It is with Great Sorrow and even Greater Love that I tell you that my best friend, for the last 54 years, Leonard D. Easter, passed peacefully on 10/5/26 after several heart issues overcame him over the last month or so. Yesterday, his loving wife, Nina, told me I could share the news with the Krok Brotherhood, although I think Nina did post a picture, somewhere, last night.

On 9/25-26 I got a call from his cell….thinking it was Lenny….but it was one of his sons, Rumi, who told me that Lenny’s heart stopped the day before and Nina had tried CPR for 20 minutes until the EMTs arrived and they took him back to the local hospital. He had no heartbeat for at least those 20 minutes. Rumi was kind enough to keep me updated as things progressed, calling me every other day. He was a rock and Lenny would have been so proud.

I can’t quite describe the profound sadness and emptiness I feel at this moment. I know many of you guys loved him, too, but Lenny was a Prince of a man, a musical savant and a born leader. His persona and talent were responsible for Leonard Bernstein’s interest in The Kroks and why he wrote “A Little Norton Lecture” for us and played with us at the Inaugural Sanders Concert, with The Whiffs and Vassar Night Owls, in the Spring of 1973.

Personally, I owe most of what’s happened in my life to his decision, junior year, to override some of the seniors who wanted to reject me a 3rd and final time by telling them: “It’s MY group, and HE’S in it”.

Everything that I’ve done, since then, is due to that decision, compounded by the extraordinary luck I had that Zorba (Peter Lerangis) saw me with long hair, in 1977, and convinced me to do the lead in Hair, at Dunster House. It is All of a Piece…many of you know the rest of that story and why the Max Comins Foundation is trying to build a World Class Performing Arts and Education Center in Woodstock, VT, where I’ve done the lead in 8-9 shows since 1993. Lenny was also instrumental in setting up my Foundation and getting it 501-c-3 status and was to be one of the initial members of the BOD. He will be an Honorary one, now, and I will do everything I can to make him proud.

I wanted to give Nina and their children, Arun, Rumi, Hope, Lena and Faith some time and space to process all of this, and will now send flowers from the Kroks, to them, today. I also told them that we would all want to honor Lenny with songs whenever it worked for the family. They loved the idea, and I think it will probably be for a Memorial Service sometime near his next birthday, in May.

Nunc & Love,
 -Max Comins H1973 – K1973