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Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets

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Speaker 2: that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,

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Speaker 2: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. My guests today

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Speaker 2: are a father and daughter, David and Maggie Sith. We

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Speaker 2: record it in person at a studio in New York City.

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Speaker 2: David is almost ninety years old and has had a fascinating,

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Speaker 2: many chaptered life. He's been a professor, a writer, author

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Speaker 2: of a memoir, Eleanor's Rebellion, a mother, a son and

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Speaker 2: her secret. He's been a journalist, He's been an actor.

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Speaker 2: His is a story of a bedrock secret that shaped

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Speaker 2: him from the inside out and the ripple effect of

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Speaker 2: that secret. In a way, this is a story of

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Speaker 2: before and after. Maggie, David's youngest daughter, is born into

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Speaker 2: the aftermath of the Secrets revelation, but is nonetheless impacted

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Speaker 2: by it in ways that profoundly shape her own life.

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Speaker 2: You'll be hearing more from Maggie in the second half

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Speaker 2: of this episode, and oh, if her voice sounds familiar,

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Speaker 2: you may know her from her remarkable acting career on

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Speaker 2: both stage and screen. Particularly her role as psychiatrist Wendy

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Speaker 2: Rhodes on Billions. I'm going to start at the beginning.

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Speaker 2: Tell me about the landscape of your childhood.

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Speaker 3: The problem is that I remember my childhood literally as

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Speaker 3: a before and after reality because I wasn't aware of

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Speaker 3: the first two years of my life, which I spend

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Speaker 3: at an orphanage and didn't discover that until forty years later.

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Speaker 3: I remember my childhood as more or less happy, middle class,

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Speaker 3: secular Jewish life, mainly in the Bronx. My parents were.

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Speaker 3: They were parents, you know. I tried to avoid them

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Speaker 3: as much as possible and at the same time coax

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Speaker 3: them into getting everything I wanted in their being, doting

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Speaker 3: on me and loving me and caring for me to

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Speaker 3: the point where I was oblivious to what was going

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Speaker 3: on between the two of them, which was really important

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Speaker 3: in my childhood because my biological father was not the

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Speaker 3: guy who was raising me, and he was mainly interested

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Speaker 3: in my mother, not me for a long time. Then

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Speaker 3: he slowly got turned around. I was part of his

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Speaker 3: family too. He was rescuing my mother, who was a

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Speaker 3: single mom. In the word they used in those days

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Speaker 3: was illegitimate.

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Speaker 2: Tell me about your mom tell me about her background

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Speaker 2: and how she came to make the choices that she

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Speaker 2: made that so acted your early life. In your life, she.

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Speaker 3: Was something of a wild child. She never got out

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Speaker 3: of high school. She was kicked out of high school

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Speaker 3: because she forged a letter for a friend of hers

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Speaker 3: who was didn't want to go to gym class because

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Speaker 3: she was a lesbian, and my mother really understood that

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Speaker 3: that was difficult for a young woman at that time.

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Speaker 3: My mother got a relative of hers to forge a

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Speaker 3: medical excuse for her, and they found out about it,

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Speaker 3: and they kicked her out of school.

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Speaker 2: What year are we more or less well?

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Speaker 3: I was born in thirty five. She was born in fourteen,

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Speaker 3: so this would have been around nineteen thirty, nineteen thirty one,

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Speaker 3: nineteen thirty two, just when the Depression was hitting full

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Speaker 3: stride and FDR was becoming president, which was a big

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Speaker 3: deal in my family. I think her rebelliousness her she

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Speaker 3: thought of herself. I think, although she never really quiet

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Speaker 3: defined it that way, but her sister did. The people

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Speaker 3: around her did as a nonconformist, and I think she

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Speaker 3: was open in a way that she was not ready

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Speaker 3: to know to really incorporate into her her growing years.

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Speaker 3: She was very bright. Eventually she went back, you know,

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Speaker 3: late later on, after she was married and settled down,

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Speaker 3: she went she went back and got a college degree

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Speaker 3: and got a master's degree, and was she was a

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Speaker 3: very She was a really intelligent, creative, interesting person who

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Speaker 3: I think was very much trapped in the circumstances that

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Speaker 3: she didn't want to be in. And I don't think

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Speaker 3: she really wanted to have a child when she was eighteen,

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Speaker 3: but she did and she was a loving mother.

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Speaker 2: So when we talk about the sort of split screen

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Speaker 2: of your childhood, there was all of this that you

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Speaker 2: did not know, right, And just because you didn't know

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Speaker 2: it doesn't mean it wasn't there. It just means right,

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Speaker 2: you didn't know it, but it was in the air

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Speaker 2: around you.

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Speaker 3: It was emotionally part of the fabric of my life.

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Speaker 2: So if you can go back to your childhood in

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Speaker 2: that time and do the magic trick of entering that

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Speaker 2: state of not knowing, what did your family as you

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Speaker 2: were growing up feel like to you and your place

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Speaker 2: in it? And just what you know, what was it

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Speaker 2: like to be you as a kid and a teenager, as.

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Speaker 3: A young kid, what I experienced and did not understand,

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Speaker 3: was a lot of anger, a lot of trouble making.

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Speaker 3: I went out of my way to make trouble wherever

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Speaker 3: I was. I enjoyed it. And at one point I

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Speaker 3: must have told my parents, because my friends were doing this,

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Speaker 3: that I wanted to go to Hebrew School. I didn't

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Speaker 3: want to go to Hebrew School. When I went, I

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Speaker 3: got thrown at.

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Speaker 2: It seems like a family tradition of some sort.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I just following in a long line.

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Speaker 3: But what I did, and I can't imagine that this

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Speaker 3: came from anything other than real anger and willingness just

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Speaker 3: to make trouble, was the rabbi in this classroom was

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Speaker 3: putting something up on the blackboard and his back was

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Speaker 3: turned to the class and I jumped up out of

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Speaker 3: my seat and started crossing myself in front of the kids,

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Speaker 3: and they all were laughing, and the rabbi turned around

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Speaker 3: and caught me and down. I went to the principal's office.

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Speaker 3: I didn't get thrown out. Then I got thrown out

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Speaker 3: for fighting. A couple of weeks later or something. I

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Speaker 3: was kicked out of other schools too.

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Speaker 2: And how did that all play in your family? Like,

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Speaker 2: how did they our families tend to label us in

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Speaker 2: some way or another, like were you the troublemaker?

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Speaker 3: I was the troublemaker, and I was a troubled I

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Speaker 3: was a troubled person. I was packed off to a

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Speaker 3: psychiatrist who had some reputation, and we used to play

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Speaker 3: cards when I went to see her. I guess that

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Speaker 3: was a form of therapy. And one time she gave

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Speaker 3: me the deck too, and I riffled the deck and

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Speaker 3: she said, what game do you.

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Speaker 4: Want to play?

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Speaker 3: And I said fifty two card pick up? And I

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Speaker 3: threw the cards all on the floor and she slapped me.

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Speaker 2: That doesn't sound very therapeutic.

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Speaker 3: It wasn't. It was. It was interesting, though, oh what

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Speaker 3: have I done in that moment? But I didn't. I

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Speaker 3: wasn't able to to in any way incorporate that in

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Speaker 3: a thinking or understanding way in terms of seeing what

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Speaker 3: I had done and what had happened to this person

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Speaker 3: who really in some way lost control of her own

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Speaker 3: professional reality.

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Speaker 2: So interesting, aside from like troublemaking and you know, and

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Speaker 2: rage any other kind of dominant emotions during those years

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Speaker 2: in this in this state that you were in, you know,

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Speaker 2: one of the things we to talk a lot about

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Speaker 2: on this podcast is this term that I came across

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Speaker 2: when I was doing my own research, which is the

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Speaker 2: unthought known, you know, the thing that we know but

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Speaker 2: we can't allow ourselves to think because it would be

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Speaker 2: too dangerous. And you can't imagine something that you can't

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Speaker 2: suspect something that you can't imagine, right, So you had

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Speaker 2: no way of knowing that there was this whole other,

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Speaker 2: huge kind of field, if you will, and yet it

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Speaker 2: impacts us, right.

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Speaker 3: I think there were two things that come to mind.

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Speaker 3: One is that on some really on the deepest level,

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Speaker 3: I thought of myself as a kind of criminal and

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Speaker 3: couldn't really process that. There were things that I did

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Speaker 3: as a child that I almost feel I can't imagine

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Speaker 3: that anybody would do that, but I did that. I

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Speaker 3: concoct episodes with friends that what are you doing in retrospect?

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Speaker 3: And I did. And it was because I thought of

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Speaker 3: myself as a kind of criminal and I could get

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Speaker 3: away with anything, do anything. I never understood the source

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Speaker 3: of this anger in myself. I never thought of myself

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Speaker 3: as angry. I thought of myself as a peace loving child,

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Speaker 3: which was a croc. And the other part of that

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Speaker 3: was that I lived in a fantasy world. I mean

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Speaker 3: I remember thinking that I read Batman and Superman comics,

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Speaker 3: and I'd walk around the house with a towel tied

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Speaker 3: around my neck as though I could jump out the

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Speaker 3: window and fly. And I never thought that, oh, maybe

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Speaker 3: I really want to jump out the window. I think

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Speaker 3: that was part of what was going on. I never

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Speaker 3: would have jumped out of the window. I was a

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Speaker 3: hypochondriac from the time I was two, so I wouldn't

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Speaker 3: have done that. But that kind of chaotic inner life was.

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Speaker 3: I had this dark side to it, and it also

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Speaker 3: had this imaginative side to it. I remember when I

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Speaker 3: was in the second grade, I got to play Columbus

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Speaker 3: in a second grade play and I discovered America and

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Speaker 3: I stood on the stage and I had the whole

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Speaker 3: world in my two arms. That was part of my

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Speaker 3: life too. I had this imaginative yearning for what I

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Speaker 3: couldn't define, but was always there. My brother was not

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Speaker 3: a model student, but he was. He really went by

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Speaker 3: the book. He was my father's first born and he

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Speaker 3: could never could could never be acknowledged. He was always

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Speaker 3: the brother trailing in the wake of the first born prince.

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Speaker 3: How much younger than you, four years and three months.

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Speaker 3: And my sister is four years and three months younger

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Speaker 3: than my brother, and she had epilepsy from an early age.

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Speaker 3: She was very smart and very she was very turned

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Speaker 3: out to be very artistic, and then also she picked

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Speaker 3: up the mantle of making trouble in her you know,

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Speaker 3: in a much more serious way than childhood trouble. She

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Speaker 3: got involved in a lot of political stuff later on.

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Speaker 2: But in your shared childhoods, you were the troublemaker.

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Speaker 3: I was the troublemaker. I was a protector of my sister,

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Speaker 3: an antagonist to my brother, who was too goody goody

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Speaker 3: for me. I was always trying to lure him into trouble,

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Speaker 3: and when we got into trouble, dumping it off on him.

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Speaker 3: I very much clung to my mother, and I instinctively

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Speaker 3: understood that she embraced me fully, that she loved me.

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Speaker 3: And I was frightened of my father because he had

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Speaker 3: a really serious problem with temper and he could also

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Speaker 3: be physical with his temper. At the same time, I

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Speaker 3: relished the time that I had with him because I

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Speaker 3: was pretty much of a freidie cat as well as

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Speaker 3: being an angry person, so when it was bedtime, I

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Speaker 3: didn't want to go to bed, and I didn't want

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Speaker 3: to have a I didn't want to be in the dark.

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Speaker 3: And my father would come in and sit down with me,

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Speaker 3: and he would tell me stories, and I loved his storytelling.

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Speaker 3: This was one time he told me the story of

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Speaker 3: Joan of Arc and he went all the way through

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Speaker 3: it to the point where the flames started coming up

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Speaker 3: around her, and I started crying. And then he said,

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Speaker 3: but then the rains came, and the rains put the

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Speaker 3: fires out, and she was saved, and I was saved.

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Speaker 3: So he was in retrospect. Now when I think of him,

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Speaker 3: I think of all that he went through as a kid,

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Speaker 3: from the ages of nine to thirteen. He was in

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Speaker 3: the middle of the Russian Civil War and was running

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Speaker 3: with his father from town to town as a Jew,

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Speaker 3: literally trying to escape being killed. And I never quite

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Speaker 3: was able to assimilate that as a young person, as

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Speaker 3: a teenager, and I have since.

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Speaker 2: Well, to me, this is so much a story about

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Speaker 2: the ways in which sometimes life allows us to come

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Speaker 2: to understand and know our parents as human beings and

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Speaker 2: not you know only as our parents, which is the

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Speaker 2: way that most of the time. That's how we walk around.

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Speaker 2: It's hard to imagine a before us, and certainly when

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Speaker 2: we're kids and teenagers and young people, it's I think,

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Speaker 2: almost impossible to imagine.

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Speaker 3: Right it is it is, and later on the you know,

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Speaker 3: the the sword and shield drop away, and then they're

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Speaker 3: just human beings like we are as older people.

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Speaker 2: David gets thrown out of the same high school, not once,

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Speaker 2: not twice, but three times. Quite an achievement. He does

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Speaker 2: manage to graduate and goes to Adelphi College for a year,

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Speaker 2: then transfers to Bard. Bard's a very creative place, and

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Speaker 2: there David finally feels at home.

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Speaker 3: At the same time, I was lugging along all of

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Speaker 3: the fantasies I had about writing the Great American novel,

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Speaker 3: which was never going to happen. But I carried that

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Speaker 3: around like a like some sort of invisible trophy that

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Speaker 3: I thought I had and didn't have, and I think

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Speaker 3: I intellectually awoke at Bard College. I wasn't much of

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Speaker 3: a reader until I got to Bard, and then I

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Speaker 3: started reading. My father, the guy who raised me, went

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Speaker 3: to Columbia, and that's where I really wanted to go,

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Speaker 3: and I knew that Columbia accepted the children. There was

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Speaker 3: a legacy admission policy that Columbia had, but I somehow

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Speaker 3: wasn't part of that legacy, and I never picked up

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Speaker 3: on that.

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Speaker 2: Oh how interesting I.

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Speaker 3: Understood years and years later after my brother Mike went

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Speaker 3: to Columbia, and I realized, why didn't I go to Columbia.

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Speaker 3: I mean that sort of passed through my brain and left.

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Speaker 2: As and then returned when you eventually.

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Speaker 3: Put it all together.

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Speaker 2: Right, So your story is, in so many ways a

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Speaker 2: story of a life almost bisected, almost evenly in midlife

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Speaker 2: of you, a life lived until the age of forty

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Speaker 2: with one set of data, hugely important data, and then

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Speaker 2: you know the ensuing decades after forty. David intellectually wakes

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Speaker 2: up while at Barred, and when he graduates, he goes

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Speaker 2: to the Iowa Writers Workshop, a hotbed for young, talented,

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Speaker 2: ambitious writers. But David can't quite handle the pressure. Besides,

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Speaker 2: he isn't sure what he wants to do. He describes

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Speaker 2: this time as a sort of half awakening.

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Speaker 3: I spent one semester there and I was just too

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Speaker 3: lonely and too scared, So I hustled back to New York.

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Speaker 3: Had no idea what I wanted to do, other than

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Speaker 3: I wish I could be an actor. And I went

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Speaker 3: and I got a job teaching in the yeshiva in Brooklyn.

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Speaker 2: And they hadn't heard your Hebrew's cool story.

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Speaker 3: They hadn't heard that had I didn't advertise that. But

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Speaker 3: somewhere in that process I ran into somebody who's who

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Speaker 3: I told that I want, you know, I really love

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Speaker 3: to be an actor if I could, And he said,

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Speaker 3: why don't you go to an open call for the show? Okay,

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Speaker 3: I didn't know what an open call was. I went

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Speaker 3: to an open call for this show. I did what

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Speaker 3: I had to do, and nothing ever came. I was

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Speaker 3: walking out of the audition and I ran into this

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Speaker 3: friend of mine from high school, you know, fellow schoolmate,

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Speaker 3: and he was a theatrical producer, he said, and I

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Speaker 3: told him that I wanted to be an actor, and

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Speaker 3: he said, well, let me give you the names of

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Speaker 3: two two agents. You need an agent. And he gave

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Speaker 3: me the names of two agents and the name of

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Speaker 3: a photographer. He said, because you're going to need you're

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Speaker 3: going to need a head shot. And I said, headshot,

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Speaker 3: What's I didn't even know what a headshot was but

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Speaker 3: the agent that he sent me to was somebody who

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Speaker 3: literally when I when I met him, said okay, we'll

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Speaker 3: sign you to a contract. And I got a job

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Speaker 3: as a lead in one and an off Broadway production

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Speaker 3: right away. And I was in this production for seven months.

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Speaker 3: And then I you know, lots of things happened right

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Speaker 3: away as I became a professional actor, and I thought

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Speaker 3: of this, this is my future. And of course it

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Speaker 3: was my future so long as everything was handed to

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Speaker 3: me and it was easy. And then as soon as

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Speaker 3: you know, after a while, I went out to Hollywood

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Speaker 3: and got a Hollywood contract right away, but nothing was

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Speaker 3: really happening. And then after several years, you know, the

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Speaker 3: jobs didn't start flowing to me like you know, like popcorn.

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Speaker 3: It it was kind of barren and I didn't know

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Speaker 3: what I was doing. By then, I had met Jenny,

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Speaker 3: my women and I who've been married to for sixty

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Speaker 3: two years, and at one point I decided, well, it's

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Speaker 3: time for me to become a responsible human being. I

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Speaker 3: wasn't going to be an actor. I told my wife

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Speaker 3: that I'm going to go back to graduate school. We

306
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Speaker 3: were living together at that time. We weren't married. And

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Speaker 3: she said, you're going to go to graduate school. He said,

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Speaker 3: I'm leaving you. She was going to be with an actor.

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Speaker 3: She wasn't interested in somebody going back to graduate school,

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Speaker 3: so she left me and I was on my own.

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Speaker 3: And a few months later, because I was so I

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Speaker 3: was just so lonely and heartbroken that Jenny had left.

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Speaker 3: She was from Mexico. I called her in Mexico and

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Speaker 3: I said, you know, we chit chatted back and forth,

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Speaker 3: and I said, you want to get married? She said,

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Speaker 3: what the fuck? Why not? We got married. I mean,

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Speaker 3: it was as mindless as that, and at the same time,

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Speaker 3: there was something really deep in it, because here it

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Speaker 3: is sixty two years later, thirty something years of separation,

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Speaker 3: through all kinds of hell that we went through, and

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Speaker 3: she's the closest person in my life and always has been.

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Speaker 2: I'm so struck by the ways that you know, our

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Speaker 2: lives unfold. The you know, the ease with which you

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Speaker 2: got those early jobs, you know, the relationship with Jenny ending,

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Speaker 2: and then you know, out of your mouth comes let's

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Speaker 2: get married, which are exactly the words that changed changed

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Speaker 2: everything there when you left acting that first time. I'm

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Speaker 2: thinking about what you said about being in second grade

329
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Speaker 2: and being Columbial and how it felt, and also struck

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Speaker 2: by the way that you were describing, you know, running

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Speaker 2: around your house with with the towel and the cape

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Speaker 2: and you know, the fantasy and the entering, the embodying,

333
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Speaker 2: entering the internal life of a character of another, especially

334
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Speaker 2: when you don't really know what's going on inside yourself

335
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Speaker 2: in some way. So I'm wondering when you left acting

336
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Speaker 2: whether you experienced that as a loss or did you

337
00:20:46,240 --> 00:20:48,639
Speaker 2: like when you describe the loneliness and that that feeling,

338
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Speaker 2: was it entirely about Jenny at that time, or were

339
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Speaker 2: you also feeling.

340
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Speaker 3: Like, now, there's a part of me that's always been

341
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Speaker 3: not the exact word, but for as long as I remember,

342
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Speaker 3: there's always been a part of me to this day

343
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Speaker 3: it feels desolate. And the part of maturing for me,

344
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Speaker 3: of growing up was filling in the other side of desolation,

345
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Speaker 3: that is understanding the richness and the gift that a

346
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Speaker 3: single life brings to you. That is the present moment

347
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Speaker 3: for me. It's both a it's a split screen between

348
00:21:27,520 --> 00:21:32,880
Speaker 3: desolation and joy, and I don't know how, I don't

349
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Speaker 3: know how to quite mix them. I lately, only lately,

350
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Speaker 3: And this is strange for a sixties freak. Discovered Leonard Kohn,

351
00:21:42,800 --> 00:21:50,560
Speaker 3: the Prince of Gloom, and he's brilliant, and he's nuanced,

352
00:21:51,080 --> 00:21:58,520
Speaker 3: and he understands the exact relationship between despair and absolute rapture.

353
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Speaker 3: And he doesn't try to fine either. It's just there.

354
00:22:02,640 --> 00:22:06,800
Speaker 3: It's present in the music. And I feel like, emotionally,

355
00:22:06,880 --> 00:22:11,120
Speaker 3: that's been present in my life from the first memories

356
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Speaker 3: I have.

357
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Speaker 2: Well, I would wager that maybe it was present in

358
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Speaker 2: your life from before the first memories.

359
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Speaker 3: That you have. I'm entirely open to that. I don't

360
00:22:21,640 --> 00:22:24,439
Speaker 3: know how that works, but I'm entirely open to it.

361
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Speaker 2: I guess what I mean is the way that we're

362
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Speaker 2: formed by what we don't know.

363
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Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah sure.

364
00:22:33,240 --> 00:22:37,119
Speaker 2: Despite Jenny's initial misgivings, David does go to graduate school,

365
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Speaker 2: where he does well doesn't get kicked out. After graduating,

366
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Speaker 2: he does a teaching job at the University of Wisconsin,

367
00:22:43,760 --> 00:22:47,480
Speaker 2: arriving in Madison in nineteen sixty eight. At this point,

368
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Speaker 2: he and Jenny have had their first two children. Their

369
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Speaker 2: son is four and their daughter is two. So it's

370
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Speaker 2: the late sixties on a college campus and not just

371
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Speaker 2: any college campus, but the University of Wisconsin, another high

372
00:23:00,119 --> 00:23:04,680
Speaker 2: did a perfect storm for all kinds of protesting, activism

373
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Speaker 2: and exploration. David embraces what he calls the craziness.

374
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Speaker 3: I remember in the first I got fired within the

375
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Speaker 3: first three months that I was on campus.

376
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Speaker 2: That's a three weeks to pattern here, David.

377
00:23:18,520 --> 00:23:22,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, there. I was four years old again or whatever

378
00:23:23,000 --> 00:23:27,560
Speaker 3: it was. I walked into my department chairman's that my

379
00:23:28,560 --> 00:23:32,680
Speaker 3: chairman's office one day. And during that year there was

380
00:23:32,720 --> 00:23:35,800
Speaker 3: sixty eight I guess because there was a presidential election.

381
00:23:36,480 --> 00:23:40,760
Speaker 3: Eldridge Cleaver was running. It was an off candidate for president,

382
00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:46,000
Speaker 3: and he was being banned from speaking on different college

383
00:23:46,080 --> 00:23:49,840
Speaker 3: campuses because he was a black panther. And I didn't

384
00:23:49,880 --> 00:23:52,200
Speaker 3: know this department chairman. From a hole in the wall,

385
00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:56,520
Speaker 3: walked into his office. I've got a great idea. I

386
00:23:56,560 --> 00:24:04,080
Speaker 3: introduced myself. I'm David Siff, I'm new assistant professor. I said,

387
00:24:04,080 --> 00:24:06,480
Speaker 3: why don't we invite Eldridge s Cleaver to speak here?

388
00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:11,480
Speaker 3: He said, that's very interesting. Oh, I'll take it under advisement.

389
00:24:12,359 --> 00:24:15,960
Speaker 3: Within the next couple of months, there was a faculty

390
00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:20,119
Speaker 3: meeting and one of the propositions at that faculty meeting

391
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Speaker 3: was to terminate my contract. So at the end of

392
00:24:24,600 --> 00:24:28,760
Speaker 3: three years there was no possibility of promotion. That passed.

393
00:24:30,600 --> 00:24:33,600
Speaker 3: I knew I was out on my purchase. There were

394
00:24:33,600 --> 00:24:40,160
Speaker 3: incredible campus protests over that, real physical protests on campus

395
00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:45,960
Speaker 3: about my firing. I was not well enough adjusted emotionally

396
00:24:47,359 --> 00:24:51,840
Speaker 3: to go much beyond the fact that, oh, this is

397
00:24:52,280 --> 00:24:56,439
Speaker 3: this is such an injustice, this is terrible, and at

398
00:24:56,440 --> 00:25:00,159
Speaker 3: the same time, oh my god, it's like it like

399
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:03,879
Speaker 3: I really am Superman. It was a I mean, I

400
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:08,520
Speaker 3: was really I don't want to use the word stupid lightly,

401
00:25:08,640 --> 00:25:12,280
Speaker 3: but I really, in retrospect, I was such a stupid

402
00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:18,560
Speaker 3: position to place myself in. I was as helpless as

403
00:25:19,240 --> 00:25:25,280
Speaker 3: any other of millions of people who were facing these

404
00:25:25,560 --> 00:25:31,560
Speaker 3: tidal waves of you know, of war and retribution and

405
00:25:32,720 --> 00:25:37,560
Speaker 3: that none of us were going to fix individually. No

406
00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 3: less understand But I carried on, like a lot of

407
00:25:41,320 --> 00:25:44,840
Speaker 3: other people in that time, as though I understood what

408
00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:48,720
Speaker 3: was going on. I didn't. I stayed after I was

409
00:25:48,760 --> 00:25:52,360
Speaker 3: fired because by then I was a full blown hippie

410
00:25:52,359 --> 00:25:56,359
Speaker 3: with you know, having sky high adventures with acid and

411
00:25:57,119 --> 00:26:01,000
Speaker 3: you know whatever. I could smoke and so kids.

412
00:26:00,800 --> 00:26:05,520
Speaker 2: Were old enough to have memories of that time and place.

413
00:26:07,080 --> 00:26:11,080
Speaker 2: So then you come back to you returned to New York.

414
00:26:11,240 --> 00:26:14,600
Speaker 3: I returned not to New York City. We moved upstate

415
00:26:14,800 --> 00:26:18,560
Speaker 3: New York and we moved one rented house after another,

416
00:26:18,600 --> 00:26:23,359
Speaker 3: and really beautiful places in Columbia County. My kids, my

417
00:26:23,440 --> 00:26:27,280
Speaker 3: two oldest, went to local schools for a year. We

418
00:26:27,320 --> 00:26:31,040
Speaker 3: took them out and homeschooled them. Those years seemed like

419
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:33,119
Speaker 3: it was a refuge and at the same time and

420
00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:36,680
Speaker 3: it was just it was just being able to live

421
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:40,680
Speaker 3: in the wilderness without feeling pressure to decide anything.

422
00:26:41,560 --> 00:26:45,040
Speaker 2: So in that period of time, you're in your thirties

423
00:26:45,040 --> 00:26:48,440
Speaker 2: at this point, what was your emotional state and also

424
00:26:49,040 --> 00:26:52,160
Speaker 2: what did you think was next? You're in this kind

425
00:26:52,160 --> 00:26:55,000
Speaker 2: of liminal place of like an like you were kind

426
00:26:55,000 --> 00:26:56,200
Speaker 2: of in an in between place.

427
00:26:57,119 --> 00:27:01,880
Speaker 3: The war was over, but not the issues that produced it.

428
00:27:02,800 --> 00:27:07,600
Speaker 3: I remember during the Wisconsin years having this understanding that

429
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:12,199
Speaker 3: a lot of the political activism that I was so

430
00:27:12,400 --> 00:27:16,360
Speaker 3: caught up in was posturing. There was a point when

431
00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:20,359
Speaker 3: Tom Hayden came through. He was making a tour of

432
00:27:20,480 --> 00:27:25,400
Speaker 3: universities about some day some more, one of the moratorium

433
00:27:25,480 --> 00:27:29,719
Speaker 3: days or something, and he gave a speech to selected

434
00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:34,520
Speaker 3: activists on campus and his slogan was, if the government

435
00:27:34,560 --> 00:27:38,240
Speaker 3: doesn't stop the war, will stop the government. And I thought,

436
00:27:38,280 --> 00:27:42,120
Speaker 3: holy shit, what are you talking about, man, That's never

437
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:46,760
Speaker 3: going to happen, and you know, stop stop doing this.

438
00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:50,200
Speaker 3: I think I understood, at least subliminally on that level,

439
00:27:50,240 --> 00:27:52,800
Speaker 3: that I could I could not sustain myself as the

440
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:57,239
Speaker 3: kind of activist that I had been. And then there

441
00:27:57,320 --> 00:28:02,200
Speaker 3: was also in that period shortly after this bomb went off,

442
00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:05,440
Speaker 3: blowing up one of the campus buildings, and I had

443
00:28:05,480 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 3: been really involved in doing a lot of research and

444
00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:13,919
Speaker 3: writing about this center and interviewing people at the center.

445
00:28:13,960 --> 00:28:19,760
Speaker 3: And I felt very much responsible for what happened, and.

446
00:28:20,280 --> 00:28:23,800
Speaker 2: You felt responsible because you had brought it into kind

447
00:28:23,840 --> 00:28:24,600
Speaker 2: of a public life.

448
00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:27,600
Speaker 3: Absolutely, there was a friend of mine and I who

449
00:28:27,640 --> 00:28:32,959
Speaker 3: did all of the investigative reporting on this center. I

450
00:28:32,960 --> 00:28:36,400
Speaker 3: mean it was really intricate. Was involved and really involved

451
00:28:36,440 --> 00:28:39,840
Speaker 3: getting documents and interviewing people who didn't want to be

452
00:28:39,880 --> 00:28:45,000
Speaker 3: interviewed and getting them to be willing to talk about stuff.

453
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:49,640
Speaker 3: When the building blew up, I remember we were riding

454
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:53,840
Speaker 3: home from Wisconsin for the summer and we heard this

455
00:28:53,960 --> 00:28:56,480
Speaker 3: on the radio, and it was just like, oh my god.

456
00:28:57,360 --> 00:29:00,560
Speaker 3: The first thought I had is thank God would there

457
00:29:01,560 --> 00:29:04,520
Speaker 3: And then the next thought was, yeah, I'm as responsible

458
00:29:04,520 --> 00:29:06,400
Speaker 3: for that as the people who blew the place up,

459
00:29:07,040 --> 00:29:10,000
Speaker 3: because I was fomenting for that to get rid of

460
00:29:10,040 --> 00:29:12,480
Speaker 3: this place. But I never thought of it in terms

461
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 3: of a bomb. I thought of it in terms of intellect.

462
00:29:15,800 --> 00:29:18,520
Speaker 5: Well, you were exposing it to the campus as an

463
00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:20,280
Speaker 5: army math research center.

464
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:22,560
Speaker 2: Right, that's Maggie David's daughter.

465
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:27,840
Speaker 5: The university was involved in developing weapons for the Vietnam War. Yeah, exactly,

466
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:30,000
Speaker 5: so you were you were part of an expos but

467
00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:31,640
Speaker 5: you weren't involved in the No.

468
00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:35,480
Speaker 3: I wasn't involved in planning to do any physical damage

469
00:29:35,480 --> 00:29:38,400
Speaker 3: to the place, but I was very much interested in

470
00:29:38,480 --> 00:29:43,120
Speaker 3: seeing this center dismantled. It just didn't get dismantled the

471
00:29:43,160 --> 00:29:45,320
Speaker 3: way I was fantasizing her.

472
00:29:45,920 --> 00:29:48,160
Speaker 2: Yeah. I keep on thinking about sort of the interplay

473
00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:51,560
Speaker 2: between naivete and disillusionment.

474
00:29:52,120 --> 00:29:52,560
Speaker 3: Yeah.

475
00:29:52,600 --> 00:29:56,120
Speaker 2: I mean you use the word stupidity, and I was thinking, No,

476
00:29:56,400 --> 00:30:00,440
Speaker 2: that's harsh. There's like this this naivete about again. What

477
00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:04,160
Speaker 2: you can't imagine happening happening or you know, an outcome

478
00:30:04,200 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 2: that's just totally different from what you can possibly imagine

479
00:30:07,840 --> 00:30:08,800
Speaker 2: or fantasize about.

480
00:30:09,800 --> 00:30:13,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think naivete is a word that much more accurate,

481
00:30:14,040 --> 00:30:17,320
Speaker 3: because I think stupidity is is is a kind of

482
00:30:17,360 --> 00:30:21,880
Speaker 3: grandiose term that I would use from the first moment

483
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:27,680
Speaker 3: of discovery of what I wasn't seeing and realizing that

484
00:30:27,760 --> 00:30:34,040
Speaker 3: I hadn't seen what I needed to see.

485
00:30:34,280 --> 00:30:47,560
Speaker 2: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.

486
00:30:49,320 --> 00:30:52,720
Speaker 2: As David approaches forty, his life has already been marked

487
00:30:52,760 --> 00:30:57,760
Speaker 2: by a series of upheavals, disillusionments, reckonings, and unexpected turns

488
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:01,840
Speaker 2: during his time in column A County. He gets another

489
00:31:01,880 --> 00:31:06,160
Speaker 2: teaching job, this one at Brooklyn College, but well, he

490
00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:09,440
Speaker 2: gets fired from this one too, but as always, he

491
00:31:09,520 --> 00:31:14,720
Speaker 2: presses on. It's during this period that a seismic event occurs.

492
00:31:15,200 --> 00:31:18,719
Speaker 2: He sees his birth certificate for the first time, a

493
00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:22,200
Speaker 2: revelation that will shake loose the pieces of everything he

494
00:31:22,280 --> 00:31:24,360
Speaker 2: thought he knew.

495
00:31:25,360 --> 00:31:30,800
Speaker 3: My father had died fairly recently in Maggie. Maggie was

496
00:31:30,800 --> 00:31:33,040
Speaker 3: born by then and was ill and was in the

497
00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:38,360
Speaker 3: hospital in Hudson, New York. She was in an ice crib.

498
00:31:38,680 --> 00:31:44,200
Speaker 3: She was misdiagnosed as having three kidneys turned out not

499
00:31:44,320 --> 00:31:47,040
Speaker 3: to be the case. But my father had come up

500
00:31:47,080 --> 00:31:51,120
Speaker 3: to Columbia County that weekend and had a heart attack

501
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:56,480
Speaker 3: and was on his way to the hospital in Hudson,

502
00:31:56,520 --> 00:31:59,640
Speaker 3: where Maggie was in her ice crib, and on the

503
00:31:59,640 --> 00:32:03,520
Speaker 3: way he said his last words was I'm going to

504
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:07,200
Speaker 3: see my granddaughter. And then the next thing was he died.

505
00:32:08,080 --> 00:32:13,240
Speaker 3: I didn't have an inkling at that point except a

506
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 3: couple of weeks later ago, within a within less much

507
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:21,000
Speaker 3: less than a month, I had a vivid dream one

508
00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:24,080
Speaker 3: night that I was driving along with my father and

509
00:32:24,120 --> 00:32:28,560
Speaker 3: it was a beautiful day and he was he was driving,

510
00:32:29,120 --> 00:32:33,240
Speaker 3: and he said, there's a storm coming. That was the dream,

511
00:32:34,040 --> 00:32:37,000
Speaker 3: and I said we I would never have thought of

512
00:32:37,040 --> 00:32:41,720
Speaker 3: the dream again until I found out what was going on,

513
00:32:41,800 --> 00:32:45,960
Speaker 3: and then shortly thereafter I began the process that led

514
00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:46,880
Speaker 3: to the discovery.

515
00:32:47,440 --> 00:32:49,840
Speaker 2: And why were you undergoing that process?

516
00:32:50,280 --> 00:32:53,560
Speaker 3: Because I was. I was still in my hippie years

517
00:32:54,520 --> 00:32:58,960
Speaker 3: and I was very much interested in getting an astrology

518
00:32:59,080 --> 00:33:02,920
Speaker 3: chart and I needed to get an exact birth time

519
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:06,960
Speaker 3: for the rising sign. And the only birth certificate I had,

520
00:33:07,560 --> 00:33:11,200
Speaker 3: said birth certificate for day was nothing on it, and

521
00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:13,440
Speaker 3: I asked my mother what time was I born and

522
00:33:13,560 --> 00:33:16,680
Speaker 3: she said she gave me some time, and I asked

523
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:21,160
Speaker 3: her a sister, my aunt. She said a totally different time.

524
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:24,440
Speaker 3: And I said, this isn't going to work. I can't

525
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:27,560
Speaker 3: do my chart, so I'm not thinking anything. I went

526
00:33:27,600 --> 00:33:29,760
Speaker 3: down to the Department of Health in New York City

527
00:33:29,800 --> 00:33:35,560
Speaker 3: to get you an original birth certificate. They gave me one.

528
00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:39,160
Speaker 3: I looked at it and it had a I don't

529
00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:41,520
Speaker 3: even remember if it had a time on it, but

530
00:33:42,080 --> 00:33:45,600
Speaker 3: two weeks later. It took two weeks for me to

531
00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:49,120
Speaker 3: see this. On the top of that birth certificate was

532
00:33:49,520 --> 00:33:54,800
Speaker 3: certificate of birth by adoption, and that sort of detonated

533
00:33:54,880 --> 00:33:59,400
Speaker 3: something inside. So when my mother came up for a weekend,

534
00:33:59,480 --> 00:34:02,800
Speaker 3: I said, MA, let's go down. I want to talk

535
00:34:02,840 --> 00:34:06,120
Speaker 3: to you about something. And I showed her this birth

536
00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:10,960
Speaker 3: certificate and she said, oh that, And I said, what

537
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 3: do you mean? Oh? That? Said? You know your father,

538
00:34:15,600 --> 00:34:19,200
Speaker 3: he wants to cross every T and dot every eye.

539
00:34:19,800 --> 00:34:23,600
Speaker 3: You were born before we were married, and so when

540
00:34:23,600 --> 00:34:28,400
Speaker 3: we got married, in order for you to know, in

541
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:32,200
Speaker 3: order to convert your birth certificate, we had to adopt you.

542
00:34:34,360 --> 00:34:40,319
Speaker 3: And I thought Okay, this doesn't quite make sense, but

543
00:34:40,760 --> 00:34:44,719
Speaker 3: I'll take it in. I don't remember exactly the thing

544
00:34:44,800 --> 00:34:49,480
Speaker 3: that made me aware. I kept questioning my mother, and

545
00:34:49,600 --> 00:34:52,600
Speaker 3: at one point she sort of threw up her hands

546
00:34:52,640 --> 00:34:54,640
Speaker 3: and said, of course you know who your father is.

547
00:34:55,320 --> 00:34:57,880
Speaker 3: And at that point I was sitting out in the

548
00:34:57,920 --> 00:35:01,160
Speaker 3: back and this uncle of mine was walking across the

549
00:35:01,239 --> 00:35:03,920
Speaker 3: lawn in this place they had in the country, with

550
00:35:03,960 --> 00:35:07,960
Speaker 3: a bag of garbage over his shoulders, and I thought, oh,

551
00:35:08,000 --> 00:35:14,600
Speaker 3: my god, not Uncle Morty. And she said, your father's

552
00:35:14,680 --> 00:35:23,840
Speaker 3: van Heflin. And I couldn't process that. I wanted to

553
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:26,920
Speaker 3: accept it, but then there were all kinds of things

554
00:35:26,960 --> 00:35:30,280
Speaker 3: going through my head that I looked nothing like my father,

555
00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:35,400
Speaker 3: and I just didn't quite believe her story. And I remember,

556
00:35:35,640 --> 00:35:39,640
Speaker 3: I don't know how I managed to what it was

557
00:35:39,719 --> 00:35:42,840
Speaker 3: I said that triggered her saying, oh, of course you

558
00:35:42,960 --> 00:35:44,120
Speaker 3: know who your father is.

559
00:35:45,080 --> 00:35:48,920
Speaker 2: It's the quality of her saying well, of course, you know.

560
00:35:49,120 --> 00:35:51,560
Speaker 2: I mean, that's there's no of course here.

561
00:35:52,320 --> 00:35:55,320
Speaker 3: You know, she gave up something she had been holding

562
00:35:55,360 --> 00:35:58,480
Speaker 3: on to for forty years, and I think the secret

563
00:35:58,520 --> 00:36:01,880
Speaker 3: for her was as much life defining as it was

564
00:36:01,960 --> 00:36:07,279
Speaker 3: for me and for my father. I mean they both

565
00:36:07,360 --> 00:36:12,440
Speaker 3: lived with that and made decisions and choices and about

566
00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:16,520
Speaker 3: conforming to the secret rather than conforming to what their

567
00:36:16,520 --> 00:36:17,360
Speaker 3: hearts wanted.

568
00:36:18,560 --> 00:36:21,920
Speaker 2: Where does that go? What do you do with that?

569
00:36:22,640 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 3: She was more questioning about, well did he know? Did

570
00:36:28,200 --> 00:36:32,000
Speaker 3: you tell him? And she said, I never said a

571
00:36:32,040 --> 00:36:34,880
Speaker 3: word to him about it. You were my child. I

572
00:36:34,920 --> 00:36:39,240
Speaker 3: didn't have to tell him. And her sister said, Eleanor

573
00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:41,600
Speaker 3: I was right there when you called him and told

574
00:36:41,640 --> 00:36:43,319
Speaker 3: him so.

575
00:36:44,160 --> 00:36:46,920
Speaker 2: By and by him, you mean Van Heflin. Van Heflin,

576
00:36:49,600 --> 00:36:53,160
Speaker 2: for the uninitiated, Van Hefflin was a well known actor,

577
00:36:53,560 --> 00:36:58,240
Speaker 2: an Academy Award winner who played opposite Judy Garland, Lana Turner,

578
00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:02,640
Speaker 2: Katherine Hepburn, and many others. He had roles in iconic

579
00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:07,280
Speaker 2: films such as Shane three, ten to Yuma, and worked

580
00:37:07,280 --> 00:37:13,120
Speaker 2: steadily throughout the nineteen forties, nineteen fifties and sixties. David's forty.

581
00:37:13,160 --> 00:37:16,440
Speaker 2: Now he and Jenny have an eight and ten year

582
00:37:16,440 --> 00:37:20,560
Speaker 2: old Ivan, and Ellen and baby Maggie, and now his

583
00:37:20,680 --> 00:37:25,239
Speaker 2: mother has casually dropped into conversation that Van Heflin is

584
00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:32,279
Speaker 2: his father. It's a lot, it's world rocking. In fact, it.

585
00:37:32,400 --> 00:37:37,279
Speaker 3: Sort of undid whatever I thought was reliable in my

586
00:37:37,360 --> 00:37:40,480
Speaker 3: relationship with my mother. I mean that there were other

587
00:37:40,600 --> 00:37:44,160
Speaker 3: small episodes, like I drove her up to our house

588
00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:46,879
Speaker 3: for dinner one night, and she was a widow living

589
00:37:46,920 --> 00:37:51,040
Speaker 3: alone and at a clear blue sky. While we were

590
00:37:51,120 --> 00:37:54,120
Speaker 3: driving along, she said, I just want you to know something.

591
00:37:54,600 --> 00:37:57,120
Speaker 3: If you change your name to Heflin, I'll never talk

592
00:37:57,160 --> 00:38:01,360
Speaker 3: to you for as long as I live. What are

593
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:04,120
Speaker 3: you talking. I've never said anything about changing my name

594
00:38:04,160 --> 00:38:07,040
Speaker 3: to Halflin. I never thought about it, but that was

595
00:38:07,080 --> 00:38:10,440
Speaker 3: in her mind. There was part of the secret that

596
00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:12,919
Speaker 3: she was wrestling with.

597
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:21,120
Speaker 2: Misattributed paternity stories are now common. Of course, the advent

598
00:38:21,239 --> 00:38:26,719
Speaker 2: of inexpensive recreational DNA tests have made these discoveries epidemic,

599
00:38:27,360 --> 00:38:30,680
Speaker 2: and it is also common that secrecy surrounds these stories.

600
00:38:31,760 --> 00:38:35,560
Speaker 2: David could have easily spent his entire life not knowing

601
00:38:35,560 --> 00:38:38,839
Speaker 2: the truth had he not taken an interest in his

602
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:40,200
Speaker 2: astrological chart.

603
00:38:41,560 --> 00:38:44,560
Speaker 3: All I know is I'm glad I found out, you know,

604
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:49,200
Speaker 3: when I was trying to track down his family and

605
00:38:49,239 --> 00:38:51,319
Speaker 3: I met some of them. I met his sister. His

606
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:53,760
Speaker 3: sister lived here in New York, and I had written

607
00:38:53,800 --> 00:38:58,000
Speaker 3: her a letter. She said, come and visit us, and

608
00:38:58,080 --> 00:39:02,440
Speaker 3: I walked into this Upper West Side apartment. She was

609
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:06,520
Speaker 3: an actress and she worked all for a long time

610
00:39:06,560 --> 00:39:09,799
Speaker 3: on a daytime soap. And I could tell from the

611
00:39:09,800 --> 00:39:12,279
Speaker 3: moment I walked into their apartment that they were not

612
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:17,719
Speaker 3: exactly believers. You know. They were looking at me up

613
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:19,640
Speaker 3: and down in the same way I was looking at

614
00:39:19,680 --> 00:39:21,520
Speaker 3: them up and down, trying to say, is there any

615
00:39:21,600 --> 00:39:24,799
Speaker 3: family resemblance here? I don't see any family resemblance. And

616
00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:27,920
Speaker 3: she was the same thing. And she when we finished,

617
00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:30,360
Speaker 3: I don't think I spent more than a half an

618
00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:33,600
Speaker 3: hour with them. She walked me out to the elevator

619
00:39:33,640 --> 00:39:37,760
Speaker 3: and she didn't say anything. Before I got onto the elevator,

620
00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:41,160
Speaker 3: she turned she said, well, I'll tell you one thing.

621
00:39:41,640 --> 00:39:45,279
Speaker 3: You do have the Hefflin hands. And I went down

622
00:39:45,320 --> 00:39:49,319
Speaker 3: that elevator ride say I have the Hefflin hands. And

623
00:39:49,360 --> 00:39:52,399
Speaker 3: it was like, it's like, I believe you, And all

624
00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:54,880
Speaker 3: the while underneath that was I don't know if this

625
00:39:55,040 --> 00:39:55,799
Speaker 3: is so.

626
00:39:55,920 --> 00:40:00,520
Speaker 2: Or not right, because in a way it was so

627
00:40:00,719 --> 00:40:05,600
Speaker 2: upending when your mother told you that too could have

628
00:40:05,640 --> 00:40:07,320
Speaker 2: been a fabrication.

629
00:40:07,560 --> 00:40:10,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, she told me a story about there. You know,

630
00:40:10,120 --> 00:40:13,640
Speaker 3: I tried to talk to her about their relationship. I

631
00:40:13,680 --> 00:40:17,360
Speaker 3: knew at the time that she was spinning something around

632
00:40:17,360 --> 00:40:20,560
Speaker 3: the cotton candy, but it wasn't real. And she said,

633
00:40:20,560 --> 00:40:25,000
Speaker 3: we had this wonderful relationship. We read James Stevens Crock

634
00:40:25,080 --> 00:40:27,680
Speaker 3: of Gold together and I said, this.

635
00:40:27,560 --> 00:40:30,400
Speaker 2: Is a a crold.

636
00:40:31,120 --> 00:40:34,200
Speaker 3: And I had no idea what her relationship was. It

637
00:40:34,200 --> 00:40:36,440
Speaker 3: could have been anything from a one night stand to

638
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:39,319
Speaker 3: something that lasted a short while, and that was really

639
00:40:39,360 --> 00:40:43,319
Speaker 3: intense for her and for him. You know, you know,

640
00:40:43,360 --> 00:40:46,760
Speaker 3: as soon as I'm moving on to the next big gig,

641
00:40:46,840 --> 00:40:48,280
Speaker 3: that's it for this lady.

642
00:40:48,920 --> 00:40:54,120
Speaker 2: I never knew in the immediate aftermath or the next

643
00:40:54,600 --> 00:40:59,239
Speaker 2: couple of years, as you're metabolizing this new identity in

644
00:40:59,280 --> 00:41:04,600
Speaker 2: a certain way, or this identity, this reshuffling of memory

645
00:41:04,640 --> 00:41:08,799
Speaker 2: and of the past and rethinking things, what is this

646
00:41:08,960 --> 00:41:12,759
Speaker 2: next period of time like for you and Maggie. I

647
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:16,560
Speaker 2: want to bring you in and ask about your experience

648
00:41:17,640 --> 00:41:22,680
Speaker 2: of your dad when you were little and what you knew,

649
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:25,919
Speaker 2: what you knew about this story that Washy was never

650
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:27,960
Speaker 2: a secret for you as you were growing up.

651
00:41:29,040 --> 00:41:32,920
Speaker 6: Right, I just always I knew it to be true.

652
00:41:34,080 --> 00:41:36,719
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, when I was growing up he had

653
00:41:36,760 --> 00:41:41,040
Speaker 5: gone back to acting. So my earliest memories of my

654
00:41:41,239 --> 00:41:46,799
Speaker 5: father are of seeing him on stage. So I have

655
00:41:46,920 --> 00:41:52,719
Speaker 5: these sort of early core memories that were very significant,

656
00:41:52,760 --> 00:41:55,799
Speaker 5: and I think him being on stage did have a

657
00:41:55,920 --> 00:41:58,719
Speaker 5: charge for all of us because it was new. Like

658
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:00,960
Speaker 5: the first thing I remember seeing was mister Roberts. Is

659
00:42:00,960 --> 00:42:01,640
Speaker 5: that what it was called.

660
00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:06,160
Speaker 3: I was doing a number of regional theater things. Mister

661
00:42:06,239 --> 00:42:07,200
Speaker 3: Roberts was one.

662
00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:11,279
Speaker 6: Of them in North Carolina, and I remember must have.

663
00:42:11,200 --> 00:42:13,880
Speaker 5: Been little, I don't I don't know, maybe five or six,

664
00:42:14,160 --> 00:42:20,399
Speaker 5: but I remember he walked downstage as mister Roberts and

665
00:42:20,680 --> 00:42:22,759
Speaker 5: he found me in the audience and he winked at me,

666
00:42:23,440 --> 00:42:26,760
Speaker 5: and then he carried on and I was so shocked

667
00:42:27,719 --> 00:42:32,239
Speaker 5: that he was both somebody else and my father. He

668
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:35,760
Speaker 5: broke the fourth wall there, you did, but very very subtly,

669
00:42:35,840 --> 00:42:38,480
Speaker 5: very sneakily, and and you know, I'll just never forget

670
00:42:38,520 --> 00:42:41,320
Speaker 5: the like the electricity that I felt in that moment

671
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:47,120
Speaker 5: and and the real fascination that it instantaneously gave me.

672
00:42:48,239 --> 00:42:50,240
Speaker 5: There was also a goat in that play.

673
00:42:51,400 --> 00:42:52,280
Speaker 6: There was a live.

674
00:42:52,080 --> 00:42:54,560
Speaker 5: Animal in that play, and I remember the animal Pete

675
00:42:54,560 --> 00:42:57,319
Speaker 5: on stage, and that was another moment where I was like,

676
00:42:57,719 --> 00:42:59,319
Speaker 5: this animal is pete, what is going on?

677
00:42:59,440 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 2: Like it's real?

678
00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:02,759
Speaker 5: Well, it's not real, it's you know, And the whole

679
00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:05,720
Speaker 5: thing was very like electrifying. And then you did another play,

680
00:43:06,160 --> 00:43:10,680
Speaker 5: The Dining Room, and I remember I came and visited

681
00:43:10,719 --> 00:43:12,319
Speaker 5: you for like a week, and I must have been

682
00:43:12,360 --> 00:43:16,160
Speaker 5: about eight at the time, and there was another child

683
00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:18,680
Speaker 5: of another actor who was there, and I was there

684
00:43:18,680 --> 00:43:20,760
Speaker 5: for several days, and by the end of the week

685
00:43:20,800 --> 00:43:22,399
Speaker 5: that I was there, me and this other kid knew

686
00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:25,839
Speaker 5: the entire play by heart, and we would re enact

687
00:43:25,920 --> 00:43:27,920
Speaker 5: it for our parents. So it's just like, you know,

688
00:43:28,040 --> 00:43:31,040
Speaker 5: all of that that was what I grew up with.

689
00:43:31,080 --> 00:43:33,200
Speaker 5: But you know, by the time I was two or three,

690
00:43:33,280 --> 00:43:36,600
Speaker 5: we'd moved back to the Bronx, and I lived in

691
00:43:36,640 --> 00:43:40,759
Speaker 5: the same place my entire childhood, and you know, my

692
00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:42,640
Speaker 5: father was acting for the first part of that, and

693
00:43:42,680 --> 00:43:45,200
Speaker 5: then he fell out of that into sports writing, which

694
00:43:45,239 --> 00:43:49,120
Speaker 5: was a whole other chapter. But we were in one place,

695
00:43:49,920 --> 00:43:52,799
Speaker 5: and I had this feeling of I felt like I

696
00:43:52,800 --> 00:43:54,480
Speaker 5: had missed the boat. I felt like my family had

697
00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:56,799
Speaker 5: had all these amazing things happened to them, all these

698
00:43:56,840 --> 00:44:00,960
Speaker 5: amazing adventures they'd lived through the sixty and the Vietnam

699
00:44:01,040 --> 00:44:06,000
Speaker 5: War and this revelation that upbended everything and exploded everything,

700
00:44:06,080 --> 00:44:10,440
Speaker 5: and they'd had all these experiences together, and I was

701
00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:16,279
Speaker 5: living this really boring life, you know, sort of having

702
00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:20,319
Speaker 5: this like steady, this more or less steady childhood that

703
00:44:20,760 --> 00:44:23,600
Speaker 5: you know, didn't have a lot of financial security. But

704
00:44:23,640 --> 00:44:25,400
Speaker 5: my sister, who was ten years older than me, was

705
00:44:25,440 --> 00:44:27,080
Speaker 5: sort of like a second mom, and she was really

706
00:44:27,200 --> 00:44:30,600
Speaker 5: charged with taking care of me because you went on tour.

707
00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:33,120
Speaker 5: There was a year long tour that he went on

708
00:44:33,200 --> 00:44:35,880
Speaker 5: with a Neil Simon play, and so you know, my

709
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:38,759
Speaker 5: sister was really like picking me up from school every day.

710
00:44:38,800 --> 00:44:40,520
Speaker 5: She would pick me up from nursery school and then

711
00:44:40,800 --> 00:44:45,359
Speaker 5: kindergarten and helping my mom raise me. So I had

712
00:44:45,400 --> 00:44:48,120
Speaker 5: like an extra parent. I think for my brother and sister,

713
00:44:48,239 --> 00:44:50,080
Speaker 5: like moving back to the city was really like a

714
00:44:50,160 --> 00:44:52,360
Speaker 5: rupture for them. I think they had a lot of ruptures,

715
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 5: and I don't think they necessarily loved living in the city.

716
00:44:55,080 --> 00:44:57,239
Speaker 5: But for me, it was just everything I knew, and

717
00:44:57,280 --> 00:44:58,680
Speaker 5: it was it was very stable.

718
00:44:59,320 --> 00:45:03,880
Speaker 2: Didn't They also grow up in their early years with

719
00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:09,759
Speaker 2: a relationship to Benjamin Sith as their grandfather, and then

720
00:45:09,920 --> 00:45:13,479
Speaker 2: learning yeah, and Ben and Ellenor biologically that he wasn't.

721
00:45:13,680 --> 00:45:17,720
Speaker 5: Ben and Eleanor were a huge part of their childhood life,

722
00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:23,120
Speaker 5: and I have no memory of Ben and Eleanor. Eleanor

723
00:45:23,160 --> 00:45:24,840
Speaker 5: died when I was in the third grade, when I

724
00:45:24,880 --> 00:45:27,799
Speaker 5: was nine, but she had been very sick for most

725
00:45:27,840 --> 00:45:29,799
Speaker 5: of my childhood, so I have no memory of her.

726
00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:34,759
Speaker 5: She had a brain tumor, so it was something that

727
00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:37,000
Speaker 5: you know over the years. The last ten years of

728
00:45:37,040 --> 00:45:39,759
Speaker 5: her life, which was my childhood, she was pretty much

729
00:45:39,760 --> 00:45:41,840
Speaker 5: a nonverbal for most of what I remember of her.

730
00:45:41,960 --> 00:45:45,279
Speaker 5: I remember as being a very loving presence, and I

731
00:45:45,280 --> 00:45:48,560
Speaker 5: remember loving her, but I don't remember ever really being

732
00:45:48,560 --> 00:45:51,720
Speaker 5: able to communicate with her. And I have no memory

733
00:45:51,719 --> 00:45:53,560
Speaker 5: of Ben. So they were already gone. But for my

734
00:45:53,600 --> 00:45:56,760
Speaker 5: brother and sister, they had this house in the country.

735
00:45:56,800 --> 00:45:59,040
Speaker 5: We all called it the ranch Us and the cousins,

736
00:45:59,120 --> 00:46:02,000
Speaker 5: and we would go there every weekend and it was

737
00:46:02,040 --> 00:46:04,279
Speaker 5: a real place of refuge for all of us, but

738
00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:08,080
Speaker 5: especially for my brother and sister and Ben. I don't

739
00:46:08,080 --> 00:46:10,280
Speaker 5: think they have any memories of him having a temper.

740
00:46:10,320 --> 00:46:12,400
Speaker 5: He was just like a real doting grandfather.

741
00:46:13,280 --> 00:46:14,080
Speaker 3: He was right.

742
00:46:14,239 --> 00:46:16,440
Speaker 6: They were very, very.

743
00:46:16,520 --> 00:46:20,840
Speaker 5: Loving grandparents, and so I think for them that rupture

744
00:46:20,920 --> 00:46:24,839
Speaker 5: was also like he's not my grandfather were mad at

745
00:46:24,840 --> 00:46:25,640
Speaker 5: our grandmother?

746
00:46:25,840 --> 00:46:26,080
Speaker 4: Why?

747
00:46:26,320 --> 00:46:28,160
Speaker 5: Like you you know, I think you I think it

748
00:46:28,280 --> 00:46:33,560
Speaker 5: just it just caused so much distortion and and chaos.

749
00:46:33,080 --> 00:46:36,480
Speaker 3: And that was absolutely part of the earthquake because the

750
00:46:36,520 --> 00:46:40,840
Speaker 3: impact on both of them was just profound. My oldest

751
00:46:41,280 --> 00:46:46,080
Speaker 3: daughter's sense of security really came through her grandparents in

752
00:46:46,120 --> 00:46:49,600
Speaker 3: that place they had, and that was just taken out

753
00:46:49,600 --> 00:46:53,440
Speaker 3: from under her like a tablecloth done by a magician.

754
00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:56,759
Speaker 5: And I think, like I felt, I felt the unease

755
00:46:58,000 --> 00:47:02,200
Speaker 5: between my father and some of the older relatives in

756
00:47:02,239 --> 00:47:05,520
Speaker 5: the family. I think I think after Eleanor and Ben

757
00:47:05,560 --> 00:47:09,600
Speaker 5: were gone, there was still kind of a lingering discomfort.

758
00:47:09,920 --> 00:47:11,920
Speaker 5: You know, I would say that you had with maybe

759
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:16,120
Speaker 5: Harriet Morty, and you know, our relationship to the ranch

760
00:47:16,239 --> 00:47:19,200
Speaker 5: and those cousins, and you know, there's sort of this

761
00:47:19,320 --> 00:47:22,160
Speaker 5: feeling of like do we belong do we not belong?

762
00:47:22,920 --> 00:47:27,520
Speaker 5: Although you know, Daniel and his family lived near us

763
00:47:27,560 --> 00:47:30,800
Speaker 5: in the Rocks, and yeah, we saw them every weekend,

764
00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:32,919
Speaker 5: and like you know, that side of the family, there's

765
00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:37,160
Speaker 5: been and Eleanor were always and are still our closest

766
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:38,320
Speaker 5: family here in the city.

767
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:41,480
Speaker 6: There are you know, there are people you know.

768
00:47:41,719 --> 00:47:45,920
Speaker 2: So in the fullness of time that feeling of I'm guessing.

769
00:47:45,960 --> 00:47:49,640
Speaker 2: I mean, you never had that feeling of rupture. But

770
00:47:49,760 --> 00:47:52,480
Speaker 2: for your brother and sister there was that feeling, and

771
00:47:52,760 --> 00:47:56,440
Speaker 2: of course, David, for you, there was that feeling tremendously

772
00:47:56,520 --> 00:48:00,400
Speaker 2: of who are we to each other? If we have

773
00:48:00,560 --> 00:48:06,359
Speaker 2: lived our whole lives together in one story and then

774
00:48:06,400 --> 00:48:11,560
Speaker 2: the story changes. Yeah, how much, if anything, did knowing

775
00:48:11,680 --> 00:48:14,920
Speaker 2: or suspecting or sort of half believing that Van Heflin

776
00:48:15,040 --> 00:48:20,040
Speaker 2: was your biological father did that play into your returning

777
00:48:20,080 --> 00:48:20,520
Speaker 2: to acting.

778
00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:26,560
Speaker 3: I think it played an enormous part in my returning

779
00:48:26,600 --> 00:48:30,520
Speaker 3: to acting, because I think it was It was like

780
00:48:30,920 --> 00:48:35,000
Speaker 3: a gesture that was taken in both with passion and

781
00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:37,480
Speaker 3: with blindness. It was the only thing I could do

782
00:48:38,120 --> 00:48:42,480
Speaker 3: to give myself some sense of being who I was.

783
00:48:42,880 --> 00:48:45,560
Speaker 3: I had no idea who I was at that point.

784
00:48:47,120 --> 00:48:49,680
Speaker 3: Being an actor connected one part of my life to

785
00:48:49,719 --> 00:48:54,080
Speaker 3: this next part of my life, and it connected me too, well,

786
00:48:54,200 --> 00:48:59,160
Speaker 3: that's my biological father. That I see that connection. When

787
00:48:59,160 --> 00:49:05,040
Speaker 3: I started going over the photographs of him and his movies,

788
00:49:06,000 --> 00:49:08,640
Speaker 3: I not only looked for for well, can I see

789
00:49:08,680 --> 00:49:11,360
Speaker 3: something in his face and his gestures that are like

790
00:49:11,920 --> 00:49:16,520
Speaker 3: I concocted all kinds of similarities that may or may

791
00:49:16,520 --> 00:49:20,920
Speaker 3: not have been there. The plots of his movies were

792
00:49:21,000 --> 00:49:23,319
Speaker 3: ones that I entered into us though. That was that

793
00:49:23,480 --> 00:49:27,080
Speaker 3: was who he was, and that connects to who I am.

794
00:49:27,160 --> 00:49:30,360
Speaker 3: And I remember there's one movie he plays a character

795
00:49:30,440 --> 00:49:31,279
Speaker 3: named David, and.

796
00:49:31,239 --> 00:49:35,080
Speaker 2: I said, ah, unusual name.

797
00:49:36,000 --> 00:49:39,280
Speaker 3: Right. You know if you get hit by a huge

798
00:49:39,320 --> 00:49:41,680
Speaker 3: ocean wave and you're just up in the air with

799
00:49:42,200 --> 00:49:45,600
Speaker 3: all of that, now, that's that's the feeling that I had.

800
00:49:45,640 --> 00:49:47,680
Speaker 3: Through all of that, I couldn't make sense of any

801
00:49:47,719 --> 00:49:49,920
Speaker 3: of it. So I was grasping at anything that would

802
00:49:50,320 --> 00:49:55,640
Speaker 3: give me some sense of, well, this is coherent. And

803
00:49:55,800 --> 00:49:58,319
Speaker 3: acting seemed coherent for me, not just because of the

804
00:49:58,840 --> 00:50:02,359
Speaker 3: because of my ball logical father was an actor, but

805
00:50:02,440 --> 00:50:05,840
Speaker 3: because I had done that. It felt it was authentic

806
00:50:05,920 --> 00:50:09,640
Speaker 3: for me. And there is a part of me that

807
00:50:10,880 --> 00:50:13,400
Speaker 3: was then an actor. It always will be an actor.

808
00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:18,239
Speaker 3: I mean, I just in some way I chickened out,

809
00:50:18,560 --> 00:50:21,120
Speaker 3: and in some way I came up against how hard

810
00:50:21,200 --> 00:50:25,759
Speaker 3: the the profession really is and what I was and

811
00:50:25,960 --> 00:50:29,440
Speaker 3: wasn't prepared to do for it. And as with a

812
00:50:29,480 --> 00:50:31,400
Speaker 3: lot of things in my life. I wasn't prepared to

813
00:50:31,440 --> 00:50:37,000
Speaker 3: do everything for it some but not everything to a point. Right.

814
00:50:37,320 --> 00:50:42,480
Speaker 2: It's interesting too that because you already had had a

815
00:50:42,520 --> 00:50:45,200
Speaker 2: first career as an actor, it seems to me that

816
00:50:45,239 --> 00:50:48,360
Speaker 2: it would have been like a connection to like the

817
00:50:48,719 --> 00:50:53,680
Speaker 2: you who didn't know somehow knew, you know, not new,

818
00:50:53,719 --> 00:50:56,879
Speaker 2: but again the unthought known, the you who didn't know,

819
00:50:57,440 --> 00:51:00,759
Speaker 2: and then the you who then knows. It's a way

820
00:51:00,800 --> 00:51:04,600
Speaker 2: of stitching together those two use.

821
00:51:05,120 --> 00:51:07,879
Speaker 3: Yeah, very much. So. I think that there's a way

822
00:51:07,880 --> 00:51:10,319
Speaker 3: in which we attach to the things we don't know

823
00:51:10,960 --> 00:51:13,759
Speaker 3: at some point in our lives in a way that

824
00:51:14,200 --> 00:51:16,680
Speaker 3: seems to there is a kind of sense to it,

825
00:51:16,719 --> 00:51:20,719
Speaker 3: but it's ultimately inexplicable the way that that stitching happens.

826
00:51:21,520 --> 00:51:22,480
Speaker 3: But it does happen.

827
00:51:28,680 --> 00:51:49,480
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. A little girl watches her father

828
00:51:49,640 --> 00:51:55,560
Speaker 2: on stage, a deft wink, a feeling of magic, specialness,

829
00:51:55,600 --> 00:51:59,680
Speaker 2: a wide open world, a door through which Maggie walks.

830
00:52:00,920 --> 00:52:05,399
Speaker 2: It's impossible to separate out those early core memories from

831
00:52:05,400 --> 00:52:08,480
Speaker 2: the end result, which is that Maggie becomes an actor.

832
00:52:09,400 --> 00:52:13,080
Speaker 2: Would it have happened anyway or was it absolutely formative

833
00:52:13,800 --> 00:52:16,760
Speaker 2: or was it in her father's genes, her grandfather's genes,

834
00:52:17,080 --> 00:52:18,320
Speaker 2: and her own.

835
00:52:20,160 --> 00:52:22,240
Speaker 5: We look back and we can connect all the dots,

836
00:52:23,200 --> 00:52:26,799
Speaker 5: but we can't actually go back to that point and

837
00:52:28,120 --> 00:52:30,000
Speaker 5: connect the dots fast forward, you know what I mean.

838
00:52:30,360 --> 00:52:32,719
Speaker 6: I can connect all the dots.

839
00:52:32,440 --> 00:52:37,040
Speaker 5: Back to those moments, for sure. I think I have

840
00:52:37,080 --> 00:52:40,080
Speaker 5: an experience of myself as in some way always having

841
00:52:40,120 --> 00:52:43,040
Speaker 5: known I was an actor. And I think that's an

842
00:52:43,120 --> 00:52:47,160
Speaker 5: unusual feeling, you know, Like I think there was some

843
00:52:47,320 --> 00:52:49,920
Speaker 5: part of me that always understood that's where I was

844
00:52:50,080 --> 00:52:50,680
Speaker 5: headed from.

845
00:52:50,600 --> 00:52:51,239
Speaker 6: The time I was.

846
00:52:53,560 --> 00:52:54,359
Speaker 4: Early on too.

847
00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:56,839
Speaker 5: But I also think there's a part of me that

848
00:52:57,200 --> 00:53:00,840
Speaker 5: was very open, you know, like, and I couldn't see

849
00:53:01,040 --> 00:53:01,880
Speaker 5: very far ahead.

850
00:53:01,920 --> 00:53:03,440
Speaker 6: I remember as a kid always feeling like when I

851
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:04,000
Speaker 6: think about my.

852
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:07,480
Speaker 5: Future, I felt like a wall in front of me,

853
00:53:07,640 --> 00:53:10,160
Speaker 5: Like I was like, wow, I really can't see it.

854
00:53:10,360 --> 00:53:14,440
Speaker 5: But I also had this feeling of drive towards something

855
00:53:14,560 --> 00:53:18,840
Speaker 5: like performing. But I really cared to be a good student.

856
00:53:18,960 --> 00:53:21,839
Speaker 5: I mean, I think the benefit of how I grew

857
00:53:21,920 --> 00:53:24,960
Speaker 5: up and the stories all on the table, you know,

858
00:53:25,040 --> 00:53:29,640
Speaker 5: the stories of who you know you're, the true paternity,

859
00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:32,360
Speaker 5: and the whatever you look off in that direction, and

860
00:53:32,400 --> 00:53:34,480
Speaker 5: there's sort of old Hollywood. But then you look off

861
00:53:34,480 --> 00:53:36,839
Speaker 5: in the Ben and eleanor direction or Ben Siff, and

862
00:53:36,840 --> 00:53:40,040
Speaker 5: he's like, you know, his father was a Russian revolutionary,

863
00:53:40,120 --> 00:53:43,719
Speaker 5: and these Jewish intellectuals, and you having had a life

864
00:53:43,760 --> 00:53:47,200
Speaker 5: in academia, and I really cared about school.

865
00:53:47,200 --> 00:53:47,920
Speaker 6: I really cared.

866
00:53:47,719 --> 00:53:49,320
Speaker 5: About learning, and I went to like a math and

867
00:53:49,360 --> 00:53:52,120
Speaker 5: science high school, and I was encouraged to go to

868
00:53:52,160 --> 00:53:54,480
Speaker 5: college and that there would be time to do everything.

869
00:53:54,560 --> 00:53:55,560
Speaker 6: And I so.

870
00:53:55,800 --> 00:53:57,759
Speaker 5: You know, I feel like there were there was mythology

871
00:53:57,800 --> 00:54:00,279
Speaker 5: in every direction I looked that was interesting to me.

872
00:54:01,120 --> 00:54:05,239
Speaker 5: None of it was really emotionally fraught for me, Like

873
00:54:05,440 --> 00:54:08,800
Speaker 5: I think, I can't imagine my brother or sister choosing

874
00:54:08,840 --> 00:54:12,160
Speaker 5: to be an actor, you know, Like I think having

875
00:54:12,160 --> 00:54:14,800
Speaker 5: grown up through all of that chaos and then maybe

876
00:54:14,800 --> 00:54:18,480
Speaker 5: the rupture of the family, and you know, I don't

877
00:54:18,480 --> 00:54:20,360
Speaker 5: think they would ever choose to step into that. But

878
00:54:20,440 --> 00:54:23,359
Speaker 5: where I land in the family, it all just looks

879
00:54:23,400 --> 00:54:26,759
Speaker 5: so interesting to me, you know. And I'm also the

880
00:54:26,800 --> 00:54:28,319
Speaker 5: youngest by a lot, and I grew up in a

881
00:54:28,400 --> 00:54:30,880
Speaker 5: very stable way, so I just had the freedom to

882
00:54:31,680 --> 00:54:35,719
Speaker 5: choose and to try and to move forward. And then

883
00:54:35,719 --> 00:54:41,719
Speaker 5: I also think the experience and the narrative around my

884
00:54:41,840 --> 00:54:44,960
Speaker 5: father's like two goes at it. I think there was

885
00:54:45,000 --> 00:54:47,120
Speaker 5: a part of me that it was also has always

886
00:54:47,120 --> 00:54:50,120
Speaker 5: been sort of very determined, like, well, this is the

887
00:54:50,120 --> 00:54:52,680
Speaker 5: path I've chosen, and I'm going to stick to it.

888
00:54:53,040 --> 00:54:55,279
Speaker 5: You know, even if there would have been other things

889
00:54:55,320 --> 00:54:59,320
Speaker 5: available to me, I really always strongly had the feeling

890
00:54:59,400 --> 00:55:01,800
Speaker 5: that that I just want to see I want to

891
00:55:01,800 --> 00:55:03,920
Speaker 5: see something through, you know, like I really want to

892
00:55:03,960 --> 00:55:04,839
Speaker 5: see it through.

893
00:55:05,280 --> 00:55:09,200
Speaker 2: I'm guessing you were never kicked out of any schools. No, No,

894
00:55:10,640 --> 00:55:15,160
Speaker 2: you know, it's striking me what you said about you know,

895
00:55:15,360 --> 00:55:18,160
Speaker 2: the narratives weren't fraught for you. I think that that's

896
00:55:18,239 --> 00:55:21,160
Speaker 2: so key when it comes to family secrets, when it

897
00:55:21,200 --> 00:55:23,400
Speaker 2: comes to you know, the things that we hold and

898
00:55:23,440 --> 00:55:25,920
Speaker 2: the ease or the difficulty with which we hold them.

899
00:55:26,080 --> 00:55:29,560
Speaker 2: That these weren't fraught narratives for you. They were stories.

900
00:55:29,960 --> 00:55:33,279
Speaker 2: You didn't have to struggle to determine how true they

901
00:55:33,280 --> 00:55:35,640
Speaker 2: were or how not true they were, or how they

902
00:55:35,680 --> 00:55:38,960
Speaker 2: would how all those dots would connect. I mean, it's interesting,

903
00:55:39,360 --> 00:55:42,320
Speaker 2: but that wasn't the way that you were holding those stories,

904
00:55:42,320 --> 00:55:43,640
Speaker 2: because they weren't painful for you.

905
00:55:44,040 --> 00:55:47,760
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think at the same time, I will say,

906
00:55:47,880 --> 00:55:49,960
Speaker 5: you know, my mother was also an actor as a

907
00:55:49,960 --> 00:55:52,799
Speaker 5: young woman, Like when my parents met, she had moved

908
00:55:52,800 --> 00:55:55,120
Speaker 5: to New York from Mexico, and she was an actress

909
00:55:55,160 --> 00:56:01,560
Speaker 5: and she she left it very very quickly. And she

910
00:56:01,680 --> 00:56:03,640
Speaker 5: always said that she had a dream. She said, she

911
00:56:03,680 --> 00:56:06,320
Speaker 5: had a dream one night that there was a dragon

912
00:56:06,400 --> 00:56:09,640
Speaker 5: flying around destroying the world. And he turned to her

913
00:56:09,680 --> 00:56:11,600
Speaker 5: and he said, and if you're not careful, I'll destroy you.

914
00:56:12,000 --> 00:56:13,759
Speaker 5: And she woke up from the dream and she knew

915
00:56:13,800 --> 00:56:16,359
Speaker 5: that she didn't have it in her to be that

916
00:56:16,440 --> 00:56:20,400
Speaker 5: kind of a performer. And you know, also that's another

917
00:56:20,480 --> 00:56:23,200
Speaker 5: myth right that I sort of grew up with. But

918
00:56:23,560 --> 00:56:27,600
Speaker 5: she and my father really loved that I was an actor.

919
00:56:27,719 --> 00:56:29,720
Speaker 5: Like and from the time I was little, they loved

920
00:56:29,920 --> 00:56:33,200
Speaker 5: seeing what I did. They were always the smartest people

921
00:56:33,400 --> 00:56:33,919
Speaker 5: in the room.

922
00:56:34,080 --> 00:56:34,319
Speaker 6: You know.

923
00:56:34,400 --> 00:56:36,960
Speaker 5: I always I cared so much what they thought, and

924
00:56:37,040 --> 00:56:40,759
Speaker 5: I trusted them, and they loved the form, and they

925
00:56:40,920 --> 00:56:45,080
Speaker 5: delighted in me doing what I did, and you know.

926
00:56:45,040 --> 00:56:47,200
Speaker 6: And that was really that was also really bolstering.

927
00:56:48,640 --> 00:56:50,600
Speaker 5: And I think I think a lot of artists don't

928
00:56:50,600 --> 00:56:52,760
Speaker 5: grow up with that kind of support. But I think

929
00:56:53,600 --> 00:56:56,000
Speaker 5: I think both you and Mom really really took a

930
00:56:56,120 --> 00:56:59,240
Speaker 5: kind of put pleasure in it, and that was helpful.

931
00:56:59,800 --> 00:57:04,400
Speaker 2: It's interesting too that because you didn't really have meaningful

932
00:57:04,440 --> 00:57:11,040
Speaker 2: relationships with your grandparents, meaning with Benjamin and Eleanor, there

933
00:57:11,120 --> 00:57:14,680
Speaker 2: wasn't a loss there either, or even the anger that

934
00:57:14,680 --> 00:57:18,080
Speaker 2: we've been talking about, right, the anger toward Eleanor or

935
00:57:18,120 --> 00:57:19,040
Speaker 2: the sense of betrayal.

936
00:57:19,560 --> 00:57:22,360
Speaker 5: Eleanor had a sister, Harriet, was my great aunt, Harriet,

937
00:57:22,520 --> 00:57:25,160
Speaker 5: and I remember when Eleanor died, Harriet and Morty told

938
00:57:25,200 --> 00:57:28,840
Speaker 5: me that they would be my grandparents, and they were.

939
00:57:29,200 --> 00:57:32,000
Speaker 5: My father had a bit of a fraud relationship with them,

940
00:57:32,440 --> 00:57:35,600
Speaker 5: but they really reached out to me and like let

941
00:57:35,640 --> 00:57:38,680
Speaker 5: me know, and it felt like an extension of ben

942
00:57:38,720 --> 00:57:42,560
Speaker 5: and Eleanor that they loved me and that they would

943
00:57:42,800 --> 00:57:45,720
Speaker 5: be that to me. And they were like they took

944
00:57:45,760 --> 00:57:47,320
Speaker 5: me on vacation with them, and.

945
00:57:47,440 --> 00:57:49,720
Speaker 6: You know, they were very loving to me.

946
00:57:49,800 --> 00:57:52,360
Speaker 5: At the same time that I could feel some of

947
00:57:52,400 --> 00:57:55,960
Speaker 5: the tension that lived between you and them. So I

948
00:57:56,000 --> 00:58:00,720
Speaker 5: feel like I got this in loco grand parentis from

949
00:58:00,760 --> 00:58:02,520
Speaker 5: my great aunt and uncle on that side. I think

950
00:58:02,520 --> 00:58:07,080
Speaker 5: that family was, for all of their secrets and dysfunction,

951
00:58:07,720 --> 00:58:13,000
Speaker 5: very committed to being family, very committed to being loving.

952
00:58:17,920 --> 00:58:21,120
Speaker 2: Van Heflin died four or five years before David makes

953
00:58:21,120 --> 00:58:26,040
Speaker 2: his discovery, so of course contacting Van directly isn't an option.

954
00:58:26,960 --> 00:58:30,960
Speaker 2: But David thinks, what about his family? What about his kids?

955
00:58:31,560 --> 00:58:32,640
Speaker 2: His other kids?

956
00:58:34,720 --> 00:58:38,000
Speaker 3: I of course wanted to find out about who he

957
00:58:38,160 --> 00:58:41,280
Speaker 3: was and what kind of family there was. And I

958
00:58:41,320 --> 00:58:45,880
Speaker 3: knew there were these siblings or half siblings. There was

959
00:58:46,200 --> 00:58:47,800
Speaker 3: a sister who was still alive.

960
00:58:48,360 --> 00:58:49,600
Speaker 2: Were they close in age to you?

961
00:58:49,920 --> 00:58:54,160
Speaker 3: Pretty close? Yeah, The youngest was about ten years younger,

962
00:58:54,160 --> 00:58:58,560
Speaker 3: but the oldest sister was just about three or four

963
00:58:58,640 --> 00:59:03,640
Speaker 3: years younger, and the middle sister was six or seven.

964
00:59:03,720 --> 00:59:09,520
Speaker 3: And then that whole process of discovery was something that

965
00:59:10,920 --> 00:59:14,520
Speaker 3: it happened quickly, but it also happened before the Internet,

966
00:59:15,320 --> 00:59:18,520
Speaker 3: So there really is a difference in the way you

967
00:59:18,600 --> 00:59:21,960
Speaker 3: piece things together. And I tried to piece things together

968
00:59:22,080 --> 00:59:24,920
Speaker 3: sort of in the way that I did when I

969
00:59:24,960 --> 00:59:28,600
Speaker 3: was finding out about the Army Math Research Center. I mean,

970
00:59:28,600 --> 00:59:31,760
Speaker 3: it was investigative reporting more than anything.

971
00:59:32,640 --> 00:59:34,960
Speaker 2: What did that entail? The investigative reporting.

972
00:59:35,120 --> 00:59:41,120
Speaker 3: Going through any publication I could find that described Van Heflin,

973
00:59:41,560 --> 00:59:46,040
Speaker 3: his family, who my half siblings were, where they lived,

974
00:59:46,720 --> 00:59:52,400
Speaker 3: the miserable little town in Oklahoma that the Heflins came from.

975
00:59:52,840 --> 00:59:56,760
Speaker 3: I knew all of that before I actually sat down

976
00:59:57,520 --> 01:00:01,960
Speaker 3: with his sister for the first time. So that there

977
01:00:02,040 --> 01:00:06,600
Speaker 3: was a part of me that was emotionally scrambled when

978
01:00:06,960 --> 01:00:09,000
Speaker 3: I was going through this, and another part of me

979
01:00:09,080 --> 01:00:13,560
Speaker 3: that was almost sort of ruthlessly methodically trying to piece

980
01:00:13,680 --> 01:00:18,640
Speaker 3: all of this together in some coherent puzzle. I never

981
01:00:18,720 --> 01:00:21,040
Speaker 3: got rid of the sense that my life was just

982
01:00:21,160 --> 01:00:26,760
Speaker 3: simply almost incomprehensible to me. Like I was raised as

983
01:00:26,840 --> 01:00:29,840
Speaker 3: a Jewish kid in the in the Bronx, and a

984
01:00:30,240 --> 01:00:33,360
Speaker 3: sort of it was a sort of hostile environment that

985
01:00:33,440 --> 01:00:37,600
Speaker 3: I grew up in. And lo and behold, I discover

986
01:00:37,720 --> 01:00:41,720
Speaker 3: in my biological father that his family didn't come over

987
01:00:41,760 --> 01:00:45,400
Speaker 3: on the Mayflower. They came over shortly thereafter. I'm a

988
01:00:45,480 --> 01:00:48,200
Speaker 3: Jew from the Bronx. He's a gooy from Oklahoma. How

989
01:00:48,240 --> 01:00:50,800
Speaker 3: do you piece those three things together? But half of

990
01:00:50,840 --> 01:00:52,880
Speaker 3: me is not Jewish?

991
01:00:53,640 --> 01:00:55,480
Speaker 2: Is that something that occurred to you right away?

992
01:00:55,680 --> 01:00:59,400
Speaker 3: Right away? Yeah, right away, because you know that part

993
01:00:59,400 --> 01:01:01,200
Speaker 3: of me where I was grown out of Hebrew School,

994
01:01:01,600 --> 01:01:03,720
Speaker 3: was a part of me that didn't want to be Jewish,

995
01:01:04,320 --> 01:01:07,240
Speaker 3: you know, at the time I felt ashamed of that

996
01:01:07,320 --> 01:01:11,520
Speaker 3: because it was to me just cowardice, not wanting to

997
01:01:11,520 --> 01:01:16,360
Speaker 3: stand up as a Jew. And later on, you know,

998
01:01:16,400 --> 01:01:19,960
Speaker 3: it's sort of stitch stitches together this part of me

999
01:01:20,000 --> 01:01:23,480
Speaker 3: that no half of me is not Jewish, and I

1000
01:01:23,520 --> 01:01:26,600
Speaker 3: couldn't piece that together in any coherent way until I

1001
01:01:26,640 --> 01:01:30,080
Speaker 3: found out what was really there. And so now I

1002
01:01:30,120 --> 01:01:32,760
Speaker 3: can be much more at peace with myself as a Jew,

1003
01:01:34,040 --> 01:01:36,360
Speaker 3: and also at peace with myself as you know, the

1004
01:01:36,400 --> 01:01:38,800
Speaker 3: part that's a non Jew. And so I think the

1005
01:01:40,800 --> 01:01:45,400
Speaker 3: medium for me is being a Buddhist. That's will makes sense.

1006
01:01:47,920 --> 01:01:50,000
Speaker 2: So interesting. I'm just flashing back to you know, the

1007
01:01:50,080 --> 01:01:53,000
Speaker 2: kid making the cross in Hebrew school behind the back

1008
01:01:53,040 --> 01:01:55,320
Speaker 2: of your of your Hebrew school teacher, or the young

1009
01:01:55,360 --> 01:01:58,840
Speaker 2: man you know teaching at a yeshiva. Look, I could

1010
01:01:58,880 --> 01:02:02,240
Speaker 2: so easily be accused of of having a prejudice toward nature,

1011
01:02:02,880 --> 01:02:06,200
Speaker 2: which I actually really don't. I think the being formed

1012
01:02:06,240 --> 01:02:08,680
Speaker 2: in all of these different ways, the being formed by

1013
01:02:08,720 --> 01:02:10,560
Speaker 2: who you believe yourself to be, who you believed your

1014
01:02:10,560 --> 01:02:14,800
Speaker 2: father to be, also having this lurking secret also a

1015
01:02:14,840 --> 01:02:17,960
Speaker 2: year and a half spence in an orphanage that is like,

1016
01:02:19,120 --> 01:02:21,840
Speaker 2: it's so in the shadows of being able to grasp.

1017
01:02:21,680 --> 01:02:24,520
Speaker 3: Part of my research too, because I researched that part.

1018
01:02:24,800 --> 01:02:25,560
Speaker 2: Tell me about that.

1019
01:02:26,480 --> 01:02:28,880
Speaker 3: I went through all of the publications I could find,

1020
01:02:29,280 --> 01:02:34,880
Speaker 3: also including photographs from the inside of that institution. So

1021
01:02:35,000 --> 01:02:38,360
Speaker 3: I saw there's one photograph that I remember in meticular

1022
01:02:39,320 --> 01:02:43,280
Speaker 3: where the infants were laid out. They were laid out

1023
01:02:43,600 --> 01:02:47,000
Speaker 3: in a room where rows of them were in these cribs,

1024
01:02:47,560 --> 01:02:50,080
Speaker 3: and I was one of those infants in a crib

1025
01:02:51,120 --> 01:02:54,680
Speaker 3: in that room. So that made me see, well, yeah,

1026
01:02:54,840 --> 01:02:57,640
Speaker 3: that was part of my life. I have no memory

1027
01:02:57,680 --> 01:02:59,920
Speaker 3: of that, but I have that photograph.

1028
01:03:00,440 --> 01:03:04,880
Speaker 5: Do you remember you also found the file about your

1029
01:03:04,920 --> 01:03:08,640
Speaker 5: mother sort of There was a file that you found

1030
01:03:08,680 --> 01:03:14,520
Speaker 5: that described how she had a campaign within her family

1031
01:03:14,680 --> 01:03:17,560
Speaker 5: to win them to they would she would bring her

1032
01:03:17,600 --> 01:03:18,360
Speaker 5: family to visit her.

1033
01:03:18,400 --> 01:03:20,600
Speaker 3: Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I was going to

1034
01:03:20,640 --> 01:03:23,400
Speaker 3: be brought home as a She was going.

1035
01:03:23,320 --> 01:03:24,800
Speaker 5: To make them all fault, She was making them all

1036
01:03:24,880 --> 01:03:26,800
Speaker 5: fall in love with you so they would let her

1037
01:03:26,920 --> 01:03:27,560
Speaker 5: take you home.

1038
01:03:27,720 --> 01:03:28,680
Speaker 6: And she succeeded.

1039
01:03:29,640 --> 01:03:33,200
Speaker 2: And wasn't it that she I mean, she had an elaborate,

1040
01:03:33,640 --> 01:03:36,960
Speaker 2: you know, sort of lie to the public to explain

1041
01:03:37,600 --> 01:03:40,920
Speaker 2: the producing of this infant. I mean she she sort

1042
01:03:40,920 --> 01:03:42,720
Speaker 2: of had it all worked out.

1043
01:03:42,880 --> 01:03:46,160
Speaker 3: She had everything worked out. There was a relative in

1044
01:03:46,160 --> 01:03:50,240
Speaker 3: the family who was a doctor, and he's the one

1045
01:03:50,280 --> 01:03:54,200
Speaker 3: who provided her with the phony excuse for the you know,

1046
01:03:54,280 --> 01:03:59,080
Speaker 3: her pal and high school. He was going to provide

1047
01:04:00,280 --> 01:04:04,320
Speaker 3: information that she was away in Buffalo at the point

1048
01:04:04,320 --> 01:04:07,760
Speaker 3: when she was in New York conceiving this child.

1049
01:04:08,320 --> 01:04:11,320
Speaker 2: And what was that going to do, the Buffalo alibi.

1050
01:04:11,760 --> 01:04:13,560
Speaker 3: It was going to allow her to have a child

1051
01:04:13,560 --> 01:04:17,560
Speaker 3: in New York City and Saint Elizabeth's Hospital without the

1052
01:04:17,560 --> 01:04:20,560
Speaker 3: rest of the family knowing. And of course they all

1053
01:04:20,560 --> 01:04:23,880
Speaker 3: did know. You know, her mother knew her, her mother's

1054
01:04:23,920 --> 01:04:24,600
Speaker 3: sister knew.

1055
01:04:25,000 --> 01:04:28,840
Speaker 2: Although memory itself is it's an ever shifting landscape. I mean,

1056
01:04:28,880 --> 01:04:33,280
Speaker 2: our memories are part imagination, part memory, yep, and also

1057
01:04:33,400 --> 01:04:35,440
Speaker 2: are connected very much to where we are in our

1058
01:04:35,480 --> 01:04:37,920
Speaker 2: lives now and what we remember.

1059
01:04:38,560 --> 01:04:42,080
Speaker 6: The story is I remember it just to get real

1060
01:04:42,160 --> 01:04:42,960
Speaker 6: Rajamon about it.

1061
01:04:42,960 --> 01:04:46,200
Speaker 5: But the stories I remember it is that she got

1062
01:04:46,200 --> 01:04:48,800
Speaker 5: pregnant and they hid it from her.

1063
01:04:48,600 --> 01:04:51,640
Speaker 6: Father, right, and they told her that's it, that's it.

1064
01:04:51,680 --> 01:04:54,160
Speaker 5: They told him that she had TV right and that

1065
01:04:54,280 --> 01:04:54,640
Speaker 5: she had.

1066
01:04:54,520 --> 01:04:55,480
Speaker 3: To go to it and she had to get to

1067
01:04:55,480 --> 01:04:58,000
Speaker 3: Buffalo to a sanatorium and him to recover.

1068
01:04:58,440 --> 01:04:59,760
Speaker 6: Meanwhile, she was sent to live on the.

1069
01:04:59,720 --> 01:05:02,720
Speaker 3: Lower East Side with the on ninety fourth.

1070
01:05:02,520 --> 01:05:05,560
Speaker 6: Street, where she came determined, she came.

1071
01:05:05,440 --> 01:05:09,840
Speaker 3: Determined, she gave birth, and my grandfather was kept out

1072
01:05:09,840 --> 01:05:12,200
Speaker 3: of the loop because it would destroy him.

1073
01:05:12,760 --> 01:05:14,720
Speaker 6: But my question is did he ever come to know?

1074
01:05:15,120 --> 01:05:18,760
Speaker 3: Of course he knew, I mean he knew that. My

1075
01:05:18,880 --> 01:05:23,560
Speaker 3: memory of my mother's father was he was an extremely

1076
01:05:23,720 --> 01:05:28,560
Speaker 3: loving man, and he knew me as his grandson, and

1077
01:05:28,680 --> 01:05:33,520
Speaker 3: I had no question that he was my grandfather. He was.

1078
01:05:34,040 --> 01:05:36,680
Speaker 3: He was one of those people who I just knew

1079
01:05:36,920 --> 01:05:44,240
Speaker 3: was my family. Same with my grandmother, who campaigned all

1080
01:05:44,320 --> 01:05:47,400
Speaker 3: of them. Oh god, I don't know what they were

1081
01:05:47,520 --> 01:05:52,760
Speaker 3: like before I actually was taken into the family. My

1082
01:05:52,840 --> 01:05:58,160
Speaker 3: grandmother certainly wanted me adopted, adopted out out away, not

1083
01:05:58,280 --> 01:06:00,960
Speaker 3: part of, not part of all of this. Same with

1084
01:06:01,040 --> 01:06:04,760
Speaker 3: my great aunt. My great aunt was my grandmother's sister,

1085
01:06:05,320 --> 01:06:10,640
Speaker 3: and both of them were really loving presences in my life,

1086
01:06:10,800 --> 01:06:14,040
Speaker 3: and I believe their love was absolutely genuine, and I

1087
01:06:14,080 --> 01:06:19,000
Speaker 3: think they're wanting to give me away was just as genuine.

1088
01:06:19,760 --> 01:06:23,760
Speaker 3: And when I stitched the two different sides together, well

1089
01:06:23,800 --> 01:06:27,960
Speaker 3: that's the way life works, and that's I accept that.

1090
01:06:28,240 --> 01:06:29,440
Speaker 3: That's part. That's true.

1091
01:06:30,040 --> 01:06:34,760
Speaker 2: And your aunt Harriet, she's the one who at some

1092
01:06:34,840 --> 01:06:37,800
Speaker 2: point said to your mother in front of you, you

1093
01:06:37,800 --> 01:06:39,520
Speaker 2: know I was there when you called him. Yeah right,

1094
01:06:39,560 --> 01:06:46,240
Speaker 2: so yeah, so she always she always knew. Yeah. Over

1095
01:06:46,360 --> 01:06:50,680
Speaker 2: many years, David finds some equilibrium and begins to make

1096
01:06:50,760 --> 01:06:54,480
Speaker 2: peace with the earthquake, the truth of his paternity, and

1097
01:06:54,520 --> 01:06:58,640
Speaker 2: the circumstances of his early childhood. He processes the story

1098
01:06:58,880 --> 01:07:02,600
Speaker 2: by writing about it in his memoir. He also gets sober.

1099
01:07:03,200 --> 01:07:06,640
Speaker 2: He hasn't had a drink in twenty two years.

1100
01:07:06,800 --> 01:07:11,200
Speaker 3: I think part of the equilibrium came from sobriety, which

1101
01:07:11,200 --> 01:07:15,000
Speaker 3: to me is just simply a word for being able

1102
01:07:15,040 --> 01:07:18,800
Speaker 3: to see more clearly than when your mind is clouded

1103
01:07:18,840 --> 01:07:22,120
Speaker 3: with either a substance or a fantasy, being able to

1104
01:07:22,200 --> 01:07:25,960
Speaker 3: see other people than yourself, seeing what they went through,

1105
01:07:27,320 --> 01:07:31,320
Speaker 3: feeling for them, which I don't think I was able

1106
01:07:31,360 --> 01:07:34,480
Speaker 3: to do when I first found this out, and certainly

1107
01:07:34,720 --> 01:07:38,320
Speaker 3: through most of the years that I was not sober,

1108
01:07:38,720 --> 01:07:42,800
Speaker 3: I didn't have much feeling beyond myself except for my children,

1109
01:07:43,520 --> 01:07:46,680
Speaker 3: and sobriety was really the has been a source of

1110
01:07:46,760 --> 01:07:51,919
Speaker 3: equilibrium for me or coming to equilibrium and still is

1111
01:07:52,640 --> 01:07:54,240
Speaker 3: It's not over and done with it. Just as I

1112
01:07:54,280 --> 01:07:58,920
Speaker 3: will always be an alcoholic is the process of sobriety

1113
01:07:58,960 --> 01:08:03,160
Speaker 3: will going to be my constant work. Doesn't whatever else

1114
01:08:03,200 --> 01:08:05,880
Speaker 3: I do, that's a constant piece of my work.

1115
01:08:06,880 --> 01:08:10,480
Speaker 2: This is probably an impossible question to answer, but do

1116
01:08:10,520 --> 01:08:17,400
Speaker 2: you connect the earthquake of the Discovery and it's sequel

1117
01:08:17,760 --> 01:08:22,840
Speaker 2: and its impact on you with beginning to drink alcoholically

1118
01:08:23,280 --> 01:08:25,360
Speaker 2: or do you think that was coming for you anyway?

1119
01:08:25,920 --> 01:08:29,160
Speaker 3: Well, I think that certainly precipitated it, but I think

1120
01:08:29,200 --> 01:08:32,160
Speaker 3: it was always there because it was it was in

1121
01:08:32,200 --> 01:08:35,400
Speaker 3: my genes. I mean I wasn't I'm not the only

1122
01:08:35,439 --> 01:08:39,360
Speaker 3: one in that line who had problems.

1123
01:08:38,920 --> 01:08:41,439
Speaker 2: With alcohol in which line my.

1124
01:08:41,439 --> 01:08:44,640
Speaker 3: Paternal line, on the other hand, my mother loved her

1125
01:08:44,680 --> 01:08:49,439
Speaker 3: whiskey sours, so who knows where it all came. But

1126
01:08:49,560 --> 01:08:54,160
Speaker 3: I think on my paternal side that was that was

1127
01:08:54,200 --> 01:08:55,480
Speaker 3: a real problem.

1128
01:08:55,840 --> 01:08:59,599
Speaker 2: So this equilibrium, it's one of those words like closure.

1129
01:09:00,200 --> 01:09:00,879
Speaker 2: It's a fantasy.

1130
01:09:00,960 --> 01:09:01,920
Speaker 3: It's a fantasy word.

1131
01:09:02,080 --> 01:09:04,080
Speaker 2: We'll use it since we don't have a better one

1132
01:09:04,120 --> 01:09:04,840
Speaker 2: in terms.

1133
01:09:04,600 --> 01:09:07,720
Speaker 3: Of fine balancing on the seesaw.

1134
01:09:07,960 --> 01:09:11,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's I like that and there's also that

1135
01:09:11,720 --> 01:09:15,880
Speaker 2: sense of the ongoing metabolizing of something that can never

1136
01:09:15,960 --> 01:09:22,840
Speaker 2: fully be digested. So I'm really interested in the way

1137
01:09:22,880 --> 01:09:28,680
Speaker 2: that you both metabolized this. Took it on as part

1138
01:09:28,720 --> 01:09:32,639
Speaker 2: of your identity that Van Heflin was your biological father,

1139
01:09:34,280 --> 01:09:37,799
Speaker 2: and yet we're always a little bit not one thousand

1140
01:09:37,840 --> 01:09:42,160
Speaker 2: percent certain. When you described having your half sisters, your

1141
01:09:42,200 --> 01:09:45,040
Speaker 2: biological half sister, saying you have the Van Hefflin hands

1142
01:09:46,080 --> 01:09:50,759
Speaker 2: and the oh I do the searching for those clues,

1143
01:09:51,560 --> 01:09:52,080
Speaker 2: it went.

1144
01:09:51,880 --> 01:09:55,400
Speaker 3: Away because I think the equilibrium for me is the

1145
01:09:56,200 --> 01:10:01,400
Speaker 3: awareness as fully as I can have awareness that Benjamin H.

1146
01:10:01,479 --> 01:10:07,800
Speaker 3: Was my father, and I love and miss him. I

1147
01:10:07,880 --> 01:10:12,519
Speaker 3: don't love and miss Van Hefflin more and well, over

1148
01:10:12,560 --> 01:10:17,200
Speaker 3: the years, I really came to do as much investigating

1149
01:10:17,320 --> 01:10:23,880
Speaker 3: about Ben's life as Van Heflin's life, and his life

1150
01:10:24,000 --> 01:10:27,040
Speaker 3: moved me far more than whatever I ever found out

1151
01:10:27,040 --> 01:10:31,759
Speaker 3: about Van. Recently, I had it around for a while.

1152
01:10:31,840 --> 01:10:37,360
Speaker 3: I discovered a short story he wrote about his a

1153
01:10:37,479 --> 01:10:42,679
Speaker 3: child in Russia during the Civil War, a Jewish kid

1154
01:10:42,800 --> 01:10:46,000
Speaker 3: running from a village to village when the Red Army

1155
01:10:46,040 --> 01:10:48,280
Speaker 3: would come through, followed by the White Army, and they

1156
01:10:48,320 --> 01:10:50,639
Speaker 3: would say any Jews around and they would take out

1157
01:10:50,680 --> 01:10:55,439
Speaker 3: somebody and shoot them. And he has this it's just

1158
01:10:55,640 --> 01:10:59,560
Speaker 3: it's almost it's like a ten page story. It's brilliant.

1159
01:11:00,280 --> 01:11:04,920
Speaker 3: My father was a wonderful writer. He emotionally was not

1160
01:11:05,479 --> 01:11:10,559
Speaker 3: very curious, but he was a brilliant observer and he

1161
01:11:10,640 --> 01:11:13,680
Speaker 3: really described what a Russian village was like for a

1162
01:11:13,680 --> 01:11:17,559
Speaker 3: little terrified kid who is Jewish. The piece will be

1163
01:11:17,560 --> 01:11:20,840
Speaker 3: published at some point. I know that my oldest daughter

1164
01:11:20,960 --> 01:11:24,040
Speaker 3: has got that now and she's determined to get the

1165
01:11:24,080 --> 01:11:29,200
Speaker 3: thing published. And it's a knockout. It's a real piece

1166
01:11:29,200 --> 01:11:33,080
Speaker 3: of work and made me wonder about As a lawyer,

1167
01:11:34,120 --> 01:11:38,439
Speaker 3: he wrote appeals briefs and as legal right. I mean,

1168
01:11:38,479 --> 01:11:42,679
Speaker 3: I don't know the law very well, but his writing

1169
01:11:42,720 --> 01:11:46,479
Speaker 3: as a lawyer was very succinct. His thoughts were clear,

1170
01:11:48,560 --> 01:11:51,559
Speaker 3: and that little short story that I saw the same

1171
01:11:51,640 --> 01:11:54,799
Speaker 3: kind of clarity as there, except that the emotional clarity

1172
01:11:54,880 --> 01:11:57,280
Speaker 3: is there as well. And it's the one point in

1173
01:11:57,320 --> 01:12:03,360
Speaker 3: his life where I can think that emotional clarity was

1174
01:12:03,520 --> 01:12:06,320
Speaker 3: one hundred percent with him, and it was like at

1175
01:12:06,360 --> 01:12:09,920
Speaker 3: other points for the and knowing him as my father,

1176
01:12:10,120 --> 01:12:13,120
Speaker 3: no emotional clarity was not his strong point.

1177
01:12:14,640 --> 01:12:19,640
Speaker 2: And yet in terms of emotional clarity. You felt that

1178
01:12:19,720 --> 01:12:22,000
Speaker 2: he had emotional clarity when it came to you, Yes,

1179
01:12:22,080 --> 01:12:22,880
Speaker 2: and his love for you.

1180
01:12:23,000 --> 01:12:28,080
Speaker 3: Yes, that was acquired. He acquired that over the years.

1181
01:12:28,160 --> 01:12:33,160
Speaker 3: But ultimately I knew that he loved me, and he

1182
01:12:33,240 --> 01:12:36,040
Speaker 3: did not. He did not separate. In the beginning, he

1183
01:12:36,120 --> 01:12:39,800
Speaker 3: might have separated me out from his firstborn. By the

1184
01:12:39,920 --> 01:12:42,519
Speaker 3: end of his life, he did not. I was part

1185
01:12:42,600 --> 01:12:43,719
Speaker 3: of the Mitschburch.

1186
01:12:44,840 --> 01:12:47,960
Speaker 2: Do you think that he knew about van Heflin?

1187
01:12:48,320 --> 01:12:50,839
Speaker 3: Oh, he knew. I am not one hundred percent certain.

1188
01:12:51,280 --> 01:12:54,519
Speaker 3: I'm ninety five percent certain that he would have known

1189
01:12:54,560 --> 01:12:56,880
Speaker 3: the whole story. But this five percent of me that

1190
01:12:56,960 --> 01:12:57,479
Speaker 3: doesn't know that.

1191
01:12:58,640 --> 01:13:01,439
Speaker 5: Ooh, there's no way to I know all these things

1192
01:13:01,479 --> 01:13:03,000
Speaker 5: that are just lost to time. Yeah.

1193
01:13:03,120 --> 01:13:05,559
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no one who's no relative around who can

1194
01:13:05,600 --> 01:13:06,240
Speaker 3: tell me either.

1195
01:13:11,880 --> 01:13:15,439
Speaker 2: In the Sliding Doors version of David's life, there's a

1196
01:13:15,479 --> 01:13:18,440
Speaker 2: world in which he never finds any of this out.

1197
01:13:19,000 --> 01:13:22,360
Speaker 2: I mean, he needed his rising sign for his astrological chart.

1198
01:13:23,479 --> 01:13:26,799
Speaker 2: This secret could have just floated invisibly through his life

1199
01:13:27,120 --> 01:13:30,599
Speaker 2: and the lives of his children, leaving puzzling and invisible

1200
01:13:30,680 --> 01:13:35,120
Speaker 2: damage in its wake. When David found his birth certificate

1201
01:13:35,520 --> 01:13:38,960
Speaker 2: and learned the truth of his paternity of Van Heflin.

1202
01:13:39,560 --> 01:13:42,040
Speaker 2: It was many years before twenty three and meters and

1203
01:13:42,120 --> 01:13:46,760
Speaker 2: ancestry dot com existed. Now millions of people have made

1204
01:13:46,800 --> 01:13:51,240
Speaker 2: these discoveries. Now these kinds of secrets are no longer possible.

1205
01:13:52,160 --> 01:13:56,440
Speaker 2: Someday soon secrets will be seen, like raydon or plastic

1206
01:13:56,600 --> 01:14:01,559
Speaker 2: or cigarette smoking as just a bad idea. But there

1207
01:14:01,600 --> 01:14:05,160
Speaker 2: is still one little question mark, because even though all

1208
01:14:05,200 --> 01:14:10,320
Speaker 2: signs lead to Van Heflin, there isn't actual proof, and

1209
01:14:10,439 --> 01:14:13,719
Speaker 2: proof would be comforting in such an upended world.

1210
01:14:16,000 --> 01:14:18,639
Speaker 3: Years ago, I did a twenty three and mes thing

1211
01:14:20,040 --> 01:14:25,040
Speaker 3: and I forgot about it. Nothing interesting turned up from it.

1212
01:14:26,240 --> 01:14:30,360
Speaker 3: In the last month or two, I looked at the

1213
01:14:30,400 --> 01:14:34,240
Speaker 3: twenty three and me thing again and then I realized that, oh,

1214
01:14:34,320 --> 01:14:39,960
Speaker 3: all along, I had this lurking suspicion that maybe Van

1215
01:14:40,040 --> 01:14:43,160
Speaker 3: Heflin wasn't my father. I didn't know who my father was.

1216
01:14:43,920 --> 01:14:46,040
Speaker 5: I was like, we don't even really know if this

1217
01:14:46,200 --> 01:14:50,040
Speaker 5: is true. I don't even really know if this guy

1218
01:14:50,160 --> 01:14:53,479
Speaker 5: is my grandfather, my father's father, like for sure, for sure.

1219
01:14:54,280 --> 01:14:56,400
Speaker 5: And I went to my father and I said, it's like,

1220
01:14:56,439 --> 01:14:59,240
Speaker 5: what percentage chance do you think it is that Van

1221
01:14:59,280 --> 01:15:03,639
Speaker 5: Heflin is not your biological father, and you said twenty

1222
01:15:03,680 --> 01:15:04,519
Speaker 5: five percent chance.

1223
01:15:05,520 --> 01:15:06,360
Speaker 6: That was a month ago.

1224
01:15:06,800 --> 01:15:08,439
Speaker 5: And then we were on the phone and he was

1225
01:15:08,439 --> 01:15:10,640
Speaker 5: looking at his twenty three and meters page because he

1226
01:15:10,640 --> 01:15:13,120
Speaker 5: had done it a few years ago, during which time

1227
01:15:13,160 --> 01:15:15,680
Speaker 5: he discovered that he had a lot of like Scottish

1228
01:15:15,720 --> 01:15:19,599
Speaker 5: English ancestry that seemed to correlate with you know, that

1229
01:15:19,800 --> 01:15:24,360
Speaker 5: family's tree Irish Irish. And then I said, well, have

1230
01:15:24,439 --> 01:15:26,360
Speaker 5: you ever looked on the little tab that shows you

1231
01:15:26,400 --> 01:15:28,920
Speaker 5: who you're related to? And he was like, what what

1232
01:15:28,960 --> 01:15:32,160
Speaker 5: are you talking about? I said, can you just go

1233
01:15:32,200 --> 01:15:34,200
Speaker 5: to the page? You went to the page. I was like,

1234
01:15:34,240 --> 01:15:38,280
Speaker 5: do you see any tab that says relatives? And he said, oh, yeah,

1235
01:15:38,280 --> 01:15:40,680
Speaker 5: there it is, and he clicked on it and there

1236
01:15:40,760 --> 01:15:43,639
Speaker 5: was a half niece from the Hefflin side.

1237
01:15:43,760 --> 01:15:47,599
Speaker 3: There was the daughter of the one of my half.

1238
01:15:47,520 --> 01:15:50,160
Speaker 2: Sisters shows up as your half He shows up.

1239
01:15:50,120 --> 01:15:51,479
Speaker 3: The closest relative that I have.

1240
01:15:51,720 --> 01:15:55,800
Speaker 5: Yeah, And so it was like, oh, okay, a question asked.

1241
01:15:55,560 --> 01:16:01,839
Speaker 6: And answered vanished. But all all my life, it's.

1242
01:16:01,680 --> 01:16:05,439
Speaker 5: Never really mattered, you know, like our family as our family,

1243
01:16:06,400 --> 01:16:09,639
Speaker 5: Ben and eleanor are our grandparents, you know, it always

1244
01:16:09,640 --> 01:16:12,880
Speaker 5: existed in my life as sort of like some backdrop

1245
01:16:13,320 --> 01:16:19,400
Speaker 5: mythology possibility, you know, And but I find the proof

1246
01:16:19,479 --> 01:16:24,880
Speaker 5: of its sort of comforting, just because it's.

1247
01:16:23,880 --> 01:16:24,320
Speaker 6: Good to know.

1248
01:16:24,400 --> 01:16:27,599
Speaker 5: It's good to fill in some of the blanks. It's

1249
01:16:27,640 --> 01:16:32,840
Speaker 5: good to not be wondering. I felt happy for you, Dad,

1250
01:16:32,880 --> 01:16:33,560
Speaker 5: actually that is.

1251
01:16:33,680 --> 01:16:37,519
Speaker 3: I felt relief of that, even though I told myself

1252
01:16:37,600 --> 01:16:39,599
Speaker 3: I've made peace with all of this when I found oh,

1253
01:16:39,680 --> 01:16:41,200
Speaker 3: there's the actual proof.

1254
01:16:41,680 --> 01:16:44,000
Speaker 5: But in terms of like you know, Benjamin h is

1255
01:16:44,000 --> 01:16:47,960
Speaker 5: somebody who imprinted himself on you, who you've imprinted on us,

1256
01:16:48,760 --> 01:16:53,639
Speaker 5: You know that that reality is more real than whatever

1257
01:16:53,680 --> 01:16:57,679
Speaker 5: the biology is, and whatever the biology is is ultimately

1258
01:16:57,720 --> 01:17:04,080
Speaker 5: a mystery too, you know, like who knows how genes work,

1259
01:17:04,240 --> 01:17:08,920
Speaker 5: how talent works, why we pursue things Like sometimes I think,

1260
01:17:09,479 --> 01:17:11,800
Speaker 5: I mean, I think I've always felt like what I

1261
01:17:11,840 --> 01:17:14,800
Speaker 5: do and why I do it is sort of from

1262
01:17:14,800 --> 01:17:16,760
Speaker 5: within me, And then I have moments where I'm like, God,

1263
01:17:16,760 --> 01:17:18,559
Speaker 5: maybe it has nothing to do with me, and it's

1264
01:17:18,600 --> 01:17:20,320
Speaker 5: all conditioning and genetics.

1265
01:17:20,840 --> 01:17:23,800
Speaker 6: But there's no way to know, you know that.

1266
01:17:23,800 --> 01:17:26,920
Speaker 5: It's so those things are almost impossible to parse out

1267
01:17:26,960 --> 01:17:28,160
Speaker 5: in oneself.

1268
01:17:28,360 --> 01:17:31,040
Speaker 2: Right, which is kind of wonderful. There's a freedom in

1269
01:17:31,080 --> 01:17:35,440
Speaker 2: that at a certain point of you know, containing multitudes,

1270
01:17:35,720 --> 01:17:36,559
Speaker 2: holding all of it.

1271
01:17:40,360 --> 01:17:43,160
Speaker 5: I have an eleven year old daughter, and I had

1272
01:17:43,160 --> 01:17:48,000
Speaker 5: a moment the other day thinking about mothers and daughters.

1273
01:17:48,479 --> 01:17:49,920
Speaker 6: I was thinking about my mother's line.

1274
01:17:49,960 --> 01:17:52,840
Speaker 5: Actually, I was thinking about my relationship with my mother

1275
01:17:52,960 --> 01:17:56,600
Speaker 5: and her relationship with her mother, and her mother's relationship

1276
01:17:56,640 --> 01:17:59,720
Speaker 5: with her mother, and the singularity of all these mother

1277
01:18:00,240 --> 01:18:03,600
Speaker 5: relationships and how even though you lose your knowledge of

1278
01:18:03,640 --> 01:18:09,080
Speaker 5: who your ancestors are, the relationship of mother daughter, I

1279
01:18:09,120 --> 01:18:11,799
Speaker 5: can think back to all of that mythology and connect

1280
01:18:11,840 --> 01:18:15,120
Speaker 5: it all the way up, and that's very comforting. But

1281
01:18:15,920 --> 01:18:21,519
Speaker 5: the static in your father son relationship, you know, that's like,

1282
01:18:21,920 --> 01:18:25,400
Speaker 5: I just it's sad that that static was there for

1283
01:18:25,439 --> 01:18:27,000
Speaker 5: so long and that there's this.

1284
01:18:27,280 --> 01:18:31,720
Speaker 3: You know, well, the secret dominated what my family was

1285
01:18:31,800 --> 01:18:36,040
Speaker 3: for so long. The secret defined who we all were.

1286
01:18:36,840 --> 01:18:37,640
Speaker 2: That's exactly it.

1287
01:18:38,000 --> 01:18:42,920
Speaker 3: Yeah. I forget which of the Buddhist masters said this,

1288
01:18:43,360 --> 01:18:47,719
Speaker 3: but I think it's sort of common in Buddhist teaching

1289
01:18:48,240 --> 01:18:53,040
Speaker 3: that at one point or another you were someone's father, mother, brother, sister,

1290
01:18:53,240 --> 01:18:58,760
Speaker 3: and uncle. Because they go through former lives and I

1291
01:18:58,760 --> 01:19:02,400
Speaker 3: mean all of that is you. You, in a sense, are

1292
01:19:03,160 --> 01:19:06,240
Speaker 3: not only imagining the life that's in front of you.

1293
01:19:06,240 --> 01:19:11,000
Speaker 3: You are that life. It's in every person you encounter.

1294
01:19:11,200 --> 01:19:12,599
Speaker 3: You are part of that life.

1295
01:19:12,680 --> 01:19:31,080
Speaker 4: You are that life.

1296
01:19:32,720 --> 01:19:36,439
Speaker 2: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly z Acre

1297
01:19:36,600 --> 01:19:39,879
Speaker 2: is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.

1298
01:19:40,600 --> 01:19:42,599
Speaker 2: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,

1299
01:19:43,000 --> 01:19:45,439
Speaker 2: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear

1300
01:19:45,439 --> 01:19:48,880
Speaker 2: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight

1301
01:19:48,880 --> 01:19:53,080
Speaker 2: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also

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Speaker 2: find me on Instagram at Danny Rider. And if you'd

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Speaker 2: like to know more about the story that inspired this

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Speaker 2: pot podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance.

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Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.