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Man who changed name to Jack Ass dies by shootin himself
HOT SPRINGS - The former Robert Craft, the man who changed his legal name to Jack Ass in 1997 and founded the Hearts Across America campaign that encouraged people to put up big red "healing hearts" along highways, has himself died.
A coroner said Wednesday that Ass shot himself with a hunting rifle last week in a yard used for automobile storage east of Hot Springs. He was 45.
No information was available earlier because, at his own request, he was buried in a simple pine box with no embalming of the body. By law, the body had to be interred within 48 hours, an official with the funeral home that handled the burial said. There was no obituary or death notice issued.
Sanders County Coroner Mark Denke said Wednesday that the sheriff's office received a call at 11:50 a.m. Monday, Aug. 21, from the owner of the property where the suicide occurred. The property owner, Verlan Smith, told officials that as he was inspecting his property he heard a gunshot, saw a portion of the body, and immediately called 9-1-1, the coroner said.
Ass died instantly from the gunshot, Denke said. He was found with the rifle on the ground between the vehicle he drove to the location and a demolition derby car he owned that was stored at the location, the coroner said.
Ass had prepared detailed instructions for disposal of his remains and for settling of his personal affairs, the coroner said.
He had even written his own eulogy, which was read at his grave during a gathering at Jocko Catholic Cemetery east of Arlee. Despite the lack of notice, about 50 friends and relatives from all over western Montana attended, said Diane Craft, a relative from Columbia Falls.
Ass was the subject of a Missoulian story last December after he sued Viacom, the giant media conglomerate and parent company of MTV, for injury to his reputation and defamation of character allegedly brought on him because of the production of the TV show "Jackass" and a subsequent movie.
The New Yorker and other national media also published pieces on Ass' lawsuit against Viacom, and he was asked by numerous radio talk-show hosts to discuss the lawsuit on the air, which he did, always plugging his Hearts Across America campaign, where the crosses served to memorialize deceased loved ones.
The suit was filed in Sanders County District Court in Thompson Falls last year, with Ass serving as his own attorney. The suit was transferred to federal court in January, and dismissed recently, a federal court clerk in Missoula said Wednesday.
Ass had been upset about the dismissal of his lawsuit, friends in Hot Springs said. But there were other issues in his life that may have made him despondent or distraught.
Craft said that she and other friends and relatives are discussing holding a memorial service for Ass at a later date, and if such a public service is planned, information will be made available to the media in advance.
He concluded the five-stanza poem he left as his eulogy with the following two stanzas:
"So I decided to leave this physical plane
for I accomplished what I was chosen to do.
one door closes and another opens up
and for me these words are true.
"Remember the good times
forget the bad and shed no tears for me,
for I am blessed and grateful to
all my awesome friends and family."
At his request, he was buried beside his mother, Dorothy Fisher, in the Jocko Cemetery, and both graves are marked with red Hearts Across America healing hearts in accordance with his final wishes.
Doc-
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2003/08/01/news/mtregional/znews08.txt
and sum funny comments from ppl-also a laugh
doc- http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/com...l?IDLink=609379
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