A Letter From The Editor
When The Fairy Tales Shatter
M
y sweet uncle Roy was the ulti-
mate Marilyn Monroe fan. He
was heart-broken when she died. He
talked about it for the rest of his life.
The mild-mannered barber felt terribly
sorry for the movie idol who was nick-
named “Goddess.” For years, he kept
the newspaper from that day, Aug. 6,
1962. The headline read, “Marilyn
Monroe Kills Self.”
Maybe that’s when suicide became
glamorous.
I’ve always thought that Monroe’s
death changed the way Americans
viewed suicide, a tragedy, horribly sad,
but it was also viewed as haunting and
mysterious. No one knows for certain
if Monroe committed suicide or if she
simply took too many pills. There’s also
a plethora of murder conspiracy theo-
ries that abound, but mostly the suicide
theory dominates.
Had she lived to be 90, then died
of a stroke, I doubt that Monroe would
have retained the mystique that she’s
held on to through the years since
her untimely death. I doubt that Andy
Warhol would have painted her like-
ness, Elton John and Bernie Taupin
would not have written Candle in the
Wind, nor would a ton of bio-pics been
made about her.
There have been a number of
historic celebrity suicides since, but few
have had quite the impact of Monroe’s.
Personally, for many reasons, I wish
she’d just managed to call someone
who could have talked her through
it all. Mostly because I think that the
view of suicide changed with Monroe,
and since her death, suicide has been
viewed as a dramatic way out to some
— especially the younger and more
impressionable members of society.
Fast forward to this June when
the news broke that fashion designer
Kate Spade ended her life. Spade had
been beautiful, successful and loved.
The most puzzling part about Spade’s
suicide was the fact that she left behind
a 13-year-old daughter.
The big question when reading
about her suicide was, “Why?” But
then, isn’t that always the question?
The CDC has released a new
report, which found that suicide rates
are on the rise across the country, clas-
sifying suicide as one of the leading
causes of death in the United States.
Since 1999, suicide rates have
increased by 30 percent in more than
half of the US states, several of which
saw increases much steeper — in North
Dakota, the suicide rate rose by 57.6
percent.
In 2016, the CDC reports, nearly
45,000 Americans lost their lives to
suicide, and more than half of that
number