Ilgvars Karlis Lelis

Ilgvars Karlis Lelis (aka “Starlight” and “Karl” Lelis)

Starlight was born, Ilgvars Karlis Lelis, on February 28, 1959, to Joseph & Mirdza Lelis, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and spent the first two and a half years living in Cambridge, where his father was finishing his Ph.D. in Linguistics at Harvard University.

Upon graduating, his father accepted a teaching position at Howard University in Washington D.C. in 1961, and the family joined him a year later in September of 1962, and settled in College Park, Maryland.

Ilgvars was the fourth child out of five in the family. He had three brothers: two older, and one younger, and a sister, who was the oldest child. I was the middle child and turned five years old about seven weeks after Ilgvars was born. Our older brother didn’t live with us (which is another story in itself), but the two of us (Ilgvars & I) were very close during the formative childhood years, and spent a lot of time together.

Ilgvars was a very bright kid and had many interests, which he pursued with great zeal and enthusiasm. He learned about the planets and stars as soon as he was able to read, which was around age four or so. This was no doubt an early foundation for his later love and fascination with astrology.

The proximity of our ages made it ideal for us to hang out together (not to mention that the 3 youngest brothers, myself included, shared a room). When Ilgvars was about 5, I started creating adventures I called “Expeditions”, where I would put him on the handle bars of my bike, and we would go down by the railroad tracks, the junkyard, construction equipment depots, sand and rockpile quarries, which all were adjacent to a swampy lake with loud bullfrogs. I’d fill a plastic canteen full of Kool-Aid, make a couple of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, put them in a backpack, and off we went! We wouldn’t be seen again until evening.

He would later help me out with my paper route, and we would go to the movies on Sundays and sit through the feature up to three times. It was quite a hike, but we still took the familiar route of our earlier expeditions, and cut through the industrial areas, coming and going. The most notable movies we saw during that era, were the early Clint Eastwood “Dollar” movies, and the James Bond flick “You Only Live Twice”.

Our parents were refugees from Latvia, who had fled communism, and had landed in one of the many D.P. (Displaced Persons) camps in Germany, after World War II, which is where they first met. They both opted for America, and under the Marshall Plan, they came over in effect as “indentured servants”, which meant that someone in America had to sponsor them, and then they had to work for the person(s) who sponsored them.

Though they decided to keep in touch with each other, they had no say on where they would be placed. Our father ended up as a cowboy on a ranch near Bismark, North Dakota, while our mother was sponsored by a doctor’s family in Akron, Ohio, who needed a nanny for their children.

Our mother was treated well, whereas our father was not. As soon as he had the resources to break free, he joined our mother in Akron, where he got a job as a janitor in the church where they were married. That was the best job he could get at the time, not knowing English very well. (He ultimately ended up teaching English and Comparative Literature at the college level.)

Our parents were strangers in a strange land, and they wanted to keep their heritage alive, to remember their lives before being completely uprooted. So, they gave all of their children Latvian names, and we were only allowed to speak Latvian at home.

Some names were easier to pronounce than others. “Ilgvars” was a particularly unusual name, and the difficulty was compounded by the Latvian nicknames for it. “Ilgvars” (which literally means “long-power” or endurance, tenacity, etc.), was shortened to “Ilgucis” (pronounced “il’-goo-tziss” – “oo” as in book or cookie), and even shorter, “Gucis” (“Goo’-tziss”), Guci (“Goo’tzee) and just plain “Guc” (“Gootz”).

Somewhere around age twelve, Ilgvars decided that none of those options suited him, and he started going by the name, “Carl”, which was an anglicized version of his middle name, Karlis. (Karlis was our mother’s father’s name.) Carl eventually started spelling it with a “K”, but not before he had applied & received a Social Security Card with the name, “Ilgvars C. Lelis”, which created further complications for him down the road.

He also had a love for music at an early age, as did all his older siblings. He listened to the radio a lot, and was exposed to a lot of cool music, as it was happening, i.e. the British Invasion (Beatles & Stones, Animals, Yardbirds, etc.) and the Psychedelic, hippie era (Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Buffalo Springfield, Doors, Steppenwolf, etc.).

Even though we didn’t have access to a real piano, Karl had figured out most of the Major & minor chords on the keyboard, before he was ten. And he started figuring out chords on the guitar soon after. By the time he was thirteen, he was a solid rhythm guitarist, and was able to figure out songs by ear.

(He started learning electric lead guitar soon after, and had gotten fairly proficient by the time he was 15 or 16, but he ultimately settled for playing acoustic guitar. It was more practical; it required less equipment to haul around, and it was conducive to ad hoc public performances when the mood and crowd was right.)

Early on, he was also drawn to and enamored of the whole hippie scene, and rock star personalities. Brian Jones had the same birthday as him (Feb. 28th), so at one point Carl decided his stage name would be “Carl Brian”. And of course, part of that whole scene was the celebration of psychedelic drugs.

Karl already had issues, even before he got into psychedelics, but they were largely ignored because he was intelligent. We both had severe ADHD, but there was no diagnosis for that back then. Our teachers simply said “we weren’t paying attention”. Karl’s issues ran deeper than mine, however, and it was noticeable that he was lacking certain abilities, even though he excelled in other areas.

And he did get into psychedelics – too much, too early – long before he could really handle himself, and way long before his brain was fully developed. Add a touch of OCD to the mix, along with an extremely addictive personality, and the resulting compound was a recipe for disaster.

Karl managed to fail 9th Grade English, and in lieu of Summer School, or being held back, he was promoted to 10th grade, with the understanding that he would make up those credits in Evening classes, that fall.

As fate would have it, Karl’s new high school was so disorganized, that no one could tell him initially, what his class schedule was, or whom his teachers were. So, instead of trying to unravel the bureaucracy to sort it out, Karl decided it was official permission to not attend school, anymore (including his night classes).

Needless to say, when all of this finally came to light, months later, it did not go over well. But ironically, and much to Karl’s credit, he took it upon himself to study for his G.E.D., which he completed, six months before his class graduated.

Entering the job world was difficult for Karl, and he quickly developed a pattern of sabotaging any chances for succeeding at any particular vocation. He would start out strong and willing, but grew tired of the grind very quickly or suddenly. He never stayed at any one particular job long enough to get a reference, so he was perpetually working the same type of menial, entry level jobs, with no chance for advancement.

His options were also further limited by the fact that he never got a driver’s license. He did learn how to drive, but was too overwhelmed by all the moving parts, and having to focus all of his attention on this singular task, for so long. [Interesting parallel to our parents: neither of our parents ever learned how to drive either, and that fact produced unnecessary economic and social limitations for our family, which lasted until the oldest kids got their licenses (our sister & me, respectively), who then became de facto chauffeurs for everyone else.]

In retrospect, some of Karl’s issues might have been genetic imprinting. Our father suffered from PTSD after being a POW in WWII, and in all probability, was also bi-polar, which he treated by self-medicating with alcohol. By his own admission he did say he suffered from melancholia as a youth. Karl and our dad were both Pisces, and Karl seemed to resemble our father more closely than the rest of the siblings, both in looks, and in impulsive, addictive, emotional behavior.

Throughout his twenties and thirties, Karl never really “launched” properly, that is, he never became truly independent for any length of time, with a job or a place to live of his own. Our parents divorced in 1979, and Karl lived with either parent numerous times during that stretch. In between, Karl would stay with friends, or go travelling with the Rainbow Gathering. At one point, he was living in the woods in a treehouse.

He was a good-looking kid, and was a natural extrovert. In some ways – for a brief moment in time – it seemed he was ahead of his peers. He lost his virginity at 14 while at a Latvian summer camp. He had three other girls mooning over him, actually crying in the morning of the last day, commiserating together, while Karl was in love with a 5th girl, who was an unattainable ideal.

But he didn’t learn many essential life lessons, at critical junctures that his peers did, and that left him on the “outside looking in” for much of his adult life. Many times, those lessons would come back to bite him, when least expected.

Karl’s life became a never-ending party. He was naturally outgoing and gregarious, and couldn’t understand why people didn’t want to talk to him at 3:00 AM, just because they had to get up at 6 to go to work – even if he wasn’t stoned, drunk, or tripping, which he often was during those calls. But he didn’t do anything maliciously. I think he was just lonely, and lacked the confidence and skill set to go about establishing relationships in any normal kind of way.

A byproduct of this was that Karl kept irregular hours, often staying up all night and sleeping during the day. This of course, also made it nearly impossible for him to keep appointments, go on job interviews, work a job, or have social interactions with most people.

Some major life events came to a head, during Karl’s 30th year: 1989. I got married, and was the first of 5 siblings to do so. (My mom had remarried in 1983, and she lost her 2nd husband to cancer 6 weeks before my wedding.) Then, on Nov 13th, our father died at age 62 - also of cancer. (Our mom buried 2 husbands that year.) Karl did not attend his father’s funeral.

Karl’s life really is a tale of two cities. Sometime after his fortieth birthday, he decided that no one (including anyone in his family) cared about him, so he decided to leave the area he grew up in, for good, and strike out for greener pastures, elsewhere.

This was an astute observation on his part, because – quite frankly – he had alienated all of his siblings, one way or another, and most other people that he knew at the time. Our mother was still tolerant and sympathetic towards him most of the time, but even she rued aloud (one time that I heard) about having a 40-year-old baby.

No one seems to remember exactly when he left permanently, or even when or how long he lived in Boston, but it was about a year or two, in between travelling around with the Rainbow Gathering. And it was the culmination of his travels with the Rainbow Gathering that landed him in Ithaca. A third-party account stated that one day, a hippie bus deposited Karl in Ithaca, because they were tired of dealing with him. And the rest is history.

On many levels, this might have been the best decision Karl ever made (even though it sounds like, initially, the decision was made for him). Here in Ithaca, he had a chance to reinvent himself, to start over with a clean slate. Ithaca was a place where no one knew his past, and no one would bring up any past misdeeds to embarrass him. And he fit right in with the progressive, quirky, like-minded attitudes, of the many kindred spirits he found on The Commons. It was a match made in heaven.

He could play guitar in public, live his life however he wanted to, without anyone telling him what to do or how to live. He could totally be himself, without any constraints, without any filters. Every day was his to decide. It was like he had landed in a hippie-land that time had forgot.

Somewhere during his Rainbow Gathering stint, Karl had given himself the moniker: “Starsign”, a probable allusion to his preoccupation with astrology. At some point, not sure when – or if it coincided with his arrival in Ithaca, Starsign became “Starlight”.

We eventually heard that he was living in Ithaca, and he would hit my mom up for money a few times a year. He also would ask our youngest brother and myself for money from time to time. It was always an emergency, and since he had no checking account, the money had to be wired by Western Union. Over the next decade there many late-night trips to the WU terminal.

Once Latvia became independent again, our mom started going back there for the summers, and kept extending her stay. She eventually leased an apartment in Riga, and still maintained an apartment in Rockville, MD. She managed to do this, living on Social Security as her only income, and she had roommates in both cities. When she returned home in 2010, she no longer had the full use of her legs, and had to use a walker to get around. A few months later she developed cancer, and passed away a year after that, at the beginning of March in 2012.

As the executor of her modest estate, I nonetheless had to track down Karl to get him to sign papers so I could distribute his share, and close the estate. I took a week off work, in Aug of 2012, convinced I could accomplish this nebulous task. My wife, Kathleen, was more than openly skeptical. (“Are you out of your mind? How are you going to find him?”) I was determined I would find him, even though he had no phone, and no apparent fixed address. (The mail kept getting returned for the only address we had for him, which was in Brooktondale – a suburb South of Ithaca.) How big could Ithaca be?

Long story short, though Karl didn’t live there, I did manage to meet someone who did, and she had let Karl use her place as a mailing address. She said that Karl was usually hanging out on The Commons. Once I figured out where that was, I zipped into an empty parking space on N Cayuga (that was luck in itself), walked around the corner to the entrance to The Commons and saw a tall, lean figure, in a colorful t-shirt, from the back, about 75 yards away. I said, “There he is! That’s Karl!” And it was.

The first thing that struck me when I found him in Aug of 2012, was how polite he was. That’s not how most people in Maryland would remember him. The second thing that struck me was how healthy he looked. He was clean, and his body was wiry – not an ounce of fat on him.

This was kind of weird, but at first, he seemed to not recognize me. I hadn’t seen him in 12 years, but I didn’t think Kathleen or I looked that different, nor did he look that different to me.

Nonetheless, I asked him if he still knew how to play “Heaven’s Blues”, which was a song he wrote. He looked at me bewildered and said, “You’ve heard that?! Are you one of my Rainbow brothers?” And I said, “Brother... Now there’s a clue...”

After I revealed who we were and what my mission was, we hung out together for the next 24 hours. He was saddened to hear our mom had passed, and kind of suspected it – but his logic of denial (kind of like Schrodinger’s Cat), was that if he ignored the news of our mom’s progressing illness, then she wouldn’t die.

I learned then that Starlight was actually homeless. He was living on the back porch of a vacant house, with a friend. I asked him how he got by in the winters, and he said “couch surfing”. We had a few beers together at an outdoor pub on the T-side of The Commons. (He was so used to being outdoors at the time, that he had an aversion to going inside.) We took him back to our motel in Binghamton for the night.

Before we left him, we took him to the (then) Sprint store, and got him a cell phone, and added him to our plan. This put him on the grid, somewhat. At least now, we could communicate easier. I also convinced him to open a checking account, so that he could receive his share of the distribution from our mom. He did, and that made all of our lives easier.

He played guitar for us one last time – an original instrumental compilation, which had recognizable snippets from other songs. He executed it perfectly – no hesitation – no mistakes. That was the last time I saw Starlight.

I had a really good conversation with him on the phone, about politics, sometime in 2017 or 2018, and I was very impressed by his depth of knowledge of world events, and what was going on in our country. We also saw eye-to-eye on all significant issues, which didn’t surprise me, but I was glad to see that our minds were still aligned that way. But what was most impressive about that 20-minute conversation, was that Starlight had no stammer. He presented his ideas in clear, continuous, flowing, complete sentences. It was a joy to experience.

In early Aug or late July, 2018, Starlight survived a vicious attack from a gang of teens. We didn’t hear about it until much later, and I only learned more details of what actually happened, just recently while in Ithaca.

I don’t know who his caretaker was at N Tioga St., but I am extremely grateful to her/him/them, and to all the good people of Ithaca, who helped him out during this time, all the people who contributed to his fundraiser to get him back on his feet, and to all the people who cared for him and subsequently looked out for Starlight, one way or another. Thank you, all. You made a difference in his life.

Starlight sent me a text on my birthday, in April. He thanked me for all the times I had been a positive influence in his life. That was the last communication from Starlight to anyone in my family.

On September 11, 2025, I heard from the investigator for the Tompkins County Medical Examiner that my brother, Ilgvars, had passed, and that they found his body on Sep 3rd. He also stated that he had probably been deceased for a month, before he was found.

Starlight’s phone records seem to confirm that. His last outgoing text message was on 7/30/25, and his last outgoing voice call was on 8/5/25. I’m assuming he passed soon after.

We’ll never know exactly what happened or when. And though his wallet and phone were not found, there was no evidence of foul play or third-party involvement. Starlight officially died of undetermined circumstances, and unspecified natural causes.

As I was trying to uncover what happened – with little clues, and even less evidence, I was comforted by all the nice things I heard and read, and by the good people I met who cared about him. He was lucky to have such a network of friends, and I was heartened to think that maybe Starlight had a better life than I had imagined.

One last cosmic observation: Starlight was also a student of numerology as well as astrology and other teachings of mysticism. Once I saw articles about his attack in 2018, I realized that his probable departure date coincides with the timeline of the attack, nearly to the day – seven years ago.

They say that you don’t have a single remaining cell in your body from 7 years ago. So, technically Starlight had shed all traces of his cellular makeup from that incident, by early Aug of this year. And so, maybe Starlight decided he had fulfilled his time here, was ready to move on to the next great adventure, and wanted it to occur on a cosmic number: Lucky number 7. Who knows?

Besides my birthday text, I did have one last actual conversation with Starlight, earlier this year – probably sometime around his birthday, where I asked him how he was really doing. He replied, “You know... 60/40.” And he was content with that. As long as he could do whatever he really wanted 60% of the time, he could tolerate the other 40%. (Another interesting parallel to our father, is that our dad made a similar statement about himself, back in the 70’s, and Karl was not there to hear that.)

Starlight was a unique being who remained true to himself, regardless of his circumstances. He was a shooting star... His enthusiasm was infectious – his emotional enjoyment was contagious. Starlight was Peter Pan, Arthur, Stanley Kowalski, Rainman, Rasputin, Edgar Allen Poe, Brian Jones and George Harrison, rolled into one.

I invite any and all who knew Starlight, to share their stories, photos, and video links, on this site. If anyone wants to contact me directly, to share more personal experiences, I welcome that, too.

Gunars P. Lelis

Rockville, MD

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