In Memoriam: Grady Towers

Kevin Langdon

Grady Towers, one of the most influential members of the higher-IQ-societies community, was murdered on March 20, 2000, at the age of 55, while investigating a break-in at a park facility where he worked as a security guard. A man with a criminal record including at least one other murder has been apprehended and charged with the crime.

I knew Grady pretty well, though he always maintained a certain reserve. I met him in person only once, at a Triple Nine Society annual meeting in the late 1980’s. He was extremely intense, charismatic, and argumentative, and he often had an unusual view of the things that came up in the many conversations that weekend. I felt that there was something driving him. Grady and I agreed about some things and disagreed about others. I enjoyed the challenge of arguing with him. It was clear to me that  I was seeing only one side of whatever these conversations were evoking in him and that it was an important part of his own process.

Grady was involved with the high-IQ societies for many years, primarily through writing essays and submitting them for publication in the societies’ journals and through correspondence with a few carefully-selected inviduals, among whom I was fortunate to be included. Essays like “The Outsiders” helped to define the higher-IQ-societies community. Grady’s letters were like his conversation: wide-ranging, passionate, and thorough. Some of Grady’s letters have been published on Darryl Miyaguchi’s site <http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/hard_iq.html>, along with a few of his essays. Other essays are available on the Prometheus Society’s site <http://www.prometheussociety.org>. And I’m working on a compilation of Grady’s essays for his family. There will be a public announcement when copies are available. Grady Towers’ essay “Intelligence and g” is item number 7 in this issue of Noesis. “IQ, Creativity and the Twisted Pear, or Why the Sidekick Gets the Girl” is item #8.

I am among the many members of the societies who will miss Grady and what he brought to this community.