posted December 17, 2006 04:34 AM         

FAREWELL: LOST IN THE STARS
LINDA GOODMAN LIVED GUIDED BY ASTROLOGY AND HAUNTED BY DEATH
Date: 11/27/1995; Publication: People Magazine; Author: CYNTHIA SANZ

PUBLISHED DECEMBER 18, 1995 PAGE 14 Correction--In a story on Linda Goodman, we misspelled the name of her friend Bob Slatzer.

FOR MILLIONS OF AMERICANS THE age of Aquarius arrived with Linda Goodman. Armed with heavenly charts and a down-to-earth writing style, the popular astrologer brought the ancient beliefs that the stars could forecast the future out of the realm of exotica and onto the bestseller lists. Her 1968 book Sun Signs sold more than 5 million copies and spawned the top-selling sequels Love Signs and Star Signs. Celebrities including Steve McQueen, Princess Grace and Sonny and Cher sought her counsel. "She got astrology on the map,'' says friend Rob Dorgan. Adds Goodman's daughter Jill, 38: "She paved the way to New Age thinking."

But while Goodman, who died Oct. 21 at age 70 of complications from diabetes, helped others find their answers in the stars, she seemed woefully unable to come to terms with the mysteries of her own life. The 1973 suicide of her 21-year-old daughter Sally haunted Goodman for decades. One of five children (three of whom died in infancy) born to Goodman and the first of her two husbands, writer William Snyder, Sally was an aspiring actress when she overdosed on Demerol in her New York City apartment. Linda's second husband, Sam Goodman, a radio announcer, identified his stepdaughter and had her body cremated.

But despite her husband's testimony, a previous suicide attempt by Sally and a rambling note at the scene, Goodman refused to believe her daughter was dead. A week after the cremation, Goodman, who had moved to the remote mining town of Cripple Creek, Colo., in 1970 to write, flew to New York to search for her "missing" child. She argued that autopsy photos showed the dead woman's skin--brown from days of decaying in a warm apartment--was darker than Sally's and that Sally's astrological charts indicated she was alive. While there, Goodman spent 10 days sleeping outside St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan to call attention to what she believed was an official cover-up of her daughter's fate. "She couldn't let it go," says friend Bob Slates. "She contacted the FBI and the CIA. At one point she told me the government was behind the whole thing."

When Goodman's fortunes increased--the paperback rights for her second book, Love Signs, were sold for a then-record $2.25 million in 1978--she spent more than $400,000 on private detectives to keep up the search. Investigator Anthony Pellicano (who later would work for Michael Jackson) concluded that Sally had committed suicide shortly after talking to her mother on the phone, but Goodman rejected his findings. "She was a wonderful woman," Pellicano says, "but she obviously had serious guilt problems about the death of her daughter."

Long before Sally's suicide, Goodman had been obsessively single-minded in her pursuits. Born Mary Alice Kemery in Parkersburg, W.Va., she began her career as a newspaper writer in Parkersburg where she also married first husband Snyder. Later she took a job as a radio announcer in Pittsburgh, where she adopted the name Linda and met second husband Goodman. (They married in 1955.)

Although her family says Goodman always had a very spiritual side, her interest in astrology didn't blossom until she moved to New York City in 1963. There she sometimes spent 20 hours a day in a nightgown doing charts and poring over a coffee-table book on astrology as she wrote Sun Signs. "She was very determined," says Jill, an artist and one of two children (son Michael, 35, is an aspiring writer) from the Goodman marriage (Sam died in 1983).

Goodman's intensity and generosity drew friends to her: She frequently thanked acquaintances for favors with gifts of cars or expensive jewelry, a habit that led her into bankruptcy in the late 1980s. But they were often driven away by her demands and her temper--a reaction Goodman never seemed to understand. Years after lover Robert Brewer, a 26-year-old marine biologist, left her in 1972, Goodman continued to set a place for him at her dinner table in expectation of his return.

In time, not only did Goodman stop believing in death (she eventually claimed that Marilyn Monroe, Howard Hughes and Elvis Presley were all still alive but in hiding), but "age was an illusion to her," says son Michael.

When diagnosed with diabetes in the mid-1980s, Goodman, who distrusted traditional medicine, sometimes refused treatment and later had to have first a toe, then part of her leg amputated. Afterward, she became a virtual recluse in her Cripple Creek home. "She wanted to suffer alone," says longtime friend Terry Moore, the actress and widow of Hughes.

Even then, Goodman continued to look to the stars. Linda Goodman's Love Signs Relationship Report, a personalized analysis of couples' astrological compatibility, which she finished before her death, will soon hit the Internet. "Linda really did believe in love," says Dorgan, "and she lived her life for it."

--CYNTHIA SANZ --VICKIE BANE in Cripple Creek and DANELLE MORTON and LYNDON STAMBLER in Los Angeles

CYNTHIA SANZ, FAREWELL: LOST IN THE STARS LINDA GOODMAN LIVED GUIDED BY ASTROLOGY AND HAUNTED BY DEATH. , People, 11-27-1995, pp 139+.

------------------
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

posted December 17, 2006 04:47 AM         

Quote:
"I found out that there is a web sight called Conscious Evolution. I went there and if you click on "Linda Goodman" and then go to the subject "another forthcoming book that didn't make it" there is someone named "Write On". It sounds like she has quite a bit of the Linda's work that was never completed. I have copied it to this reply. This has been such an adventure for me. I live in a very small town and this is so fasinating to me.
Re: another forthcoming book that didnt make it
#157688 - Fri Oct 06 2006 09:55

Hi Daisy,

I have been working for many years now to pull together a full picture of Linda's life. Back when our site was LindaGoodman.net, and before even Auriel and Dave were hired to answer astro questions on it, Greg and Crystal flew me out to California to discuss our working together to publish the "official" Linda Goodman biography. Greg and I were immediately in synch, but Crystal Bush and I were immediately at odds. For me, it was just a vibe I immediately picked up from Crystal that immediately put me off. I had wanted to like her, but I honestly couldn't wait to get out of there once I met her. Greg always kindly begged understanding of her, so I haven't mentioned my feelings about her until now. But anyway...

I was and am friends with a number of Linda's friends, some of whom had very trustingly handed over a lot of their own things from Linda, which Linda had given them, to Crystal ... and Crystal, promising their return in a week, had never and STILL has never given them back to those friends of Linda these many years later.

In similar fashion, Crystal wanted me to do all the work on a book she would take credit for. I declined in no uncertain terms.

Nevertheless, with the help of Linda's true friends and the encouragement of Gregory, I have continued to work on gathering everything I can. And finally, as of Oct. 1 of this year, I'm devoting full time to the project. You would be amazed at the number of people Linda actually did give copies of various things to. And, once they understood me and what I'm doing and that I'm for real, many of these things have passed into my hands.

I do have copies of all of Linda's work (manuscripts and research notes) on the three "forthcoming books" she meant to publish -- Hazelwood, Twelfth Night Secrets, and Spider Line. I also have the manuscript of Captains, the book Goober wrote. Plus I have a number of her own notes in her own handwriting on some of these matters, and I have a number of the books Linda learned from herself when she was teaching herself astrology and other codes. These are her copies of those books, again with her handwritten notes in the margins.

I just completed an interview Thursday with two of her friends and have other interviews lined up for next week. I'm planning to phone "Finbar O'Malley" (not his real name) today, and the lady who cared for one of Linda's gurus (the Twelfth Night Secrets guru) at the end of her life has said that I can come look at what that guru left with her. I have never wanted to aggressively push this project, but rather to wait until things began to come together of their own accord, which is exactly what's happening now.

Spider Line is about Linda's search for Sally. It's that specific. And the phrase itself, as Greg said here on this site before, refers to a physical feature of Sally that Linda believed she would be able to identify Sally by if ever she were to see her in the flesh again.

Love,
Maria "
http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum5/HTML/000292.html

posted December 17, 2006 12:43 PM         

Everything will be coming, through this acceleration, we Must Master OurSelves,

and alter the probablities

Saving Planet Earth, or not. ...

Our MOther Earth..
Must be Healed...

We must Heal OurSelves first..
or we cannot do Our Great Work!

posted December 17, 2006 05:42 PM         

but I am not going to let it start. I am writing a HUGE piece to put forth the truth about whats going on...I am so sick of everyone saying "this and that" about her...magazines and people who always talk about "someone told me this about linda"

I HAVE A SURPRISE FOR YOU ALL....its called
FIRE and some people are about to get burned.

posted December 17, 2006 07:07 PM         

and The Truth is, as we each come to Master
OurSelves, lies, will not work anyMOre, deception, will be revealed...

along with the Mysteries...for this is
a very special TIME, we live in, Our STory

each one of us, humanity

Creation

GOD