By SJ Otto
I first met Gypsy Claar (Tracy Elizabeth 'Gypsy' Claar/ her official name) some time after I began publishing my so call ‘counter culture newspaper’ called the Public Voice. I had modelled that paper off of a counter-culture newspaper called the Public Notice, in Lawrence , KS
This was more than just a Marxist-Leninist newspaper. A lot of young Marxist-Leninist or socialist political activists don’t understand how it was to be a member of the 1960s-1970s counter-culture. For a while it was just a given that anyone who grew his hair long, wore “hippie clothes” or what we might call today “freak clothes” belong to a kind of counter-culture. It was mostly a cultural thing based on trendy ‘60s or ‘70s stuff.
Not everyone who belonged to that counter culture movement was a leftists. In fact as time when on, for me, it was a shock to see how many right-wing “hippies” and “Freaks” there were around me.
But Gypsy worked with me and Tim Pouncey, who was as much a left-wing hippie as I am today. They (Tim and Gypsy) both worked on my newspaper, the Public Voice, with lots of articles and satire that was needed to defend the working class of Wichita
I don’t know how many of my readers knew 'Gypsy' Claar. She was a political activist for the homeless. She was not as much a political person as she supported people’s human rights. And she was an old hippy, as some of us actually knew her and some of us actually are today. She died a little over a month ago. She was about 73. I knew her well and at one time she did some work for the old Public Voice Community News paper, of which I was the owner and Editor of.
I knew Gypsy from way back in the 1980s. I went to one of her parties in one of her ranch homes north of Wichita in the rural parts of Sedgwick County Hutchinson , KS
I remember when she was taking journalist classes at Wichita State University
As her obit says:
“She is survived by: daughters, Elizabeth ‘Kathy’ Renner, Wichita , Christina ‘Teena’ Effenbeck, Mt. Hope , and Mariah Claar, Wichita
It is always difficult to loose an old friend, but we all have to die some time and at least she had a fairly long life, and she lived a life most of us would be proud to have lived.