By STEWART SLAVIN
IT IS WITH SADNESS that I have belatedly learned of the passing of Mark Holmes, a childhood friend in Rustic Canyon, quarterback of the Palisades High football team, a spiritual healer and subject of the book, What Really Happened to the Class of ‘65?
Mark died suddenly on January 29, 2022, but his death was only reported in the in-house magazine of the religious group to which he belonged.
I found this out from Bill Buerge, who is planning the 60th Reunion for the Class of ‘65 and was told of Holmes’ passing by a former patient of his.
I’ll never forget when Mark and I were about 12 fooling around on the field at Rustic Canyon Park and Mark would exclaim, “Let’s Get Deed!” And then we’d go running after neighbor Bob Dedon. Mark would repeat the call whenever we met.
Mark and I also played on the same Red Sox junior league baseball team at the park in 1961 in which he was the team’s King of Swat. He was also into sailing.
Historian Roger McGrath, who played football with Mark at PaliHi in the mid-1960s and remained good friends with Holmes over the years, said he spoke with Mark a year or so before he died.
“When I talked with Mark, he didn’t mention any health problems. It all came as a surprise to me because Mark was very health conscious, didn’t dissipate at all, and worked out regularly.”
McGrath said Holmes had been living in Panama for years and urged Roger to come down and surf with him before he moved.
“He was talking about selling his place in Panama and moving to Thailand,” McGrath said. His relationship with the actress Leigh Taylor-Young, who had previously been married to actor Ryan O’Neal, ended years before.
On the football field at PaliHi, Holmes was the quarterback and McGrath the halfback.
Both were named the Santa Monica Evening Outlook’s Co-Players of the Week after PaliHi’s first victory of the 1964 season.
The winning drive in the 6-0 victory over Hollywood High began when Holmes was set to punt on fourth down at midfield but got a high snap from center and instead ran the ball to the Sheik’ 39.
Halfback McGrath swept around right end for the final 27 yards and the winning touchdown. McGrath gained 110 yards on 20 carries for the game while Holmes tallied 49 in seven totes.
After graduation from PaliHi, Holmes attended four different colleges before finally deciding to go into Oriental medicine and acupuncture.
Both Holmes and Leigh Taylor-Young joined the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (MSIA) in the early 1970s and were active in the group for more than 50 years.
MSIA teaches a meditation technique that includes chanting of sacred Sanskrit words. It also offers a 12-year program called Soul Awareness Discourses designed to connect individuals inwardly to their own divinity.
Students are taught to stay focused on their individual spiritual practices and service to others. In Mark’s case, this was combined with his holistic Oriental medicine.
“For many years as Mark was learning and expanding his medical knowledge and unique magic, I was his patient,” said Taylor-Young, who was known for her roles in “I Love You, Alice B. Toklas,” “The Horsemen,” “Soylent Green” and other films.
“Later we married, and we both soon recognized that we respected and cared deeply for each other but we were more spiritual brothers and sisters than married beloveds.
“And so, dearest Mark, thank you for your wisdom, the healing ease and laughter, and the mutual and profound interest in health that we shared. Thank you for allowing me to be your guinea pig for your many medical experiments. I never minded being on the cold bathroom floor with what seemed like a hundred needles in my face, hooked up to some sophisticated German machine.”
Others associated with the group, which some former members described as a cult controlled by John-Roger, referred to as the Mystical Traveler, included author Arianna Huffington, Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys and actress Sally Kirkland.
Holmes had been a pivotal figure in the best-selling Class of ‘65 book written by classmates Michael Medved and David Wallichinsky that also spawned a short-lived TV series. And Mark had been trying to distance himself from the book ever since it was published in 1976. Those who knew Mark described him as an intensely private person.
Susan Monahan covered the 40th Reunion of the Corinthians class for the Palisadian-Post in August 2005. In her report, she noted that one classmate passed by Holmes in the ballroom of the Fairmont Hotel in Santa Monica saying, “you still look just like Paul Newman.”
Holmes told the reporter he didn’t feel he had been accurately portrayed in the book.
The book took its cue from a cover story in Time magazine that prophesied in 1965 that America’s teenagers were “on the fringe of a golden era” and it picked the Palisades High graduating class as an exemplar of the new age. Medved and Wallechinsky wanted to find out how the class was faring a decade later amid the social upheavals it had experienced.
In the book, Holmes was described as the star quarterback turned Hollywood masseuse. He was the “All-American boy,” dreamboat and darling of the faculty who was voted by classmates as Most Likely to Succeed.
But after graduation, according to the book, Holmes couldn’t get into Annapolis as his father did, went into mescaline, acid, Eastern philosophy, experimented with homosexuality and then went clean and positive to become an ordained minister in MSIA.
During his interview for the book with Medved and Wallechinsky, Holmes lit a candle to insure that “the frequency of light … is high enough so that discarnate entitles cannot enter the immediate area.”
Reviews of the book appeared in newspapers across the country, including the New York Times.
Holmes was annoyed that the book stereotyped him and others in his class and didn’t attempt to draw a true picture of his life after Palisades High.
At the 40th reunion, Holmes told the Palisadian-Post: “I was the first chapter (The Quarterback). Then, there I was in the New York Times, and they misrepresented my religion.
“It wasn’t the story of the class. You can’t generalize about a group of people, as being from the Palisades, or being that age. We all have our own biological individuality. It’s like the dinner they’re serving. Everyone in the room can eat the same thing, but we’re all going to react differently to it.”
Author Wallenchinsky, son of novelist Irving Wallace, said he was sorry Mark felt the way he did but “I still don’t agree with the religious movement he was involved in.”
The author did admit he was uncomfortable criticizing his classmates in the book. “I haven’t written a bad word about someone I know since,” he said.
Jeff Stolper, “The Surfer” in the Class of ’65 book, said Mark “always had a smile and was very friendly to everyone.”
“I ran into him at a restaurant back in the mid-1990s,” recalled Stolper. “He was alone and as I went to say, hello, he asked me and the lady I was with to sit down at his table, and he explained a new technique to help cure something in the human body. He wasn’t trying to sell it to us, he was excited to be able to help his clients feel better.”
Classmate Mila Malden and her husband Jeff Phillips said they were both saddened by the news. “Mark was a kind person, a lovely friend,” said Jeff, a fellow athlete who had been friends with Mark from the seventh through 12th grades.
Leigh Taylor-Young and others in the MSIA wrote the following deeply moving remembrances of Mark who will be missed by fellow members of his Class of ‘65 and all who knew him. Here is a link. https://www.msia.org/newdayherald/archives/110881-loving-mark-holmes?fbclid=IwY2xjawFoI7RleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHbPS_tg5Pss0ebqW6qSanFvL_mVmCJAFV53f2yeP_ec1yfYYCyETALiyag_aem_C7ZKmZzKA69TQDtCQYkyrQ
