Margaret Grubb
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| Born: | September 22, 1907 Beltsville, Maryland, United States |
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| Died: | 1963 United States |
| Occupation: | Glider pilot |
| Spouse: | L. Ron Hubbard |
| Children: | 2 |
This article forms part of a series on Scientology |
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Concepts
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Margaret "Polly" Grubb (b. September 22, 1907 - d.1963??) was the first wife of pulp fiction author and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, to whom she was married between 1933 and 1947. She was also the mother of Hubbard's first son, L. Ron Hubbard Jr. and his first daughter, Katherine May "Kay" Hubbard.
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[edit] Meets Hubbard
Grubb was born in Beltsville, Maryland on September 22, 1907, to a farming family. [1] She was an only child whose mother had died when she was young, and took her first job (in a shoe shop) at the age of sixteen to support herself and her father. Although christened Margaret, she preferred to be known as Polly. She lived with her father in Elkton, Maryland. [2]
She was a keen glider pilot and met L. Ron Hubbard on a Maryland gliding field in early 1933, where both of them were learning to fly as preparation to obtaining a pilot's license. At the time, Hubbard was self-employed as a writer of pulp fiction stories. The two began a relationship after going on a blind date [3].
[edit] Marriage
Hubbard and Polly married on April 13, 1933 after only a short courtship. They settled in Laytonsville, Maryland. The wedding is said to have been controversial with the couple's parents; Polly was already pregnant, suggesting that the marriage may have been something of a shotgun wedding.
She had a miscarriage not long afterwards but became pregant again in October 1933. On May 7, 1934 she gave birth two months prematurely to L. Ron Jr while on holiday with her husband at Encinitas, California. They had another child, Katherine May (or "Kay") in New York City on January 15, 1936.
In the spring of 1936 the Hubbards moved to Bremerton, Washington to be near Hubbard's own family, the Waterburys. They settled in the community of South Colby, Washington, where Hubbard established a "writing studio" from where he produced many of his pulp short stories and novels. However, the marriage came under strain when Hubbard began spending increasingly long periods in New York in order to be nearer his publishers and fellow pulp writers. Polly suspected that he was having affairs with other women in New York and confided her suspicions to family friends. According to Robert MacDonald Ford, a friend who later became a US Senator, matters came to a head when Polly found hard evidence of her husband's philandering:
| “ | It seems Ron had written letters to a couple of girls in New York and left them in the mail box to be picked up. Polly found them and got so mad that she opened the envelopes, switched the letters and put them back in the box. She didn't tell him what she had done until they had been picked up. [4] | ” |
The couple appear to have patched up their relationship afterwards, as they went on an extended sailing trip to Alaska in July 1938. Three years later Hubbard entered the US Navy for war service. Save for a period in 1943 when Hubbard was stationed in Astoria, Oregon during the fitout of the ill-fated USS PC-815, Polly appears to have seen relatively little of her husband. It was clear by the end of the war that the marriage was doomed. She had briefly considered moving to California to be with her husband during his posting there, but refused as she did not want to uproot her children. By this time she had moved in with Hubbard's parents in Bremerton. For his part, Hubbard had moved in with the rocket scientist and occultist Jack Parsons in Pasadena, California, and had begun an intense affair with Parsons' girlfriend Sara Northrup. By her own account, Polly did not see Hubbard at all between 1945 and June 1947. [3] Hubbard later claimed that she had "become involved with another man and when her service allotment ceased just before the war's end, sought to obtain and was refused a divorce." [5]
[edit] Divorce
On August 10, 1946 Hubbard married Sara, with whom he had been living for about a year. Polly filed for divorce in Port Orchard, Washington on April 14, 1947 on the grounds of "desertion and non-support" as neither she nor her children were obtaining any support from her absent husband. She had no idea that he had already bigamously married another woman and nor did Sara know until then about Polly; according to Sara, "I did not discover that he was still married to her until after the divorce proceedings had begun." [6] He agreed to the divorce on June 1 and subsequently agreed to Polly having custody of the children, costs and $25 a month maintenance for each child. The divorce was finalised on December 24, 1947. [7] Hubbard later claimed that "it was I who obtained the divorce and have never really had an upset marital background" and that he got the divorce when "I was written to and advised by the judge that I should obtain one as he was tired of service wives deserting their husbands." [5]
Despite the divorce decree, Hubbard appears to have avoided meeting his side of the agreement. Around February/March 1951, Polly sued him for maintenance, charging that her former husband had 'promoted a cult called Dianetics', had authored a bestseller (namely Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health), owned valuable property and was well able to afford payment of maintenance for his two children. She demanded 42 months of support payments that Hubbard had failed to make since their settlement, totalling $2,503.79. Hubbard had also failed to pay a debt to the National Bank of Commerce, taken out in 1940, which with interest now came to $889.55. Hubbard responded by claiming that Polly should not have custody of the children because she "drinks to excess and is a dipsomaniac". [8] [9]
In April 1951, Sara filed for a divorce from Hubbard after he left for Cuba with their daughter Alexis Valerie, accusing him of "paranoid schizophrenia" and of subjecting her to "systematic torture". The case made newspaper headlines, as Hubbard was by now famous following the success of Dianetics. Polly evidently saw the headlines and wrote to Sara on May 2 to tell her:
| “ | If I can help in any way, I'd like to - you must get Alexis in your custody - Ron is not normal. I had hoped that you could straighten him out. Your charges probably sound fantastic to the average person - but I've been through it - the beatings, threats on my life, all the sadistic traits you charge - twelve years of it. I haven't asked for anything but with the money rolling in from "Dianetics" I had hoped to get enough for plastic surgery for Kay's birthmark - Please believe I do so want to help you get Alexis.[10] | ” |
[edit] Remarries
Polly was later married to John Ochs and moved to Pennsylvania. [3] She is reported to have died in 1963, suffering from alcoholism. [11]
Although she played a major part in Hubbard's life, it is noteworthy that Polly is not mentioned in official Church of Scientology biographies. Indeed, he later claimed in a British television interview that he had only been married twice and had four children (actually seven; he was counting only those he had had with his third wife, Mary Sue Hubbard, and altogether disowned his marriage to Sara Northrup):
| “ | HUBBARD: "How many times have I been married? I've been married twice. And I'm very happily married just now. I have a lovely wife, and I have four children. My first wife is dead."
INTERVIEWER: "What happened to your second wife?" HUBBARD: "I didn't have a second wife." [12] |
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[edit] References
- ^ Christopher Evans, Cults of Unreason, p. 26 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974)
- ^ Russell Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah, pp. 59-60 (Michael Joseph Ltd, 1987)
- ^ a b c Interview conducted by FBI Inspector W. Beale Grove, Philadelphia District, February 20, 1963
- ^ Russell Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah, p. 75 (Michael Joseph Ltd, 1987)
- ^ a b Hubbard, "Autobiographical notes for Peter Tompkins", 4 June 1972. Exhibit 500-I in Church of Scientology of California vs. Gerald Armstrong, Superior Court for the County of Los Angeles, case no. C 420153
- ^ Bent Corydon, L. Ron Hubbard: Madman or Messiah?, p. 294 (Lyle Stuart, 1987)
- ^ Russell Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah, p. 134 (Michael Joseph Ltd, 1987)
- ^ Russell Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah, p. 180 (Michael Joseph Ltd, 1987)
- ^ Jon Atack, A Piece of Blue Sky, p. 118 (Lyle Stuart, 1990)
- ^ Bent Corydon, L. Ron Hubbard: Madman or Messiah?, pp. 281-282 (Lyle Stuart, 1987)
- ^ Stewart Lamont, Religion Inc., p. 130 (Harrap, 1986)
- ^ Cited in Secret Lives: L. Ron Hubbard, Channel 4 Television, Nov 19th 1997
