The media was not allowed to attend Saturday Night's memorial to Hunter Thompson at the Hotel Jerome in Aspen. One reporter "was "there as a continuation of Hunter's legacy," and Sunday, the family agreed to allow him to write about it.

The event was in the Jerome Ballroom, where people mingled and shared memories of Hunter. For the "ceremony," many read a passage or two from a work by Hunter, and recounted a Hunter moment. Here's a sample:

Reading aloud from Hunter Thompson works was a kitchen mainstay. And Saturday night was no exception, replete with the crowd warning people, as Thompson did, "slower, slower."

Actor, neighbor and friend Don Johnson recounted how Thompson would lie down with Johnson's horse when it was sick. Johnson did not quite know what to make of that....A gravelly voiced Johnson read a Thompson passage about electricity - a lazy, actually neutral force - that could turn quickly and punch someone in the gut with one wrong move. Just like when Johnson asked Thompson, What is the sound of one hand clapping? Thompson slapped him across the face.

About 100 of Hunter Thompson's close friends will be gathering for a private memorial today at a secret location in Aspen. Among those attending: Actors Jack Nicholson, Sean Penn and Johnny Depp; Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner; and Ralph Steadman. And a lot of lawyers, whom I won't name.

Simultaneous tributes will be held around the world:

Web postings show that fans from Prague to Brisbane are planning gatherings to coincide with the private commemoration. The gatherings are planned to include readings of his works, screenings of movies about Thompson and drinking the whiskey Thompson favored. "A lot of people want to reach out and show their admiration for Hunter," said one his attorneys, George Tobia of Boston. "There are a lot of ad hoc tributes going on."

This one is a must read, and its by a guy who never even met Hunter, Fred Reed, author of Nekkid in Austin: Drop Your Inner Child Down a Well. (I'm not making that up.)

For those of you who missed that decade (or even the next one), the last paragraph should still bring it home for you:

Then it was over. Everybody went into I-banking or something equally odious. We gave up drugs as boring.

You can see why he ate his gun. Everything he hated has returned. Nixon is back in the White House, Rumsnamara risen from the dead, bombs falling on other peoples’ suburbs. The Pentagon is lying again and democracy stalks yet another helpless country. This time the young are already dead and there will be no joyous anarchy. The press, housebroken, pees where it is told. But he gave it a hell of a try.

The bio on Fred Reed's book page reads:

Fred Reed is a Marine combat veteran, police reporter, amateur biochemist, former long-haul hitchhiker, and part-time sociopath living in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from the Yankee Capital.

Well done, Fred. [hat tip to "fat city" Don, who's gone fishing.]

• Crooks and Liars has a 7 minute video of Hunter being interviewed by Tim Russert

• Hunter's widow, Anita Thompson, describes their last day together

• Hunter's Legacy's in the Works

• Former Rolling Stone writer Lucian Truscott IV recalls his early days with Hunter

• The Nation republishes a 1965 article by Hunter, The Motorcycle Gangs: Losers and Outsiders, that later became his Hells Angels book

• The Hunter S. Thompson Foundation: "...dedicated to helping people in the prison system ``who don't belong there.''

Hunter Thompson's wife Anita says she was on the phone with Hunter when he killed himself. In the Aspen Daily News, she provides an account of the Good Doctor's final days and of her feelings about his suicide:

At first I was very angry. He was my best friend, my lover, my partner, and my teacher," she said. "But I know he is much more powerful and alive now than ever before. He is in all of our hearts. His death was a triumph of his own human spirit because this is what he wanted. He lived and died like a champion."

As to the final phone call:

Hunter Thompson's son and daughter-in-law are interviewed in today's Rocky Mountain News. It's long, so here's a recap:

Hunter S. Thompson died Sunday as he planned: surrounded by his family, at a high point in his life, and with a single, courageous and fatal gunshot wound to the head, his son says. His son and daughter-in-law could not be sadder. And they could not be prouder. ...The couple chose to speak out for the first time since Thompson's suicide because they believe the act has been misunderstood. "Some people said, 'How could he do this?'

The Aspen Daily News reports,

A commemoration for [Hunter]Thompson's close friends and family has been scheduled on March 5 from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Belly Up nightclub in Aspen, a.k.a. Fat City - the name The Good Doctor initially prescribed to owner Michael Goldberg.

A family spokesman said, "You know who you are" if you should attend.

If that's not you (it's not us either), you will get another chance this summer when "a public celebration of Thompson's life" is planned.

This is great, but it might be one of those "only in Aspen" things:

The Pitkin County coroner confirmed yesterday that author and counterculture icon Hunter S. Thompson died from an intentional, self-inflicted gunshot wound. Coroner Steven Ayers said Thompson died instantly. The sheriff's office told The Associated Press the weapon was a .45-caliber handgun.

Ayers has not ordered a toxicology report to reveal whether there were drugs or alcohol in Thompson's body at the time of death. "I'm not ordering a toxicology report in this case because it was incidental to the cause of death. It doesn't matter if there were drugs in his system; it had nothing to do with the manner of his death," Ayers said.

Translation: It was nobody's business but his own.

We wrote the other day that Hunter Thompson, among other things, was a mensch. It was Hunter that brought these folks to Denver, to fight an injustice to Lisl Auman, serving a life sentence for a murder that occurred after she was in police custody.

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Warren Zevon
enlarge (he opened the rally with "Lawyers, Guns and Money")

Hunter Thompson's post-death wishes were that he be cremated, and that his ashes then be blown out of a cannon across his ranch. His entertainment lawyer from Boston, George Tobia, Jr, says that will be done. Tobia also provides this description of Hunter's death:

In a phone interview yesterday, Tobia said only in retrospect does it makes sense that the 67-year-old author sat in his kitchen Sunday afternoon, stuck a .45-caliber handgun in his mouth, and killed himself while his wife listened on the phone and his son and daughter-in-law were in another room of his house. His wife had no idea what had happened until she returned home later.

The Denver Post says Hunter's son Juan Thompson provided this account to investigators:

In July, 1990, Hunter Thompson wrote this (excerpted) letter of appreciation to Keith Stroup, former executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, for inclusion in the magazine's publication, The Champion. It also appears on page 310, “Songs of the Doomed, More Notes on the Death of the American Dream, Gonzo Papers Vol. 3” (1990) by Summit Books.

Woody Creek, July 1990:

Ho-ho. These lame cheapjack bullies had reckoned without the Long Riders from NACDL, who came over the horizon on both flanks and swept down on them like Jeb Stuart at the first Battle of Bull Run, and I will never forget the feeling of wild happiness and raw courage I felt when I saw them coming and knew that I finally had not just the troops, but Generals . . . and, Mother of Babbling Christ, I even had credit.

The reminiscences and flashbacks for Hunter Thompson are flying around the web. Here are some sites, some articles, and some clips:

• HST on Conan O'Brian

Conan: "You keep barrels of GUNPOWDER in your basement? What on earth for?"

HST: "Well, uh, em, to make bombs of course."

Conan: "You make bombs???"

HST (startled, looks around): "BOMBS??!! WHERE ??"

Aspen Daily News: Caption to the photo of Hunter at an anti-war rally at Aspen's Paepcke Park in 2003:

He told the crowd, "This president has destroyed the country, the economy, the relationship with the rest of the world. He's a monster in the White House. He should resign."

More:

• Excellent tribute page with lengthy quotes from Hunter's writing at Marc Cooper's place.

• San Antonio/Aspen Lawyer Gerry Goldstein:

Hunter was not only a national treasure, but the conscience of this little village," said Gerry Goldstein, a prominent Aspen attorney who is a dear friend of the Thompson family. "He kept us all honest. It didn't matter who you were, whether you were his friend or someone he didn't even know. He didn't mind grading your paper. He was righteous. He was part of a literary nobility."

• Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom has this great photo: