fans of the No Prisoners, No Mercy show, up to several thousand of you at high points in the month (so say the data counters). We get the occasional letters, such as one listener who described my co-host and I as “the fabulous sisters” and another who thanked us for thanked us for including her in the “No Prisoners, No Mercy experience.”  The time was when I even performed on stage, and afterwards took my bows (along with the rest of the cast) to the applause of  thousands of people.

But this is the rarety rather than the rule.

Usually we get letters when listeners are angry and they come out swinging like the pendulum on a grandfather clock on speed. Fandom on any level is fickle.  There’s a line in the movie “Mad Max” where Tina Turner, as Auntie Entity, proclaims “One day the cock of the walk, the next day a feather duster.”  This was driven home like a spike through my heart as I walked autograph row at the 2010 Chicago Comic Con.  There were the popular stars to be sure; Brent Spiner (a great guy) had a long line.  There were also stars whose fickle fans no longer saw them in the lime light…among them was Walter Koenig and John de Lanci.  I read a story once where Mr. de Lanci was at Con despite having a bad case of the flu.  He sat there through the presentation, drinking a glass of water. At the end of the talk, a bidding war began for the glass that the actor had begun drinking from.  The winning bidder presented his 50 dollars, and finished the glass of water, proudly proclaiming “I have the Q virus”.

Yet here sat John de Lanci,  his current project a kind of a sci-fi/slasher film called Recreator . Mr. De Lance and Mr. Koenig both sat at the table, with no fans around them; no one asking for their signature. Eventually, Mr. Koenig got up and walked away in what must have been the saddest moment I have experienced in decades.   It was at that moment, and I still don’t know why, that I felt the depth of the tragedy of the death of this man’s son. Not because I too had been where he is, and where his son was before his death, even though that is certainly part of it.  Perhaps what affected me most profoundly is that once the lights faded, and the next “next generation” Star Trek cast took over, few people around me seemed to care what Mr. Koenig was like, not as an actor, not for his body of work, but for the kind of human being he is.

Hopefuly my co-host will be able to go back today and speak to Mr. Koenig.

Still, I will relate my own miracle that is the reason I am still here, having escaped the fate of Andrew Koenig,  Mr. Walter Koenig’s son – divine intervention.  Years before, I had been to the meeting of a group that raised money for charity by dressing as Klingons.  At the meeting a woman named Lee Busco gave me her phone number on a small slip of paper, telling me to call her if I ever needed help.

That scrap of paper sat at the bottom of my wallet for years.

Then the day came I arrived home from work, to be greeted only by one of our dogs, and only one, where there should be two.  “Winston” I called out.  No answer.  No dog, which came running.  Then I saw a letter on the desk. Opening it, I read a letter that brought my world crashing down around me.  The person to whom I had been married for 9 years left me for a younger woman.

Conveniently the younger woman had the same first name.  At least the ex wouldn’t have to be careful about what name to call out.   Now I can laugh and say “My ex left me and took my dog – gee I miss that dog.”  Then, I realized I had been hiding out in a relationship that was a lie for 9 years. I felt my life was over, and even went to the drug store looking for sleeping pills to make sure it was – I didn’t find them.  What I  did find was that same scrap of paper in the bottom of my wallet with a phone number.

I called the number.

I reached out and that person put me in touch with someone else I had met through the same Star Trek group. That person was my co-host and mother superior, who invited me to her house, and promptly took my car keys, telling me I wasn’t going anywhere. I reached out, I dearly wish Andrew Koenig had reached out.  And today I cried for the death of a man I never even met…Walter Koenig’s son.

Would it were that Fran and I had the opportunity to get to know Walter Koenig better. Not the actor, but the person.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather