Submitted by Tim Jackson:
Harvard alum pulls the prank of his life
by Joseph P. Kahn
Boston Globe
March 2, 2008
When the Harvard class of 1959 gathers for its 50th reunion a year from June, they’ll chat about global issues and grandchildren, postretirement pursuits, and the inevitable health concerns. At some point they’re also bound to discuss a subject few thought much about until recently: classmate Arthur Lemay and why he tried to fool them all into thinking he was dead.
In a ruse Mark Twain might have concocted, Lemay, a retired management consultant from Northern California, circulated his own obituary on a Harvard ’59 e-mail listserv last month, then sat back and watched classmates’ reactions. The faux obit followed scores of right-wing polemics Lemay wrote and distributed over the years, e-mails that tweaked and often infuriated his more liberal-minded classmates, virtually none of whom remembered Lemay from their college days, but upon whom he’d managed to make quite an impression recently.
“Arthur knew he was dying as early as September of 2007,” began the death notice, which was signed by Lemay’s wife and posted in late January. Ascribing his death to kidney failure while vacationing in the Caribbean, it contained descriptive touches such as: “He loved to play roles: the agent provocateur, the crazed right-winger, the insane bomber…” And: “He was actually a very reasonable person, not given to extremes. Had you met him, you would find him quite reasonable, sympathetic to liberal views, personable, interesting, and full of information – some of it quite esoteric and obscure.” Continue reading “70 Year Old Pulls College Prank”
