Brother Asaiah Bates, the 78-year-old patron sage of the Lower Kenai Peninsula, left this mortal plane Monday night in Homer, the town he lauded as ″our cosmic hamlet by the sea.″
Bates, a tall, ethereal presence who wore his white hair gathered in a wisp of a ponytail, dispensed boundless praise in a southern accent at virtually every public meeting in Homer. His frequent and grandiloquent letters to the Homer News spoke of positive energy flows, enlightenment and love. He called everyone by first name, preceded with ″Brother″ or ″Sister.″ He officiated at the marriage ceremonies of more than 100 Homer couples. Homer’s politicians named him one of the town’s greatest citizens.
Bates, who moved to Kachemak Bay in flowing robes in the 1950s to establish a religious commune, in time became the town’s most beloved eccentric.
People close to him said Thursday it was too soon after his death to talk about him.
″Part of his philosophy is not to make any waves for three days,″ explained longtime friend and Homer recycler Mike Kennedy.
Bates’ bodily self never completely mended from a 1991 heart attack. His heart trouble took him to South Peninsula Hospital again this year, but he checked out about two weeks ago to die at home.
Bates was born Claude Donald Bates on April 19, 1921, in Greenville, S.C., to an unmarried mother. He was raised, he said, on the streets and in an orphanage. His formal schooling ended after third grade.
In World War II, he served in the South Pacific as a nose gunner on a bomber. He killed, by his count, ″hundreds of Japanese.″
At war’s end, he received an honorable discharge, a handful of medals and $322. But the killing left him psychically scarred. He was arrested in Denver after a bar fight in which a gun was pointed at his heart.
″In the jail that night, I could not get my mind off that gun,″ he told the Homer City Council in 1990 in explaining his devotion to peace. ″And I thought about the millions of Japanese who couldn’t get their eyes off the guns and the millions of Americans who couldn’t get their eyes off the guns. And I thought this is insanity.″
He was ready to check himself into a psychiatric hospital but instead found a messianic leader named Krishna Venta. Venta, based in California’s San Fernando Valley, taught that mankind came to Earth in 12 rocket ships powered by cosmic energy, that man has 110 interconnecting senses and that one’s negative thoughts are registered on the bodies of others.
He renamed the troubled veteran ″Brother Asaiah.″
In the 1950s, Bates and other disciples established the Wisdom Knowledge Faith Love commune at the head of Kachemak Bay. They wore long robes and went shoeless, even in winter. They became known in Homer as the Barefooters.
The movement fizzled after Venta was blown up by two excommunicated followers in 1959.
Bates moved to Homer and took to wearing leather boots, but he held strong to Venta’s teachings. He was the last adherent, the leader’s daughter said.
With no congregation of his own, Bates visited a different Homer church every Sunday. He was elected to the Homer City Council and joined the Chamber of Commerce. He wore thrift-store clothes and became a janitor for the phone company.
Here’s a taste of Bates’ style:
″Joy and love to all you dear souls at the Daily News Temple,″ he wrote in a letter to the editor in 1990. ″I must say, next to the exotic Homer News, your paper is the best on the planet! . . . One of the greatest events dancing from your paper upon my mind is the ‘out of this world’ cartoons. . . . I am dancing on the wheel of the Great Brahma’s mystical dream.″
The letter ran sandwiched between one accusing the Daily News of ruining people’s lives and another urging it to stop printing ″insulting drivel.″
At a 1993 hearing on a proposed oil lease sale in the Homer area, Bates described for state and borough officials Earth’s chakras, or centers of psychic force.
″I do not see oil wells on the lower Kenai Peninsula as a part of the chakra,″ he said.
Unlike many of the constituents who speak at City Council meetings, Bates was unfailingly positive, said councilman Mike Yourkowski.
″He’d say things like ‘This is the finest group of minds I’ve ever been around,’ ″ Yourkowski said.
Not that the council members believed it, he said, but the words made them feel good nonetheless.
In 1990, Bates clashed with area veterans by objecting to the placement of a war memorial in a peace park he’d given the city. He was further vexed by the outbreak of the Persian Gulf War. One night during that period, he had a heart attack and felt his spirit leave his body.
″I saw the most beautiful veil you’ve ever seen in you life. . . . I wanted to go into that veil, and it was coming to get me,″ he told a reporter later. ″The veil, brother -- Ooooh, there is something out of this world.″
A ringing phone brought him back. He had been ready to go, he said, and he had felt no fear.