Posted on 08/20/2009 9:06:06 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A man who wandered out of Discovery Park three weeks ago suffering from apparent amnesia has been identified as former Tucsonan Edward F. Lighthart, according to friends who recognize him from his photograph published in The Seattle Times.
Lighthart, 54, is a 1974 graduate of Sahuaro High School who also attended Pima Community College and the University of Arizona, according to Arizona Daily Star archives. He also attended New York’s Culinary Institute of America in the mid-1970s, with the hopes of opening a French catering service in Tucson after graduating, according to a 1976 article.
Friends have e-mailed photographs of Lighthart, and he acknowledges that the man in the photographs is he, according to Seattle police.
“The name isn’t ringing a bell, but the image is definitely me,” said Lighthart, who had been listed at Swedish Medical Center as Jon Doe since he walked out of the park.
While he didn’t recognize his name, he said that might happen down the road.
Seattle police said now that they have Lighthart’s birth date, they’re trying to find family, friends and colleagues, said Tina Drain, with Seattle Police Department missing person’s office.
Within hours of posting the story online, a reader identified Jon Doe as Lighthart, an English teacher he knew in China. The reader, David Akast, said Lighthart taught at English schools in China and “had an incredible knowledge of European cultural history.” Another friend, Randall Snyder of Columbus, Ohio, said he knew Lighthart from the mid-1990s when they attended the Union Institute in Cincinnati together.
He said Lighthart was a high-caliber chef in New York but left that profession following an accident. He then moved to Cincinnati to attend the Union Institute. Snyder, who hasn’t seen Lighthart since the late 1990s, said Lighthart left the school without graduating and moved to Europe. He said he has a huge art collection. “He is a very, very brilliant man and knows art like nobody I know,” Snyder said. Police also said they are working with Interpol to find his European contacts. Drain said that Lighthart entered the U.S. in March 2008 from Calgary, Alberta. John Lucas, a spokesman at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said Lighthart graduated in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in French. When he left with the University of Wisconsin, he gave them an address in Vienna, Austria, Lucas said.
The man known only as Jon Doe wandered out of Discover Park wearing pressed khakis and had $600 in his sock. He said he didn’t know who he was or when he was born. He is fluent in English, French and German and has a professorial knowledge of European cultural history. He remembered attending the Culinary Institute of America and being a chef.
It has a fictional quality, alright.
:’) It’s possible that all the people who said they knew him recognized him but didn’t remember that he’d used different names in these different places, and that this isn’t his first episode.
When I was in high school I got kicked in the head during a football game. It was so weird. I had gone to bed and “woke up” sitting on the bench in the stadium asking the guy that played behind me if he was “in for me”. The weird part was that I had gone to bed like 5 days before - when I got kicked, it knocked any memory of the previous 5 days right out of me. It’s difficult to imagine what this fellow is going through.
Maybe he's Spellbound.
:’) Oh, I thought it was going to be Robin Trower...
Guess what I have playing on the DVD right now.
Cold wind blows
and the Gods look down in anger
on this poor child
Why so unforgiving and why so cold?
Been a long time crossing bridge of sighs.
;^)
That’s another of a handful of my faves by him.
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