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ASPEN, Colo. -- Friends of journalist
Hunter S. Thompson say they want to blast his cremated
remains out of a cannon in a final salute to the gun-loving
writer who committed suicide last weekend.
"If it can be done, we will do it,"
said Boston attorney George Tobia Jr., who represented
Thompson for about 15 years. "Maybe it will be part
of a public thing or maybe one night a shot will ring
out and people will know."
Thompson, 67, shot himself in the head
Sunday night with a .45-caliber handgun in the kitchen
of his home in the Woody Creek area north of Aspen. Friends
said he had been in considerable pain over the past year
after breaking a leg and undergoing hip surgery.
The family tentatively plans a private
commemoration of his life on March 5, family spokesman
Douglas Brinkley said. He said it's being called a "commemoration"
because "Hunter hated words like 'memorial."'
A larger event to celebrate Thompson's
literary career may be staged in April, he said.
Thompson's remains were cremated on Tuesday.
He was long fascinated by firearms and explosives; his
friends say he often joked that he was cannon fodder and
wanted his ashes to be shot from a cannon.
Pitkin County sheriff's spokesman Joe
DiSalvo said that would probably be legal.
"It think if someone wanted to fire
a cannon on their own property, I think they could do
that," said Pitkin County Sheriff's Investigator
Joe Disalvo. "I think by statute it would be OK."
Thompson was cremated in Glenwood Springs
Tuesday.
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