March 7, 2001

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In Memory of Divine

“Miss Lulu, do you think I’m made of steel?”

I honestly do not have an answer for that very American question:”Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” mainly due to being a mere thought bubble at the time. Ask me though,where I was when I learned the news that Harris Glenn Milstead, AKA Divine, had passed away,and I can tell you. Eating cheese toast and drinking coffee at the Valley Cafe,in the small college town of Ellensburg,Washington. Whiling away the afternoon that day, my astonishment compounded when I came across an obituary in the local Daily Record that Mr. Milstead had passed in his sleep the previous night. A sad day,and 13 years later it still seems impossible that the Baltimore star of so many great John Water’s movies and other wonderful projects is gone.