LSD icon Owsley 'Bear' Stanley dead at 76; killed in car accident in Australia
by Lukas I. Alpert, nydailynews.com
March 14th 2011 9:47 AM
Owsley "Bear" Stanley's long, strange trip has ended.
The counterculture icon who was a major LSD producer in the 1960s and was
celebrated in song by The Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix, has died in a car
crash in Australia.
He was 76.
Stanley was a core figure in the drug scene that underpinned hippie culture,
producing an estimated one pound of pure LSD - enough for roughly five million
trips.
His pioneering role made the name "Owsley," a popular slang term for the drug.
Stanley stood firm in his belief that the drug was beneficial to society,
despite serving two years in prison in the early 1970s.
"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for," he told
the San Francisco Chronicle in 2007. "What I did was a community service."
Stanley was also a skilled audio technician who worked with The Dead creating
their legendary sound system. Stanley inspired the band's bear logo - which
became a fixture on the back of Volkswagen buses for decades.
"His death is grievous loss to his family and the tens of thousands of people
from the '60s who were influenced by his work with the Grateful Dead," said
long time friend Sam Cutler.
Stanley was the grandson of one-time Kentucky governor and senator Augustus
Owsley Stanley.
The counter-culture figure moved to Australia in the 1980s after growing
convinced that the northern hemisphere would be subsumed by another ice age.
He was killed when the car he was driving swerved off a highway Saturday and
down an embankment into a tree. His wife, who was with him in the car, suffered
minor injuries.
In announcing his death, his family called Stanley "our beloved patriarch."
He is survived by his wife, Shiela, four children, eight grandchildren and two
great-grandchildren.
With News Wires Services
Original Page:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/03/14/2011-03-14_lsd_icon_owsley_bear_stanley_dead_at_76_killed_in_car_accident_in_australia.html
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