alternatehistory.com

I have been looking for a way to get active on the forum again. I know that I do not have the time to research and post long, continuing story lines, so I have decided to post alternate biographies of famous people who lived longer, or died younger. This is my first one based on the singer Karen Carpenter who overcomes her anorexia nervosa and lives a longer live, enjoy and please comment. Any good suggestions will be edited in!

Karen Anne Carpenter-Levenkron (March 2, 1950 – June 10, 2013) was a singer, drummer and well known advocate for eating disorders. She and her brother, Richard, formed the 1970s duo The Carpenters. Her skills as a drummer earned admiration from her peers, although she is best known musically for her vocal performances. After her successful treatment for anorexia nervosa and her marriage to psychotherapist Steven Levenkron she became a well-known and outspoken advocate for the treatment of eating disorders and her tireless work to change the image that women must be thin to be attractive. In 1990 she opened Carpenter House in New York which specialized in the treatment of eating disorders. Many celebrities, including Olympic Gold Medalist Christy Henrich, were patients at Carpenter House.
Carpenter suffered from anorexia nervosa in her younger years, an eating disorder which was little known at the time. She died at age 63 from heart failure caused by a weakened heart from her years of suffering from the disease.

Early Life

Karen Carpenter was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the daughter of Agnes and Harold Bertram Carpenter. When she was young, she enjoyed playing baseball with other children on the street. Later, in the early 1970s, she would become the pitcher on the Carpenters' official softball team.Her brother Richard developed an interest in music at an early age, becoming a piano prodigy. The family moved in June 1963 to Downey, California to be closer to the recording industry.
When Carpenter entered Downey High School, she joined the school band. The conductor gave her the glockenspiel, an instrument she disliked. After admiring the performance of her friend, Frankie Chavez, she asked if she could play the drums instead. She and her brother made their first recordings in 1965 and 1966. The following year she began dieting, which she admitted in a 1996 interview began her long descent into her battle with anorexia nervosa. Under a doctor's guidance she went on the Stillman Diet. She rigorously ate lean foods, drank eight glasses of water a day, and avoided fatty foods. She was 5' 4" in height and before dieting weighed 145 pounds and afterwards weighed 120 pounds until 1973, when the Carpenters' career began to take off. By September 1975, her weight was 91 pounds. Her weight would continue to swing wildly until she completed her treatment for anorexia nervosa in October 1985. At the time of her marriage to Steven Levenkron she weighed 138 pounds and maintained a healthy weight throughout the remainder of her life. When she died she weighed 141 pounds.

Music Career

From 1965 to 1968 Karen, her brother Richard, and his college friend Wes Jacobs, a bassist and tuba player, formed The Richard Carpenter Trio. The band played at numerous nightclubs and also appeared on the TV talent show Your All-American College Show. Karen, Richard and other musicians also performed as an ensemble known as Spectrum. Spectrum focused on a harmonious and vocal sound, and recorded many demo tapes in the garage studio of friend and bassist Joe Osborn. Most of those tapes were rejected. According to former Carpenters member John Bettis, those rejections "took their toll." The tapes of the original sessions were lost in a fire at Joe Osborn's house, and the surviving versions of those early songs exist today as acetate pressings. Finally A&M Records signed the Carpenters to a recording contract in 1969. Karen sang most of the songs on the band's first album, Ticket to Ride, and her brother wrote 10 out of the album's 13 songs. The issued single, Ticket to Ride, became their first single; it reached #54 on the Billboard Hot 100. Their next album, 1970's Close to You, featured two massive hit singles: "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and "We've Only Just Begun". They peaked at #1 and #2, respectively.

Karenstarted out as both the group's drummer and lead singer, and she originally sang all her vocals from behind the drum set. Eventually, she was persuaded to stand at the microphone to sing while another musician played the drums, although she still did some drumming. Karen was persuaded to stand up and sing instead of playing the drums because at 5 feet 4 inches tall, it was difficult for people in the audience to see her behind her drums. After the release of Now & Then in 1973, the albums tended to have Carpenter singing more and drumming less. At this time her brother developed an addiction to Quaaludes. The Carpenters frequently cancelled tour dates, and they stopped touring altogether after their September 4, 1978, concert at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. In 1981 after the release of the Made in America album, the Carpenters returned to the stage and did some tour dates, including a live performance in Brazil.
In 1979 Richard took a year off to cure his dependency on Quaaludes, and Karen decided to make a solo album. Her solo work was markedly different from usual Carpenters fare, consisting of adult-oriented and disco/dance-tempo material with more sexual lyrics and the use of Karen's higher vocal register. The project met a tepid response from Richard and A&M executives in early 1980 and the album was shelved. In 1987 Karen purchased all rights to the album after hearing that Richard was trying to get the album released. The Karen Carpenter Album continues to fascinate her fans with what could have been, especially since Karen vowed never to release the album. Shortly after purchasing the rights to her recordings she announced that she was retiring from music in order to focus on her eating disorder activism. However, after the death of her mother she and Richard reconciled and in 1995 they did their now famous One Last Ride With The Carpenters Tour. The twelve city, sold out event was the biggest and most profitable music tour of the 90s. The final show at Yankee Stadium in New York City proved to be the final musical performance for Karen.
Marriage and Activism
In 1982 Karen began treatment for her anorexia nervosa with Dr. Steven Levenkron in New York. In November of that year she almost left treatment and returned to California. During an interview with after her final tour in 1995 she related how Dr. Levenkron pleaded with her not to end her treatment. According to Karen, “I looked in Steven’s eyes and I realized that this man cares for me more than anyone I had ever known, including my own family. I fell in love with him that day, but I hid my true feelings until after my treatment was complete in 1985. Without Richard I believe that I would have died from my illness.” On April 9th, 1986 Dr. Steven Levenkron and Karen Carpenter were quietly married at City Hall in New York City, with only the judge and Dr. Levenkron’s receptionist in attendance. Karen did not inform her own estranged family until June when she announced she was pregnant. She gave birth to her son Michael Richard Levenkron-Carpenter on February 14th, 1987. Two years later, on March 23rd, 1989 she gave birth to her daughter Margret Elizabeth Levenkron-Carpenter. After her marriage she became an outspoken advocate for eating disorders, urging people to learn about them, and encouraging people to seek treatment. She also fought against the portrayal of super-thin models and actresses as the desired look to achieve for young women. On her 40th birthday, March 2nd, 1990 she opened Carpenter House just north of Yonkers, New York. Carpenter House specializes in the treatment of eating disorders, and is famous not only for the celebrities that have been treated there, but for the thousands of women, and men who have been treated there. Carpenter House is famous for not turning anyone away, regardless of their ability to pay. She gave her last interview on the O’Reilly Factor just a month before her death on May 3rd, 2013, where she talked about eating disorders and the legacy of Carpenter House.
Personal Life
Carpenter lived with her parents until she was 26. After the Carpenters became successful in the early 1970s, she and her brother bought two apartment buildings in Downey as a financial investment. They named the two complexes "Only Just Begun" and "Close to You" in honor of the duo's first hits. In 1976 Karen bought two Century City apartments, gutted them, and turned them into one condominium. Located at 2222 Avenue of the Stars, the doorbell chimed the first six notes of "We've Only Just Begun". After her marriage, Karen and Steven lived in New York until the opening of Carpenter House. The couple then moved into a home they had built next to Carpenter House. Carpenter collected Disney memorabilia, and loved to play softball and baseball.
Carpenter dated a number of well-known men, including Mike Curb, Tony Danza, Terry Ellis, Mark Harmon, Steve Martin and Alan Osmond.After a whirlwind romance, she married real-estate developer Thomas James Burris on August 31, 1980, in the Crystal Room of the BeverlyHills Hotel. Burris, divorced with an 18-year-old son, was nine years her senior. A new song performed by Carpenter at the ceremony, "Because We Are in Love", was released in 1981. Burris concealed from Carpenter, who desperately wanted children, the fact that he had undergone a vasectomy. Their marriage did not survive the deceit and were divorced in 1983. In 1986 she married Dr. Steven Levenkron who fathered her two children. Her son Michael followed his father into medicine, becoming a surgeon in Boston, Massachusetts. Her daughter Margret became active in Carpenter House and after Karen’s death, took over management of the treatment center and pledged to carry on her mother’s legacy.
Death
On June 9th, 2013 Karen was admitted to a hospital in Yonkers for chest pain and shortness of breath. She never recovered and was pronounced dead at 4:13a.m. the next day. The Yonkers coroner gave the cause of death as "heartbeat irregularities bought on by a weakened heart. “It has taken thirty years, but her heart, weakened by her anorexia nervosa, finally gave out”, announced a tearful Steven at a press conference that morning.
Legacy
Karen Carpenter-Levenkron wrote in her autobiography that she had lived two lives, one before her treatment for anorexia nervosa and one after. She said that she had no regrets with either life, but she was thankful for both. In addition to her timeless music, her activism and the legacy of Carpenter House, she wrote two books. In 1990 she released “Beauty to Die For” about the dangers of eating disorders. All proceeds from the book go directly to Carpenter House. In 2001 she released her autobiography, “The Two Lives of Karen Carpenter.”
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