Michael McCracken Memorial

McCracken
Does anybody know what happened to Michael McCracken?
YES !
Read this page.
McCracken1

From: StonyJ@aol.com
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 10:00:24 EST
To: liberty@woodstocknation.org

Not sure if this is the correct mail address for Daniel..........but, if it
is, I wanted to see if he knew my father, Michael McCracken. He lived in the loft at 73 Commercial with Michael Bowen and Arthur Monroe in San Franscisco.

Michael McCracken Jr.

Hi Michael,
Sure I knew your father.
We were not close but I had a real love for him.I lived with one of his ex "old ladies" Louise Lundy in 1964. He used to come over often and roar around the pad. He was a powerful artist distracted by many spirits.
If you have any photos of him or any examples of his art work or writings I would be glad to publish them for you on his own memorial page.
Also If you wish to share your own story of being the child of a beatnik artist and where you are now that would be of interest to many people.
I have waited many years to see how our children would turn out. Some of the story is tragic, some comedy and some even a bit divine.
Just rembering Michael gives me glad and sad feelings, but mostly glad because I know that he was part of God's perfect plan in my life.

Love and best regards,

Daniel Eggink

From: StonyJ@aol.com
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 19:31:58 EST
To: woodstoc@catskill.net

Thanks for the quick response!

Actually, I knew almost nothing about my father until 3 months ago! All I knew was he was a painter, he was from the United Kingdom, and his name was Michael McCracken!

Over Labor Day weekend, I was in Big Sur for my cousins' wedding. The next day, I was sitting in Detchuns Inn having breaakfast with my grandmother and my wife, and my grandmother said " This place should be very special in your heart". I asked "why?". She told me that my mother had spent a lot of time there (her name was Carole Joseph McCracken, by the way). She went on to tell me about Haight and North Beach.

Arriving back in Chicago, I started looking up Haight Ashbury web sites, as I had never heard of it before. I happened to plug in my fathers name, and I noticed a link that had both my fathers name AND Haight! It was, of course, Michael Bowens "HEY GRINGO", where he casually had mentioned my father's name in a reference to his friends. I wrote to him and asked if he had known my father or had known someone who had.

Within three hours, Michael Bowen had written back (from Italy) and said "Not only did I know him, he was my best friend! We (Arthur Monroe, also) have been looking for you for over THIRTY years, and had pledged to watch over you if anything ever happened to your mother and/or father". My mother died of a heroin overdose in a Mexican hotel in Nov '66. I was then taken back to Chicago by my mother's parents and soon adopted by a great family. No one had ever talked about '66 in my family until the last few years.

Since making contact, Arthur Monroe and Michael Bowen have spent literally HOURS on the phone telling me stories of both my father and mother. Four of my father's paintings are in the (Dr. Reidar) Wennesland Collection in Norway with Bowens & Monroes pieces. I just ordered a book from the Norwegian Academic Press on the collection, and look forward to seeing the paintings myself.

Besides Bowen & Monroe, I've spoken to Jerry Kamstra, whose book I ordered and read twice (The Frisco Kid). He wrote many stories about exploits with my father (Arthur told me to take those stories with many grains of salt, as his artistic license and imaginative mind created much embellishment!) I also spoke with a gentlemen by the name of Roberto Ayalla (spelling?). He had some great memories of my mother especially.

Bowen, Monroe, and I are trying to find out what happened to my father. They remember hearing the rumors that he had died, having been taken from a New York hospital (Payne Whitney) back to England. They now question whether or not that really happened, and that he might still be alive. In any case, we are trying to track down his brother (no one remembers his name) or his parents, who at some time lived in Florida. We were able to get a copy of my parents Marriage Certificate from San Mateo last week, which showed that his parents names were Phyllis and Alex McCracken. I'd really appreciate some help on this if you have any ideas.

I have many more stories, but I'm sure I've taken up too much space already. Love to talk to you more and hear some fond rememberances.

ATB (all the best)

From: StonyJ@aol.com
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 13:00:20 EST
To: liberty@woodstocknation.org
Subject: Michael McCracken

Daniel-
Thanks so much for the web page. I've had a couple of responses from it so far (one was from Allen Cohen).

Wanted to update you......Michael Bowen found a letter from my father to him in 1967, It was from a St. Lukes Woodside Hospital in London, where he was a So now we are applying to the Salvation Armys Family Tracing Service.....I'll let you know what happens!

Michael McCracken Jr.

Good hunting Michael.

Love is making a way for you. We are all learning how to use our tools. Welcome to the Hotel CALIFORNIA, room 777, Woodstock Nation. 99/00

The place is "THE PLACE" on San Franciscos, Grant avenue featuring beatnik poet, DAN PROPER reciting his Blabber Mouth Night hit : "THE FINAL HOUR"

y2k is here to stay. Olay!

The San Francisco Oracle can be found in the Artist Cemetery,
Woodstock, New York.
Daniel Eggink

From: StonyJ@aol.com
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 01:19:31 EST
To: liberty@woodstocknation.org

Search Yields results......

This is a copy of an e-mail that I received today from a London attorney:

>From Michael Wolfers
66 Roupell Street
London SE1 8SS
England

1 February 1999

Hi again

I do now have ANSWERS for you instead of questions, as I have been
personally and checked out the General Register Office. I am afraid it
is sad news, since it looks as if your father died young. You clearly
want documentary support for the information and I find that ordering
from overseas is quite cumbersome. I quote from the regulation:
"Payment from abroad should be by international money order, cheque or
draft (payable in London) in favour of Office for National Statistics
and should always be expressed in sterling." Each certificate would
cost you about fifteen pounds sterling . I think that could be a
hassle for you and would slow down the inquiry you make.

Accordingly I have ordered and paid for copies to be made (these are
legally valid documents) since they are dealt with not in London but
in Merseyside in the north of England. If you could mail me a check
for fifty US dollars (it can be an ordinary US bank check, as I have a
tiny dollar savings account I use for buying books) that would cover
the certificates, my fares and postage. I would snail mail you a birth
and death certificate at the address you have given me. Certificates
carry detail about addresses and persons that may also give you leads
to the history of events - as well as your original request in respect
of Saint Luke's.

Meanwhile here is the information I have from the indexes.
BIRTH
McCracken Michael W, mother's maiden name Weston, registered West Ham
London third quarter of 1940 (covering months July to September)

DEATH
McCracken Michael W, aged 27, registered Islington, London, second
quarter of 1968 (covering months April to June).

I have ordered a full detailed copy of each of these events and this
will show street addresses and occupations of persons and cause of
death etc.

I am hesitant to intrude on your privacy or jump to conclusions, but
as a Londoner I can say something about Saint Luke's Woodside in the
period of the 1960s and 1970s. It was a north London hospital that
served patients on a short term basis who were suffering from forms of
mental illness - that might include a temporary depression etc. From
friends with medical skills I understand that it was rather "old
fashioned" as it tended to rely on physical medicine - including
electric shock treatment - rather than on psychiatric counselling that
many hospitals were already preferring even in the 1960s and 1970s.

It is unlikely that I shall have the *official* register information
until the end of the week, but will keep you informed.

I am sorry to be the bearer of sad tidings.

Michael Wolfers

From: StonyJ@aol.com
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 00:21:02 EST
To: liberty@woodstocknation.org

At least I now know

Part of me is sad, yet part relieved that he is not sitting in some hospital
thousands of miles away from me, thinking that no one cares, no one remembers.
I have enjoyed the past four months learning, from the many people that knew him, what kind of man he was and, potentially, what kind of man he would have been. I want to thank YOU for the part YOU played in my search. Whether it was providing some direction or just allowing me to share the new info that I had discovered, you made the difference and fueled my desire to keep going. Thanks for being a part of a search that has apparently ended with a result that was assumed, yet not wanted. I am still, with the documents that are en route, going to pursue my fathers relatives, but the focus of my search is now less
intense, as the urgency has been satisfied by knowing that my Michael
McCracken is no longer alive.......

Please post the e-mail that I sent to you from Michael Wolfers, and then this e-mail.......I have many people that have been checking the page for updates. Then you can remove the whole thing in 30 days.

You have been great through this whole thing, and I will never forget you for that.

Michael

Postscript from Eggink

Link to Meet Michael McCracken
McCracken was a big guy and brave.
He died at 28 but to me he is ageless.
His personality did effect my life.
I will always love him.
egg

Daniel Eggink

UPDATE-2003

Michael's Passport obtained from newly found
Peter McCracken

passport1

PETER MCCRACKEN & FAMILY

MORE TO COME AFTER THE JULY 2003 MEETING IN MIAMI, INCLUDING AN ARTICLE IN THE MIAMI HERALD
Miami1
L-R: Michael McCracken Jr (StonyJ@aol.com), Peter McCracken, Alexander McCracken, Alex McCracken Jr

- Living & Arts

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted on Sat, Jul. 19, 2003.

Quest fills in the blanks; he finds kin, info on parents

BY ANA VECIANA SUAREZ
aveciana@herald.com

PUZZLE SOLVED: Michael Rothenberg sits in his Chicago office with a photo of his dad that he sent out on the Web hoping to find details about his father's life and death. STACIA TIMONERE/ FOR THE HERALD
By all accounts, Michael Rothenberg has had a fulfilling life. A finance manager at an auto dealership in Chicago, he has been married to the same woman, Lisa, for 14 years. His two daughters are healthy. And his childhood was as idyllic as any.

But like so many children who've been adopted, a haunting curiosity about his biological parents lingered. What were they like?

He knew his biological mother's family and saw them often. In fact, his adoptive parents were good friends of his biological grandparents on his mother's side. But he knew nothing about his birth father.

''I was told both my parents had died in a car accident and because I knew my mother's family and we kept in touch, she wasn't a mystery,'' says Rothenberg, 40. ``My father, though, was a blind alley.''

Rothenberg didn't pursue that interest, however, until 1998, when a chance comment by his grandmother after a cousin's wedding grabbed his attention. Having breakfast in a country inn in Big Sur with his biological mother's family, his grandmother turned to him and said, ``This place should be special for you. Your mother was here a lot with her friends.''

And thus Rothenberg launched a quest that, thanks to the Internet, has connected him with his birth father's older brother in Miami, his birth father's half-brother in London, a paternal cousin in California -- and the true story of how his birth parents lived and died.

Rothenberg will meet his biological father's clan at his uncle Alex McCracken's Northeast Miami-Dade apartment Sunday. His other uncle, Peter, will be there from London, as well as Alex's son from California, Alex Jr. Their plans? Get to know each other and comb through the hundreds of family pictures McCracken owns, including a self-portrait Rothenberg's birth father, Michael McCracken, painted in high school.

TWISTS AND TURNS

The story of Rothenberg's search has enough twists and turns to fill a John Grisham novel. For instance, after Rothenberg found out from a friend of his parents' that his birth father had a brother, he called 30 Alex McCrackens around the country and sent out over 200 e-mails. He had almost given up when, on June 10, Peter McCracken e-mailed him from London.

Turns out Peter was his biological father's younger half-brother, and Peter, too, was searching for an older brother. Later, Rothenberg located Alex McCracken at the Miami VA Hospital, and the conversation that followed has changed the lives of all three men. For Alex McCracken, especially, it has been a new lease on life.

McCracken, 64, is a retired businessman who owned a car lot on Northwest 36th Street. Along with his late brother (Rothenberg's birth father,) he attended Miami Beach High in the '50s, but then moved away and returned to Miami in 1972. He is in ill health now, yet the discovery of a nephew and a half-brother has improved his spirits considerably.

``It's not like the dividing of the Red Sea, but to me it's tantamount to that. Three weeks ago I was calling for a priest. And now . . .. ''

What's more, McCracken didn't even know he had a younger half-brother. Originally from the United Kingdom, McCracken last saw his father in 1949, when the family split and his mother brought her two sons to America.

PART OF THE STORY

But the reunion is only part of the story. Along the way Rothenberg also unearthed some telling details about his birth parents, Michael McCracken and Carole Joseph, tidbits that have helped him understand the person he is.

Carole Joseph was a jazz singer in North Beach, Calif., a familiar figure in the Haight-Ashbury scene of the 1960s. Michael McCracken was a painter who survived by working at odd jobs. They fell in love and married in 1962, splitting up a year after Rothenberg was born.

While searching for his family, Rothenberg met his parents' friends, Arthur Monroe, still in California, and Michael Bowen, e-mailing from Italy. They told him Carole Joseph had died of a heroin overdose in a hotel in Tijuana when her son was 3 ½ years old. Her parents brought him back to Chicago, where he was adopted by Herbert and Charlotte Rothenberg, family friends who lived in the same building as the grandparents. (Herbert died in September 2001, but Charlotte still lives in Skokie, Ill.)

No one was sure what had happened to Michael McCracken, however, until Rothenberg discovered he had committed suicide at 27. His parents' lifestyle surprised Rothenberg.

''I watch the Fox News Channel and I'm a conservative Republican,'' he quips.

At the same time, he also recognizes that, though not well managed, his biological parents were surprisingly talented. Four of his father's paintings are included in the Wennesland Collection in Norway and his mother sang with Janis Joplin.

''It's like looking through a window into a room in another era,'' Rothenberg says, ``but I don't necessarily want to go into that room.''

The search has made him grateful in many ways, too. He is thankful his grandparents, who had never approved of their daughter's choices, ''had the insight to remove me from that whole California scene'' and thankful that his adoptive parents brought him up in a safe haven. And, of course, he is happy to have a history.

''I feel a sense of completion,'' he adds. ``I can fill in the pieces to show my daughters now.''

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