Jack Ash Project

Jack Longacre’s final wish was to have his ashes scattered on the high points of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Jean Trousdale, a close friend of six years, took the responsibility of making sure it happened. After Jack died of cancer in October 2002, Trousdale spent the next year coordinating a nationwide set of memorial ceremonies for him.

More than 600 people have taken part in scattering Jack, but Trousdale was the only person who had the job of putting Jack’s remains into 51 separate film canisters, which Jack had marked with the names of each state. She didn’t know if it was going to freak her out or not, she says, but a man’s last wish is a man’s last wish, so she sat down with the canisters, a roll of bubble wrap, 51 Ziploc bags, 51 boxes, and a box of ashes that used to be her friend.

“I just scooped them out,” Trousdale says. “Just took the little canister, dipped the ashes out and wiped the canister off.” Before he died. Jack had shown her how he wanted her to seal each canister before mailing it. “I’ve dealt with ashes before,” Trousdale says. “They’re just calcium.”

[Ed: The above text is paraphrased from pages 19-20 of Brendan Leonard’s thesis “Because it is there“. You can read his full article on the “Jack Ash Project” (pages 19-33) for more information.]

The initial effort was to memorialize Jack’s ashes on all 50 state highpoints and DC. Since then, Jack has been memorialized on all 7 continents. If you are high point traveling abroad and wish to take a bit of Jack Longacre to a mountain top, email Mick Dunn at mickfords@gmail.com stating your proposed destination after which he will consult his tracking spreadsheet.

The following tables show where Jack Longacre’s ashes have been memorialized. Links will show pictures or specific memorial pages.

United States		Africa		Antartica
Asia		Australasia		Europe
North America			South America

Map pin color codes for highpoint of continent, country, state, county, other, default – non-HP

Only admnistrator owned posts can execute the [includeme] shortcode. This message is shown only to administrators.