A Personal Connection

My dad, sister and I
“I always tell my daughters how much fun they would have with their Aunt Sharon if she were alive today. Sharon loved art and so do my kids. If Sharon were around, they’d all be drawing or tie-dying something.”


Aunt Sharon October 16th 1956- November 18th 1978

I am driven to research this topic and its signficance to media history because of the aunt I never got to meet.

Among the 913 Peoples Temple members who perished in Jonestown was my Aunt Sharon. She was 22 when she died. My family, along with the rest of the Burlingame, CA community, hoped Sharon had run off and escaped into the jungle.

But she didn’t.

My grandpa was a prominent PR guy in San Francisco during the rise of the Peoples Temple. My dad says he used his networking the best he could to find out about the Temple after Sharon became involved. He didn’t agree with her choice to join the Peoples Temple, but he wrote her religiously and never ceased to try to get her out of Guyana before something bad happened.

Jones was so manipulative of the media that there was little critical coverage of the group until it was too late. After the New West exposé, that made families like my dad's concerned, Temple members fled to Jonestown, many without telling their families.

My dad and his family saw Sharon for the last time during Christmas of 1977. Three months later, she took off for Jonestown without telling anyone of her plans.

Jonestown community members set up a radio connection with the San Francisco Temple. Initially, this was the United State's only tie to Jonestown.

My grandpa went to the Temple repeatedly and pushed to contact Sharon. He spoke with her over the radio on her 22nd birthday in October of 1978. In his last letter to Sharon, he wrote that "Christmas just wouldn't be the same this year." A month later, he was inconsolable when he found out that his youngest child was dead.

My dad loaned me his portfolio filled with newspaper clippings about the Peoples Temple, Jonestown and the mass murder- suicide for my research. His collection includes news stories about his sister and other Bay Area kids’ deaths in Jonestown.

Reporters analyzed Sharon’s death tastefully without making her or other young people from the Temple seem like brainwashed lunatics.

They described Sharon’s humanitarian spirit and idealist dreams to build a school for underprivileged children. As both her family and the media noted, in some ways, Sharon's Temple work had fulfilled her childhood desires to help others. The local reporters often returned to the elusive question behind the Jonestown tragedy of “Why?”

On Nov. 18, 1998–– the 20th anniversary of the mass murder-suicide–– my dad, an editor at my hometown newspaper, wrote and published a beautiful feature in expository narrative style called “Letters from Jonestown.”

The lead begins “I always tell my daughters how much fun they would have with their Aunt Sharon if she were alive today. Sharon loved art and so do my kids. If Sharon were around, they’d all be drawing or tie-dying something.”

The story includes the correspondence between Sharon and the rest of the family while she was in Guyana, anecdotes about Sharon growing up and a history of the Peoples Temple, Jonestown, and Sharon’s involvement.

I remember the resonance “Letters from Jonestown” had in my hometown community 10 years ago, especially among my 12-year-old friends who read it. It provided a powerful, emotional history lesson that caused many to think about religious groups and their leadership.

While working on my project, I wept after reading it the 20th time.
My dad's words offer a profound, personal media analysis of a historic tragedy.