On planet earth and the beginning of human history often a single thought will appear and bring with it an idea that sows the seed of deep changes in the rise of human life on earth.

In 1966 I read The Prospect of Immortality and in that book Robert Ettinger explained in vivid detail how I might today go about stopping or at least greatly delaying my own death by utilizing the science of cryonic suspension.

The book’s explanation was crystal clear. It offered a thesis of a fact and an assumption. If I had my body frozen in LN2 while I was still in the early stages of dying (clinical death) and stayed frozen until (the assumption) a future generation of science might one day in the distant future be up to the task of returning me to a new and healthy life.

The problem with implementing these life saving suggestions in 1966 was that there were no facilities to perform such a cryo perfusion and no doctors or morticians that would or could handle processing anyone that wanted to be cryonicly suspended. There were also no reliable LN2 capsules or storage and maintenance services available at that time and finally there was no place to store such a frozen patient.

These facilities would need to be created to care for such patients providing decades or even centuries of care and safe keeping before anyone could rely on this method of dealing with the dying process.

Driving home from work one day in 1966 I had just listened to an old Tony Bennett song "If I ruled the world" when the stations DJ announced with a tongue in cheek attitude " If any of you listeners out there don’t like the idea of dying just call this number______ and get yourself invited to a Life Extension Society meeting in Los Angeles next week.

The L.E.S. proposes freezing your body when you die instead of burying it. They claim one day they may be able to bring you back.

That DJ never knew how much he had changed my life and world history with that simple announcement that he was so playfully making. I called that number and attended that California first human suspended animation meeting. Within a month I was elected president of the newly formed CSC.

We had a tight group of advocates incorporated as the non profit Cryonics Society of California. We were determined to bring the needed professionals and facilities together that could offer cryonic suspension to those choosing this new and promising means of dealing with the dying process.

Among our two hundred members, the CSC meetings resulted in enlisting doctors, low temperature researchers, mortuary owners and professionals from all walks of life. It was not easy to convince most people that the grand prize of greatly extended life was worth the effort, but to those of us who loved life there was nothing that was going to stand in the way.

Poet Kahlil Gibran said it beautifully when he writes, " to be like a running brook singing its melody unto the night, to wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving. "

Yes the love of life is strong and is an inalienable right, an instinct that some thriving human beings embrace with all their heart and soul. Yet strangely, there are those who have no interest in extended life. My own brother whom I love with all my heart has an attitude of, are you kidding, no way do I want to come back to this world once I am out of here. No way!

On January 12, 1967 CSC made world history by freezing Dr. James Bedford. Dr. Bedford was the first human being to be frozen under controlled conditions with the goal of eventual reanimation.

The suspension team consisted of Dr. Renault Able the attending physician, Dr Dante Brunnol who directed the perfusion, Robert Prehoda an author of three books supporting reduced metabolism research and myself.

Prehoda was in a way two faced about his personal support for the cryonics program. To the scientific world, he claimed he was opposed to human cryonics suspension. However privately he was very much in support of the CSC goals to freeze those of us facing death today.

This is very clearly documented by his actual participation in the perfusion and freezing of Dr. Bedford. Dr Bedford actually spent overnight in dry ice in Prehoda's garage.

The freezing of the first man created a lot of interest in cryonic suspension, but the problem cryonics faced obtaining hard cash became a difficult puzzle. People did strange thinks to hold on to their money.

Dr. Bedford provided three hundred thousand dollars for his suspension and care but CSC was never paid anything. He was whisked away by his son and Dr. Renault Able, then secretly transferred many times to different locations over the next several years.

Many years later when the three hundred thousand dollars was gone, Dr Bedford body was given to the Alcor foundation who to this day provides a free capsule and continued suspension in LN2 for the first men ever frozen. We salute you Alcor the world is indeed indebted to you.

Dick Jones, the first secretary of the CSC, saw first hand how desperate the society was for funds to purchase property on cemetery grounds and build a storage vault to store our frozen heroes. Three patients were then on dry ice for two years waiting for a capsule and reanimation. Dick never offered to help not even a penny.

Dick Jones, it turns out, was a multi millionaire, and when in 1988 he himself died of AIDS while in his mid thirties, he left over five million dollars to the Alcor foundation in Arizona for his own suspension and safe keeping.

After the freezing of Dr Bedford in 1967 a series of deaths of prominent CSC officials occurred. First was the very well known Marie Sweet who had given enormously of herself and time to promoting CSC efforts to prosper and develop a state of the art cryonics facility.

Marie died on August 27,1967 alone in a Santa Monica hotel while in town promoting the CSC first national cryonics conference. She was not discovered for 48 hours after her death.

We placed her in dry ice temporary storage. As it turned out Marie had made all the necessary legal arrangements for her own suspension, but she had provided absolutely no funds for to pay for that suspension.

Her husband gave CSC a total of three hundred and declared that was all the money they had between them. They lived only on social security.

Several months later, on May 14, 1968 my personal hero Ms. Helen Kline passed away. Helen was dying when she set up the very first California cryonics meeting at her home in spite of the cancer that was ravaging her body.

Helen found the strength to hang in there and fight for her life. It was Helen who brought us all together and take the first step to bring together the teachings of the Prospect of Immortality.

Helen died with out having a penny to her name. She did however get an excellent suspension there were no delays as we had a suspension team right there at the moment of her clinical death. At my decision and direction we placed her temporarily in the dry ice container with Marie Sweet.

On Sept 6, 1968 the historian of cryonics Russ Stanley died from a heart attack while at work. Russ was the most gung ho cryonicist I had ever met. He was a wealthy man, but left only ten thousand for his freezing storage and perpetual LN2 replacement. It took 24 hours to get cryonic treatment to Russ. We now had three patients in temporary storage and not enough money to save any one of them on a permanent basis. At least the funds left by Russ Stanley provided money to replace the dry ice on a weekly basis. The cost of keeping these patients in dry ice for over two years at $90 each week translates into $9,500 for a two-year period.

I decided not to give up on saving these frozen heroes, I hoped something or someone would come forward and help. I believed all our lives depended on that truth.

After about two years of weekly replacing dry ice on our three patients, we received a desperate call from a Michigan resident, Marie Bowers, who had had her beloved father frozen and stored at the Cryocare Equipment Company in Phoenix, Arizona. She was broke and unable to pay for her fathers continued maintenance.

Cryocare owner Ed Hope told me when I called him to inquire about the capsule that she had two weeks to pay up the $1,500 she owed him or he would "kick the fucking thing into the street".

Mr. Hope asked me if that was clear enough?

Ms. Bowers donated the capsule and her father to CSC with a written notice of her inability to continue her fathers suspension. The CSC paid Ed Hope the $1,500.00 Ms. Bowers owed The CryoCare Equipment Company. We then took the capsule to California.

In the intervening two years CSC had acquired three more patients A beautiful seven year old little girl from Canada. Her father had no money he pleaded with me to help save her. I could not say no.

Another young man from New York frozen by CSNY was Stephan Mandell. Stephan’s mother pleaded with me to bring him to California as New York was not able to provide her a secure storage location for her capsule.

We did bring Stephen’s capsule to California. We never did hear from Ms. Mandell once the capsule arrived in California. The only other people to provide any donation money ( ten thousand dollars ) were the two sons of Mildred Harris.

Ms. Harris was placed in temporary dry ice storage with the understanding the brothers would donate between one and three hundred dollars a month to maintain their mothers suspension

After two years in dry ice storage the family requested and received a private memorial service and viewing of their mother. About ten family members traveled from Iowa for this service. The ceremony was very beautiful and Ms. Harris did indeed appear to be sleeping beauty waiting for that special kiss.

The brothers like all of the frozen heroes survivors failed to keep their promise to make monthly donation. After a year or two all the patients were essentially abandoned and left for CSC to pay the bills.

Over the ten years the society survived it did accomplish several outstanding goals. We sponsored the first California national cryonics conference. We froze the first human being. We built the first cryonics vault on cemetery grounds. We froze and stored nine patients three years almost for free.

As with most great ventures such as placing a man on the moon, mistakes were made and lives were lost. However in that effort great advances were made. At one cryonics meeting I had the distinct pleasure of introducing Fred and Linda Chamberlain to each other.

They quickly fell in love and became a powerful team. Fred became a vice president of CSC and Linda took charge of all office activities as office manager.

It soon became very obvious that they had a goal of establishing their own cryonics facility. They had access to almost every bit of information and activity the CSC was involved in.

And that was fine with me as I recently told Bob Ettinger and CI president Ben Best my goal was not to become rich famous and live forever. Just living forever was ample reward for me.

The Chamberlains went on to make the dream of a state of the art cryonics facility a reality. I applaude them for their contribution to the world, which is in my opinion without a doubt comparable to the birth of the wheel or the discovery of fire.

The one CSC activity I did not share with the Chamberlains or any one else was that the capsule containing the first four frozen heroes had failed and there were no funds to purchase another capsule or to even provide LN2. The society had completely run out of money. CSC was broke.

I could find no one who would part with any of their money to save these frozen heroes who apparently did not care enough financially about saving their own carcass.

I have been severely rebuked for this action and I believe justly so. Not for my conduct of trying with all my heart to save these poor souls who had left virtually no funds with which to continue their suspension, but for walking away for twenty five years and refusing to discuss or answer even the tiniest detail of what happened at the failed cryonics vault. I can only explain the anger I felt after being found at fault to the tune of thirty seven thousand dollars ( the total judgement was almost half a million dollars) for the intentional infliction of pain and suffering to Clair Halpert a Cryonics Society of New York (CSNY) member whom I had never even met and had absolutely nothing to do with. We had no knowledge of her mothers suspension by the CSNY.

I felt like a volcano had erupted inside my soul and like the volcano on the big island of Hawaii kept on erupting for all of those years.

My reason for not informing the Chamberlins or any one else regarding the issue of the failed capsules was for their own well being, this is true of all the CSC members and directors who knew nothing about the capsule’s failure. This was the very reason I was the only society member that was sued.

The decision to try and save those who had made no provisions for their own suspension cost, was my own foolish decision I acted on their behalf out of my own compassion. If I had not done so they would have been disposed of within a few days of their death.

The plaintiff’s attorney Mr. Worthington would then have included any one he could in his law suit and vicious search for pockets to money grab, as he tried so desperately to do.

In closing I would remind everyone that CSC played an important roll in the rise of the Chamberlins and of Alcor itself. Every wonderful achievement they made had its beginning from the existence of the Cryonics society of California.

Yes the CSC vault did indeed in the long run fail, but the CSC members them self’s were a resounding success. They produced the Chamberlins, Dick Jones, Cryobiologist Greg Fahy, Ph,D and countless other leaders in today’s suspended animation programs. While there are some who would choose to ignore these facts there are many others who do acknowledge this truth.

The CSC took an enormous hit from unscrupulous money grabbing attorneys, showing how vulnerable the cryonics concept can be to juries and people who view this science as a new religion threatening the old ways of thinking and believing. I acknowledge that CSC made mistakes, but I ask you please don’t diminish CSC contribution to the cryonics program because of those mistakes.

On April 4^th 2004 some 25 years later I retired from my electronics business and turned that switch in my head back on and allowed my self to once again embrace cryonics as the life saving hope it truly is. I asked Bob Ettinger if he would object to my writing another book about the early CSC years (first book "We Froze The First Man".) Mr. Ettinger said he thought it would be a good idea to record that part of history.I have just finished writing that book and hope it will be published soon. The working title is "Frozen heroes and the cryonics time machine."

Since finishing my book I have joined CI as an Option One Member and I have made all legal and financial arrangements to be frozen when my time comes to face the grim reaper. In the meantime I am filled with confidence, that one day I will be revived to become part of a brave new world.

After seeing the wonderful facility the people of Michigan have so carefully built on a slow but steady course, it is truly an honor to join your group and be counted as one of those embracing the metamorphosis of cave man into super man.

In April 2005 I was rushed to my local hospital emergency room with what was believed to be an oncoming heart attack. I was ultimately discovered to have a life threatening lack of potassium which was easily managed. During my three day stay in the hospital I was faced with the horrible fact that even though I had made arrangements to be frozen there was no one there to prepare my body for cryonics suspension.

If I died, sooner or later the Renaker Mortuary would come around to pick up my by now very dead body, pack me in ice and ship me to Michigan for permanent LN2 storage.

The problem with this scenario is that without immediate cooling and resumption of artificial of heart compression the oxygen flow to my brain will cease and brain damage will continue to become more severe.

While we have a right to expect future medicine to be able to perform miracles we must deliver ourselves to that future generation in the very best condition possible.

As I am now retired this is a perfect time to bridge and fill that gap between death and arriving at CI in Michigan. I happen to have a close personal relationship with a young couple who work at the Palomar hospital here in California. They are both trauma team experts and regularly work in the organ donor ward of their hospital.

It is a matter of routine for them to place organ donors in a special organ harvesting ward and keep those deceased ones connected to a heart lung machines until the exact right moment that they are released to the donor recipient organization. In our case that would be the cryonics Institute or its representative, Renaker Mortuary.

We have formed a company here in California to provide stand by service and information for those patients now living in the west coast. The name of this new venture is "The Continued Life Group" further information can by found by calling us at (760) 583-6700 or email us at: cryosafe@thecontinuedlifegroup.com

And remember as Ettinger explains it’s more interesting to be alive than to be dead.

Bon Nelson (left) and Robert Ettinger in front of the CI Facility in July 2005

Photo Ben Best