Frank's Niece!

[Cathy]

Aunt Agnes, she was kicked out for mooning the nun.

OMG - I'm in love with Aunt Agnes. Man, I'll bet even Ayn didn't push her around too much.

she wouldn't dare lol...I think that's why they got a long so well!

[Cathy]

after his mother's death, he had dropped out of his Catholic high school and become a lifelong atheist

Ellen, why did she write this...I thought she wrote he was six when he went to a public school?

[Ellen Stuttle]

after his mother's death, he had dropped out of his Catholic high school and become a lifelong atheistEllen, why did she write this...I thought she wrote he was six when he went to a public school?

Two different people.

Harry Binswanger wrote age six.

There are discrepancies between the reports, the usual with people remembering things they were told.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Aunt Agnes, she was kicked out for mooning the nun. OMG - I'm in love with Aunt Agnes. Man, I'll bet even Ayn didn't push her around too much.

she wouldn't dare lol...I think that's why they got a long so well!

Well, that's something I've been wondering about, Alice and Agnes. Agnes sounds to me like someone Ayn/Alice would have liked.

Barbara said that Ayn was not interested in Frank's family, but I wonder if it's that Barbara wasn't and Ayn was more interested than Barbara realized.

Ellen

[Cathy]

after his mother's death, he had dropped out of his Catholic high school and become a lifelong atheistEllen, why did she write this...I thought she wrote he was six when he went to a public school?

Two different people.

Harry Binswanger wrote age six.

There are discrepancies between the reports, the usual with people remembering things they were told.

Ellen

I see. My aunt told me he dodged the draft...do you know if they ever caught up to him and made him serve? ~Cathy~

[Cathy]

Aunt Agnes, she was kicked out for mooning the nun. OMG - I'm in love with Aunt Agnes. Man, I'll bet even Ayn didn't push her around too much.

she wouldn't dare lol...I think that's why they got a long so well!

Well, that's something I've been wondering about, Alice and Agnes. Agnes sounds to me like someone Ayn/Alice would have liked.

Barbara said that Ayn was not interested in Frank's family, but I wonder if it's that Barbara wasn't and Ayn was more interested than Barbara realized.

Ellen

But part of the books states they enjoyed her at family dinners...how does that happen if she Kept Uncle Frank away from the family?

[Cathy]

Aunt Agnes, she was kicked out for mooning the nun. OMG - I'm in love with Aunt Agnes. Man, I'll bet even Ayn didn't push her around too much.

she wouldn't dare lol...I think that's why they got a long so well!

Well, that's something I've been wondering about, Alice and Agnes. Agnes sounds to me like someone Ayn/Alice would have liked.

Barbara said that Ayn was not interested in Frank's family, but I wonder if it's that Barbara wasn't and Ayn was more interested than Barbara realized.

Ellen

But part of the books states they enjoyed her at family dinners...how does that happen if she Kept Uncle Frank away from the family?

hmmm, maybe Aunt Alice didn't want Barbra to know the O'Connor family.

[Cathy]

Aunt Agnes, she was kicked out for mooning the nun. OMG - I'm in love with Aunt Agnes. Man, I'll bet even Ayn didn't push her around too much.

she wouldn't dare lol...I think that's why they got a long so well!

Well, that's something I've been wondering about, Alice and Agnes. Agnes sounds to me like someone Ayn/Alice would have liked.

Barbara said that Ayn was not interested in Frank's family, but I wonder if it's that Barbara wasn't and Ayn was more interested than Barbara realized.

Ellen

But part of the books states they enjoyed her at family dinners...how does that happen if she Kept Uncle Frank away from the family?

hmmm, maybe Aunt Alice didn't want Barbra to know the O'Connor family.

they might have converted her lol.

[Ellen Stuttle]

I don't think Frank ever did serve in the armed forces. I vaguely remember some reference to that but not where I saw or heard it.

Speaking of Cyrus and Frank, here's a comment on that by Heller. I was looking to see if there was any reference to draft-dodging in her brief history of him on pp. 65-66.

pg. 66

His role in King of Kings was his first part in Hollywood.

[....] When [Ayn] first saw him on the set, he was dressed in a short tunic, with sandals laced to his knees and a long scarf tied jauntily around his head. He was Cyrus's twin brother.

Ellen

[Cathy]

I don't think Frank ever did serve in the armed forces. I vaguely remember some reference to that but not where I saw or heard it.

Speaking of Cyrus and Frank, here's a comment on that by Heller. I was looking to see if there was any reference to draft-dodging in her brief history of him on pp. 65-66.

pg. 66

His role in King of Kings was his first part in Hollywood.

[....] When [Ayn] first saw him on the set, he was dressed in a short tunic, with sandals laced to his knees and a long scarf tied jauntily around his head. He was Cyrus's twin brother.

Ellen

My Aunt Agnes said that thank God he was in silent films and good looking or he wouldn't have a job at all in that industry! ~Cathy~

[Cathy]

I don't think Frank ever did serve in the armed forces. I vaguely remember some reference to that but not where I saw or heard it.

Speaking of Cyrus and Frank, here's a comment on that by Heller. I was looking to see if there was any reference to draft-dodging in her brief history of him on pp. 65-66.

pg. 66

His role in King of Kings was his first part in Hollywood.

[....] When [Ayn] first saw him on the set, he was dressed in a short tunic, with sandals laced to his knees and a long scarf tied jauntily around his head. He was Cyrus's twin brother.

Ellen

My Aunt Agnes said that thank God he was in silent films and good looking or he wouldn't have a job at all in that industry! ~Cathy~

Thank you Ellen...good night

[Ellen Stuttle]

But part of the books states they enjoyed her at family dinners...how does that happen if she Kept Uncle Frank away from the family?

Again, different books written by different people. Heller's and Barbara's respective pictures of Ayn's relationship with Frank's family have some divergences of detail.

Nonetheless, Heller does not mention anything about trips to Ohio except for the one when your grandfather died, so I guess that she didn't hear anything about those from Marna or Connie. Looks like Mimi was already dead when Heller started interviewing. Agnes was dead well before Heller started interviewing. Agnes might have been already ill - at any rate she was at least 80 and didn't live much longer - when Barbara started interviewing.

Do you know what Agnes died of?

Ellen

[Cathy]

But part of the books states they enjoyed her at family dinners...how does that happen if she Kept Uncle Frank away from the family?

Again, different books written by different people. Heller's and Barbara's respective pictures of Ayn's relationship with Frank's family have some divergences of detail.

Nonetheless, Heller does not mention anything about trips to Ohio except for the one when your grandfather died, so I guess that she didn't hear anything about those from Marna or Connie. Looks like Mimi was already dead when Heller started interviewing. Agnes was dead well before Heller started interviewing. Agnes might have been already ill - at any rate she was at least 80 and didn't live much longer - when Barbara started interviewing.

Do you know what Agnes died of?

Ellen

No, I don't. I didn't find out the year she died until recently. ~Cathy~

[Ellen Stuttle]

Could somebody please put on here (page 598, 100 voices) for me? Because someone said that Uncle Frank dropped out of Catholic school at a young age and enrolled himself in a public school because he was anti-religious. Does it say how old he was? My grandmother died when he was twelve, there was no way before then that my grandparents would have allowed that. Who said that? ~Cathy~

I'm not finding where page 598, 100 Voices was mentioned before Cathy's post. Does anyone know where it was?

Ellen

Edit: I found it.

http://www.solopassion.com/node/5103#comment-120073

A post by Gregster on SOLO.

Submitted by gregster on Sun, 2013-05-05 10:54.

Interesting, that story of Harry's. Sounds to me like Rand's recollection had slipped by then. She was about 72 or so ( don't know exactly) when she started Scrabble-playing sessions with Harry and his then-girlfriend, Molly Hays.

The biographical interviews with Barbara were in 1960-61, when Ayn was age 55-56.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

In 100 Voices there is an interview with Judy Berliner. She says that in 1961, Rand came to the University of Michigan and gave her an interview for a student newspaper. Rand also gave a speech.

She gave the speech "The Objectivist Ethics" at the University of Wisconsin on February 9, 1961.

She lectured at the University of Michigan on May 15, 1961.

As late as 1980 Rand went to Chicago to be on the Donahue show, so maybe she and Frank traveled more than we realized.

According to Heller, pg. 526, endnote to pg. 404, Rand's first Phil Donahue Show in May 1979 was "broadcast from Madison Square Garden."

Heller doesn't say where the April 29, 1980, reappearance was filmed. However, it was "part of a Great Minds of America series, which also included Milton Friedman" (pg. 407). Friedman was still living in Chicago (yes?), but maybe his part was filmed there and hers in NYC. Or maybe Friedman flew to NYC.

Ellen

[Peter]

I am about half way through this thread after an online absence. I have been on a trip, a funeral, and two sleep apnea tests.

I find Ayn Rands niece plausible. Memories are tricky.

For instance, Peter Reidy wrote:

As I may have mentioned in this very forum, I heard about the affair as gossip a year or two after the Great Kiboshing. It was too weird to believe, so I didn't, until BB's book came out.

end quote

I remember you hinting at an affair between Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden in 1964 or 1965, years before the Kiboshing. You attributed it to someone you knew who was from, perhaps Boston? It was someone who was at a question and answer event when Nathan and Ayn were present. Then there may have been a more personal party where all were again present. That alleged eye witness discerned the affection between Nathan and Ayn.

After mentioning that event, Peter Reidy patiently explained to me, a neophyte Objectivist, how the name Branden can be broken down into Ben Rand which means Son of Rand, and quipped that if he is her son then she and Nathan were committing incest. That was good for a few hoots of laughter from me. I am sure of the dates because I went into the Army soon after and did not speak to Peter Reidy for decades.

Or so I remember. I will keep an open mind, considering how Ellen Stuttle has been quizzed over the years about her personal knowledge of Ayn.

Peter Taylor

[Neil Parille]

Someone in 100 Voices is quoted as saying Ayn went to Chicago in 1980 to appear on the Donaghue show.

I imagine that the the intro to the show would make clear where it was filmed.

-Neil

[9thdoctor]

Someone in 100 Voices is quoted as saying Ayn went to Chicago in 1980 to appear on the Donaghue show.

I imagine that the the intro to the show would make clear where it was filmed.

-Neil

Watch it, Donahue asks her what she thinks of Chicago architecture, and suggests she go sightseeing. I'm pretty sure that was the second appearance, and the first was at Madison Square Garden in NY. They're both on YouTube.

[Cathy]

Someone in 100 Voices is quoted as saying Ayn went to Chicago in 1980 to appear on the Donaghue show.

I imagine that the the intro to the show would make clear where it was filmed.

-Neil

Neil, when u wrote that Aunt Alice had a falling out with her cousin because she didn't go to a funeral, and I said, she said that as an excuse. The falling out was really over a coat. Aunt Alice promised her cousin a certain coat and didn't give it to her. That's what the real argument was over. ~Cathy~

[Cathy]

I remembered something today. After the falling out and Aunt Agnes left, me and my sister ran away every chance we could. We were so dumb thinking we wouldn't get caught and the cops always found us. My step mother would dress us alike and it wouldn't have been hard for the cops to see two girls who looked alike and dressed alike. In between the times of running away, letters would come to the house with clerk of courts written on the envelopes address to John O'Connor in care of Conny and Cathy O'Connor. We never knew what those envelopes contained and where never told. What if my aunts and uncle got a hold of the courts? What if they (aunts and Uncle) pushed my dad into doing something, and that's why he dropped us off at the detention home? What if my aunts and uncle did try to find us and found out we were wards of the state and thought we were adopted out? If that were the case, then the family would not have mentioned us...I don't think. I am trying to look at all what if's. BTW, I just found out a few years back that my mother was six months pregnant with us when her and my father got married. Both sides were full of secretes. ~Cathy~

[Neil Parille]

The next ARI sponsored Objectivist conference will be in Chicago:

And to introduce our host city, we present a General Session talk titled “Chicago Reach for the Stars,” in which Jonathan Hoenig, Shoshana Milgram and Stephen Siek discuss Chicago and its connection to Ayn Rand, its architecture and its surprising vigor in finance and trade. You won’t want to miss it!

It says of Milgram

She is editing the draft of her book-length study of Ayn Rand’s life (to 1957).

It would be nice to have an authorized biography of Rand's entire life. Maybe Milgram will start a second volume.

-Neil Parille

[Peter]

As a preamble to my premise:

I remember hearing about Ayn Rands affair with Nathaniel Branden in 1964 or 1965. I took it as gossip and farfetched though possibly true. If it were true I reasoned Ayn Rand would divorce Frank. That did not happen, but the thought of a romantic interlude was always there in the back of my mind. The person relating this gossip to me was positive that the first person account he had heard was completely true because he trusted the gossiper. I never found out who that person was. So I heard the gossip from someone who heard it from someone who was in Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Brandens presence.

When the unfortunate split with the Brandens occurred in 1967 I remember being stunned and furious with Nathaniel Branden and wondered if he were blackmailing Ayn Rand to keep the affair silent, or was he stealing from her? What terribly wrong thoughts I had based on Ayn Rands account in The Objectivist Forum.

Can anyone else old enough to remember the times, relate how they heard about the affair? I will put this under "Frank's Niece" but if the owners choose to move it into the garbage pile that is fine too. I am also interested in any other gossip old or new that anyone knows about Objectivism, the various sides, or personalities. No proof required . . . I just want to know the gossip.

Peter

[Brant Gaede]

1968, not 1967.

What makes garbage for the Garbage Pile is bad faith posting.

--Brant

you don't qualify; you don't even know how to try

[Cathy]

Cathy,Your latest information about Eddie's Cigar Store and such like are giving me clues about something I've been wondering about, why there's no detailed mention of the rest of Frank's family besides Nick and Mimi and a little about Joe in Barbara's book.

Maybe it was a bit too "raunchy," shall we say, to fit the picture of the relatives of Rand's husband.

Ellen

I have no idea. Did they mention anything about Margaret? I can not for the life of me remember her. I don't remember any visits from her, or Aunt Agnes saying much about her. Did she die young? Now I am also wondering if the reason my dad said he wasn't fond of Aunt Alice because she was Jewish, and didn't want me to know she was Atheist. Isn't a biography suppose to be about her whole life, or just parts they want people to know? BTW, it must have been Donahue that triggered the memory, if you didn't say Elizabeth. Whatever I'm glad it did lol. Does anyone on hear talk to Barbra? If she was Aunt Alice's friend...don't you think she would know about the family? Did Connie ever say that my grandparents ever found out about the abortion? ~Cathy~ sorry so many questions

Nothing about Margaret, except her name listed among Dennis's children in Barbara's book. Not even that in Heller's.

Maybe she died young.

She'd have to be more than a hundred if she's still alive, since she was older than your dad, who you say was born in 1902.

Wouldn't it be something if the reason there's no mention of her is because she ran away from home and became an adventuress?

Your grandmother died when Frank was about fifteen. Do you mean a step-grandma?

I'm sorry. I misremembered which of the Papurt girls told Heller about the abortion. It was Mimi not Connie.

EDIT : SORRY AGAIN. Eye troubles don't help.

Looks like it was MARNA - MW - not MIMI - MS - who was being interviewed and told Heller of the abortion. That also makes sense of the being a toddler, although it would probably date the abortion as the late 20s.

The references in Heller's book are slight:

pg. 128

At one point [this seems to have been during one of the times Mimi was staying with Ayn and Frank] he [Frank] told [Mimi] that he would have liked to have children but that "it wouldn't fit with Ayn." Mimi may already have known of her aunt's decision to have an abortion earlier in the 1930s, since Mimi's father, A. M. Papurt, had loaned O'Connor the money to pay for it. It is interesting to note that children do not figure much in Rand's fictional universe, with the exception of a few flashbacks and the character of eight-year-old Acia Dunaeva in We the Living, who behaves like a spoiled five-year-old. In homage to their philosopher-queen and her characters, some of her followers would also forgo having children.

The endnotes give these references:

For the phrase "it wouldn't fit with Ayn," a taped interview with Mimi conducted by Barbara February 18, 1983.

For the decision to have an abortion, Heller says:

Agnes Papurt told her daughter MW that she, [Marna], had been a toddler when this event took place, which would set it in the early 1930s (author interviews with [Marna], June 21, 2004, and December 21, 2005).

SCRATCH the part about Heller's missaddition.

Heller's addition can't be right about when Mimi was a toddler, not if Mimi was 20 in 1939, as Barbara says, but then Barbara has something off too, since she says Mimi was 16 at her grandfather's funeral.

But if Mimi was 20 in 1939, then she couldn't have been a toddler when the abortion happened, since that would place the abortion before Rand even came to America.

Something is off somewhere.

The only other reference to the abortion is in a passage pertaining to Ayn's and Frank's years in California on the ranch (1944-1951). I'll quote a two-paragraph part, since this also has material about Ayn's relationship with Marna.

pg. 181

O'Connor's niece Mimi Papurt, now married and called Mimi Sutton, hadn't made her way to California. But she and Rand wrote letters to each other. Mimi's father, A. M. Papurt, the man who had once loaned the O'Connor's money for an abortion, had died a few years earlier, leaving the young woman's mother and two younger sisters impoverished--so much so that the elder of the two, Marna, had quit high school to help support them. Mimi had been badgering Marna to finish school, and in the spring of 1946 she asked Rand for help in bringing Marna to Boston, where Mimi and her husband lived, to earn her highschool diploma. She and Frank agreed to pay fifty dollars a month, plus the cost of transportation from Ohio, plus school clothes.

The arrangement led to a misunderstanding. Marna had dropped out during the second semester of her junior year. To graduate, she had to complete three semesters. Rand was under the impression that the girl was supposed to graduate in one year. Marna re-entered school in April and finished her junior year in June. But she was forced to leave school again the following April, because Rand stopped sending money. The writer, who didn't understand, or wouldn't make allowances for, the traditional school-year calendar, was furious with Marna. "She said, 'You told me you'd finish,'" the niece recalled. Marna found a job with a traveling magician, whom she married, and eventually earned an equivalency diploma and attended college. But a strain developed on both sides.

[The strain didn't last long, as is said in a later passage.]

The references for the passage are letters from AR to Mimi, and Heller's June 21, 2004, interview of Marna.

Ellen

Ellen, I found a website with death dates. MiMi died in 1985 and Marna died in 1995. I cant find connie yet or Margaret, But she couldn't have had an interview with them in 2004/2005. ~Cathy~

[Cathy]

I just read some of Heller's book. It states in there ...in middle age she (Rand) could still amaze her friends by correcting a mistake recitation of a well known Russian Orthodox prayer. I wonder if this was the prayer she taught me and my sister. Also it seems to me out of the Brandan's and O'Connor's the good ones was Barbra and Uncle Frank. Some people may not like what I have to say but...I think all three of them were Ayn Rand's victims...if the book is correct. Aunt Alice and Ayn Rand are two different people to me...I have not connected the two together...and in a way I hope I don't. ~Cathy~