Lafayette Ronald Hubbard was born on March 13, 1911, in Tilden, Nebraska. There are lots of lies and a lot of nonsense about his life. We'll skip over all of that and get to his wives and children.
First came Margaret Louise "Polly" Grubb. She was born on September 22, 1907, in Beltsville, Maryland. The two were married on April 13, 1933. They had two children, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, Jr. (May 7, 1934-September 16, 1991) and Katherine May "Kay" Hubbard (January 15, 1936-May 29, 2010). Both changed their names. Hubbard, Jr., nicknamed "Nibs," became Ronald Edward "Ron" De Wolf. Kay became Catherine May "Kay" Gillespie by a change to the spelling of her Christian name and her marriage to James P. Gillespie. L. Ron Hubbard and his first wife were divorced on December 24, 1947. She married John W. Ochs and died on November 17, 1963, in Valley, Pennsylvania.
Hubbard had already married his second wife by the time he was divorced from his first. She was Sara Elizabeth Bruce Northrup, former girlfriend of rocket scientist and occultist John Whiteside "Jack" Parsons (1914-1952). Sara was also an occultist and went by the witchy name of "Soror Cassap." Born on April 8, 1924, she was younger by half a generation than her paramours.
Sara and Hubbard were married on August 10, 1946, in Chestertown, Maryland. Their daughter Alexis Valerie Hubbard was born on March 8, 1950, in New Jersey. The attending physician was Joseph A. Winter (1911-1955), future brother-in-law of John W. Campbell, Jr. The infant Alexis came into the world in complete silence so that no engrams would be lodged in her brain. Dianetics was born two months later in the pages of Astounding Science Fiction, May 1950. It was, in contrast, damaged from the beginning. Anyway, Hubbard was more devoted to his brainchild, such as it was, than his real child. The way he treated her can be considered nothing less than a disgrace, but what else can we expect from one of the most monstrous figures in all of genre literature?
Hubbard and his second wife were divorced on June 12, 1951, in Sedgwick County, Kansas. She afterwards married Miles F. Hollister (1925-1998). Sara Hollister preceded her last husband in death, her end coming on December 18, 1997, in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1968, L. Ron Hubbard had this utterly bizarre exchange with an interviewer from Granada Television:
Hubbard: How many times have I been married? I've been married twice. And I'm very happily married just now. I have a lovely wife, and I have four children. My first wife is dead.
Interviewer: What happened to your second wife?
Hubbard: I never had a second wife.
L. Ron Hubbard's third and last wife was Mary Sue Whipp. Born on June 17, 1931, in Rockdale, Texas, she was younger still than Hubbard's never-was second wife. She became involved in Dianetics in 1951 and journeyed to Kansas to be with fellow believers. She and Hubbard were married on March 6, 1952, in Kay County, Oklahoma. They had four children together, Quentin, Diana, Mary Suzette, and Thomas. Quentin killed himself. The others are still living.
In 1981, Mary Sue Hubbard was maneuvered out of her position of power within Scientology. Not long after that, she served a prison sentence for crimes she had committed while occupying that position. I like the words of Mr. Justice Latey of the English High Court of Justice regarding a different legal matter. They bear repeating here and everywhere: "Mr. Hubbard is a charlatan and worse, as are his wife, Mary Sue Hubbard, and the clique at the top privy to the cult's activities." (Quoted in "Judge Raps 'Slave' Cult" by Maureen Knight, Daily Express, July 7, 1984.)
A dissolute and utterly corrupted L. Ron Hubbard died on January 24, 1986, in Creston, California. I picture him at the end as being in the same condition as M. Valdemar of Poe's story. Hubbard's second and third wives survived him. Mary Sue Hubbard died on November 25, 2002, in Los Angeles, California. Scientology is supposed to have prevented two out of the three of those deaths, I think. In fact, after his death, Hubbard's successor at the head of Scientology said in a public address to his followers that Hubbard had "discarded" his body because it "had become an impediment to the work" he was to do outside the confines of the universe. In other words, he didn't really die. (Quoted in Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee, p. 402).
In all of this, I'm reminded of other totalitarian and gnostic belief systems. Like Joseph Stalin and his Marxist-Leninism, Hubbard and his Scientology considered certain persons to be actually nonpersons and sought to scrub them from the record. That's what he attempted with his second wife. Sorry, Ron, the world remembers her. Like Karl Marx, Hubbard had seven children. Four of Marx's children died in infancy or childhood, partly because he was such a layabout. (Say what you will about L. Ron Hubbard, he was at least energetic and ambitious.) Two others died by suicide. Only one of Hubbard's children has died in such a way. And like Marshall Applewhite (1931-1997)--and the fictional villains of That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis--Hubbard believed that the body can be discarded and the soul live on within an otherwise material universe (although, as his successor pointed out, Hubbard is now working outside the universe, address unknown). There is in the world of today a similar gnostic belief in what is referred to as "gendered souls" stuck in bodies of the wrong sex. We're supposed to believe that altering and mutilating those bodies will set things right. In other words, the universe and nature are flawed, and we are wise enough and powerful enough to correct those flaws. We have believed these things since very near our beginning. Old ideas die hard.
That's enough of Hubbard for now and for a long time to come, I hope. I promise to write about some better things to end this year.
Original text copyright 2022, 2023 Terence E. Hanley
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