Newport Lawyer’s Path Crosses Kerouac’s

It didn’t so much matter that the Florida neighbors remembered writer Jack Kerouac in his last days as a bum, a pitiful man who often stumbled down the street with a bottle.

Not to his only child, writer Jan Kerouac, who died June 5 at age 44 of kidney failure after a life of hard drinking.

On a whim, in spring 1994, she and her Newport Beach attorney, Thomas A. Brill, had knocked on the doors of her father’s neighbors in St. Petersburg, where the Beat Generation writer died 25 years earlier at age 47.

And then they walked into her father’s white one-story bungalow, where Jan Kerouac had never been. She headed to his beat-up wood desk and sank into the chair of the father whom she had only met twice.

“When we left,” Brill said, “she said she could feel her dad’s presence. . . . It was a moment of joy for her.”

Brill, 36, represented Jan Kerouac in the bitter fight for her father’s archives that had consumed her last years. Now, he will represent her heirs in the dispute over Jack Kerouac’s treasure trove of notebooks, letters and original manuscripts of books.

The lawsuit against the family of Kerouac’s last wife is scheduled for trial in St. Petersburg in October. Brill is not the attorney of record in the case because of a minor conflict of interest but has been retained by Jan Kerouac’s stepbrother and ex-husband to continue the fight. (Brill is in charge of the case but Florida attorney Nathaniel D. Hines will present the court arguments, Hines confirmed.)

The dispute comes at a time of renaissance for Beat Generation fans--filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola is working on a script for a possible movie of “On the Road” and coffeehouse readings are trumpeting the works of poet Allen Ginsberg and writer William Burroughs (“Naked Lunch”).

Kerouac’s estate, reportedly worth $10 million, includes the frail, yellowing draft of the classic ‘50s novel, “On the Road,” a book that defined the Beat Generation of rabble-rousing, jazz-bopping, drug-dropping rebels.

Scholars say the collection--valued at $91 when he died--is priceless.

“There’s no question that the Kerouac manuscripts and diaries and correspondence have enormous research potential,” said Anthony Bliss, curator of rare books and literary manuscripts at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library.

Two years ago, Bliss talked informally with Jan Kerouac about her father’s collection.

“You could just see she was intensely committed to what she was trying to do,” Bliss said. “She was just captivating.”

In the last few years, Jan Kerouac, who was in failing health, had tried to come to terms with her absent father. Kerouac abandoned his second wife, Joan, when she was pregnant with Jan in 1952 after a single year of marriage.

Jan Kerouac had a troubled life not unlike her father’s, full of booze, drugs and wanderlust. She grew up poor on Manhattan’s Lower East side and spent much of her adulthood roaming the country. Her writing includes the autobiographical novel, “Baby Driver: A Story About Myself,” published in 1981.

She last saw her father at age 15, she wrote in the book. He was sitting in a rocking chair, drinking whiskey from a bottle and watching “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

In May 1994, Jan Kerouac sued the relatives of her father’s third wife, Stella Sampas, who inherited Kerouac’s belongings. The lawsuit alleges that Sampas got the collection via a forged will of Kerouac’s mother.

Responded Orlando attorney Leticia J. Marques, who represents the Sampas family: “That’s not a forged will. There is absolutely no credible evidence that the will is forged.”

Marques refuted allegations that the Sampas family has been selling off Kerouac’s collection, bit by bit, to collectors including actor Johnny Depp, who bought the writer’s tweed car coat and other small belongings for $50,000.

In the past couple of years, the Sampas family has been cataloging Kerouac’s collection and plans to sell it to a public library or university, she said. The family has sold a few items of no historical value to help pay for litigation fees and other expenses, she said.

But Jan Kerouac was passionate about keeping her father’s collection intact, Brill said.

“There’s more to it than, ‘Let’s get our hands on this estate,’ ” Brill said. “Financially, she was doing OK. She was getting some royalties [from Kerouac’s books]. . . . It was an issue of family pride. It became an issue for her of belonging to a family that she never really had.”

Her fight crept into Brill’s consciousness.

He traveled to Lowell, Mass., where Kerouac was born, to work on the case. In Lowell, he stopped by Kerouac’s grave, where visitors had left flowers and a bottle of wine, and dropped into the hamburger joint that the writer had frequented.

Last year, after his trip to St. Petersburg, Brill reread “On the Road” with a new eye.

He remembered the words of Kerouac’s neighbors.

Kerouac must have been a great writer, they said, but “when he was here, he didn’t seem so great.”

Still, late at night, they would spot the light on in his bedroom. Until 2 or 3 a.m., they heard him--his typewriter pounding.

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Heir Not Apparent

Newport Beach attorney Thomas A. Brill is representing the heirs of Jan Kerouac, daughter of Jack Kerouac, in a suit over the Beat Generation writer’s estate, reportedly valued at $10 million. A look at the relationships of the people involved in the battle:

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Jack Kerouac

Died in 1969, left his estate- valued at $91- to his mother.

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Stella Sampas

(Jack’s third wife) Died in 1990.

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Joan Haverty

(Jack’s second wife) Was married to Jack for one year before birth of Jan, Jack’s only child.

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John Sampas (Stella’s newphew) Took over as director of the estate, upon Stella’s death.

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Gabrielle Kerouac (Jack’s mother) Died in 1973, left her belongings- including Jack’s estate- to Stella Sampas.

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Jan Kerouac (Jack’s daughter) Died June 5, 1996. She sued the Sampas family in May 1994, charging that the signature on Gabrielle’s will was forged and she is rightful heir, along with Gabrielle’s grandson, Paul Blake, Jr.

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Thomas A. Brill

Newport Beach attorney representing Jan’s heirs.

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David Bowers

(Jan’s stepbrother)

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John Lash (Jan’s ex-husband)