We were contacted directly about this article, I was about to post it in the Altamont thread but this is special as it was written Nannete Varian who was in direct contact with Meredith Hunt's sister Dixie Ward

This is it

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Her Brother Was Killed at an Iconic Stones Concert
by Nanette Varian Editor
http://www.more.com/2050/10258-stones-altamont-victim-s-sister-speaks/2

The killing of Dixie Ward's brother, Meredith Hunter, was captured in the documentary Gimme Shelter.
Dixie Ward speaks out about her brother’s death at one of the most notorious rock concerts in history—the Rolling Stones show at Altamont Speedway in December 1969.


It was supposed to be the Rolling Stones’ answer to Woodstock, a free concert 40 years ago this month at Altamont Speedway, in the San Francisco Bay area, tacked on to the end of their American tour. But it degenerated into violence, ending the life of Dixie Ward’s 18-year-old kid brother, Meredith Hunter.

Ward had warned her brother not to go to the concert that day: Meredith was African- and Native-American; his girlfriend, Patty Bredehoft, was white. “Blended couples had started to come into vogue in Berkeley,” says Ward, who was 28 at the time. “But in surrounding areas, it was not acceptable. My husband, who had a trucking business, would take me out riding and show me where crosses had been burned on people’s lawns.”

Meredith told his sister, “Don’t worry, I’ve got a gun.” But, Ward tells More.com, he insisted the gun wasn’t loaded. It will just "scare” any troublemakers, he said. Ward says she thought he was joking about bringing a gun. He wasn’t.

The stage at Altamont Speedway was frighteningly low; members of the Hells Angels were brought in to help keep order. The bikers ended up battering the crowd with pool cues, even managing to brain Jefferson Airplane vocalist Marty Balin.

The concert, including Hunter’s killing, was captured in Gimme Shelter, the concert film by documentarians Albert and David Maysles (who would go on to make Grey Gardens). In the film, Mick Jagger watches a loop of the killing in an editing room. Hunter has a gun—it is silhouetted against his date’s crocheted vest—and an Angel stabs him several times, after which the bikers reportedly threw him to the ground and kicked and beat him. “Don’t let him die, please!” Patty Bredehoft sobs to the paramedics. But it is too late.

The oldest of four children of a schizophrenic mother, Dixie often acted as the family caretaker. She remembers Meredith, who was 10 years younger, as an extremely bright and curious child. “When I did laundry I’d find insects and pollywogs in his pockets,” she says. He grew into a tall, cocky teenager. “He was 6 foot 4, and had a beautiful chocolate tan,” she says. Meredith was a flashy dresser with a closet full of brightly colored suits. His sister liked to kid him about them, especially the bottle-green one he can be seen wearing in Gimme Shelter. “I’d say, ‘What are you trying to be, a stoplight?’ ” she recalls teasing him.

According to the new book Let It Bleed: The Rolling Stones, Altamont and the End of the Sixties, by Stones tour photographer Ethan A. Russell with Gerard Van der Leun, Hunter, worried about all the fighting at the concert, went back to his car at one point during the show, retrieved the pistol from his trunk and tucked it into his waistband.

Ward was home listening the radio when she heard a news report that “some erratic person” had attacked the band. She thought nothing of it until a neighbor came and told her Meredith was dead. She went with her mother to the coroner’s office. “When we came back my mother had a Christmas tree up.” Ward recalls. “She covered it with a sheet, and that was the end of our Christmases for a lifetime.”

Over the years there have been conflicting accounts of what happened that day at the foot of the stage. Ward knows now that her brother wasn’t joking about the gun. But she is convinced that it was unloaded, and that Meredith would have drawn it only to counter racist threats. Of the reports that there was methamphetamine in his system, she says, “I’m not aware of any drug use. I’d given him some antihistamines because he had such bad allergies that day.


Angel Alan Passaro, who is seen stabbing Hunter on film, was tried for murder, and acquitted on the grounds of self defense. A wrongful death lawsuit brought against the Stones by Hunter’s mother, Altha May Anderson, was settled for $10,000. The Alameda County sheriff’s office reopened the case in 1983 to investigate rumors that a different Angel had killed Hunter, but concluded that Passaro had delivered the fatal blow. Passaro died in 1985.

Ward says she's never spoken to Patty Bredehoft about the events of December 6, 1969, nor has she seen Gimme Shelter. “I never wanted to see him running for his life, to know what happened when he took his last breath” she says, her voice catching. “You have to understand, I raised him as my child, practically.”

The month before Meredith died, Ward’s husband was electrocuted in a freak accident. She had three small children, and Meredith stepped up, she says, assuming a fatherly role, coming around the house, teaching her youngest how to cross the street. “I’m always going to be there for you,” he assured her. After he died, Ward says, she had no time to grieve, or even to think. She was thrust back into caretaker mode. “My kids were a mess,” she says. “My mother had a nervous breakdown.”

Now a Montessori educator in her late sixties, Ward has seen more than her share of tragedy: During the past five years she’s lost her two remaining siblings, and her mother (who had turned a spare bedroom into a flower- and photo-packed “graveyard” for her dead children, including artificial grass, stepping stones and a bed blanketed with dolls). She takes comfort in her work, her husband (she remarried not long after her brother’s death), her children and grandchildren.

Forty years later, she has “no feelings one way or another,” toward the Rolling Stones. “Nothing can resurrect him,” she says of her brother. “But I think he’d have grown to be a good man.”

Next: A slideshow of images from the new book Gimme Shelter: The Rolling Stones, Altamont and the End of the Sixties.


To buy the book.

http://www.amazon.com/Let-Bleed-Rolling-Altamont-Sixties/dp/044653904X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260132604&sr=1-1

Thanks for the article Voodoo, it's good to see his sister's point of view about this, a real tragedy for anyone's family.

A tragic story indeed. He went packing heat to scare troublemakers. What a bad idea.

Easy to forget with all the debate that went on about the events of that day that the poor bugger had a family.

Definitely a dumb idea in retrospect to whip out a gun when he did, but a pretty sad reflection on society when someone goes to a concert thats supposed to promote peace and love and feels he has to carry a gun in case he gets attacked.

Touching story. Random violence is very common here in the US. People get shot everyday, and you get numb to hearing about it. It's good to read this article, puts some persective on the tragedy. RIP.

I've often wanted to go to certain events in my city, but after learning where some of them are located, decided to skip it. He knew he would find trouble, and he got it. A concert or a sporting event is the worst reason to put yourself into harm's way.

.....puts their true feelings into pespective when they tried, (and ludicrously succeeded), to blame the Stones in order to extort $10k.  

captainglassback wrote on Dec 8^th, 2009 at 1:50pm:

.....puts their true feelings into pespective when they tried, (and ludicrously succeeded), to blame the Stones in order to extort $10k.

I'm sure one of the many lawyers on the board could handle this better than I, but I would guess that the Stones were the responsible(sic) party who decided to go with the Hells Angels as security for an event they "organized", and that being the case, I don't think $10,000 (about the amount they should've spent on security, as opposed to $300 worth of beer they DID spend) is too much for a portion of the blame or of the price-tag on a young man's life. The lawsuit neither casts the family in a bad light OR amounts to extortion, imho (in My holy opinion)

Well, lets use MY legal mind here. I dont believe the story that he "walked back to the car and got a gun". He was in the middle of nearly 1/2 a million people! His car wasnt parked at the nearest meter, next to Old Joe's Drug Store, just across from the old cherry tree. It was, like most people's, miles away. I reckon he had the gun on him the whole time.

I also honestly cannot think of anything dumber to do than pull out a gun whilst surrounded by bikers. Let alone, Hells Angels bikers who are out of their brains. Unpleasant as it sounds (and safely 40 years later and in my pj's 1/2 way around the world), but i think in a situation like that, the Angel who stabbed him might have actually done the right thing. What IF the gun was loaded? There were a lot of innocent people there. It was cram-packed and people jostling around.

I have never heard of Hunter having drugs in his system. That might be something poignant to find out. As that REALLY changes the perspective of things. A guy with a gun, out of his mind, just several feet from the band and thousands of innocent bystanders. To see how really close Hunter was, he can briefly be seen not long before the attack on him. He was maybe 2-3 rows from Jagger. Well, there were not really rows. He was 2-3 people from the band.


Bloody odd that it's taken 40 years for his sister to say something. It's a sad thing all around. I wonder if his girlfriend has ever been interviewed?

This guy got what he was after: a confrontation with someone at the concert. He picked the wrong people at the wrong time to confront.

By the way, was it ever cleared up whether the gun was loaded or not?

some might say hunter was a sacrifical lamb to the stones flirtations with and reference to violence and "forces you don't understand" as a well spring of creative ideas (at best) and niave posing (at worst)

certainly it was the high water mark of the Stones as mythic rock and roll creatures - their apogee as bad boys - (watch out!! being a Stones fan could get you killed!) - from there they retreated to st. tropez and got themselves a corporate logo (albeit a very cool one) and a financial adviser

imho