better than others—he asked the love of his life to marry him on Christmas Eve 2006—but as a young man, he spent most of his holidays haunted by the loss of his father, John, killed in a 1966 helicopter crash in Vietnam. In between the ugliness of his 1994 arrest—just one in a string of run-ins with Boise police—and when he passed away a few days after Christmas 2012, Seeley’s widow, community leaders and even Boise police all agreed that they had come to know and love a man whose life would not soon be forgotten. In spite of his diagnosis of severe bipolar disorder, Seeley became an author, advocate for the disabled, homeless and veterans, and even a candidate for the Boise City Council. Many citizens say they knew something about the man, but most didn’t know it all.
LAURA
“We met when we were both students at Boise State; it was in the Morrison Hall dormitory,” said Laura Seeley. “I was Laura Aldous back then. It was the fall semester of 1982. I was studying information science and, of course, Mark was studying journalism. He eventually changed his major to political science.” Laura said she and Seeley just “clicked;” nothing romantic, but they were really good friends. They would sit in the lobby of their dormitory and talk the night away. “We were just pals,” Laura said. But their relationship was put on hold—for 22 years. “I left Boise State after that semester back in 1982 and didn’t come back,” Laura said. “We lost touch.” That is until 2004, when Laura walked into “My father’s voice went silent when I was 5 a Boise Walmart to buy some roof sealant. She stepped up to the hardware counter and saw a years old,” Seeley wrote in 2008. familiar face, albeit two decades older. Long before he began writing about his “I said, ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ father—a practice he didn’t start until into his He said, ‘I sure do. Remember Morrison 40s—Seeley dreamed of being a newspaper Hall?’” Laura said. “It was quite a story. By writer, preferably writing about politics or then, I had been married and divorced and sports. He even claimed his own publication, Mark had never married.” The Seeley Tribune, at the age of 11. But in the 22 years between their first “I think this picture was taken when he encounter and their Walmart reunion, Seeley first began writing,” his widow, Laura Seeley, had drifted across the West, working as a ski told BW, pointing to a glossy black and lift operator, cashier, trash collector and room white photo of a bleach-blond kid wearing service waiter. He looked back on the years as a “PRESS” hat with a No. 2 pencil tucked what he called a “tsunami of bad luck, karma, behind his right ear. “Word got around to circumstance or just whatever-the-hell-it-is that the local little league that Mark was such a rules fate in people’s good writer so they lives.” asked him to write In early 1994, Seefor the Tri-City Scoop ley’s still-undiagnosed in Rockland, Calif. mental illness was He was paid $12 a raging, and even though week.” he sought out some But baseballs were personal counseling, he put up on the shelf had a major falling out one early summer with his mother. She morning when two went as far as placing a military officers came restraining order against to the door to tell her son. Alice Seeley that she “I was instantly was a widow; the homeless with $3.17 CH-47 her husband to my name,” he was co-piloting in wrote years later. Vietnam had crashed. “Why I remember that “Every few weeks exact amount, I do not I would close the know.” door to my room and Seeley slept on the wet my pillow with streets of Boise, spendmy tears, looking ing occasional nights in at a favorite photo shelters, including Comof him and crying,” munity House (now Seeley later rememthe River of Life men’s bered in a book he Mark Seeley turned his father’s wrote about his father. “The letters home and his own shelter), which had opened in memory of that final hug memories into a self- November 1994. published book. It was also in 1994 that goodbye would pierce its Seeley first walked into Boise way through my weakened Weekly. He began writing defenses and leave me sobletters to the editor about homelessness and bing uncontrollably.” editors encouraged him to become a semi-regSeeley grew up too fast. As a 17-year-old, ular columnist—which he did for the next 13 and still receiving a monthly payment from years—writing often about Boise’s homeless, the Veterans Administration, he spent a lot of time at a local Denny’s restaurant, hanging out and even more often about veterans. But his own demons continued to haunt with grown-ups, getting a taste for cigarettes him. Seeley later admitted that he often and coffee. Ultimately, Seeley’s mother moved her fam- thought of killing himself by jumping from an overpass onto a Boise freeway, “So I would ily back to Boise, her hometown. kiss a trucker’s windshield and die that way in-
A FATHER’S SON
12 | MAY 1–7, 2013 | BOISEweekly
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