They say you should live your life so the Westboro Baptist Church will picket your funeral. I don’t know who exactly ‘they’ are or why they’re telling us how to run our lives but I concur with their contention.
One person who did raise the hackles of Westboro was the actor Leonard Nimoy.
Of course his most iconic role was that of my hero, Spock, in the sci-fi series (and subsequent movies based around said series) Star Trek. The punch line is that unlike the Enterprise in the third Star Trek film, The Search for Spock, Westboro couldn’t find Spock’s resting place. Sucked in.
The man behind Spock was a good egg. He stood by his Star Trek cast mate Nichelle Nichols – who in the 1960s portrayed one of the first African American female characters on a TV series – when she wasn’t receiving equal pay and refused to be part of the animated Star Trek series until Nichols and fellow cast mate George Takei’s characters were written in.
He photographed a book celebrating the fuller female figure.
He hosted a slightly nutty TV show in the 70s called In Search Of… which introduced a generation of children to, among other topics, the joys of “lost civilisations, extra-terrestrials, myths and monsters, missing persons, magic and witchcraft, unexplained phenomenon…”
In the guise of Spock he replied to a letter from a young girl experiencing racism. Seriously, the man was a peach. And if you don’t like peaches then he’s another awesome fruit. Or something.
Nimoy’s first autobiography, published in 1975, was titled I Am Not Spock. It was perhaps understandable that Nimoy, the actor, would have wanted to separate himself from Spock, the character. The second volume of his autobiography, written in 1995, was titled I Am Spock. By this time, Nimoy could probably more fully comprehend Spock’s profoundly positive impact on society and that it was something he did not need to walk away from.
Through the character of Spock, Nimoy brought to life someone whose commitment to logic didn’t cancel out a childlike wonder of the universe. Half-Vulcan, half-human, Spock himself experienced racism as a child and this is what he/Nimoy drew upon when replying to the aforementioned young girl.
As a member of the Enterprise crew he showed his loyalty and as much as he may not like to have admitted it, a deep love for his friends. He was also, at times, magnificently sassy. And let’s not forget that time he liked cats. Excellent.
Now he’s left us and even with a space of two weeks since his death I feel the universe is a lot emptier without him. Although I am still sad, we are a lot richer for having both Nimoy and Spock. Even though they’ll never know it, they have, and always shall be, my friends. LLAP.
