It is time to tell this love story. It began during a summer art class in 1955. John had enrolled in a life drawing/painting class (night school) under an assumed name. I fell in love with his artwork and we became friends.

It was six months before he revealed his true identity to me during a Halloween party hosted by our art instructor, a lovable Italian professor on Sabbatical from Italy.  John was Errol Flynn to me but he was Tarzan to himself, physically daring, invincible, immortal and pleasantly eccentric.

He took great pride in himself, his health and physical stamina: swam every day, rain or shine, and rode horseback on the hills of Tarzana that had once been Edgar Rice Burroughs’ ranch, where John spent many happy years growing into manhood.

When our Italian professor returned to Italy in 1956 John invited a select group from the art class to form a class at his studio in Tarzana.

Our friendship grew and we fell in love. John’s modesty, regarding his talents as a painter, never ceased to amaze. He was one of the most prolific artists I’ve ever known but he took his gift lightly. He was a student of the Russian contemporary painter, Nicolai Fechin. They traveled together in the Southwest and Mexico during the forties and early fifties and John exhibited his work and sold many paintings in Arizona and New Mexico at well-known art galleries.

His talents as a father and a Tarzan role model were much more important priorities to him.

We took only one trip in the six years before we married in December 1961. It was in Spring, and we went for a weekend to Rosarita Beach and to the bullfights in Tijuana, Baha California. John, being Tarzan, ate the food and drank the water against my better judgement, as he felt immune to any consequences.

One week after we returned he became seriously ill with what was later diagnosed as viral encephalitis, which does kill most of its victims. John did not even go to the hospital or see his physician until ten days after a deliriously high fever.

He began to suffer weakness in his legs and general malaise that summer and in December when we married he was mysteriously ill. Within six months following our wedding he was confined to a wheelchair, unable to walk. It was perhaps the worst punishment this Tarzan could endure. And the diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease that followed rendered him inconsolable.

We sought refuge in Malibu by the ocean, which we both felt was therapeutic as well as magic for us. It did help the morale but John’s physical condition deteriorated. During that time, Hulbert Burroughs, John’s brother, was able to contact drug researchers in Europe, who were conducting experiments and studies with L’Dopamine. It is the treatment which has become the savior for many sufferers of Parkinson’s Disease, in spite of its side effects.

John was one of the first people in the United States to try this medication, with miraculous results. After three months of closely monitored dosage, he got up out of his wheelchair, one and one-half years into our marriage and walked out on the deck of our home to view the Pacific Ocean. He was standing, unaided, on his own strength for the first time. This was such a wonderful deliverance for him. The L’Dopamine medication became his key to freedom from the limitations of his body, for eight hours every day. Then he would have to retreat to his wheelchair prison until the following morning when his medication started again. He had not been able to paint for two years but he barely agonized at this part of the tragedy because his other physical limitations were such a priority to his vision of himself.

He began to paint and tried valiantly to regain the use of his limbs through exercise and walking on the beach every day with our house boy or his sons, John and Danton. We started having fun doing some of the accessible things we loved, entertaining friends, and going to museums and art galleries. We tried to be the personification of our great love for each other for a little while, which will have to last me for my lifetime.

~ Mary Burroughs ~ May 2000

Reprinted from the ECOF 2000 Special Edition