My Mom Mama Cass

FIVE DECADES AFTER THE DEATH OF THE MAMAS & THE PAPAS SINGER, OWEN ELLIOT-KUGELL'S MEMOIR GIVES AN INTIMATE LOOK AT THE MUSICAL LEGEND

- LIZ MCNEIL

Fifty years later, the details of Owen Elliot-Kugell's final day with her mom, Cass Elliot, remain vivid in her memory. She recalls how they walked through the Los Angeles airport holding hands before the then 7-year-old flew by herself for the first time, from L.A. to Baltimore, where she would attend summer camp while her mom performed a series of solo shows in London. "I remember her saying, 'Look out your window because I'm going to wave," says Owen, 57. "I looked out the window, and there she was, and she was waving. That was the last time I saw her."

A few weeks later, on July 29, 1974, her world changed forever when Cass, the woman whose sensuous alto had once anchored the folk-rock group the Mamas & the Papas, died in her sleep from a heart attack in her London apartment. She was 32. "Even at 7, I knew I'd have to be a survivor," recalls Owen. "I felt very alone. Extremely alone and very much like, you're on your own, kid." She moved in with her aunt Leah Kunkel (Cass's sister) and her husband, Russ. "I got to have a mom and a dad and a house and a dog, and it was normal," she says. But the loss left her with endless questions, from the secret of her paternity to the oft-told rumor that her mom had died from choking on a ham sandwich. "I had to discern fact from fiction," says Owen.