In Memoriam: Durk J. Pearson

IN MEMORIAM

DURK J. PEARSON

August 19, 1943 – October 26, 2024

By Scott C. Tips, NHF President

I first met Durk Pearson and his new wife Sandy Shaw 55 years ago at a Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) convention in Saint Louis, Missouri. Durk and Sandy had just turned 26. It was August 1969, and while we were talking libertarianism, the Woodstock music festival was making history in New York. But Durk and Sandy, and all of us, were making a more significant history of our own as the libertarian movement coalesced, gathered force, and abruptly broke free from traditional conservatism. I was part of that movement, having been converted then and there. Durk and Sandy helped birth that movement.

I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday. Suffering from a sore throat and hoarse voice, a tall and lanky Durk sat at a fold-out table and almost whispered into a microphone that connected to a boxed speaker, which then projected his voice full volume to the audience in the room. He had built the device himself. I sat behind Sandy Shaw, who was on the front row and enthusiastically applauding every time Durk hit a high note when speaking about freedom and individual liberty. The room, although not large, was full of people eager to hear the words of wisdom coming from this California freedom activist. Durk’s words helped convert me – and many others – to libertarianism.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Durk always seemed to excel at anything he put his mind to. When he went to M.I.T. in Massachusetts for higher studies, he was top of his class with a triple major in Physics, Biology, and Psychology. In fact, the year that he graduated and took the Graduate Records Exam (GRE), a particularly difficult exam for any person, he scored the highest GRE results of anyone taking the exam that year in the United States! It turns out that the GRE testing company has a policy of following the top scorer for each year’s class for the rest of their lives, to see how they perform in life.

Well, Durk gave the testers a run for their money because he was a renaissance man in the style of Michelangelo, certainly when it came to inventing, engineering, problem-solving, and philosophy. At the time that I first met Durk, he was employed by TRW in Redondo Beach, California and was working on the “death laser” project. But, in talking with him, anyone could see that he was an expert on virtually every topic. He held patents in shale-oil extraction, among other things. And his friends used to joke that someone could walk around with him and Sandy, engaged in casual conversation, and pick up a dozen ideas for viable businesses from those conversations.

When I broke my writing hand one school year and was concerned that it would be difficult for me to write out my exam answers, it was Durk who helpfully came to the rescue. Together, he and I constructed an electromagnetic healing device with two sets of coils, which I placed on either side of the break for several weeks. Thanks to Durk, my broken bones healed in half the time, Durk and Sandy removed my cast, and exam taking ceased to be a concern.

Because Durk could make reading from a telephone directory sound fascinating, he was a favorite during the late 1970s and mid 80s on several popular talk shows, especially The Merv Griffin Show, where he would astound Merv and his audience with his in-depth expertise on nutrition, life extension, and a host of other subjects. He made some 32 appearances on The Merv Griffin Show, which generated over 500,000 fan letters! The only guest to have ever received more fan mail than Durk was Elizabeth Taylor.

All of this fame and celebrity status arrived on Durk and Sandy’s doorstep and directly led to the publication in May 1982 of their blockbuster book, Life Extension – A Practical Scientific Approach, which sold two million copies and remained on The New York Times Bestseller list for several months. (They mention me several times in their book.) Subsequent books, such as The Life Extension Companion and a cookbook, followed; but this success and fame never seemed to go to either of their heads. They remained the same Durk and Sandy whom I had always known so well.

Prolific writers and scientists of profound integrity, they hired me in these pre-Google internet days (mid-1970s) to look up scientific papers at the UCLA Biomedical Library, copy them, and deliver them into their hands as part of their background work for this first book of theirs. At the time, I was a student at UCLA and became quite familiar with the biomedical library there. I also became a regular visitor to their home, first in Redondo Beach and then later in Manhattan Beach, California, where we would spend days and evenings talking together at length on a wide range of subjects. They were quite generous with their time.

For many years, I was one of their three closest friends. The other two close friends of Durk and Sandy were Rod Manis and Chris Kringle, both of whom died long ago, leaving me as the sole survivor of “the gang.”

Because of our decades-long close association, I became their trusted advisor and attorney for certain of their business affairs. They started a vitamin supplement business with avant-garde supplements mentioned in their books. Later, they successfully sued the FDA for having violated the law by denying certain qualified health claims for their products. Their first lawsuit was such a success that it led to subsequent, similarly based lawsuits that led others to jump on the bandwagon. But the real credit goes to Durk and Sandy for their integrity and steadfast determination to see their many lawsuits through to the end.

Durk and Sandy’s approach to life extension was pragmatic. Neither of them was a “pie-in-the-sky” dreamer who thought that the key to longevity would be one discovery away. No, as Durk told me once during our lengthy conversations, “The key to living longer is not to wait for the home-run discovery to be made that lets you live forever but instead to look for the discoveries that will give you an extra five or ten years of life. With the doubling time of knowledge working on your side, you will then still be alive when that next longevity discovery is made that will give you another ten years of life, and so on.”

Unfortunately, once they moved to Nevada, I was less in touch with them and we drifted apart, although always remaining friends. Durk and I would talk on the phone occasionally, and they gave the National Health Federation carte blanche to republish their articles in Health Freedom News.

Never afraid to challenge the authorities, Durk remained an activist, particularly on the local level, as reported in the Pahrump Valley Times where Durk successfully challenged a zoning ordinance as it applied to his property (see: pvtimes.com/tonopah/grazing-exemption-gets-bogged-down-tonopah-expansion-discussion/). And Durk continued to do interviews, such as one last year with David Naster, which will give the listener a flavor of Durk’s brilliance even at 80 years old (www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEOg-t1dmd4).

It was news to me that Sandy passed away three years ago. I am even more saddened that they are both gone now. They were very dear friends and very formative in my early life, as I’m sure they were in countless thousands of other lives. Their presence fueled the supplement industry, nutritional education, and helped to make America a healthier place.