The Living Legend by the Numbers

I believe in my father’s case, the numbers that made up the totality of his life say more than an obituary can. Here they are for better or worse, good or bad, impressive or appalling.

Age at death: 57

57 years, 8 months and 8 days.

Number of wives: 3

Mary Ann (1957-65), Beverly (1966-77) and Janet (1993-95)

Number of children: 18 (4 legitimate, 14 illegitimate)

The four legitimate children are, of course, me and my brother and sisters. The fourteen I discovered after my father’s death recorded in a little black book. They are listed by the mother’s first and last name, country, month and year of birth and sex of each child. No names of the children.

Number of degrees held: 4

A bachelor’s degree (University of California Santa Barbara, 1958), a master’s degree (Cambridge University, 1959), a PhD (Cambridge, 1963) and a JD (University of Pennsylvania, 1981).

Number Countries in which he lived: 3

The United States, Great Britain and Sweden.

Number of states in which he lived: 7

New York, Nevada, California, Washington, Texas, Pennsylvania and Hawaii.

The number of wills he left behind: 9

According to the family lawyer, there were nine wills among my father’s papers at the time of his death. Among the nine wills, the lawyer confirmed, there were versions excluding each one of his four legitimate children at various times. Never a mention of any other children.

The number of countries to which he traveled: 34

U.S., Canada, Mexico, Curaçao, England, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco, Spain, Portugal, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Italy, Switzerland, Morocco, Algeria, Vietnam, Thailand, China, Japan, Peru, Brazil

Number of women with whom he had sex: 194

The name and year of every woman my father had sex with was faithfully recorded in a little black book. I have not shared this book with anyone except my stepmother, my father’s last wife, who was with me when I found it. Although the keeping of such a sex diary is in itself of questionable taste, at least the women weren’t rated with stars. 

The list includes his mistresses, models, stewardesses, transsexuals, wives of friends, some of his children’s college-age friends, au pair girls and one Miss America contestant (But as his good friend Norman Pearlstein was quick to point about Miss Pennsylvania, “it wasn’t that impressive when you consider there were only 13 states at the time.”).

My mother recently asked me if I thought my father had exaggerated the number and I told her no, I didn’t think he did and told her my reasons, which were: 1) She was the first on the list (and they met in college). If you’re going to exaggerate your sex life wouldn’t you claim to have started at a younger age? 2) The number is only 194, if you were going to exaggerate, wouldn’t you go a little higher number? I’m sure my father thought he would reach 200. 3) I knew a lot of the women on the list personally and, just as importantly, the women who were not on the list within my father’s circle of acquaintances.

My mother still wasn’t satisfied, so she said that she would give me the names of a few women who she was certain he hadn’t had sex with and if they were on the list it would almost certainly prove my father was exaggerating his conquests. None of the women she named were on the list.

 The number of nationalities among the women with who he had sex: 14

Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, German, French, British, Irish, Swiss, Dutch, Latvian, Ukrainian, Pakistani and Australian.

IQ: 140

This IQ put him at the 99.6 percentile. He was a member of Mensa, the high IQ society, for much of his adult life. For more on this see: “Mensa and the Bye Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case.”

Books owned: 6,379

His books covered much of the wall space in his three story Philadelphia rowhouse. When he retired he cataloged his entire library, which can be seen here: Library of the Living Legend. 

Books read: 1,652

In cataloging his library, he had a column in his database to indicate whether he had read the book or not. Filtering out unread or only partially-read books leaves 1,652. I should note, however, that the number includes bound magazines such as Horizon and American Heritage. More to come on this in a future blog.

Number of books written: 3

Project Gemini: A Chronology (with James M. Grimwood and Barton C. Hacker, 1969)

Charles Darwin: The Years of Controversy (Temple University Press, 1970 and University of London Press, 1972).

He also wrote at least one unpublished autobiography, Tales of the Living Legend and one unfinished novel, The Loves of Dr. Death.

The number of people he killed: 1

On St. Patrick’s Day in 1954 while driving in Hollywood, my father accidentally struck and killed a woman. A couple of notes about this: It was something he rarely talked about over the course of his life. Ironically, the woman’s name, Bertha, was the same as his paternal grandmother’s and, as fate would have it, my father himself would not live to the age of 59. Though he was half Irish, he never celebrated St. Patrick’s Day. It wasn’t until I heard the story in the late 1970s, I understood why. My father’s own mother would also die on Saint Patrick’s Day 31 years later. 

Number of jobs he held in his lifetime: 7

The various jobs he held include three academic positions: The University of Washington (Seattle, 1963-66), The University of Houston (under contract to the NASA-MSC, 1966-67) and Temple University (1967-93). After working part-time for Diners Fugazy in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he started his own travel agency, Student International Travel. He also worked for a short time as a stringer for Time Magazine, a job he held during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Number of consecutive years attending the Fiesta of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain: 29

This is the fiesta featuring the running of the bulls, made famous by Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises, (1926), also by the film made from the book (1957) and by James Michener’s books The Drifters (1971) and Iberia (1968). 

Number of consecutive years holding a birthday party for Giuseppe Verdi: 17

More to come on this in a future blog.  

Number of countries over which my father’s ashes were scattered: 4

The U.S., Great Britain, France and Spain. For more on this see the post: “Rocket’s Red Glare: Launching the Ashes of The Living Legend”