John Williamson, Sexual Pioneer Of The 1960s, Dies Of Cancer At 80

John Williamson, sexual pioneer of the 1960s and co-founder of Topanga Canyon's Sandstone Retreat, died of cancer on March 24, in a hospital in Reno, Nevada at age 80.

John and his wife Barbara have lived on a ranch in Northern Nevada for the past 18 years, according to The Associated Press. 

Originally, John was inspired to move to California in the early '60s by Ayn Rand's book, "Atlas Shrugged," that portrays a society in which people walk away from their jobs because they are fed up with government and industry controlling their lives, according to the AP.  

He continued to work a mainstream job with an electronics company, until he met his wife in 1966 when she came by his office one day to try to sell him insurance, the AP reports.  A few weeks later they got married and began to plan something a little less 'mainstream.'

So, in 1968, as a young newlywed couple, John and his wife bought a number of rundown buildings on 15 acres of property in California overlooking the Pacific Ocean and turned it into the Sandstone Foundation For Community Systems Research.

The Sandstone Foundation offered seminars on human bonding, relationships and sexuality, and it held Sandstone Retreats on weekends, where about 500 people would gather in the nude and swap spouses or engage in group sex, the AP reports.  It gained immediate notoriety, especially in the midst of the sexual revolution.

"We actually had open sexuality and nudity, but it was optional. Everything was optional," Barbara told the AP on Thursday.  "We provided a wonderful, wonderful environment in a natural setting, and that natural setting just sort of gave people permission."

John and his wife Barbara, who had been together for 47 years, had exchanged sexual partners themselves, however, in a memoir that John had written, he said that it never put any stain on their relationship, the AP reports. The couple believed that monogamy wasn't capable of 'fulfilling people's sexual needs' and, as a result, it would 'prevent them from living life to its fullest.'

Barbara said that as the retreat's frontman, John became known as the "messiah of sex" and he carried the title proudly, according to the AP.  

A number of  celebrities were said to have visited Sandstone over the years.  "I saw more naked Hollywood stars than any other women," Barbara said, according to the Inquisitr.

Gay Talese, author of a 1981 book on the sexual revolution entitled, "Thy Neighbor's Wife," said he spent a substantial amount of time at the Sandstone Foundation, much of it naked, according to the AP.  The book explored changing sexual attitudes, including wife-swapping and Talese's research for the book included getting busy with another woman at the Sandstone Retreat, the Inquisitr reports.

Barbara said that although membership at the foundation flourished, the retreat never took in enough money to pay the bills and so in 1972, they sold the property and the Sandstone closed a couple years later, the AP reports.

After that the couple tried to build a tribal community in Montana but it never really took off, according to the AP.  Then they moved to the San Francisco Bay area, then to Nevada, where they began to take in big cats whose owners wanted to get rid of them.

At the time of his death, John was attempting to turn their property into a sanctuary for wild animals as well as an educational center, the AP reports.  The ranch facility was called "Tiger Touch," according to the Inquisitr.

John Williamson is survived by his wife Barbara, his daughter, Sheila Ellington, and a granddaughter, according to the AP.