A story ready to be told

 

 

DadToddler

Made in China

My father, Edmund Lorenz Van Deusen, was born to Presbyterian missionaries in Tsingtao, China, on December 13, 1923.  He would go on to create a firestorm with his free-love lifestyle, and a titillating book about that lifestyle, entitled “Contract Cohabitation.”

A life prematurely lived fully

Edmund died on January 18, 1994, a mere one month and one day after his seventieth birthday.  Proudly unrepentant to the end, he died alone, in his small home. He was ten years older when he died than he had expected to be, yet more than twenty years younger than his older siblings who are still alive. Years of alcohol and tobacco abuse usually do win out in the end.

I am my father’s daughter

Edmund’s story is my story. It is a story that is at once too painful to tell, and yet too compelling not to. Edmund epitomizes 1970’s California, and more specifically, Laguna Beach, land of tie-dye and patchouli, free love and divorce. On these pages I’d like to tell his story, and by doing so, tell the story of those he affected so profoundly, including my mother and me.