My Memories of Lara Parker (R.I.P. October 12, 2023)

I just learned via actress Kathryn Leigh Scott that Lara Parker (née Mary Lamar Rickey), best known as Angelique from Dark Shadows has passed away at age 84 years old (October 27, 1938–October 12, 2023). Lara and Kathryn have been good friends since the days of Dark Shadows, so my heart goes out particularly to Kathryn for her personal loss.

I remember the first time I saw Lara as Angelique on Dark Shadows, and I fell in love with her right there on the spot. She was beautiful, powerful, menacing, passionate... everything a nine-year-old boy could possibly desire, apparently. Back then, I adored everything about Dark Shadows, especially Jonathan Frid as Barnabas, but it was when Angelique appeared on the screen that I melted into a mass of lovestruck goo.

After Dark Shadows went off the air, Lara appeared in numerous television series, such as Baretta, Kojak, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Kung Fu, Remington Steele, The Six-Million-Dollar Man, and Switch, and a few theatrical films, such as Hi, Mom, Race with the Devil, and Save the Tiger. I made a point of watching most of these, and my youthful heart remained smitten, but it took a long time for me to get over my resentment over the cancellation of Dark Shadows... and thus Angelique.

Many moons later, Lara wrote a series of Dark Shadows novels, the first being Angelique's Descent, which HarperCollins released in 1998. At the time, Harper was planning a full series of Dark Shadows novels, and Elizabeth Massie and I secured a contract to write the second book — Dreams of the Dark, which was released in 1999. To my profound excitement, Lara wrote the introduction to our book, and to this day, I remain ridiculously geeked about this. Unfortunately, it wasn't long after Dreams of the Dark's release that Harper shuttered its media tie-in division, and this put the kibosh on Ms. Massie and I writing any further Dark Shadows novels for Harper. In the early 2000s, Tor Books contracted several more Dark Shadows novels from Lara.

Over the years, I attended a number of Dark Shadows events, but none was more memorable than my first — the 1999 Dark Shadows Festival at the World Trade Center in New York City. Most of the show's surviving stars were slated to appear and, more than anything, I looked forward to meeting Lara. And, in fact, she was literally the first familiar face I ran into at the festival. She greeted me cordially but had pressing obligations that prevented her from carrying on a lengthy conversation. Happily, several times, she and I were able to talk at greater length. However, the clincher for me was that she and I appeared together for a presentation on our respective Dark Shadows novels in front of the entire convention group. I had started out with a few butterflies in the old gut, but once things got under way, I managed to carry on without (much) embarrassing gushing.

I met numerous other Dark Shadows cast members at that and other gatherings, but that was the first and only time I ever got to spend any appreciable quality time with Lara Parker. And, of course, that was also the last Dark Shadows event at NYC's World Trade Center. I absolutely cherish the fact that I was able to spend some happy, memorable time there before it was gone forever.

To all Lara's friends and loved ones, I send all my sympathies and respect. She truly played a pivotal role in my childhood, and to me as an adult and an author, she added special meaning and nuance to my career. R.I.P., Lara.

Here are a couple of links to articles featuring some of Lara's thoughts on her acting and writing careers:

• The Collinsport Historical Society — Out of the Shadows: Lara Parker
• Tor/Forge Blog — Researching the Back Story by Lara Parker

On stage with Lara Parker at the 1999 Dark Shadows Festival at the NYC World Trade Center

On Never Forgetting

Among the many thousands of horrifying images from 9/11/2001, to me, the most haunting may be those of the individuals who plummeted to their deaths before the doomed World Trade Center towers actually collapsed. There's something about these depictions of people who may have chosen to face a thousand-foot drop rather than a thousand-degree inferno closing inexorably on them that hits me in the gut unlike any other. Until relatively recently, I never suspected that among the living—other than the inevitable lunatic fringe—there might be some stigma attached to these victims of such unimaginable horror.

And even now, I'm certain that many of the articles about these victims that have come out in the interim—specifically those that highlight reactions that run the gamut from plain denial to moral condemnation—are based more in sensationalism than genuine insight. To the best of my knowledge, I don't know a soul—I hope I don't know anyone—who would righteously claim that these people who jumped or fell were somehow culpable, that they might be eternally condemned because they chose the coward's way out. That they committed the unforgivable sin of choosing their own door to the great beyond. For the loved ones of those who fell, I'm sure it's easier to not think about the choices that might have been made that day. If it were my daughter, my brother, my mother, who died in such fashion, I don't know how I would feel, how I would deal with my own emotions. I do know that I could never cast any blame on them, whatever my spiritual beliefs. No more than I could cast judgment on any stranger in the same situation. Some of you reading this probably lost individuals close to you on that day. I did know some who died, though I cannot claim to have been close with any of them.

But the fact of it is this: every soul who perished in these incidents of 9/11/2001 was a victim of murder; nothing more, nothing less.

Some stories have highlighted not just a lack of understanding and acceptance among the living, but actual judgment against the "jumpers," for want of a better term. Again, I can't speak with any authority as to whether we're talking about a relatively minuscule number of misguided individuals or a broader trend among those of various religious denominations. But I can't imagine a more egregious violation of the edict "Judge not, lest ye shall be judged," most notably because not one living soul can know what was happening in those moments prior to an individual taking flight. Some of these, clearly, were forced by the sheer weight of numbers of those trying to escape the rapidly spreading flames. Some appear to have blundered, blinded and deafened by the force of the plane's impact, into the gaping abyss. And others clung, until the last possible moment, to life and hope, until it was clear that, within seconds, fire would consume them.

How would you react? Would you not panic? Would your body not involuntarily propel itself toward anything but the inferno roiling toward you? The body tries to survive; that's an inherent part of its mechanism. Personally, I'm all for having a choice when death is inevitable. Death is part of the journey we all undertake, and each of us must face it privately and, inasmuch as possible, in keeping with the beliefs we have carried with us through life.

How dare anyone who hasn't faced that fire for the final time cast judgment on someone whose life is destined to end in a matter of moments, whichever choice he or she makes. Anyone so conceited, anyone whose faith—whose primitive, simple-minded belief—assures them that someone else made the wrong choice about dying is precisely the same as the sick bastard who believes that in destroying the infidel he will find 72 virgins in his heavenly domicile.

Death is between an individual and his god, if he has one. I sure as hell have never followed—and would never follow—one who would condemn me for eternity because I chose ten seconds of flying toward physical obliteration over the flame rushing in to consume me. What an awful, horrendous, ungodly conceit—and as far as I'm concerned, a purely human conceit. There's nothing holy about living in such a judgmental state. It's horror.

The very definition of it.