Sporadic CJD Claims Two Of Ashland's Best Known Muscians
Within a span of seven weeks, two popular Ashland, OR musicians have died of apparent sporadic Creuzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD).
Dead are Dave Marston, 56, and Robin Lawson, 70. The two music industry veterans made their homes and livings in the artistic Oregon city best known for its annual Shakespeare Festival, but apparently did not work together.
Marston, a former music director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, artistic director of the Siskiyou Singers, band leader of the Beatles cover band Nowhere Men, leader of the Marston Family Singers (with Tami and their combined six children), The Ancient Men, the Rogue Valley Peace Choir, the Children's Peace Choir and choirs at the First Methodist Church, the Congregational Church and the Havurah Shir Hadash in Ashland.
He died June 22nd of sporadic CJD
Lawson was a jazz pianist, actor, broadcast journalist and press secretary to a U.S. Congressman. He was a British immigrant, who enlisted in the U.S. Army after studying jazz in California. He performed a long-running one man show as Winston Churchill and worked in both radio and television as a journalist.
He died Aug. 9th of sporadic CJD.
The Oregon Department of Human Services has kept track of CJD deaths for the past 18 years, and reports there have been a total of six cases in Jackson County, where Ashland is located. Not all were confirmed.
CJD is said to affect about one in a million people worldwide. The Ashland men were diagnosed with CJD by specialists at the University of California at San Francisco.
