Jazz And Harmony

Alice knew he was in a lot of pain, they just didn't know what was wrong. By the time she persuaded him to go to a doctor, the cancer had progressed.

She saw the end one day, sitting in meditation. She says he came to her in a vision. "I'm going onward," he told her. So she was prepared. Even though it broke her heart. He was 40 when he died. She wasn't yet 30, suddenly single with four young kids to raise.

"It was not a very happy time," Alice says.

And yes, she misses him still.

"Absolutely."

* * *

Just outside the ashram, a white sign spells out the rules: Women should dress modestly. This is a vegetarian retreat; no meat is allowed on the premises. Neither is alcohol, cigarettes or drugs. Shoes are prohibited inside the buildings, where shrines to Sri Satya Sai Baba abound.

Alice moved west because she says that is what God told her to do. First, to San Francisco in the mid-'70s, establishing a Vedantic center there, and then settling in Southern California in Woodland Hills.

Growing up with Alice as a mother didn't make for a traditional childhood. Her eldest, Michelle, remembers the vegetarian dinners, her mother dressing in the orange clothes of the renunciate who'd taken a vow of celibacy (right after her husband's death), the singing and chanting in their living room.

"So we weren't popular with the other kids when they came over," laughs Michelle, now 46 and married with children of her own. "Because we were young, it didn't seem strange really, just another part of life."

In 1983, Alice bought the ashram property, paying a reported $1.3 million for 50 acres of land, a year after her eldest son, John Jr., died in a car accident, at 17.

She got through it through her spiritual practice -- "that's the only way" -- and focusing on keeping John Sr.'s legacy alive, playing the savvy businesswoman, managing his estate through Jowcol Music, which includes a publishing and licensing business and an educational foundation. Proceeds from the estate help keep the ashram afloat. Today, she lives in a modestly furnished house in Woodland Hills. Michelle and her family live next door; Oran and his family live on the other side.

Far from Detroit, perhaps, but then again, not so far.

"You never forget your foundation," Alice says. "I'm just as devoted to Christ and Christianity as I was back then. But because you've expanded your views and you've expanded and your options for experience . . . "

Staff researcher Karl Evanzz contributed to this report.