On Wednesday evening of April 22, 2026, Mark McIntire, a great man with an incredible life, breathed his last. He was 82 years old.

Born to an Irish-Catholic family in Salem, Massachusetts, on July 31, 1944, Mark grew up with two siblings and no father, as he died when Mark was only three years old.

At 16, Mark left the chaos of home for the Catholic seminary to become a priest; studying in Washington, D.C., New England, and even Rome, Italy, as well as serving on a mission trip to Mexico.

For many personal, intellectual and spiritual reasons, he completely left the Catholic Church shortly after being ordained as a deacon and before being ordained a priest.

In his 20s, Mark found a job teaching philosophy at Westfield State College (now Westfield State University).

Shortly after being hired, he led the overthrow of the college’s authoritarian president by doing a hunger strike, a march across the state of Massachusetts, and shutting down the state legislature.

After successfully removing the college president, he was offered tenure in his late 20s, but decided to pursue acting instead.

He moved to San Francisco as a stage actor. While there, he wrote and acted in a one-man John F. Kennedy show, which eventually became a huge success.

At the same time, Mark married a notorious socialite Joan Hitchcock, becoming her fifth and second-to-last husband. She died after nearly two years of marriage, and a few months after being divorced from him. She died in his arms.

Shortly after, Mark decided his acting career justified him moving to Los Angeles for better acting gigs. While there, he became extremely close with a friend named Ron. He, too, died in Mark’s arms.

While in Los Angeles, Mark became very involved with union issues concerning the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). He ended up becoming Charlton Heston’s main advisor for all political affairs.

After several years, he decided he wanted to go back to teaching philosophy, which he did at Santa Barbara City College, and taught there for nearly 20 years.

During that time, he mentored many students and kept close relationships with them long after he was forced out by bitter faculty members fearful of his success. He sued and won a large cash settlement.

Shortly after, he moved to Tooele, Utah, and concentrated on writing and mentoring disaffected youth. While in Tooele, Mark published two books, his autobiography “Sleepwalking with Certainty,” and a collection of personal conversations he had with Charlton Heston, “Chatting with Chuck.”

Mark lived and died as a joyous person, knowing he was good to his friends and terrible to his enemies.

He did not wish for any service to be held in his honor, but believed the best way to cherish his memory is for all reading this to become lifelong learners.

For a fuller length of this obituary, see my substack article here.