Classmates Talk About Jim Morrison March 21 1991

[darkstar]

REMEMBERING THE LIZARD KING - CLASSMATES TALK ABOUT THE JIM MORRISON THEY KNEW
by: Sandy Barnes
Alexandria Virginia "Gazette Packet" News
March 21 1991

Jerry Ainsfield was with the Peace Corps in Liberia when he first heard about Jim Morrison's rock star fame. A friend had written Ainsfield about his former high school buddy, who was featured in the May 1967 issue of Life Magazine. "I went all over the place trying to find that issue of Life in Liberia," Ainsfield said. Before that he had lost track of Morrison with whom he had graduated from George Washington High School in 1961.

NOT EXACTLY TYPICAL

For Ainsfield and others who knew him at GW, Morrison was not exactly the typical "local boy who made good." For one thing, Morrison - who became the leader of the Doors rock group in the '60's - was not all that local. The son of a Naval Officer, Morrison had lived all over the country before coming to Alexandria in 1958, three years before finishing high school. Also, many who knew him were later mystified that Morrison had become a singer, as he had not seemed interested in music during his days at GW. Some, like Ainsfield were totally unaware of their former classmate's success until it came crashing to their attention.

Now, 20 years after his death, interest in the young man who became known as the "Lizard King" has been rekindled with the recent release of "The Doors," an Oliver Stone film centered on Morrison's life.

Speaking in his easy, Virginia-flavored voice, Ainsfield
described Morrison as a friend he used to "hang out
with...a handsome guy, but quiet and on the shy side.
Morrison didn't even sing in high school," he said. "He
liked to write poetry and he was a talented artist."
Ainsfield said he and others focused instead on the singing abilities of classmate Ellen Cohen who later became Mama Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas group. ("She had a beautiful voice," he remarked.)

Stan Durkee is among those who remember Morrison for his intellegence, his literary brillance and his enigmatic personality. "Intellectually, Jim was head and shoulders above all of us - he read every book you could imagine," said Durkee. "He inspired me." Durkee said he and Morrison used to go to book stores in Washington to look for works of beat generation authors who intrigued him.

Durkee remembers being in an English class with
Morrison while studying James Joyce's "Ulysses." "Even the teacher was learning from Morrison's interpretation of the work," Durkee said. "We all were...He was sort of
an intellectual leader."

However, Durkee said, "Nobody really understood Morrison (as a person). He was detached, creative...Few if any, people in our class were really close to him." Durkee, who gave Morrison a ride to school every morning, said Morrison was
alienated from his family as well. "He went for weeks
without seeing his parents," he said. Although Durkee saw Morrison as someone "who would have become a dramatic person," he said it was "a shock to everybody" that he evolved into "a teen idol." On the other hand, Durkee was not surprised by accounts of Morrison's tempermental and sometimes bizarre behavior during his performing years. Once during a class, he said, "Jim got really angry and exploded" because a teacher questioned his judgement. In a sense, Durkee said, Morrison was rebelling against the "smugness" and "mindlessness" of the late 50s. "Jim took everything to the max," said
Durkee.

WE ALL EAT SMALL DOGS

Patricia Madison, who was also in classes with Morrison, described him as "hyper, high IQ and weird." She recalls a time in Spanish class when he wrote, "We all eat small dogs" on the blackboard as a sentence to be translated. Madison also remembers an incident when Morrison brough rotting fish with him on a bus without air conditioning during a hot summer day to elicit a reaction from the other passengers (which of course, he did). "Morrison would do things we didn't dare do," Madison remarked. She said once Morrison urinated in his locker, because he
didn't feel like using the restroom.

Ainsfield said he believes some of Morrison's acting out in high school was alcohol-related, recalling that Morrison "liked drinking bourbon." However, Ainsfield said he does not believe Morrison was involved with drugs at that time.

Dick Sparks viewed Morrison as the leader of a "tight little intellectual group who followed him like puppies" and "made fun of other people." Sparks said he did not make the connection between the Morrison of the Doors and the teenager he had known in high school until he read Morrison's obituary in 1971.


Although Tommy Edwards has a distant memory of Morrison, "walking down a street in Warwick Village barefoot with a guitar around his neck," he too was surprised to learn of his later fame. Edwards sang in the high school chorus with the future Mama Cass Elliot, and thought that she - if anyone - would be the one to become sucessful in music, just as Ainsfield thought. Apparently, neither Edwards nor the others who knew Morrison in high school had any premonition of the musical success he would achieve. Still, Morrison is remembered by his classmates, if perhaps for different reasons.

When asked if he had seen the current movie about Morrison, Edwards replied, "No. That's not the Jim Morrison we remember."

[darkstar]

ALUMNI WEBPAGE

George Washington High School
Jefferson Davis Highway (Route 1)
Alexandria Virginia

Jim Morrison, GWHS Class of '61, was a member of the music group called the "Doors" during the late 60s. This is his story.

James (Jim) Douglas Morrision, ‘61
Born on December 12, 1943 and died on July 3, 1971 at age 27
Jim Morrison, a member of the "Doors", was handsome with a gentle, innocent look. His genuinely shy manner and soft, quiet voice was in direct contrast to the always drunk and/or stoned satyr who sang with such strident urgency, as he appeared onstage. Jim's grade school ambition was to become a writer. His idols were poets and joumalists including Rimbaud, Keats and Jack Kerouac.

As a student Jim excelled in text work and reference work, devouring knowledge in areas of history, science, psychology, english and the arts, but was troublesome in class. He learned to make friends fast and not get too close as his father being an Admiral in the navy and a career man, moved around the country frequently.

Jim went on to get a degree in Cinematography and actually made a movie. The film was greeted by a minority as a masterpiece and by several professors as the worst film they had ever seen. "Wierd" would have been a more appropriate description. Not long after that he bumped into an old class mate, Ray Manzerak, and decided to join Ray's band 'Screamin ' Ray Daniels ' _ and try out some of his Iyrics. After a reshuffle in the band Ray and Jim with Robbie Krieger and John Densmore formed The Doors.

They called themselves The Doors after Aldous Huxley's 'The Doors Of Perception' and worked for six months ending up at the most important rock club in Los Angeles, Wiskey a Go Go. By this time Jim was singing his own heady material and The Doors were fast gaining a loyal core of fans.

One night Electra Record Company's president Jac Holzman, and producer Paul Rothschild, dropped in at the club and signed the band, on the spot, for ten thousand dollars. That summer of 1967 their first album 'The Doors' was released and immediately hailed as a masterpiece. 'Light My Fire' the single off the album was a smash hit. Their next album 'Strange Days ' solidified The Doors ' success. _With two albums in the top ten, headline concerts causing riots and hit singles, Jim achieved his aim of becoming hero and controversial spokesman, blending poetry and insanity.

The Doors became myth makers, the group who sang about sex, doom, the revolution and death, and Jim a performer of enormous capabilities. With his picture on the cover of practically all teen magazines in America, and heralded 'The King of Acid Rock', 'The King of Orgasmic Rock ', 'The Ultimate Barbie Doll ' and 'The Lizard King' Jim was every girl's dream and every boy's self image.

Jim was becoming notorious for his drug taking, taking and fast living and by the time The Doors third album 'Waiting For The Sun' came out, his popularity had begun to wane as his fans watched him become drunker and fatter.

Arrests after The Doors' Miami concert of March 2nd 1969 for "lewd and lascivious behaviour" sparked a nation wide ban on the group, resulting in exclusion from 16 states, and Jim began to rebel against the image he had created, shedding his leathers in fear of another bust. Twelve previous arrests had not left their mark, but this was the first time his arrest had serious repercussions.

Their next album 'The Soft Parade'released in the summer of 1969 did not make the impact of the earlier albums and although 'Morrison Hotel' released in early 1970 redeemed them somewhat, the future of The Doors was at best, uncertain.

Jim was not unaware of his own absurdity and the Iyrics of 'Absolutely Live' (1970) belie his disillusionment .... "Dead cat in a top hat, Thinks he's an aristocrat That's crap". With the finish of the bluesy and intermittently successful album 'L.A. Woman', Morrison headed for Paris. He was probably looking for renewed inspiration in the birth place of French symbolist poetry and_surrealism.

So Jim met his partner Pamela in Paris and his restless soul finally found peace when he died in his bath tub on July 3rd, 1971. Speculations as to the cause of his death abound and their are some who even proclaim that he is still alive.

Before he went to France he had recorded a legacy to Doors fans and the world at large with some of his poetry.

In 1978 the remaining Doors' members, Ray Manzerak, Robbie Krieger and John Densmore got together and put his poetry to music for the latest album 'An American Prayer' In it Jim seems to be prophesing his own death and welcoming it, through lines such as:


"Death makes angels of us all & gives us wings
Where we had shoulders smooth as raven's claws
No more money, no more fancy dress
This other Kingdom seems by far the best
until its other jaw reveals incest
& loose obedience to a vegetable law
I will not go
Prefer a Feast of Friends
To the Giant Family. "

November 5, 2002.
gwaa.acps.k12.va.us/st~stories.html

George Washington High School Alumni
gwaa.acps.k12.va.us/main.shtml#Links

Surrounding Area Photo Page: gwaa.acps.k12.va.us/album.htm

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

And He Walked on Down the Hall...to Spanish Class
Remembering Jim Morrison’s strange days as a Northern Virginia high-schooler

In his official Elektra Records biography from 1967, Doors frontman Jim Morrison defiantly proclaimed himself “primarily an American, second, a Californian, third, a Los Angeles resident.” But before the rock god arrived in the City of Night, he resided in Beverley Hills—the Beverley Hills neighborhood of Alexandria, Va., that is. The son of two U.S. Navy employees, James Douglas Morrison spent 33 formative months on the west bank of the Potomac, living with his family on upper-crusty Woodland Avenue from December 1958 to the August following his graduation from George Washington High School, in 1961.

These are the dark years of Morrison’s journey to the end of the night, a period that has gone largely unexamined by the singer’s legions of hagiographers. But not Mark Opsasnick. Last week, the tireless chronicler of Washington-area rock ’n’ roll history posted news of his latest project on his Web site, http://www.capitolrock.com: a book titled The Lizard King Was Here: The Life and Times of Jim Morrison in Alexandria, Virginia.

Startled by the lack of information on Mr. Mojo Risin’s high-school years in the 15 or so available books on the man—and convinced that “something, some formative experience, occurred during his D.C. years that influenced his music and poetry”—Opsasnick began this past February to interview Morrison’s former classmates at George Washington and others who knew him during his stay in the Old Dominion. The 42-year-old Prince George’s County resident has, he says, uncovered “a lot of good stories—a wealth of previously unpublished information on the young Jim Morrison.”<br>
Opsasnick hopes to publish The Lizard King in late 2005. In the meantime, how about a little quiz? It’s simple: Just see if you can figure out which of the fantastic exploits below will actually be appearing in the book. The answer is on Page 149, but no breaking on through (to the other side) to peek beforehand. OK, wild child?

Morrison spent the summer of 1959 caddying at the Belle Haven Country Club, according to one retired groundskeeper, who related how “nobody could chase down a lost ball like that boy. He just had a nose for it.” That talent, however, didn’t please all of the club’s members. “One day a fellow come huffing into the clubhouse, all perturbed about losing his caddy to a lost ball,” the groundskeeper recalled. “I had to take the boy aside. I said, ‘Son, what are you doing out there? What exactly is it you’re trying to prove?’ And he said to me—I’ll never forget it—he said, ‘I want to hear a butterfly scream.’”

One George Washington High classmate remembered Morrison as “sexy and dangerous—a total rebel.” She recalled, for instance, an evening at the Alexandria Bowling Center when Morrison, who would later declare himself interested “in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos—especially activity that seems to have no meaning,” brazenly persisted in crossing the foul line, sometimes “by a foot or more.” The 15-year-old, she said, also “liked to shake the candy machines in the hope that something would fall down.” Finally, she described Morrison as “a sore loser”: “That’s when I realized the foul-line thing wasn’t rebelling—it was cheating.”<br>
A few acquaintances vividly recalled Aug. 16, 1960, as the day Morrison assumed the mantle of poète maudit of Northern Virginia. That evening, Morrison and some friends enjoyed the all-you-can-eat clams special at the now-defunct Beachcomber Restaurant. Afterward, something in young Jim snapped. Scaling a telephone pole, he commenced, in one former friend’s words, “to spout some lame beatnik shit about ‘great golden copulations.’” Rushed to a nearby hospital, Morrison—who declared to doctors that he “saw God on that telephone pole”—was diagnosed with a severe case of food poisoning. Nonetheless, the vision sent Morrison into a monthlong shellfish binge, during which he frequently bragged, “I eat more mollusk than a man ever seen.”<br>
In high school, Morrison’s mordant sense of humor was already on full display. One day when a teacher asked how her students “would solve the problem of infants starving around the world,” Morrison’s hand flew up. “Jim?” asked the teacher, an elderly and genteel Southerner. “Kill the children.” After a long and uncomfortable silence, the teacher wailed, “Jim! We can’t kill the little children!” Hilarity, naturally, ensued. And a fellow Spanish student remembered how, upon being asked to write a sentence on the board to be translated, a straight-faced Morrison scribbled this bit of pre–Lords and the New Creatures absurdism: “We all eat small dogs.”<br>
One George Washington classmate reminisced about one time when Morrison had to take a leak. The future rock star didn't feel up to a trip to the restroom, the classmate recalled, so he urinated in his locker.

Though his fellow students often marveled at the Rimbaud-reading Morrison’s intellectual capabilities, none of them thought he’d become a famous pop star. “I saw him with an acoustic guitar once,” said one. “But he wasn’t playing it—he was just kind of holding it.” In fact, the teenage Morrison didn’t even own a record player, and he seemed much more interested in becoming an actor than a singer. “He used to hang out at the Hollywood Grill,” recalled another old classmate. “He liked to pretend the Hollywood Grill was really in Hollywood. He’d sit there for hours in his dark sunglasses, trying to appear brooding. I think he was waiting to be discovered.” Ultimately, he was—by a truant officer. CP

The solution to "And He Walked on Down the Hall...to Spanish Class": The reminiscences about Jim Morrison's treating his locker like a men's room, messing about in Spanish class, and suggesting to kill off the world's starving infants are true. We invented the items about caddying, bowling, eating seafood, and the Hollywood Grill (except for the bit about the record player, which is true).
Washington City Paper
By Michael Little, June 18, 2004

[ensenada]

some good info there, cheers!

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

This is interesting....The Judge in the Terri Schiavo Case which has been in the news recently was one of those mentioned in Doors books who roomed with Morrison and eventually threw him out....

Quiet judge persists in Schiavo maelstrom
Circuit Judge George Greer, who is regularly reviled and travels with security, is not the man his critics might suspect.

CLEARWATER - Some of the hundreds of e-mails and letters he gets call him a "murderer."

"Are you related to (Josef) Mengele, or just a student?" one man wrote, referring to the ruthless Nazi doctor.

An indignant woman who believed his decisions weren't Christian once called and asked if he thought he was going to heaven.

Deputies who fear for his safety escort him to and from work.

That's life these days for Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge George W. Greer, who has ruled that Terri Schiavo's feeding tube could be removed, allowing her to die. Greer sits at the epicenter of the international debate over Schiavo's life, a judge who answers critics with the only rebuttal allowed by rules of judicial conduct:

Silence.

"The really difficult part of this job," Greer said, "is that you can't defend yourself."

The world knows so much about Schiavo's life, but little about the 63-year-old Greer.

A balding man whose voice has no trace of his native Brooklyn, he travels to unwind and jogs to stay fit. He has run two marathons, though the last was 20 years ago. Friends say his eyesight is awful. It's so bad, in fact, that he doesn't drive.

And Greer, vilified by many religious protesters, is a church regular. He also is a conservative Republican in a state whose conservative Republican governor tried to overturn one of Greer's orders.

"George is the religious right," said lawyer David Kurland, a longtime friend.

Friends say Greer's intellect is perfectly formed to withstand the very tempest he now faces. Always calm, not prone to mood swings or flares of temper, unerringly polite, he is not easily ruffled, they say.

But the criticisms sting, friends say. His relationship with his church, for example, has changed.

"He's been through a lot of storms in his life," said Mary Repper, a political consultant and friend. "This is just another one. George takes everything in stride."

Just don't ask Greer about his college housemate Jim Morrison, the legendary front man of the rock 'n' roll group the Doors.

Nobody took Morrison in stride, not even Greer.


* * *

When Greer came into adulthood in the 1960s, he was about as counterculture as Barry Goldwater, the presidential candidate he voted for in 1964. One of Greer's favorite bands is the Bee Gees.

His biggest brush then with nonconformity: being cited for underage drinking about the time he entered FSU and hunting without a license in 1959.

Greer, whose family moved to Dunedin when he was 4, spent 21/2 years at St. Petersburg Junior College before entering Florida State University in 1962 as a 20-year-old. He majored in marketing.

He moved to a house about a mile from the FSU campus with a friend and some students he didn't know. Greer described the house this way: "Jim Morrison and five normal people."

One Halloween, Greer recalled, Morrison greeted children out trick-or-treating at the front door completely naked. Morrison had lighter fluid in his mouth. He spit it out, touching a match to the fluid to create a roaring flame.

"The poor little kids ran screaming to their parents," Greer said.

The Morrison biography, No One Here Gets Out Alive by Jerry Hopkins and Daniel Sugerman, provides a description Greer won't contradict.

Morrison "drank their beers, ate their food, and wore their clothes without asking," the book said of Morrison's relationship with his housemates.

"He kept careful records of all his actions, and their reactions, writing in his journals as if he were an anthropologist and his housemates were his subjects. In less than three months' time, Jim had the household frantic. Everyone was living in a constant state of anxiety over what was going to happen next.

"It all blew up one night in December ... when Jim was playing Elvis too loud."

After one semester, the housemates asked Morrison to leave. He transferred to UCLA in California, where he found fame.

"He was a bright guy," Greer said. "He liked his tequila. All of us at one time or another had him on the floor with our fists raised."

Housemate Chris Kallivokas, now a Washington financial consultant, said Greer was the steady influence in a crazy house.

"George was stable, mature and structured," Kallivokas said. "He was an organized guy with a sort of balanced personality, very even-headed, not controversial, very solid. He went to class every day."


* * *

After graduating from FSU and earning a law degree from the University of Florida, Greer settled into a Clearwater practice, specializing in zoning and land use issues. He married, had twin boys, and divorced in the mid 1970s.

In 1984, he ran for Pinellas County Commission, running against the board's only Democrat. Greer won a narrow victory, campaigning on his opposition to building a Pinellas sports stadium that would eventually be built and is today Tropicana Field.

Greer, who would serve as commission chairman, won a second term to the commission unopposed, and looks back fondly to those political days.

"I think it prepared me to decide issues on their merits, and not on personalities," he said.

Greer looked to a judgeship as the pinnacle of a lawyer's career, and ran for an open seat. He won it, unopposed, in 1992.

By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE, St Petersburg Times, March 6, 2005

Full Story....
www.sptimes.com/2005/03/06/Tampabay/Quiet_judge_persists_.shtml