In the midst of the Great Depression and World War II, a boy named Herff, from Spur, Texas, was brought up in a very religious home, due, in part, to the influence of his Presbyterian minister father. Hoping to become a pastor himself, Herff earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy with an eye toward seminary. In the interim, he met and married Ann, a fellow Texan who had graduated from a Christian women’s college in North Carolina. Later, in the midst of his theological studies, Herff changed course and decided to pursue a music career. He became the music director at a Presbyterian church in North Carolina, and while living in Gastonia in 1953, he traveled to the small town of Blowing Rock to lend his baritone voice to a wedding ceremony at Rumple Memorial Presbyterian Church. 

The following year, Herff was drafted into the U. S. Army, and after a two-year stint, he moved to Colorado, where he earned a graduate degree with a focus on musical theater. After a subsequent, unsuccessful attempt to launch a professional singing career in New York, he became assistant professor of voice and director of the choral organizations at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

In 1963, during a summer break from school, Herff and Ann returned to North Carolina, this time to Boone, where Herff served as music director for the town’s outdoor drama, “Horn in the West.” He also sang bass in the show’s chorus, while Ann sang alto. By this time, the couple had two sons, who also had parts in the show, and they rented a home on the western side of the county, near the Vilas and Cove Creek communities. In 1964, Herff returned to Boone, bringing his Alabama collegiate group, “The University Singers,” to perform at Appalachian State University.

Soon after, things began to fall apart for Herff. He lost his job, and he and Ann divorced. Herff returned to Texas, and between 1965 and 1970, he obtained a position in another university’s music department and served as the choir director at an Episcopal church.

By the early 1970s, though, Herff began having emotional problems, including severe depression, and mounting debt. In 1972, he checked himself into a psychiatric hospital, where he met nurse Bonnie Nettles. And that’s when things really went off the rails. Together, they explored and promoted a bizarre form of spirituality, intertwining mysticism, reincarnation, UFOs, and extraterrestrial life with Biblical scripture and prophesy, and over time, known as “The Two” and eventually as “Do” (Herff) and “Ti” (Bonnie), they recruited followers. 

After Bonnie’s death, Herff continued to lead the cult, which ultimately assumed the name  “Heaven’s Gate,” and in 1997, over a three-day period inside a California mansion, Herff and his followers (39 people in total), donning black uniforms and Nike shoes, committed the largest mass suicide ever on U. S. soil by taking applesauce mixed with barbiturates, washing it down with vodka, and asphyxiating themselves by placing bags over their heads – all in an attempt to launch into space and ascend to what they referred to as the “Next Level.” In the estimation of some, though, Herff had already been in “outer space” for quite some time before his demise. 

And so, this was the tragic end of the complicated life of Marshall Herff Applewhite, Jr., who, for a fleeting moment, had a connection to my hometown in rural North Carolina. 

Fact is, indeed, often stranger than fiction.