Berkeley 'naked guy' had charismatic life and a tragic death

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Nov 15, 2006 | by Linda GoldstonSTAFF

He was known around the world in the early 1990s as the Naked Guy, the 6-foot-5-inch student who went to class and strolled around the University of California, Berkeley, campus wearing only shoes and a backpack.

Clothes were a symbol of elitism and repression, and Luis Andrew Martinez planned to spend his life challenging the status quo.

He died at 33 in the throes of schizophrenia, though stories about his death made only vague references to problems with mental illness. Martinez's nearly 10-year descent into that dark world, of jail and hospitals, was too painful for his family and friends to talk about right after he killed himself on May 18.

But in the five months since, the people who knew him best realized there was much to celebrate. They honored his short life at a public memorial on Sunday in Cupertino, the city where he was a star football player and wrestler, the city where he took his first nude walk and where his dreams to change the world were born.

"Andrew once wrote, 'It would really be sad if all I was ever known for was the Naked Guy,'" said his mother, Esther Krenn of Cupertino. "He wanted to be known as someone who made a difference."

There was no sign of the troubled times to come when Martinez first made his mark as a child. His first-grade teacher at San Jose's Lowell Elementary School asked Krenn how she had raised him, saying she wanted to raise a child just like him. His sixth-grade teacher at Regnart Elementary School in Cupertino said she often felt "Andrew is the only one in class listening to me."

At John F. Kennedy Middle School and Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, Martinez showed the charisma and the values that later earned him a following at UC Berkeley. He refused to wear designer clothes because many students couldn't afford them and was famous for taking dates to the library or to the woods to write poetry.

"At a time when everyone is so concerned with what everyone else thinks and what they're wearing, Andrew never did," said Bryan Schwartz, a civil rights attorney in San Francisco who was best friends with Martinez from junior high on.

They met on a class field trip to the opera and traded Eddie Murphy jokes to pass the time. Their bond grew deeper in leadership class in the eighth grade.

"He started to exert an influence on a lot of people around him," Schwartz said. "I suppose being that way, having such a strong sense of self in the eighth grade, is pretty radical."

His presence of mind saved his great-grandmother's life. At a family dinner she started choking and while Martinez's parents "watched her turn blue, Andrew got up from the dinner table and gave her the Heimlich maneuver," his mother said. He was 11 at the time.

In high school Martinez stood out on the varsity football and wrestling teams. He was honored as "best offensive lineman" by his team his senior year; the league the school played in named him "best defensive lineman."

He was often late for class in advanced placement economics because of a pickup game on the school's sand volleyball court, but "the teacher couldn't get mad at him," his friend Schwartz recalled. "He was an exceptional student, and the teacher would simply shake his head and say, 'Andrew, Andrew, Andrew.'"

Until his senior year, Martinez planned to be "a prosperous business guy," Schwartz said.

Then he read Thoreau and Emerson and found himself deeply moved by ideas about living a simple life. He joined the speech and debate team, discovered a talent, and began to reframe his ideas.

"Many of our dates were spent going to the library," said Lauri Dietz, assistant professor of English and director of the Writing Center at Angelo State University in Texas, who was Martinez's girlfriend at the time. "He was researching nudity laws at the time."

Martinez, she said, wanted to know if nudity laws were based on hygiene -- "if that were the case, he'd wear clothes. But if they reflected puritanical values, then he'd proceed with his statement."

His first nude outing was right after graduation, when Martinez shed his clothes and walked down Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road.

Martinez entered UC Berkeley in the fall of 1990, with 14 credits from advanced placement courses at Monta Vista. He became active as an advocate for the homeless and shaved his head when he joined the judo team.

He became the Naked Guy in 1992.

Martinez started going to class naked and fulfilled his dream of speaking out in Berkeley's Sproul Plaza, when he organized a nude- in. He was an instant hit with the media, and stories about him ran around the world, many with carefully cropped photos.

"He felt that people should be free to be who they are," said the Rev. Jamie Dollins, associate minister at San Dieguito United Methodist Church in Encinitas, who met Martinez in their fresh-

man year when they lived in the same dorm. "He talked about how these were Victorian, antiquated principles that kept us repressed."

Martinez was on CNN and appeared nude on "Hard Copy," "Maury Povich" and "Doctor Dean," but was asked to wear a bikini brief for the "Montel Williams Show."