Over the past week we’ve made a couple of interesting dives into L. Ron Hubbard’s past, and it’s prompted tipsters to send us some really great items.
Today, we have another key document from Hubbard’s life, and we believe it’s the first time an image of the document itself has been posted online.
It’s an affidavit that Hubbard’s first wife, Margaret Louise “Polly” Grubb, filed after Hubbard failed to pay child support.
Hubbard (1911-1986) married Polly (1907-1963) in 1933 and they had two children, L. Ron Hubbard Jr. (also known as “Nibs”, 1934-1991) and Katherine, known as Katie or Kay (1936-2010).
In 1945, after the war, Hubbard moved into a room at the Pasadena home of John Whiteside “Jack” Parsons, a rocket scientist at Caltech. At the time, Parsons was seeing a woman who Hubbard soon stole away. Her name was Sara Elizabeth Northrup (1924-1997). She also went by “Betty.” Hubbard married Sara in Maryland in August 1946, even though he was still married to Polly.
As the document here indicates, Hubbard and Polly finalized their divorce on December 24, 1947, and Hubbard made promises about paying child support for Nibs and Kay. But four years later, in 1951, Polly accused her ex-husband of being in contempt for not paying anything at all towards that child support.
Here’s the document…
Louise G. Hubbard v. L. Ron Hubbard: Affidavit of Contempt
Because it’s a bit hard to read, we’ve provided a transcript…
LOUISE G. HUBBARD, Plaintiff,
vs.
LAFAYETTE RONALD HUBBARD, Defendant.
No. 23323
AFFIDAVIT OF CONTEMPT
STATE OF WASHINGTON
COUNTY OF KITSAP
Polly Morton, being first duly sworn, deposes and says: That she is the same person as Louise G. Hubbard, the plaintiff in the above-entitled section; that by the interlocutory decree of divorce entered herein on June 23, 1947, and made final on December 24, 1947, affiant was awarded the custody of the two minor children of the parties, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, jr., now aged 17 years, and Katherine Kay Hubbard, now aged 16 years, and the defendant above-named was ordered to pay affiant, for the care and support of each child, the sum of $25.00 a month, payable on the 1st day of each month starting as of June 1, 1947, together with affiant’s court costs and attorney’s fee aggregating $118.70.
That said defendant has personal knowledge of said order and judgment.
That since said order and judgment were made defendant has paid nothing to affiant although he is well able to, and that his violation of said order and judgment are willful.
That defendant should be ordered to pay the costs and an attorney’s fee in connection with these contempt proceedings.
Polly Morton
Subscribed and Sworn to before me this 19th day of June, 1951
Isn’t that interesting? So besides explorer, philosopher, author, and space cadet, we can also add “deadbeat dad” to Hubbard’s laurels.
Also, about Polly’s name. While researching this document, we ran into a bit of a mystery. Russell Miller (Bare-Faced Messiah) and Jon Atack (A Piece of Blue Sky) both list Polly’s full name as Margaret Louise Grubb. And we have a document written by Nibs which also refers to Margaret Louise Grubb — and he ought to know his own mother’s name.
But at Arnie Lerma’s site, we found that Arnie has a copy of the original marriage license for Polly and Hubbard, and on that document she signed her name “Louise Neer Grubb” and “Louise N. Grubb.” We asked Atack and Lerma about it, and neither of them had noticed it before and they had no explanation for it. So we’re putting it to our great researcher community — what was Polly’s legal birth name, and why did she use “Neer” on some documents and not others?
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SPs on parade
One of Scientology’s biggest challenges is the number of people leaving the organization and then speaking out about the church. And we have examples of three women who have created headaches for the church with how they’ve gone public.
First, we want to congratulate Roz Cohn for being nominated as “Cabaret Artist of the Year” by BroadwayWorld in Los Angeles for her one-woman show about Scientology, “DiffiCULT to Leave.” Roz was good enough to allow the Underground Bunker to debut her show on the Internet last December.
You can still add your vote as she competes for the award!
Second, we have an audio recording of California actress and storyteller Cathy Schenkelberg, who offers a very entertaining tale about how she dealt with turning over nearly a million dollars to Scientology before finally waking up and walking away.
And third, in Australia, Ramana Dienes-Browning sent us the trailer to her new experimental short film, “Julianne.”
In 2011, we told the story of Ramana’s ordeal as a Sea Org worker on Scientology’s private cruise ship, the Freewinds. It’s still one of our favorite stories of all time.
Here’s what Ramana told us about her film: “It’s based very abstractly on my experiences in the Sea Org. I didn’t want to make it autobiographical so it’s not directly about Scientology but definitely about cults and drawn from my experiences.” She says the short film recently played at a festival, and she hopes to eventually develop it into a full feature…
Julianne Trailer from Ramana Dienes-Browning on Vimeo.
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Posted by Tony Ortega on November 19, 2014 at 07:00
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