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Hunter Thompson's Wife : We Were On the Phone When it Happened

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:

Last weekend, Anita, who was working out at the Aspen Club & Spa, called Thompson, who asked her to come home so they could work on his weekly ESPN column. She said the two never said goodbye; rather, he placed the receiver beside his typewriter that sat on the kitchen counter, loaded his revolver, and pulled the trigger.

"I was on the phone with him, he set the receiver down and he did it. I heard the clicking of the gun," said the author's widow, adding that the clicking sounded as if he was striking the keys of his typewriter. She heard a loud, muffled noise in the background, but did not know what had happened. "I was waiting for him to get back on the phone." He never did.

Both Anita and Hunter's son Juan say Hunter had planned his death:

In recent months, Thompson, 67, had repeatedly talked of killing himself, she said, and had been issuing directives verbally and in writing of what he wanted done with his body, his unpublished work and his assets. His suicidal designs put an intense strain on their relationship, she said, but his motives were not rooted in desperation or fear -- he simply felt his time had come.

He wanted to leave on top of his game. I wish I could have been more supportive of his decision. It was a problem for us," said Anita Thompson, who retreated to her parents' house in Fort Collins when the two would quarrel. There, she said, he would fax her love letters.

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    He lived and died like a champion.
    One of my best employees is still fighting the effects of an almost-inoperable brain tumor. She forgets things, has stopped driving, and has pain that cannot be medicated. One of the children in my son's third grade class is on his second run of chemotherapy in two years. The men in his father's entire office have shaved their heads in support of his son's fight to live. Champion my fat white *ss. -C

    So Cliff knows a buncha losers. Doesn't change a thing. Oh, I'm sorry, did that offend you? The ghost of HST made me do it.

    It's called free will, get over it. God forbid he goes out how he wants to, stop whoring your opinion about it already.

    Re: Hunter Thompson's Wife : We Were On the Phone (none / 0) (#4)
    by Peaches on Fri Feb 25, 2005 at 10:33:44 AM EST
    Cliff, A wife is talking about her husband. Everyone is more enlightened to hear about your employee and the schoolmate of your son. But it has got nothing to do with HTS. You can just skip out on this thread. Save your asinine comments for when they might be more relevant.

    Re: Hunter Thompson's Wife : We Were On the Phone (none / 0) (#5)
    by pigwiggle on Fri Feb 25, 2005 at 10:43:15 AM EST
    Around 50 folks take the “champion’s” way out each day in the US.

    Sad.

    Re: Hunter Thompson's Wife : We Were On the Phone (none / 0) (#7)
    by esmense on Fri Feb 25, 2005 at 11:10:18 AM EST
    Sorry, that was an act of incredible passive-aggressive hostility. He blows himself away while talking on the PHONE to her. Thompson's talent was obvious. And in his final act, so was his great disdain for those who loved him.

    Let the person who has no sin cast the first stone. Somehow I don't see it as very respectful to HST's family to be castigating him at this time.

    He killed himself. It was his choice. Take your morality tales, your condemnation, your misunderstanding and file it, until you are at the point of your own death. Then wait a moment, and then, after you're dead, you still won't have any idea what it was like for him. Arrogance knows no bounds. Alan Tomlinson

    "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." This world was never good enough for Hunter Thompson, and he never settled for what they gave him.

    Re: Hunter Thompson's Wife : We Were On the Phone (none / 0) (#13)
    by desertswine on Fri Feb 25, 2005 at 01:19:03 PM EST
    Gen. Michael W. Hagee, the Marine Corps commandant, told The Washington Post 31 Marines, all enlisted men, killed themselves in 2004, the highest percentage of suicides in 10 years.
    Of those who committed suicide, most were under 25 and took their lives by shooting themselves. Eighty-three other Marines attempted suicide, said the Post.
    I would not be so quick to condemn those who commit suicide or otherwise "take the easy way out."

    Re: Hunter Thompson's Wife : We Were On the Phone (none / 0) (#14)
    by Jlvngstn on Fri Feb 25, 2005 at 01:43:22 PM EST
    So he went on his terms, his wife is ok with it, good for him, good for her. I had a friend that battled stomach cancer for 2 years and was miserable for 2 straight years. Finally said no to chemo and within a month it killed him. Is he a coward Cliff? No, he was tired and done fighting and good for him......

    disrepectful comment deleted

    Well, it's good to know that Lefties believe in easy suicide. Ya'll try to catch the sale at the mortuary and save some money. jlv - We weren't talking about someone who had terminal cancer - we were talking about some wanker shooting himself on the phone with his wife after suffering some setbacks. In what strange progressive pot haze does that make you a champion? "I do not belive that word means what you think it means." -C

    Suicide, or the taking of ones life, is a complicated issue, and as all issues of intense personal decision, should be the left alone by all moralists of both sides. People can jizz on about how weak it is, or how its a statement ofr his own personal independence or something, knocking the fact that most people here I would presume, never met the man. People need to learn that, hell, sometimes its not their place to make decisions on other peoples activities, or event o voice their approval or disapproval of it. As HST said ""I was all for it you understand, but only on a basis of a personal friendship. Most of my friends were into strange things I don't totally understand-and with a few shameful exceptions I wish them all well. Who am I after all, to tell some friend he shouldn't change his name to Oliver High, get rid of his family and join a Satanism cult in Seatlle? Or argue with another who wants to buy a single shot reminegton fireball so he can go out and shoot cops from a safe distance? Whatevers right I say. Never f*k with a friends head by accident. And if their private trips get out of control now and then, well, you do what has to be done."

    Re: Hunter Thompson's Wife : We Were On the Phone (none / 0) (#17)
    by Jlvngstn on Fri Feb 25, 2005 at 02:56:02 PM EST
    your friends with cancer are unlucky, but i don't feel they are champions if they choose to live or not live. I would support my friends either way and would honor their decision. As far as what "pot haze" I am in, I have not smoked in 10 months because i have had too much going on, but the next time it is offered I will take it......

    Re: Hunter Thompson's Wife : We Were On the Phone (none / 0) (#18)
    by Adept Havelock on Fri Feb 25, 2005 at 03:41:43 PM EST
    This is simple. A man made a choice. I don't condemn or praise it. I accept it as His choice. His family seems to be OK with it, and that's the ONLY thing that should matter. Unless of course your a wingnut trying to score some cheap political points off of this event. Cliff, you don't like his wife's choice of words. I can only say, So what?

    jlv - I wouldn't call them either champions or heros - both words are regularly cheapened by our media today. I would certainly call them brave, courageous, and an example to emulate. I would never honor someones decision to commit suicide. It would always be something sad, no matter the circumstances. (Stopping treatment for a fatal disease seems to me to be different.) -C

    Re: Hunter Thompson's Wife : We Were On the Phone (none / 0) (#20)
    by jondee on Fri Feb 25, 2005 at 04:10:17 PM EST
    Cliff - You'd no doubt "honor" it if he permanantly softened-up a detainee,or shock n awed an Iraqi family beforehand.

    jondee - I think that our military are sensible of the civilians in the path of a war. Certinaly more so than combantants usually are. And I think that what happened at Gitmo was a shame. (In the real sense of that word.) But that's not your real point and we all know it. Everyone dies someday, kiddo, and it matters how you live and how you die. Like Horton and the Who, or Anna Karenina, or Lopakhin, or Richard III. I dunno, perhaps that is the difference between the blue and the red? Why we send out children to fight for an imperfect and perfect country? Why a southerner can simultaneously honor his Antitem fallen ancestors and be proud of a black friend sworn in as a city councilman? How you can trust your son to be friends with a "bad" kid in hope for the friend? Sorry, reading Adams letters to his wife affects me. Back to your regularly scheduled crumedgeon. -C

    Re: Hunter Thompson's Wife : We Were On the Phone (none / 0) (#22)
    by retank on Fri Feb 25, 2005 at 10:33:34 PM EST
    must be tough to be a lonely troll,, Cliff!

    Give it, up Cliff- nobody buys yer crap.

    Cliff, get a grip. The Blog is called Talkleft. Go back to Little green JimJeff's freeper footballs, or wherever it is in the internets that people actually pay attention to morons like you. You bug us adults, go play with the other kids.

    Deleted. Dr. Ace, this is not a site to bash the Good Doctor. Please go elsewhere.