It's like in the science of death, the Tibetans. But, you know, the interesting thing is when the Tibetans, when somebody dies, they just chop them up and put them on top of the mountain for the buzzards. I mean, that's pretty interesting. Well, it's actually a very practical thing, as these practices normally are, simply because, you know, Also, you know, when I do a funeral ceremony, you know, the casket is in there, and the person's lying in the casket, and then the family comes in, and they look at that, and they go, you know, and they're all crying, and they're, you know, emotional, and I just go around and comfort everybody, you know? But I don't have the feeling they do. Yeah, no. But I do have the empathy for them.

[01:08]

Yeah, sure. How do you comfort at that point? What do you... Well, you know, I just put my arms around them. Hugs them, hugs them, yeah. It's a good thing. And nothing but you say things to, or... Yeah, I say things, whatever is appropriate. Whatever seems to be appropriate at the moment, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't, myself, start gushing. Sometimes, you know, the tears will up, you know. Yeah. When I, you know... But I don't linger with it. Yeah. And I feel that they're gone. I'm still here. I have to go about my business. And they're going about their business, you know? Right. They are. I don't want to interfere with that. We don't see that business. We don't. No. But it doesn't mean that it isn't going on. The door is closed in there. I don't worry about them. So that's what I don't worry about, and that comes right back to that deep confidence and trust again, to that face. I think that's very true. It seems very much connected with that.

[02:08]

Yeah. And you remember Maharshi, of course, you know, when he was dying and a woman was beating her head against the pillar in grief and he said, well, she think it is a coconut. And people thought that was terribly heartless. But then his close people said to him, and they were absolutely distraught, of course, as one can imagine. I mean, here's this absolutely wonderful, very powerful teacher leaving you. And so that's obviously a bit of a distressing situation. And they asked him, You know, how can you leave us? Where do you go? You know, you're... He said, leaving? How could I... How could I go anywhere? I'm not going anywhere. So that also came away, kind of. That's all there together, always. I remember when Suzuki was dying. Yeah. And... He died.

[03:10]

And then all of the disciples went up into his room. And everybody was crying, you know. Uh, we cried for a little while. Including you? Huh? Including you? You cried? Yeah. Yeah, including me. Yeah, so you did feel emotional at the time. Yeah, it was very emotional. Yeah. And we all were crying. Mm-hmm. But, um, then we stopped. You know? And we carried him downstairs. Put him in the, in the... ...hurse, or ambulance, or whatever it was. Took him away. Mm-hmm. To be cremated? Well, I mean, to go into a state in the mausoleum, in the funeral home. He was there for about five days or something. But people did go sit with him. But, you know, we cried. We had our cry, you know?

[04:15]

And then we didn't cry anymore. So I don't say that I don't cry, and I don't feel that loss, you know. But it doesn't continue, you know, it's not a... Is Suzuki Roshi the closest person to you in a way that has died? Would you say that? Well, my parents died, of course. But I mean, you know, your parents died, obviously, but I mean... But I have to say, when my father died, none of us cried. Because you weren't that close to him, in a way. Well, we were close, but... I don't think there's a lot of grief. Well, if you don't have anguish about death, we've established that. There's no sense that something terrible has happened to the person.

[05:19]

Not one at all. There's no anguish about, you know, that they're in a bad state or anything like that. So there's no anguish about death. So then all that you could possibly feel would be personal emotion. And personal emotion usually has to do with a sense of abandonment, a sense of loss, a sense of missing. And if you're not close with, you weren't so close with your father, then it doesn't much no but it also would say all this I mean like intellectually or something I mean, I don't have any anguish at all about death, or I don't think of anything. In fact, I often feel a lot of relief for people that they have passed into this other state, and glory hallelujah, actually. But I feel tremendous personal attachment to them. I feel abandoned, and I miss them, and everything. So I can feel a real difference between, you just don't feel those kinds of personalistic emotions. Where do you fit on that kind of spectrum?

[06:20]

Very much the same. When you realize that a person close to you is dying, You know, like with Chuck last year, an old neighbor and a good friend up there. I mean, at times you're overwhelmed by emotion. That's right. At times it's overwhelming. It's overwhelming and you just, you know, and then you cry, you have your cry, kind of as you put it, and then it's done and then... And then you come back to your practice, or actually to your insight, which is kind of what you were saying. There isn't any problem here. I kind of go on, and then when I think about the person, I think about whatever was nice about our relationship. But you think in a positive way. It doesn't cause pain in your heart. It causes that you want more of it.

[07:21]

I think that's what gets people's hearts out. We creed types want more of a good thing. I'm a creed type, but I don't think... But it doesn't help. It doesn't... It doesn't manifest that way? No. I mean, with Suzuki Roshi, he was probably the person that was the closest person in my life. Yeah. I did feel that grief, you know, and crying. But I don't know what it was, you know. It was like we were all kind of, everybody was crying, kind of crying together, you know. But it was a wonderful feeling, you know. In a way. And then I went downstairs, I remember. And I just feel his presence everywhere. And I just started polishing, or wiping off some dust off of the leaves of a plant, you know. And I just felt that he was there, you know. He was there in a plant. In a plant, yeah.

[08:23]

So I just felt he was everywhere, you know. And that was kind of a wonderful feeling. Yes. And then there's all of his legacy that was left, you know. So I always felt that I never stopped studying with him. And even today, you know, like when I was editing the Sando Kai lectures, you know, had heard them. I mean, I was there with him when he was giving them. And then editing them, you know. Spending all that years editing them. And now talking about them, you know. And reading them and talking about them. It keeps revealing more and more things, you know. So, I just feel I'm always studying with him. Still, you know. Right, so it's not past tense, like you had studied with him, you are studying with him. I'm continually studying with him. about it, the dying, reminds me of Tozan, when Tozan was dying, and all his disciples were there, you know, and they started crying, you know, and moaning, and all this, and they thought he was dead.

[09:40]

And then he sat up, and he says, you foolish guys, what are you doing? What I'm going to do is ask you to have a stupidity rectifying meal. Really, I'd love that. That's great. Stupidity rectifying. So five days from now, I want you to make this great banquet. before I go. So they did, and they made this great banquet, and then after the banquet, he sat up, or whatever he did, and passed out. That's a lovely story. That's a good one. A stupidity rectifying meal. I'd love to have one of those.

[10:42]

I'd like that. It's very good. You're so fun, Fraser. How long had you been studying Maharshi? Let's see, probably 30 years at this point. And as you say, always, you know, very... Oh, yeah, you can just keep standing. It's not past tense at all. It's very much present. But, yeah, my introduction to Buddhism was really through the death of our second child. And then Maharishi came along, sort of right at the same time. And she died very suddenly of spinal meningitis when she was almost two. This is the most difficult thing, is to lose a child.

[11:43]

Oh, yeah. It totally knocks the hell out of you, of course. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And I had just been sort of introduced to the Tibetan book of the Great Liberation, actually, and in the old Evans-Wentz translation. Yeah, I read it. Yeah. And had started to sort of page through that, but in a somewhat desultory kind of fashion, because I was very anti-clerical and very anti-Christian, and sick of it all, and all this bullshit, all this, you know, opium for the people. But then reading that and thinking, oh, this makes an enormous amount of sense. I mean, this makes more sense. And then she died. And then the amazing thing is that she came back to, in dreams and in vision for about a year, year and a half after she died, teaching Buddhism in a way. What is an interesting combination of Buddhism and Advaita, if you want to try to find Advaita, if you want to put it that way.

[12:52]

So that really was the introduction. And Maharshi came along at the same time. Yeah. And then also appeared in Dreams. So, and totally unexpected. I mean, I was an absolutely Western, rational, atheistic sort of fuck-off, you know. I'm still an atheist, but... There's no reason to, not to be, but... of Maharshi that impressed you and continue to impress you? Well, obviously it's the basic one, it's the inquiry. Who am I? Yeah, that's right. And that, you know, for instance, a wonderful story that kind of encapsulates it all, you know, at the time that he was becoming, beginning to be known in the West through the writings of Paul Brunton, Search and Secret India, and so on. And this American, this is at the same time that the talks are being recorded, late 30s.

[14:01]

And you remember those, of course, initially in three volumes. But anyway, this American appears at the ashram in Tiruvannamalai and asks and says, Maharshi, I need to know who is God. It's very important to me. And Maharshi says, don't worry about God. You think of God as someone other than yourself and far away. Find out what is close. Find out what's immediate. Find out who you are. And after you've found that out and you still have any questions about God, let's talk again. I really like that. It's very direct. So he didn't deny anything. He just simply brought everything back to here. Insisted on that. That's the practice, yeah. Well, when I was inspired by Buber and the Hasidic tales, I also felt that I wanted to connect with Judaism.

[15:10]

So I did that, and I found this German rabbi, and I started going to his synagogue. But I just felt that I was not connected. I'd been out of the doorway, and like Alice in Wonderland, I couldn't get back in the doorway through the door into the house. Because, well, I'd been brought up you know, people from all kinds of cultures and religions, you know. And although I was... Judaism was my heritage, I had never really inherited it. Sounds like it, yeah. Yeah. And I couldn't... There was something about the exclusivity. It was more of a... I mean, great spiritual thing, but it was tribe to tribal.

[16:15]

And not really universal enough. And did you and your family feel excluded from that? Did you feel excluded from that tribe yourself? Yeah. I felt that in order for me to be part of the tribe, I would have to I had to conform too much to, not just Judaism, but to the cultural norms. I mean, I was counter-cultured to the... Really? Absolutely. I see. That's interesting to know. Yeah. But I did give in to it a bit, and I thought, well, it's okay. I respect just plain Judaism. It doesn't have to be Hasidic. So I decided that just plain Judaism was okay, but I really couldn't do it because it wasn't okay.

[17:24]

You tried, but you couldn't. I gave it a shot. You gave it a shot, but you couldn't follow through. I gave it a shot, but I couldn't follow through. Then I was reading Taoism and some Buddhism. Then one day my friend said, I'd heard about the Zen Center, but it was interesting, but it was a little distant. So one day my friend took me there in the morning. We'd been smoking pot, as a matter of fact, all night. And so in the morning we went up, walked up Fillmore Street, down Bush Street to the Zen Center. So that was my first introduction in the 60s, 64. But I always felt that Suzuki Roshi was the Hasidic teacher I was looking for and never could find.

[18:29]

And how was that? He embodied all those characteristics that we're talking about. Which ones? What were they? You have to name them. Bringing spirituality down to earth. for one thing, and a certain kind of humility and simplicity and making, allowing the spirituality, the spiritual aspect to manifest in all of our daily activity.

[19:32]

Without being spiritual. To manifest spirituality without being spiritual. The compassionate aspect. I mean, I just see so many things within the Hasidic tales, you know, that apply to him. Some of the qualities of his masters very much applied to him. and the ability to turn everything around to the person. When there's a question or a problem, to return it to the person. Not to get caught in ideas and psychology or whatever.

[20:39]

Constructs of one kind or another. Yeah, no constructs. Simply to return it to the person. and let them deal with it, but give them a new way to actually create a koan out of the questions. Yeah. Sukharshi had that ability to give a person a koan out of their own question, to make a koan out of their own question. without the person even realizing it. Interesting. That is interesting. Give me an example. This happened with you, right? Yeah, it happened with me. I'd come to him with a problem and then he would not try to take my problem away but he would give me another problem or he'd give me something, some way to look at it without give me another way to look at it."

[21:46]

And then he'd say, I'm sorry, you know, he'd chuckle. You came to me with this problem and I've just given you another problem. I'm sorry. Yeah. Did he turn a particular question of yours into a koan for you? Well, he always did that, but without saying this is a koan for You do it all the time. Yeah, yeah. You do all the time. I see, okay, as a sort of a, yeah. Is there one you would share? Well, I'm trying to think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, maybe for next time. I mean, this is a good thing to, you know, to remember and say, well, maybe something will come up in your mind between now and then. And sometimes he'd just walk up to me and say something, you know, which was a significant thing without me asking him about it. You see, just being alive is enough. And then, for no reason, and just turning around and walking away. Yeah, she said that to you once, that just being alive is enough.

[22:49]

I love that. That's great. Yeah, that's great. It is. Yeah. It could almost be the title of this book. Just being alive is enough. That's one of our titles now. I was saying that to the guy in the airplane seat next to me yesterday. We were admiring the clouds and I said, isn't it wonderful? Isn't it fantastic? Just being alive is such a great thing. And then I drove out this morning and there was a truck ahead of me with a bumper sticker on it saying, business is great, people are terrific, life is wonderful. That was kind of like a confirmation. And it was probably slightly sarcastic too, but at the same time, it's true. Yeah. I'd say something like, what is power? He said, don't use it. Oh, there's a good one.

[23:51]

That's lovely. So... What would you say, what is the essence of your practice at this point? That's a good... After many years of it all? Well, I think, you know, what I've been thinking about, the essence of my practice, I would say compassion. Because, and I just, kind of was reading this talk of Suzuki Roshi's. Hi. Hi. Oh, hi, Dick. I'll call you later. There's something I want to discuss. OK. All right. And he was talking about precepts.

[24:56]

And he said, in short, The precepts all come out of compassion. Instead of trying to talk about precepts one by one, that just concentrate on compassion, and then all the precepts will be there. Will follow naturally. Right. And I totally agree with that. But if you're not compassionate, He wouldn't take anything that wasn't given. He wouldn't kill. He wouldn't kill anybody. Right, so that's the foundation. Yeah. And that's what you've come to. Yeah, that's what I've come to. But it's good. It's good. Because now I sit in a much more deeply... Well, that's right.

[25:59]

It has a much deeper meaning. And it just keeps having more and deeper meaning. Yeah. Very good. It's a wonderful life. I feel very much in tune with Suzuki Roshi's teaching. And that it just keeps revealing itself more and more. I'll be interested to hear... I'm also going to start teaching at Senn Center in San Francisco, from the... from Bridging Streams, from the Southern Choir Lectures. What about it? Are you going to start lecturing or teaching from those? I am, yes. That would be good. And those are the ones that were just published, is that right? Yeah, do you have those? No, I need to get a copy. Get you a copy. I'm going to turn this off. I think we've done it for today. Is that right? Is that true? I think this was very good. is Ed Sea's mother, Bo's mother, and Gar Junior's wife, and that's Molly, with the blonde hair.

[27:02]

She's about 5'4", so the short woman there. My parents, my mother is in the white, and my dad is sitting in the chair with the hat on. Okay, moving back to the right of Molly is Will Clark, And then just in the very back row there, the woman with the short dark hair, curly hair, is Kitty. And next to Kitty is her dad, Bill Clark. And in the red in front of those three is my sister, Peggy. Peeking over my shoulder is my wife, Judith. And behind me, is my son, Miles. Directly in front of me is my son, Cam, and my daughter, Liz, who's in the white sweater and the little white tie doodad thing.

[28:09]

So that's identification of this picture. Thank you. And give me a call. Bye. Does somebody else want to answer that? Cindy? I think it's more the intent to change, wanting to change somebody then. I think everything, we're always having some impact on each other and it seems like when you want to change that person and your desire is that they be different, I think that's what they want. Yeah. Because sometimes I see friends and I see... I would like to ask them something so they stop thinking about... That's different, see? the mutual interchange of ideas and so on, which is what friends are about. But if we meet a friend who, for instance, you see someone doing something that you don't approve of, and you make it your mission in life to tell that person or to try to change them in some way, that's dangerous, okay? That's what I mean by trying to change somebody. You can't be alive for one second without changing everything.

[29:12]

I mean, everything we do changes everything. That's fine. But it's sometimes so difficult to... Well, a lot of this is difficult, but one reason we sit is because sitting's a mirror. It keeps showing up to us all the time what we're really doing. And when we look at that long enough, it just changes itself. We don't have to do that. We're not trying to transform our lives, but if you sit, they transform. There's a difference. Does that make sense? Yeah? Yeah? Okay. I don't want to add a lot to what's been said. I just want, as our year opens, to really appreciate the opportunity we have of practicing together. And knowing that if we really understand our practice and do our best,

[30:15]

that we will benefit, but more than that, everything around us benefits, which is the real point. And it's not easy. I've said it hundreds of times, it's just not easy. We talked about that a little bit, but no way is it easy. But it's the only thing worth doing. So I just want to finish by reminding you of the class for new members to which anyone can come next Saturday at 1. And you'll have to think about what you want to do about lunch. If you come to the morning sitting, you'll have to find some way to feed yourself between the sitting. This is Ike Lasseter taping something for Bosnia-Petnic. on September 8th, which is Wednesday. I hope to get this to you on Thursday, Basia.

[31:19]

Basia. Okay, some of this ground I'll cover I've already covered. My parents are Garland Miller Lassiter Sr. and his wife Carolyn Campelman Lassiter. L-A-S-A-T-E-R, Kampmann is K-A-M-P-M-A-N-N. Mother and dad have been married something like 54 years, and they've lived in the same house since 1949, six months after I was born. Same house on a ranch outside of Falfurrias, Texas, This property is called La Mota, L-A capital M-O-T-A, capital L, capital M-O-T-A. Carolyn and Garland Lassiter had four children. The oldest was Edward Albert Lassiter.

[32:21]

Next is Garland Miller Lassiter, Jr., and the third child is Margaret Campman Lassiter, and I was the fourth child. Ike Campman Lassiter. Ed, my oldest brother, is married to Anne Thomas. They're currently in alcohol rehabilitation at the Betty Ford Clinic, as an aside. Might be relevant somehow or another. Molly, or excuse me, Garland, Junior, or Gar Junior, is married to Molly, I guess it's Loup Lanceter. Her maiden name was Molly Louis Loup, I believe. And she is a Bennet, and that will be relevant later on.

[33:27]

They have, I didn't have the children for Ed and Ann. Ed and Ann have four children. The oldest is Lauren Lassiter Payton, P-A-Y-T-O-N, married to, no, Martin, married to Payton Martin. So her name is Lauren Martin. And they have two daughters. Payton and Lauren have two daughters. And they are, Margaret and Elizabeth. Elizabeth is just a few weeks old. Then the second daughter of Ed and Ann is Lyra and she is married and you know I don't know the name of her husband. They got married just a few months ago. They have no children. The third daughter is and the third child is Carolyn, and Carolyn is not yet married, though she's close to being married.

[34:39]

She has a very serious boat. Isn't Carolyn? No, maybe Carolyn is married. I don't think so. Yeah, no, Carolyn is married, got married, and they were planning to, she got married in the spring. Oh God, this is difficult, I'm sorry. I'm really watching their family. And then the fourth child is a boy and his name is Albert and he is a junior slash senior at Texas A&M University. Okay, there are no grandchildren of Ed and Ann except for the two of Lauren. Okay, then Gar and Molly have two boys. What is Bo's name?

[35:43]

Bo's name is Edward, I think it's Edward Albert. No, no, his name is Garland Miller Lassiter III, and they call him Bo, B-O. And not relevant to this, but it's a nickname that his father gave him while he was in utero. And it stands for the Civil War General for the South, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard III. Then the second child to Molly and Gar is Edward Albert Lassiter. No, it's actually Edward Cunningham Lasseter. They call him Ed C. So he's different from my oldest brother, who's Edward Albert Lasseter. And Ed, my oldest brother, was named after my grandfather, my father's father.

[36:43]

So my father, Garland Miller Lasseter Sr. 's father's name was Edward Albert Lasseter. and also to go back for a second. Ed and Ann had a son before Albert who died within a few days of childbirth with the syndrome where there is not enough surfactant in the lungs and so the lungs do not stay inflated. Okay, then there's Gar and Molly and their two children, neither one of which are married. And then Peggy... Aren't you going to say what they're doing? Oh, it's not so important what they're doing. Edward's going to law school and Bo is going to graduate school in business and computer science. So Peggy and Bill have two children, the oldest of which is Kitty.

[37:44]

And Kitty... Peggy is married to William A. Clark, Jr. His father is now dead, so I don't know if he uses the junior anymore. And their children are Kitty, who is a veterinarian student at Texas A&M, and Will, or William, and I don't know whether he's junior or the third or something like that. We all call him Will. And he just graduated from Princeton and is in engineering and has an engineering job as a consultant for one of the Princeton professors. And he's back in New Jersey this year working for that professor. What's Kitty's name? You know, I don't know Kitty's name. I think it's Margaret Lassiter Clark, but I really don't know.

[38:46]

I was realizing, or maybe it's just Kitty, maybe they actually named her Kitty. Okay, but I'm the fourth child, and I'm married to Judith Hanson Lassiter, and I have three children, the oldest of which is Miles, who's here with me, he's the other voice on the tape. Miles Hanson Lassiter, who's 15, and is starting to be a sophomore, or a 10th grader, at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. And Cam, that's a nickname. His name is Charles Kempman Lassiter. We call him Cam, K-A-M. He is an eighth grader at Nueva School. And Liz, Elizabeth Hanson Lassiter. No, Elizabeth Faye Lassiter. Gosh, I don't know my own kids. Elizabeth Fay Lasseter, and she is 10 years old, and she is a fifth grader at Nuevo School.

[39:51]

Then the other immediately relevant person is Lawrence Miller, L-A-U-R-E-N-C-E. He's my cousin. He's my third cousin, to be exact. And I'll trace the lineage above that. Or maybe he's my second. Are you looking at me to say he's my second? No. Okay, I think he's my third cousin. I'll figure it out in a moment. He was married to Barbara Black Miller, but they're now divorced. They have two children. Meredith is their oldest. She is like a sophomore or a junior at... Sophomore, I think. At... Where's she going to school? Swan? I think so. A school in the South noted for its academics and so on anyway. Lawrence went there. It'll come to me in a bit. And then they have a son named Lasseter Miller.

[40:57]

And Lasseter is... He's about 11. And he's going to school in Austin, Texas. That's where Lawrence... He's probably 12. He may be 12. That's where they live. And Gary and Molly live in Fort Worth, and Nan live in Houston, and Peggy and Bill live in Corpus Christi. My mother and father live at La Monta in Fountain Ridge, Texas. Let me give you some telephone numbers. Peggy and Bill Clark are at area code 512-853-7535. Ed Lassiter in Houston is at 713-621-0299. The address is 4610 Staunton, Houston, Texas, 77027. Peggy and Bill's address is 33 33 Floyd Street.

[42:10]

That's four threes. Floyd, F-L-O-Y-D Street, Corpus Christi, Texas, 78411. Gar and Molly, our address is 1208 Washington Terrace, Fort Worth, Texas, 74107. The home number is 817-738-0914. I gave you Lawrence Miller, his address is 502 West 33rd Street, Austin, Texas, 78705, telephone number 512-453-3099. Now, all of these four families, including my parents, have been told about you and are expecting calls from you, if you need to call them or want to call them, except for Ed and Ann, since they're in Betty Ford Clinic, I haven't been able to communicate with them except by letter, and I've used my letter writing to them for other purposes, so I haven't told them about you yet.

[43:23]

Mother and Dad are located, their address is PO Box 430, Foul Furious, Texas, F-A-L-F-U-R-R-I-A-S, in Foul Furious, Texas, at 78355, telephone number 512-325-2648. Now, Mother is the interview person. Everyone calls her Carolyn. Her grandchildren call her Kalina. I have no idea how that's spelled. The grandchildren, her grandchildren, are Carolina or Carolini, and they call my father, the grandchildren call my father Daddy Garland. Mother's parents were, and they're now dead, Ike S. Campman Sr.

[44:26]

and Margaret Campman, and I don't know her maiden name. Don't know her middle name, what my grandmother Margaret's name was. And the children, my siblings and I, called my mother's father, Daddy K, for the Campman. He was a lawyer in San Antonio, Texas. He went to Harvard Law School, went to Princeton and Harvard Law School. class of about 1907 from law school and practiced law his whole life in San Antonio. His wife Margaret was very active socially, very involved in the social establishment such as it is in San Antonio, Texas. She was one of the founders of the Junior League in Texas. senior, my daddy Kay, and his wife Margaret, had three children.

[45:36]

My mother, Carolyn, who was the oldest, and the next was Ike S. Campman, Jr., and the S stands for Simpson, and then there was George Campman, excuse me, George Kempman, and I don't know George's middle name. Okay, one of the things that I'm going to be sending you is a blue oversized album called Ancestors. This is something that my mother put together, Basia, that is a sort of photo history of some of the family going back. The first picture is my father. The second picture is my mother, Carolyn Adams Campman Lassiter. The next one is a picture of Edward Cunningham Lassiter. That's my grandfather and my father, Garland.

[46:39]

So his dad and my dad. And then just a picture of Edward Cunningham Lassiter, who was my grandfather. Now my grandfather, Edward Cunningham Lassiter, in the late 1800s. Okay, Basia, I'm thinking of things as I'm going along, so I'm going to take you through this picture book, but I'm also going to send you a copy of Thou Furious, Ed C. Lasseter and the Development of South Texas. This was written by Dale Lasseter, who is my cousin, He is the son of my father's brother, whose name is Tom Lasseter. Tom Lasseter was the second son of Edward Cunningham Lasseter, my grandfather, and his second wife, Maya Lasseter.

[47:50]

Maya and my Maya and Edward Cunningham Lasseter had three children. Actually, I think they had five children. The first two of them died. The first one, I think, early on. The second one was Albert, and he died practically in my father's arms when my father was about 12 or 13 years old. A car overturned on the ranch on the way to the homestead, La Mota. And my father could not lift the car off of Albert. And Albert was still alive when my father left him. And my father ran the mile and a half to the house to get help. And by the time they got back, Albert was dead. And my father has clearly carried this his whole life. I had a conversation with him with my children as a part of an interview project for my oldest boy, Miles. on the telephone with my father about two years ago, a year and a half ago.

[48:57]

My father broke down on the phone, was crying and had tremendous emotion around this whole issue. Of course I was crying too and everybody else was crying. Okay, so that's the book Ed C. Lassiter. That's the photo of Edward Cunningham Lassiter. The next photo is a photo of Mary Gardner Miller and she was Edward Cunningham's wife. And she was known as Maya. And she was a Miller from Galveston, Texas. And then that, her brothers, from her brothers come Lawrence. One of her brothers was L.D. Miller, Lawrence Dismukes Miller Sr. And L.D. Sr. had a son called, who we called, well, L.D.

[49:58]

Miller, Jr., who we called Laurie. And Laurie was married to Francis Miller, and the two of them lived in Fowl Furious and had two children. Lawrence Miller, who is the cousin that lives in Austin with the two children, Lassiter and Meredith, And Lawrence had a younger sister named Linda Miller. And Linda died, she was a year older than me. She died when she was in her late 20s. She was killed, she was shot by an intruder in her mother's apartment in Corpus Christi. Linda was like a sister to me. She was raised in Fowl Furious. We were in the same grade in school. We were always very close. Her mother, Frances, was very close to my mother.

[51:01]

Both Laurie and Frances in later years turned out to be alcoholics. They divorced. Laurie actually died of cirrhosis of the liver. Then Frances was a very embittered woman about the divorce. a paramour that he took up with and so on and so on. Frances is now dead of some kind of cancer, brain cancer or something. And she was very close to Mother for years and years. And the two families, Frances and Laurie, and my parents and the kids would get together and spend lots of time together on holidays. And I spent innumerable afternoons over there after school at their house, waiting to be picked up for the five-mile drive out to La Monta. The next picture is of my grandfather, who I absolutely idolized and thought was the most wonderful man on the face of the earth, my daddy Kay, Ike Simpson Campman, and his mom's dad, and he was married to Margaret Van Dusen Adams Campman,

[52:16]

And Margaret and I did not get along. She had a stroke about the time I was eight or nine years old. And from that time on, she was horrible to me. And what was worse is my family did not acknowledge it until after she was dead. And that was a big thing I carried. Next pictures are pictures of three women. I think that's Margaret. Campman's mother. It's Margaret Campman, Margaret Campman's mother. And also, I think, an aunt. Oh no, and my mother. So it's my mother, my grandmother Margaret, my mother's mother, and my mother's mother's mother. All in that picture. Three women. Okay, the next picture is my mother and my grandmother. Yeah. my mother, Carolyn, and her mother, Margaret.

[53:19]

And the next picture is a picture of my mother and Carolyn Campman, her grandmother. It must be and her grandmother, Carolyn Eaton Adams. So that's my mother and her, my mother's grandmother on her mother's side. So my mother is pictured here and my grandmother Margaret's mother is pictured there. Okay, the next picture is Dr. William Arnold Adams and I don't know, I don't know any of these pictures. They're described in the descriptions I really don't know these people. Some of them are my mother's campman side. My grandfather, Daddy Kay, my mother's father, was a German stock who came in to Texas around the 1860s or 70s, and I'm not clear when.

[54:36]

with the migration of Germans that went into Texas. There's Germans and Czechs and Bohemians. It's not really well known outside of Texas, but there are these pockets of German and Czech-speaking people. Even to this day, there are towns where the language of the older folks is German or Czech. My mother, my grandfather's, my grandfather Campman's family came over the first fellow, I forget his name, I think it was Herman, but it's in these pictures. He was a mason, a stone mason on the Cologne Cathedral and he came over and became a builder and was a very successful builder in San Antonio. At one point I figured out that if, and very active in the Presbyterian Church, and that if I had baptized Miles in the First Presbyterian Church of San Antonio, he would have been either the fifth or the sixth generation of my mother's family to be baptized in that church.

[55:55]

Okay, let me go back to the picture on the first page of this Ancestors. That's a picture on the Loma Blanca. The Loma Blanca is a piece of property that my father owns and it's a view out towards Salt Lake. It's on the old Spanish land. It was called Laguna Salada or Salt Lake. And that's the kind of country that's out there. It's pretty dry, desolate country. You raise cattle on it, he raises cattle on it. The other pictures that I'm going to send you, I'm going to send you a picture of my mother and father about 10 years ago. They're sitting under the trees at La Mota. Completely beautiful, you know, completely different, beautiful country. Some of the family pictures I'm going to send you of group photos of everybody are under the same trees at La Mota.

[57:03]

So that's the contrast, the oasis of La Mota in this dry, forbidding country that is the Loma Blanca. The Loma Blanca is about 3,000 acres. It's what was left, this and two other parcels of comparable size. that were divided between my father and his siblings, Tom and Lois. Let me back up a second. Edward Cunningham Lassiter. Edward Cunningham Lassiter, my grandfather, my father's father, was married to Maya. And Maya was his second wife. They had three children. My father was the oldest, Tom was the second oldest, and Lois was the third and last. Albert had been actually their second child, and then there was this girl that was the first child, she died.

[58:08]

So it was the first child died, then Albert died, the story I told you being pinned in the car, then my father, then Tom, then Lois. Okay, so that's, I'm going to send you that picture of my parents underneath the tree. Oh, and the Loma Blanca, I forgot where I was, I was interrupted. The Loma Blanca is about 3,000 acres. There are two other comparable sized pieces of property that were divided with my father and his siblings upon upon my grandmother Maya's death. She died in the late 40s. Her husband had died, Edward Cunningham Lassiter, died approximately in 1933 or 32. He was about 40 years old when he married Maya, and she was about 20.

[59:13]

He started his second complete family. His first family was And she, I forget her name, but anyway, her name was Bennett. And she was the sister of John Bennett. And John Bennett was the father of a man who we called General Bennett. And General Bennett was also John Bennett. And he had a son who he named John, John, what was John's middle name? No, it's Steve now. It was John, John Mercer Bennett III, and he changed his name to John Stephen Bennett. John Stephen Bennett is a contemporary of mine, about a year older than me. We were friends as kids. We've maintained some contact.

[60:16]

He's presently the mayor of Aspen. General Bennett led the first daylight bombing raid over Berlin and was featured as Colonel Savage in the movie 12 O'Clock High. He just recently died. He was related to Mali. Molly Loup, who was married to my brother Gar. So, and I can't trace that lineage right now. I would like, as part of your program, to get this from Mother. But Molly, my brother Garland's wife, was a Bennett. She wasn't named a Bennett, but her mother was a Bennett. Her birth mother was a Bennett. And she had Her birth mother died young, and she was raised by Zalim Loup, and Molly's father was an alcoholic and committed suicide.

[61:28]

And so she's had a traumatic family life. Anyway, she's a Bennett, and she's related to the General, and so there's that whole connection which I would like to be traced. In addition, as a result of that connection, Mali is also related to the Armstrongs. And there is a town, which is a little way station in South Texas named Armstrong.

[62:02]

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