Afterlives of the Rich and Famous Read online

  Mattie Stepanek

  The poet, the peacemaker, and the philosopher who played,” Matthew Joseph Thaddeus Stepanek was born on July 17, 1990, in Rockville, Maryland. His mother, Jeni, with a Ph.D. in early childhood special education, had four children before she was diagnosed with the adult form of dysautonomic mitochondrial myopathy, a genetic disease that took the lives of her daughter, Katie, at the age of two, her son Stevie at the age of six months, and her son Jamie at the age of three. One of the miracles of Mattie was that he survived the same disease until he was thirteen and accomplished more in those years than many of us manage in a lifetime.

  On one hand, Mattie led the life of a normal boy, loving trips to the beach, reading, and the Korean martial art hapkido, in which he earned a black belt at the age of eight before he became reliant on a wheelchair, his service dog Micah, and a ventilator. On the other hand, when he was three years old, he began writing poetry. His extraordinary gifts as a writer and poet led to six books of poetry and a collection of peace essays, all of which reached the New York Times bestseller list, and one of which, Just Peace, was awarded the Independent Publishing Gold Medal for “Peacemaker Book of the Year” in 2007, three years after Mattie’s death.

  His poetry and his charmingly transcendent presence attracted the attention of Oprah Winfrey and Larry King. His frequent appearances on their respective talk shows led to his appointment as the Muscular Dystrophy Association National Goodwill Ambassador in 2002, at the age of twelve.

  Mattie’s disease required that he be home-schooled, a situation that allowed his astonishing intellect to thrive. He was also hospitalized several times and had a near-death experience that only deepened his profound faith in God and led him to tell Larry King in a 2002 interview on Larry King Live, when asked if he was afraid of death, “I’m afraid of dying, but I’m not afraid of death.”

  On June 22, 2004, at the Washington, D.C., Children’s National Medical Center, Mattie Stepanek left this earth and went Home. His funeral six days later was attended by more than a thousand people. Former president Jimmy Carter remembered in his eulogy Mattie’s life philosophy: “Remember to play after every storm.” Mattie’s mother, Jeni, continues her beloved child’s work as a motivational speaker, peace advocate, and inspiration.

  From Francine

  Mattie is a Mystical Traveler, such a rare, highly advanced spirit that he seems lit from within by his and God’s complete sacred commitment to each other. The crowd of spirits and animals who gathered to celebrate his Homecoming went on for as far as the eye could see. Like most Mystical Travelers, he incarnated on earth once and only once, and he stayed just long enough to reignite the spark of faith in an incalculable number of people and inspire his mother to continue his work before briefly returning to the Other Side. Then, after a private audience with the Council, he left again, into the stars and on to another planet as desperately in need of him as earth was.

  This is not to imply that he and his mother are ever separate for any length of time. He is with her at every appearance, large or small, and he sits beside her on her bed every night until she falls asleep, adoring her and thanking her for the blessed lifetime she gave him, exactly the lifetime he knew she would give him when he chose her to deliver him to earth and be his best friend, companion, and caretaker in the brief time he was there.

  Walter Cronkite

  The most trusted man in America,” world-class journalist Walter Leland Cronkite Jr., was born on November 4, 1916, in St. Joseph, Missouri, the only child of dentist Dr. Walter Leland Cronkite and his wife, Helen. When Walter was ten years old, the family moved to Houston, Texas, pursuing his father’s opportunity for a position at the University of Texas Dental School. Walter, a Boy Scout, credited his early interest in journalism to an article in American Boy about the lives of reporters on assignment in other parts of the world, and he became editor of the school newspaper and yearbook during his time at San Jacinto High School.

  After two years studying political science and journalism at the University of Texas in Austin, Walter left college in 1935 to accept a part-time job as a news and sports reporter for the Houston Post. His first official broadcasting job was for the radio station WKY in Oklahoma City, and from there it was on to sports reporting for KCMO in Kansas City, where he met his future wife, Mary Elizabeth Maxwell, called Betsy throughout her life, in 1936. In 1937 he joined United Press International (UPI), and he became one of the premier American reporters covering the North African and European fronts during World War II. He was then appointed chief correspondent at the war crimes trials in Nuremburg and head of the UPI office in Moscow.

  His long career at CBS News began in 1952, when he narrated a program called You Are There, which dramatized historical events. He also anchored CBS coverage of the 1952 Democratic and Republican presidential conventions and established himself as an articulate, uniquely appealing television newsman.

  In 1962 Walter made his debut as anchor and editor of the CBS Evening News, a position he held until, at the age of sixty-five, he stepped down on March 6, 1981. During his brilliant tenure there, he interviewed every president from Eisenhower to Reagan; was the first to break the news to America of the deaths of President Kennedy and President Johnson; traveled to Vietnam to report on the aftermath of the Tet Offensive; brought cohesive understanding and clarity as the long, complicated Watergate scandal unfolded; participated in the first live transatlantic news broadcast in 1962; and was the live on-air reporter for the most historic of the NASA space program’s accomplishments, including the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969.

  By his side every step of the way was his wife, Betsy, to whom he was married for sixty-five years until her death in 2005. Their three children, Nancy, Kathy, and Walter III, ultimately presented the Cronkites with four grandchildren.

  Walter’s retirement from the CBS Evening News by no means indicated his retirement from broadcasting. To name just a handful of his post-1981 accomplishments, he did narration and voice-overs in an IMAX film about the Space Shuttle called The Dream Is Alive, special material for the film Apollo 13, Benjamin Franklin’s voice in the educational cartoon series Liberty’s Kids, a CBS documentary about Guglielmo Marconi called WCC Chatham Radio, and an eight-part television series for the Discovery Channel called Cronkite Remembers. He also chaired the Interfaith Alliance for the protection of American faith and freedom; supported the world hunger organization Heifer International; was a major fund-raiser for Citizens for Global Solutions; and was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, NASA’s Ambassador of Exploration Award, and four Peabody Excellence in Broadcasting awards. He was also inducted into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame.

  On July 17, 2009, Walter Cronkite died of cerebrovascular disease in his New York home at the age of ninety-two after a long, fulfilling life of unparalleled integrity.

  From Francine

  Walter is as happy and gratified to be Home as anyone we’ve ever seen, not because he was eager for his lifetime to end, but because he feels he used every minute of it the best he could and, he says, “made plenty of mistakes, but never one I didn’t learn from.” He emerged from the tunnel to find his wife, Betsy, a very small woman I believe was his grandmother, and a joyful pair of Springer spaniels waiting for him. He was fascinated by his time at the Scanning Machine, cherishing the life he lived, but utterly enthralled by the historic events he covered throughout his career. While reviewing his lifetime he also enjoyed remembering that his trademark newscast-ending phrase, “And that’s the way it is . . .” was his unconscious homage to a phrase used by his employer when he worked as a British newspaper editor in the mid-1800s—his employer ended every staff meeting with the words, “So there you have it,” and Walter loved the memory and the paraphrase he’d brought over from a previous lifetime.

  Orientation wasn’t necessary. Walter virtually sprinted away from the Scanning Machine, out of the Hall of Wisdom, and quickly found John an
d Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and the seven crew members of the space shuttle Challenger, all of whose deaths affected him even more deeply than the many others he reported. And then, as he describes it, he quietly returned to business as usual on the Other Side. He’s great friends with several past presidents, particularly Jefferson, Lincoln, and Eisenhower, and they actively study current world events and infuse what solutions manage to penetrate the egos of those in positions of power. He and Carl Sagan have resumed their passionate research into the infinite secrets of the universe and their lectures on future NASA explorations to those who will reincarnate and initiate many of those explorations. But his two favorite recreational pursuits are sailing and playing tennis with his old pal from Home, Peter Jennings.

  He wants his children and grandchildren to know that he and their mother are still taking good care of each other and watching over them together and that he considers them his greatest accomplishments.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States, was born in a log cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809. His father, Thomas, was a farmer. His mother, Nancy, had a total of three children—Sarah, the eldest, Abraham, and Thomas, who died as an infant. The family moved to southern Indiana when Abraham was seven, and he was nine years old when his mother died. A year later Thomas married Sarah Bush Johnston, who brought three children of her own into the family. Abraham’s stepmother was a loving, positive influence in his life, encouraging him to read and study, which quickly became two of his passions, and he more than made up for the fact that he had no more than about a year of formal education.

  By the time he reached adulthood, he was a stately figure at almost six foot four and 180 pounds, impressing the residents of his new home in New Salem, Illinois, with his integrity, honesty, and strength of character in a succession of jobs that ranged from surveying to managing a store to serving as the local postmaster, appointed by President Andrew Jackson.

  Lincoln enlisted for service in the Black Hawk War in 1832, and after his brief military career he was elected to the Illinois legislature from 1834 to 1842. In the meantime, he studied law, and in 1836 he was admitted to the bar. In 1846 he served in the U.S. House of Representatives, where his opposition to slavery became widely known in Washington. His national recognition grew with a series of debates with Stephen Douglas in 1858, when the two men competed for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Douglas won that seat, but when they ran against each other for public office two years later, Lincoln defeated Douglas and, in 1860, was elected president of the United States.

  Accompanying Abraham Lincoln to his new home in the White House were his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and their three surviving sons, Robert, William (Willie), and Thomas (Tad). (Their second son, Edward, died in 1850, at the age of four, from tuberculosis.) Mary Todd, who’d had a privileged upbringing in Lexington, Kentucky, was introduced to the rising legal and political star named Abraham Lincoln in 1839, and they were married on November 4, 1842. She tirelessly campaigned for her husband and was a loving, devoted mother to their children, but when she acquired the title of First Lady, she took it upon herself to refurbish the White House to her own extravagant tastes, lavishly ignoring the budget Congress allocated to her for the project.

  On February 20, 1862, less than a year after Lincoln was sworn in as president, Willie Lincoln, age eleven, died of typhoid fever, a tragedy from which Mary Todd never fully recovered. Lincoln, also grief-stricken, was in the midst of a national crisis. Shortly after his election, eleven southern states seceded from the Union, rejecting Lincoln’s and the Republicans’ control over the government. Lincoln’s determination to save the Union led to the four-year Civil War, the most costly conflict in American history. In the end, he successfully reunited the North and South and, with his famous Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, began the process of freeing the slaves as well.

  He was reelected in 1864, continuing his record of historic accomplishments that have inspired many to consider him the greatest president in U.S. history. He passed the Homestead Act, which allowed impoverished Easterners to obtain land in the West, helping to populate the Great Plains. His legislation created the nation’s first transcontinental railroad, protected American manufacturing, and initiated a network of national banks. And he gave some of the most brilliant speeches ever written, including the Gettysburg Address, dedicating that battlefield to the soldiers who died there, and his second inaugural address, which ended with the beautiful passage: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

  He accomplished all of this and much more against a backdrop of deep personal difficulties—the loss of two of his sons during their childhoods, the increasing instability of his wife, and his own pervasive, lifelong battle with what was then called “profound melancholy,” but what would now be diagnosed as clinical depression, which manifested itself in occasional talk of suicide, weeping in public, and a need for solitude.

  On April 14, 1865, Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln went to Ford’s Theater to see a play called Our American Cousin. During the play an actor named John Wilkes Booth, a racist and sympathizer with the Confederacy, made his way into the president’s box and shot him in the back of the head. Lincoln died the next day at 7:22 a.m., the first U.S. president to be assassinated. The nation mourned a brilliant, courageous, compassionate leader as Lincoln’s body was taken by train to be buried in the Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois.

  From Francine

  Like so many Mission Life Entities whose lifetimes end abruptly, Abraham arrived Home deeply depressed and disoriented, a combination of the shock of death and an exquisitely sensitive spirit who felt personally responsible for elevating the integrity of a harsh world. His life themes of Justice and Rescuer were ideal for the profound work he charted for himself. But his empathetic spirit, the same spirit that made it impossible for him to walk away from those who needed him, never knew the comfort of being able to emotionally separate itself from the pain, oppression, and injustice being inflicted on innocents in a country he loved. He couldn’t end his own suffering until he ended theirs, which only escalated both his resolve and his pervasive sadness. He also talks about a time in his life when he was given medication for a stomach or intestinal problem, and until he became alarmed enough to stop taking it, it dramatically exacerbated his emotional fragility, for reasons he never understood. “My poor wife was having enough difficulties of her own without my adding to them,” he says. “I will always regret the tension I caused in our household for her and for our sons, and I’m eternally grateful for the loyalty they afforded me in spite of myself.”

  A throng that extended as far as the eye could see gathered to meet Abraham when he arrived, and it’s worth adding that he was already on the Other Side before his body had even been carried from the theater. With the exception of his sons Edward and Willie (his mother had already reincarnated), the crowd was populated exclusively with loved ones from Home—this incarnation was Abraham’s first, and it will be his last. His Spirit Guide, Kabir, took him from his sons’ arms to the cocooning chambers, where he stayed to heal for nearly a decade in your years.

  Abraham has always been one of our most brilliant scholars and orators, and he immediately resumed his quietly joyful work when he emerged, thriving and at peace, from the Hall of Wisdom. He’s a constant presence in the Hall of Records, expanding his expertise in world history and politics, and his lectures on those subjects are treasured events throughout the Other Side. And he’s returned to his seat on an esteemed panel of political, spiritual, environmental, and scientific experts who regularly confer with our Council on ways to achieve healing and f
uture health on your planet and then infuse their insights to those on earth who are dedicated and open-minded enough to enact them. Your President Obama is a frequent recipient of the panel’s suggestions, and of Abraham’s personal wisdom as well—it’s impossible to put into human words the awe with which Abraham viewed the inauguration of an African American president of the United States.

  He lives alone, as he always has, but it’s interesting that he’s chosen a spot for his small lean-to that precisely corresponds to his birthplace on earth. He’s a devout Christian who regularly attends a magnificent church whose massive stained-glass windows were designed by Leonardo da Vinci. And while he never socializes, it makes us all smile that he and his four sons have become avid, enthusiastic baseball fans and never miss a game in which Joe DiMaggio is playing.

  George Harrison

  George Harrison was the “quiet Beatle,” a historically gifted musician, singer, and songwriter, the youngest member of the Liverpool band that became one of the most influential musical phenomena of the twentieth century. He was born in Liverpool, England, on February 24, 1943, the fourth and last child of bus conductor Harold Harrison and his shopkeeper wife, Louise. After an early education at Dovedale Primary School, he headed on to the Liverpool Institute, where he was a disinterested, introverted student. After his mother scraped together the money to buy her fourteen-year-old son the acoustic guitar he’d wanted for so long, he promptly formed a skiffle band (improvisational, with a heavy use of such homemade instruments as washboards, spoons, and comb-and-tissue-paper “harmonicas”) and began exploring his natural talent on the guitar. Somewhere along the line he happened to meet a fellow Institute student and bus mate named Paul McCartney, who had a skiffle band called the Quarrymen with his friend John Lennon, and despite John’s concern that he was too young to join the group, George became the Quarrymen’s guitarist.