Don Deppeller has lived an
interesting life -
he has seen his share of adventure and tragedy
— more than most. His deep interest in
the study of history lead him to works that
suggested an alternate 'pre' history... tales
of Sumeria and ancient societies introduced
the possibility of an off-world hand in the
early days of our planet. His studies of esoterica,
familiarity with governmental requisitioning
and the bidding process, and both professional
and personal relationships with elected officials
has placed him in a unique position to understand
and address the problems relating to Disclosure.
After the fire, Don took as
the logo for the band an obscure alchemical symbol
he discovered, alleged to be the "Ninth Key",
which is defined as the "unending quest of humanity
for compassionate truth". When he saw this same
symbol on the first scratch disc of Dr. Burisch, he
was stunned, as nowhere else was he able to find it.
Even many alchemical tracts don't show this.
Left: The "Ninth
Key", labelled "serpent seal"
on Dr. Burisch's scratch disk, which was 'taken'
and delivered to Dondep by way of team effort
from Dan's office in Las Vegas to a dumpster
off the "strip," to Hawaii and eventually
to Alberta Canada.
Right: The1997 Mindshaft logo - which initially
used the entire "Nineth Key" design
to but was simplified to the lower area for
ease of reproduction.
A One-Room
Schoolhouse and the Horse-and-Buggy Age draws to
a Close..... Don was
born a Libra on Oct. 2, 1959. At age 4, after his
parents divorced, he went to live with a large foster
family with 5 other children on a Mennonite farm
in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He started
the first grade as the last class that was housed
in a one-room schoolhouse and travelled in the family's
horse-drawn buggy. For several years he lived the
idyllic life of getting up at 5am, milking cows,
collecting eggs from the henhouse, shucking corn
and drying tobacco leaves. After his father finally
won a bitterly-contested court battle for custody,
he joined yet another large family that now included
a step-brother and 3 half-brothers. Feeling alienated,
he turned to the court at age 13 and asked if he
could live with his mother and her husband.
The court agreed and he was soon
enrolled in Lancaster Country Day School, where
he graduated in 1977. He had left home the previous
year, following a nervous breakdown by his mother,
and supported himself by working at a gas station
and paying rent to a classmate's family until graduation.
He obtained a scholarship to Franklin & Marshall
College, which he attended until the middle of his
sophomore year, when he became deeply alienated
by the ostracizement that had come from the local
aristocratic establishment with he had split his
world with alongside the 'street'. His studies in
sociology, criminology, and philosophy in the classroom
with books like C. Wright Mill's "The Power
Elite" and "Protestant Establishment:
Caste and Class in America" were coming to
life in the real world and affecting his relationships
with professors, teachers, his high-school sweetheart,
and the city administration he was working for in
his part-time job.During that job he discovered
the corruption of gentrification as it was being
applied in the late 1970s, and went from being a
moderate Republican, working on congressional campaigns,
to a more radical position, founding his own political
party, the L.A.S.T. party, which led to even more
radical efforts (see
The L.A.S.T. Bank Robberies).
Shortly before that dramatic, tragic, and comic
episode, he had an experience of the "Ultimate
Paradox".
After completing his sentence,
he moved to Washington, DC where he was soon gainfully
employed selling tools and hardware, but was even
more determined to make a difference.
He joined the 1982 mayoral campaign
of Mayor Marion Barry as a volunteer, and soon set
his sights on working for a winning presidential campaign.
In early 1983 he determined that Senator Gary Hart
represented the values of a new Democratic party,
not beholden to the traditional "New Deal"
special interests, and so became one of the first
dozen volunteers for that presidential campaign, finally
ending up at the Democratic Convention the following
year as a member of Hart's security staff and all-around
'gopher' for other administration tasks. Immediately
following that he joined the congressional campaign
of John Flannery, a former federal prosecutor in Virginia,
running for the 10th congressional district seat.
That campaign too was unsuccessful for the candidate,
but Mr. Flannery then took a job as a host of "The
Late Afternoon Report" which Don then helped
with.
He
arranged for the first television debate between
the representative of the African National Congress
- Dumi Matabane, who would have been the ambassador
to the US were the ANC in power at the time
- and a spokesman for the South Africa Foundation,
a mouth-piece for the official South African
position since the aparthied government did
not recognize the ANC at the time (the US government
too considered the ANC a 'terrorist' organization
under Geroge Bush senior).Later that year -
1985 - he signed on with the campaign of Gov.
Balisles of Virginia, who would later grant
Don "Clemency and the Restoration of Civil
and Political Rights" in 1989 shortly before
leaving office.
1994 - Pres. Clinton Kicks
Off Campaign For Health Care Reform With An
Address To Small Business Leaders At Don's
Office
In 1986, Don - together
with the help of several friends - co-invented the
board game Dodeccamente, utilizing sacred geometry
and incorporating a body of rules that were allegorical
for life and based after-the-fact on 'The Glass Bead
Game' by Herman Hesse.
Together
with his friends and a handful of investors
they produced a hundred copies of a limited-edition
and 500 copies of a portable version with which
they ultimately went to the Paris Int'l. Toy
Fair in 1988. See the related story of the attempt
to take the game behind the Iron Curtain in
1989, "The
Spy Episode" under "The
L.A.S.T. Bank Robberies".
Don
spent the next 9-plus years marketing the game
first through a small company in Maryland -
selling to schools and arts/craft fairs - and
through bars, nightclubs, coffehouses, bookstores,
etc. He has played the game at least once a
day on average since the first 100 came off
the production line, and hopes one day to see
it adapted to the digital age and sold as quality
family entertainment wherever fine art is sold.
Above: Dodeccamente™game
board
Family Life, Minor Rock Stardom,
and Major Tragedy in the 1990s...
Don was married to his first
wife in 1991. They bought a house in the suburbs
and had a son Justin that year, who tragically
died in a mysterious house fire of
Jan. 1, 1997. Don himself barely survived, and
nearly lost his right leg.
Thanks to the friendship of the Party Now
loose-knit organization of friends and fellow
musicians, he was able to get back on his feet
after spending about 6 months in the hospital.
He had been separated earlier in 1996.
Don's band Mindshaft was the
first American band to play the nation of Kazakhstan,
headlining an outdoor festival in the Olympic
stadium of Almaty, the capital. For one brief
week, Mindshaft experienced what Beatlemania
must have been like, with their music blaring
from sound trucks driven around the city, from
the radio stations, and being chased by screaming
groupies and fans.
They were interviewed on live primetime
radio and television, and played many of the nightclubs
of the city where guards stood by with Kalashnikovs
and sidearms. At the stadium, 700 troops 'protected'
them from the cheering crowd, but only about 4,000 fans could afford the price of a ticket (what most earned in an average month) so they were all crammed in to the center on one side of the 22,500-seat stadium. The white Russian rapper Mr. Malloy and
Kazakh rap stars opened the show. After a week of playing nightclubs and sightseeing,
they returned safely to obscurity in Washington,
DC.
Click on image for full
article
Above, Mindshaft performs their encore, "Shun", in Almaty on June 22, 1996. (Video may take a few minutes to load.)
To download the original of this and five other Mindshaft songs spanning the period of 1997 to 2003, please visit the Don Deppeller page on Jerry Pippin's website at:
Also on Jerry's website are "The Burisch Files" as well as many other interesting UFO- and alien-related interviews.
The New Millenium Arrives....
Back in the suburbs, Don remained active in local
politics, continuing on as local precinct captain
and getting the people to the polls, passing out
literature, and attending policy sessions with the
local district leaders as various issues such as
universal health care were addressed, casting his
vote as often as possible.
He met Toni
Jannelli in 1999. That year they began their
relationship which focused on a mutual love of travel,
political action, city life, music and art. They
have traveled together to Berlin, Krakow, Prague,
Paris and finally Rome where Don proposed at the
Temple of Venus in Hadrian's Villa. They bought
a house in NE Washington DC and were living happily
until the white van made its appearance and changed
their lives. (See Toni's
and Don's individual
PIF statements to the Canadian Government)
