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Also by Russell Miller

BUNNY~ THE REAL STORY OF PLAYBOY
THE HOUSE OF GETTY

Bare-Faced Messiah

THE TRUE STORY OF L. RON HUBBARD

Russell Miller


This book is dedicated to all those
Scientologists who had the courage
to face the truth and speak out


Contents
List of illustrations	vii
Author's note	ix
Introduction	1
Preface	2
1	A Dubious Prodigy	7
2	Whither did he ~A"ander?	26
3	Explorer Manqud	40
4	Blood and Thunder	59
5	Science Fictions	76
6	The Hero Who Never Was	95
7	Black 1Magic and Betty	112
8	The Mystery of the Missing Research	131
9	The Strange Ddbut of Dianctics	147
10	Commies, Kidnaps and Chaos	163
11	Bankrolling and Bankruptcy	186
12	Phoenix Rising	202
13	Apostle of the Nlain Chance	220
14	Lord of the B. lanor	233
15	Visits to t leaven	247
16	Launching the Sea Org	263
17	In Search of Past Lives	279
18	Messengers of God	297
19	Atlantic Crossing	313
20	Running Aground	333
21	Nlaking Nlovies	348
22	Missing, Presumed Dead	365
	Notes	376
	Bibl'iography	382
	Index	384

List of llhtstratio~ts

1 Abram Waterbury, L. Ron Hubbard's great-grandfather.
2 Ron's grandparents with their first child at Tilden, Nebraska, 
in the late 1880s.
3 Ron's mother, her brother and sisters, and an unknown relative.
4 Ron's long-suffering mother.
5 Ron's father, Harry Ross Hubbard, in the dress uniform of 
an officer of the US Navy.
6 The hospital in Tilden, Nebraska, where L. Ron Itubbard was 
born in 1911.
7 Little Ron in a sailor hat.
8 L. Ron Hubbard photographed during a visit to his parents 
un the island of Guam in 1928.
9 L. Ron Hubbard at George ~A,'ashington University.
10 The science fiction magazine in which Dianctics made its 
inauspicious ddbut.
11 Itubbard's public relations assistant, Barbara Kaye.
12 Richard de Mille and Barbara Kave.
13 L. Ron Itubbard with his son, Nibs, and friends in London 
in the 1950s.
14 I tubbard as 'revolutionary horticultural scientist' (Rex 
Features LId).
15 t tubbard as 'nuclear scientist' (Photo Source LId).
16 ttubbard with his wife and family (Photo Sourre LId). 17 
Hubbard and Ray Kemp in Ireland. 18 ttubbard posing as Cecil 
Rhodes.
19 The Royal Scotman (Granada Tele~'ision Ltd). 20 Arthur Hubbard 
and Doreen Smith.
21 Hubbard directs a 'photo-shoot' in Curat;ao in 1974.
22 An officer of the Sea Org at Gilman }lot Springs in 1981.

Copyright owners are indicated in brackets; all photographs 
not credited are from private sources.


Author's Note

I would like to be able to thank the officials of the Church 
of Scientology for their help in compiling this biography, but 
I am unable to do so because the price of their co-operation 
was effective control of the manuscript and it was a price I 
was unwilling to pay. Thereafter the Church did its best to 
dissuade people who knew Hubbard from speaking to me and constantly 
threatened litigation. Scientology lawyers in New York and Los 
Angeles made it clear in frequent letters that they expected 
me to libel and defame L. Ron Hubbard. When I protcstcd that 
in thirty years as a journalist and writer I had never been 
accused of libel, I was apparently investigated and a letter 
was written to my publishers in New York alleging that my claim 
was 'simply not accurate'. It was, and is.
This book could not have been written without the assistance 
of the many former Scientologists who were prepared to give 
freely of their time to talk about their experiences, notwithstanding 
considerable risks. Some of them are named in the narrative, 
but there were many others who provided background information 
and to them all I pay tribute. I was deeply impressed by their 
integrity, intelligence and courage.
This book could also not have been written without the existence 
of the Freedom of Information Act in the United States, which 
may give pause for thought to those who care about the truth 
yet are opposing the introduction of similar legislation in 
Britain.
A special word of thanks is due to Jon Atack, a former Scientologist 
resident in East Grinstead, who has assembled one of the most 
comprehensive archives about Scientology and its founder and 
generously made his files available to me. I would also like 
to thank George Hay and John Symonds in London; Lydia and Jimmy 
tticks in Washington DC; David and :'x, lilo x,%'eaver in San 
Francisco; Connit and Phil Winberry in Seattle; Skip Davis in 
Newport, Rhode Island; Diane Lewis in Wichita; Arthur Jean Cox, 
Lawrence Kristiansen and Boris de Sidis in Los Angeles; Ron 
Newman in Woodside, California; Ron Howard of George Washington 
University; Sue Lindsay of the Rocky Mountain News, Denver; 
Dave Waiters of the Montana


Historical Society; and the ever helpful staff of the Library 
of Congress. Too many people to name patiently replied to queries 
by mail and searched their records for the answers to innumerable 
obscure questions. Their contribution to the whole picture was 
invaluable.
My editor, Jennie Davies, polished the manuscript with her 
usual skill and diligence, despite the demands of her newly-born 
txvins. My wife, Renate, read every chapter as it was written 
and always offered constructive advice. She had to put up with 
my long absences abroad while I was tracking down the truth 
about L. Ron Hubbard and then endure the misery of living with 
an obsessive author through the long months of writing. I could 
never thank her enough for her patience, love and support.

Russell Miller Buckinghamshire England

Introduction

For more than thirty years, the Church of Scientology has vigorously 
promoted an image of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, as a romantic 
adventurer and philosopher whose early life fortuitously prepared 
him, in the manner of Jesus Christ, for his declared mission 
to save the world. The glorification of 'Ron', superman and 
saviour, required a cavalier disregard for facts: thus it is 
that every biography of
Hubbard published by the church is interwoven with lies, half-truths 
and ludicrous embellishments. The wondrous irony of this deception 
is that the true story of L. Ron Hubbard is much more bizarre, 
mucb more improbable, than any of the lies.


Preface

The Revelation of Ron

It was a scene that could have been ripped from the yellowing 
pages of the pulp science fiction that L. Ron Hubbard wrote 
in the Thirties . . .
A strangely alien group of young people who believe they are 
immortal set up a secret base in an abandoned health spa in 
the desert in southern California. Fearful of outsiders, they 
suspect they have been discovered by the FBI. In a panic, they 
begin to destroy any documents that might incriminate their 
leader. It is essential they protect him, for they believe he 
alone can save the world.
Searching through the top floor of a derelict hotel, one of 
their number discovers a stack of battered cardboard boxes and 
begins pulling out faded photographs, dog-cared manuscripts, 
diaries written in a childish scrawl and school reports. There 
are twenty-{mc boxes in all, each stuff eft with mcmorabilia, 
even baby clothes.
The young man rummaging through the boxes is ecstatic. He 
is certain he has made a discovery of profound significance, 
for all the material documents the earl)' life of h~s leader. 
At last, hc thinks, it will be possible to refute all the lies 
spread by their enemies. At last it will be possible to prove 
to the world, beyond doubt, that his leader really is a genius 
and mirade worker . . .
Thus was the stage set for the inexorable unmasking of L. Ron 
Hubbard, the saviour who never was.

Ilt !~ ~ ~ al,

Gerry Armstrong, the man kneeling in the dust on the top floor 
of the old Del Sol Hotel at Gilman Hot Springs that afternoon 
in January 1980, had been a dedicated member of the Church of 
Scientology for more than a decade. He was logging in Canada 
when a friend introduced him to Scientology in 1969 and he was 
immediately swept awav by its heady promise of superhuman powers 
and imm~irtality. During his years as a Scientologist, he had 
twice been sentenced to long periods in the Rehabilitation Project 
Force, the cult's own Orwellian prison; he had been constantly 
humiliated and his marriage had been destroyed, yet he remained 
totally convinced that L. Ron Hubbard was the greatest man who 
ever lived.

	Preface	3

The dauntless loyalty Hubbard inspired among his followers was 
tantamount to a form of mind control. Scientology flourished 
in the post-war era of protest and uncertainty when young people 
were. searching for a sense of belonging or meaning to their 
lives. Hubbard offered both, promised answers and nurtured an 
inner-group feeling of exclusiveness which separated Scientologists 
from the real world. Comforted by a sense of esoteric knowledge, 
of exaltation and self-absorption, they were ready to follow 
Ron through the very gates of Hell if need be.
At the time Armstrong discovered the treasure trove of memorabilia 
at Gilman Hot Springs, Hubbard had been in hiding for years. 
His location was known only as 'X', but Armstrong knew that 
it was possible to get a message to him and he petitioned for 
permission to begin researching an official biography, forcefully 
arguing that it would prepare the ground for 'universal acceptance' 
of Scient01ogy. He saw it as the forerunner of a major motion 
picture based on Hubbard's life and the eventual establishment 
of an archive in an L. Ron Ilubbard Museum.
By then Hubbard was nearly seventy years old and bad lived so 
long in a world of phantasmagoria that he was unable to distinguish 
between fact and his own fantastic fiction. Itc believed he 
was the teenage explorer, swashbuckling hero, sage and philosopher 
his biograpbies said be was. It was perhaps too late for him 
to comprehend that his life, in reality, far outstripped the 
fabricated version. tte made the leap from penniless science-fiction 
writer to millionaire guru and prophet in a single, effortless 
bound; he led a private navy across the oceans of the world 
for nearly a decade; he came close to taking over control of 
several countries; he was worshipped by thousands of his followers 
around the world and was detested and feared by most governments. 
He was a story-spinning maverick whose singular life eclipsed 
even his own far-fetched stories. Yet he clung tenaciously to 
the fiction and when Armstrong's petition to research his biography 
arrived at his hide-out that January in 1980, he unhesitatingly 
gave his approval.
Armstrong had no experience as an archivist or researcher, but 
he was intelligent, industrious, honest and enthusiastic. He 
moved all the relevant documentation from Gilman Hot Springs 
to the Scientology headquarters in Los Angeles, where it filled 
six filing cabinets, and began cataloguing and indexing the 
material, making copies of everything and reverently preserving 
the originals in plastic envelopes, acutely aware of their historical 
importance.
Not long after he had started work, posters appeared in Scientology 
offices announcing the private screening of a 1940 Warher Brothers 
movie, The Dive Bomber, for which Hubbard had written the screenplay. 
Every Scientologist knew that Ron had been a successful


4	Bare-Faced Messiah

Hollywood screenwriter before the war and the screening was 
to raise funds for the defence of the eleven Scientologists, 
including Hubbard's wife, who had been indicted in x, Vashington 
on conspiracy charges. Armstrong decided to help by finding 
out a little more about Ron's contribution to the film, but 
at the library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 
in Los Angeles he was puzzled to discover that two other writers 
had been credited with the screenplay of The Dive Bomber.
Armstrong remonstrated with the librarian, then sent a memo 
to Ron to tell him about the mistake in the Academy records. 
Hubbard replied with a cheery note explaining that x. Varner 
Brothers had been in such a hurry to distribute the movie that 
it was already in the can before it was realized that his name 
had been left off the credits. He was busy at that time, closing 
up his posh apartment on Riverside Drive in New York and getting 
read3, to go to war, so he just told the studio to mail the 
cheque to him at tile Explorers Club. After the war, he used 
the money to take a holiday in the Caribbean.
It was an explanation with which Armstrong was perfectly satisfied 
except for one niggling worry: like all Scientologists, he had 
been told that Ron was blind and crippled at the end of the 
war and that he had only been able to make a recovery because 
of tile power of his mind. Clearly, Armstrong mused, he would 
not have taken the holiday until after his recovery. In an attempt 
to tit together the chronology of events, Armstrong made an 
application under the Freedom of Information Act for I lubbard's 
US Navy records.
Scicntologists were enormously proud of the fact that the founder 
of their church was a much-decorated war hero who had served 
in all five theaters and was wounded several times; indeed he 
was the first US casualty of the war in the Pacific. It was 
then, with a sense of mounting disbelief and dismay, that Armstrong 
leafed through Hubbard's records after they had arrived from 
x, Vashington. He went from one document to another, searching 
in vain for an explanation, still refusing to believe the evidence 
of his own eves: the record seemed to indicate that Hubbard, 
far from being a hero, was an incompetent, malingering coward 
who had done his best to avoid seeing action.
Armstrong would not believe it. He set the documents aside and 
resolved to start his research at the beginning, in Nlontana, 
where Hubbard had grown up on his grandfather's huge cattle 
ranch. But he could find no trace of any property owned bv the 
family, except a little house in the middle of Helena. Neither 
could he discover any documentation covering Hubbard's teenage 
watlderings through China. In Washington DC, where Hubbard was 
supposed to have graduated in mathematics and engineering from 
George Washington University, the record showed he dropped out 
after two >'ears because

	Preface	5

of poor grades. And of Hubbard's labled expeditions as an explorer 
there was similarly no sign.
iI was finding contradiction after contradiction,' Armstrong 
said. 'I kept trying to justify them, kept thinking that I would 
find another document that would explain everything. But I didn't. 
I slowly came to realize that the guy had consistently lied 
about himself.'
By the summer of 1981, Armstrong had assembled more than 250,000 
pages of documentation about the founder of the Church of Scientology, 
but despite the gaping holes appearing in Hubbard's credibility, 
he remained intensely loyal. 'My approach was, OK, nov.' we 
know he's human and tells lies. What we;ve got to do is clear 
up the lies so that all the good he has done for the world will 
be accepted. I thought the only way we could exist as an organisation 
was to let the truth stand. After all, the truth was equally 
as fascinating as the lies.'
Armstrong's pleas to clear up the lies fell on deaf ears. Since 
Hubbard had gone into seclusion, the Church of Scientology had 
been taken over by young militants known as 'messengers'. When 
Hubbard was the commodore of his own navy, the messengers were 
little nympbets in hot pants and halter tops who ran errands 
for him and competed with each otber to find ways of pleasing 
him. Eventually they helped him dress and undress, performed 
little domestic tasks like washing his hair and smearing rejuvenating 
cream on his ficstly features, and even followed him around 
with an ashtray to catch tile falling ash from his cigarettes. 
As tile commodure became more and more paranoid, beset by imagined 
traitors and enemies, the messengers became more and more powerful.
In November 1981 Armstrong presented a written report to the 
messengers, listing the false claims made about ||ubbard and 
putting forward a powerful argument as to why they should be 
corrected. 'If we present inaccuracies, hyperbole or downright 
lies as fact or truth,' he wrote, 'it doesn't matter what slant 
we give them; if disproved, the man will look, to outsiders 
at least, like a charlatan . . .'
The messengers' response was to order Armstrong to be 'security 
checked'- interrogated as a potential traitor. Armstrong refused. 
In the spring of 1982, Gerald Armstrong was accused of eighteen 
different 'crimes' and 'high crimes' against the Church of Scientolog>', 
including theft, false pretences and promulgating false information 
about the church and its founder. He was declared to be a 'suppressive 
person' and 'fair game', which meant he could be 'tricked, cheated, 
lied to, sued or destroyed' by his former friends in Scientolog>_'.
'By then the whole thing for me had crumbled,' he said. 'I realized 
I had been drawn into Scientolog>.' by a web of lies, by Machiavellian 
mental control techniques and by fear. The betrayal of trust 
began with Hubbard's lies about himself. His life was a continuing 
pattern of


6	Bare-Faced Messiah
fraudulent business practices, tax evasion, flight from creditors 
and hiding from the law.
'He was a mixture of Adolf Hitler, Charlie Chaplin and Baron 
tx, Ifinchhausen. In short, he was a con man.'

Chapter 1

A Dubious Prodigy

According to the colourful yarn spun for the benefit of his 
followers, L. Ron Hubbard was descended on his mother's side 
from a French nobleman, one Count de Loupe, who took part in 
the Norman invasion of England in 1066; on his father's side, 
the Hubbards were English settlers who had arrived in America 
in the nineteenth century. It was altogether a distinguished 
naval family: both his maternal great-grandfather, 'Captain' 
I. C. Dex, Volfe, and his grandfather, 'Captain' Lafayette x,%'aterbury, 
'helped make American naval history'~, while his father was 
'Commander' Harry Ross Hubbard, US Navy.
As his father was away at sea for lengthy periods, the story 
goes, little Ron grew up on his wealthy grandfather's enormous 
cattle ranch in Montana, said to cover a quarter of the state 
[approximately 35,000 square miles!]. His picturesque friends 
were frontiersmen, cowboys and an Indian medicine man. 'L. Ron 
Hubbard found the life of a young rancher very enjoyable. Long 
da~'s were spent riding, breaking broncos, hunting coyote and 
taking his l~rst steps as an explorer. For it was in Montana 
that he had his first encounter with another culture the Blackfoot 
[Pikuni] Indians. He became a blood brother of the Pikuni and 
was later to write about them in his first published no~el, 
Buckskin Brigades. When he was ten years old, in 1921, he rejoined 
his family. His father, alarmed at his apparent lack of formal 
learning, immediately put him under intense instruction to make 
up for the time he had "lost" in the wilds of Montana. So it 
was that by the time he was twelve years old, L. Ron Hubbard 
had already read a goodly number of the world's greatest classics 
- and his interest in religion and philosophy was born. ,z

~ ~ /I ~ ~1

Virtually none of this is true. The real story of L. Ron Hubbard's 
early life is considerably more prosaic and begins not on a 
cattle ranch but in a succession of rented apartments necessarily 
modest since his father was a struggling white-collar clerk 
drifting from job to job. His grandfather was neither z distinguished 
sea captain nor a wealthy


8	Bare-Faced Messiah

rancher but a small-time veterinarian who supplemented his income 
renting out horses and buggies from a livery barn. It is true, 
however, that his name was Lafayette O. Waterbury.
As far as anyone knexv, the Waterburys came from the Catskills, 
the dark-forested mountain range in New York State celebrated 
in the early nineteenth century as the setting for Washington 
Irving's popular short story about Rip Van Winkle - a character 
only marginally more fantastic than the Waterburys' most famous 
scion.
Shortly before the turmoil of the Civil War divided the nation, 
Abram \Vaterbury and his young wife, Margaret, left the Catskills 
to join the thousands of hopeful settlers trekking west in covered 
wagons to seek a better future. By 1863 he had set up in business 
as a veterinarian in Grand Rapids, Michigan and on 25 July 1864, 
Margaret gave birth to a son whom they named Lafayette, perhaps 
after the town in Indiana at which they had stopped on their 
journey before turning north to Grand Rapids.
Lafayette, undoubtedly thankful to be known to his friends as 
Lafc, learned the veterinary trade from his father and married 
before he was twenty. tlis bride was twenty-one-year-old Ida 
Corinne Dc\Volfc, fr~m l lampshirc, Illinois. Diminutive in 
stature, Ida was a gentle, intelligent, str~mg-willcd yotmg 
woman whose mother had died in childbirth, with her eighth child, 
when Ida was sixteen. John Dc\Volfc, hcr fatl~cr, was a wealthy 
banker who clung to a fanciful family lcgcnd about the origins 
of the Dc\Volfcs in Europe. Details and dates were vague, but 
the essence of the story was that a cc~urticr accompa~3'ing 
a prince on a hunting expedition in France had somehow saved 
his master from an attack by a wolf; in gratitude the prince 
had ennobled the faithful courtier, ~estowing upon him tbc title 
of Count dc Loupe, a name that was eventually anglicized to 
DcXVolfe. [No records exist to support this story, either in 
Britain or France; x."ice-:\dmiral t-tarry De \Volf, twelfth-generation 
descendant of Balthazar De \Volf, the first De \Volf in America, 
says he has never heard of Count de Loupe.s]
DeXVolfc offered the young couple the use of a farm he owned 
in Nebraska on condition that Lafe would maintain and improve 
the property. It was at Burnett, a settlement on the Elkhorn 
river, one hundred miles west of Omaha, which had recently been 
opened up by the arrival of the Sioux City and Pacific Railroad.
Burnett was an unremarkable cluster of log cabins, dug-outs 
and ramshackle pine huts huddled in a lazy curve of the river 
and surrounded by gently rolling prairie. It might never have 
appeared on any map had not the homesteaders persuaded the railroad 
to make a halt nearby. The first train arrived in 1879 and thereafter 
the town developed around the railroad depot rather than the 
river; within a

	A Dubious Prodigy	9

few years a general store, saloon and livery stable were in 
business. The Davis House Hotel, opened in 1884, was considered 
the finest on the whole Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley 
Railroad.
By the time Lafe and Ida Waterbury arrived in Burnett, soon 
after the opening of the hotel, Ida was heavy with child; a 
daughter, Ledora May, was born in 1885. During the next twenty 
years Ida would produce seven more children and selflessly devote 
herself to the upbringing of a happy, close and high-spirited 
familx'.
For a couple of years Lafe worked his father-in-law's farm, 
but a bitter family row developed when DeWolfe indicated his 
intention to exclude his other children and leave the property 
solely to Ida and Lafe. Rather than be the cause of strife in 
the family, Lafe moved out, opened a livery stable in town on 
Second Street and established himself as a veterinarian. His 
business was a success because he was well-liked and respected 
in the area, particularly after playing a starring role in a 
local domestic drama which briefly held the toxvn gossips in 
thrall. Ida's sister, who had also moved to I~urnett, woke up 
one morning to discover that her husband had left her and taken 
thcir infant son with him to New York. Lafe immediately packed 
his bags, set off for New York bv train, tracked down the crring 
husband and returned to Burnett in triumph, his nephew in his 
arms.
When Ida gave birth to another daughter in 1886, it was a typically 
warm-hcartcd gesture that prompted them to name the baby Toilic. 
A young man who used to hang around the livery stable had been 
engaged to a girl called Toilic before he became mentally deranged; 
whenever he felt 'strange' he would always, for some reason, 
seek out Lafe and find reassurance from his company. ~,Vhen 
he learned that Ida and Lafe had had another daughter, he shyly 
asked if they would call her Toilie, after the sweetheart he 
knew he would never be able to marry. Years later the irreverent 
Toilie would say 'I'm nuts because I was named by a crazy man' 
and shriek with laughter.
Toilie was still a baby when hard times hit Burnett. In JanuarS.' 
1887 a catastrophic blizzard swept across the plains west of 
the Mississippi, killing thousands of head of cattle; most of 
the local ranchers were mined overnight. The farmers fared no 
better, for that terrible winter was followed by a succession 
of blistering summers accompanied by plagues of grasshoppers 
which devastated the already sparse crops. But at a point when 
many of the despairing townsfolk were talking about giving up 
the struggle against the unforgiving elements, the climate suddenly 
improved and the detested grasshoppers disappeared; unlike many 
small towns in the Nebraska prairie, Burnett
, survived the crisis.
By 1899 the local newspaper, the Burnett Citizen, was able to 
report, as evidence of increasing prosperity, that Lafe \Vaterbur)., 
,.,,'as


10	Bare-Faced Messiah

among those who had built new dwelling houses in the town that 
year.	! It was a fine, two-storey, wood-frame house on Elm 
Street, sheltered at the front by two huge elm trees. At the 
rear, beyond a stand of willows, it overlooked prairie stretching 
away into hazy infinity; deer and antelope often ventured within 
sight of the back yard and at night the howls of coyotes made 
the children shiver in their beds.
The Waterburys certainly needed the space offered by their new 
home, for by now lx, lav and Toilie had been joined by Ida Irene 
(called Ix. Iidgie by the family because she was so small), 
a brother Ray, and two more sisters, Louise and Hope. Another 
two girls, Margaret and June, would follow in 1903 and 1905. 
Lafe and Ida doted on their children, thoroughly enjoyed their 
company and liked nothing more than when the house was full 
of noise and laughter. Ida was determined that her children 
would have a happier upbringing than her own - she never forgot 
being constantly beaten at school for writing with her left 
hand - and as a consequence the xXaterburvs were unusually relaxed 
parents for their time, encouraging their offspring to attend 
church on Sundays, for example, but caring little which church 
they attended. Surprisingly, there was considerable choice. 
For a small town with a population of less than a thuusand people, 
Burnctt was an excessively Gud-fcaring community anti supported 
four thriving churct~cs - Baptist, l. uthcran, ~Icthodist and 
Cathulic.
Lafc and Ida always claimed the.,,' were too busy to g~ to church 
themselves, although Lafc openly declared, to his children, 
his ambivalcnce to~'ards religion: 'Some of the finest men I 
have ever known were preachers,' he liked to say, 'and some 
of the biggest hypocrites I have ever known were preact~ers.' 
He was a large, bluff man with an irrepressible sense of humour, 
a talent for mimicry and a hint of the showman about him: he 
often used to announce his intention to put all his children 
on the stage. In the evenings, ~vhen he had had a drink or two, 
he would sit on the porch and play his fiddle, which had a negro's 
head carved at the end of the shaft.
Tutored by Lafe, who was considered to be one of the best horsemen 
in .Xladison County, all the children learned to ride almost 
as soon as the,,' could walk and each of them was allocated 
a pony from the x,%'aterburv livery stable. Also quartered with 
the horses was the family cow, Star, who obligingly provided 
them every day with as much milk as they could drink.
In 1902, because of confusion with a similarly-named town nearby, 
the good folk of Burnett decided to change the name of their 
town to Tilden, thereby commemorating an unsuccessful presidential 
candidate, Samuel J. Tilden, who had contested the 1876 election 
won by Rutherford B. Haves. ),lay was the first of the xXaterburv 
children to graduate, in 1904, from Tilden High School. Tall, 
outspoken and

	A Dubious Prodt~	11

independent, she was an unashamed feminist - she was outraged 
when she read in the newspaper that a policeman in New York 
had arrested a woman for smoking in the street and thrilled 
to learn that deaf and blind Helen Keller had graduated from 
Radcliffe College the same year she graduated from Tilden. It 
surprised no one in the family when May announced that she wanted 
a career, declaring her belief that there must be more to life 
than caring for a husband and bearing children. Accordingly, 
and with the blessing of her parents, she set off for Omaha 
to train as a teacher. But by the time she had qualified as 
a high school and institute teacher, certificate of Nebraska, 
she was writing letters home about a young sailor she had met 
called 'Hub'.
Harry Ross Hubbard was not a descendent of a long line of Hubbards 
but an orphan. Born Henry August Wilson on 31 August 1886 at 
Fayette, Iowa, his mother had died when he was a baby and he 
had been adopted by a Mr and Mrs James Hubbard, farmers in Frederiksburg, 
Iowa, who changed his name to Harry Ross Hubbard.
At school, Harry was not a high flier. He briefly attended a 
business college at Norma Springs, Iowa, but dropped out when 
he realized he had little chance of a degree. On 1 September 
1904, the day after bis eighteenth birthday, he joined the United 
States Navy as an enlisted man. While serving as a yeoman on 
the {.'SS t'ennsylvania, he began writing 'romantic tales' of 
Navy life for newspapers back home, earning useful extra income. 
He was posted to the US Navy recruiting office in Omaha in 1906 
when he met lx,'Iay Waterbur`,' and it was not long before her 
plans for an independent career were more or less forgotten. 
They married on 25 April 1909, and by the summer of 1910 lxday 
was pregnant; her husband, now discharged from the Navy, had 
found work as a commercial teller in the advertising department 
of the Omaha 1a'brld Herald newspaper.
The Waterburys, meanwhile, had left Tilden and moved to Durant 
in south-east Oklahoma, close to the border with Texas. Lafe 
had seen the first Model T. Ford trundle cautiously through 
the main street of Tilden and realized that his livery stable 
faced an uncertain future; when a close friend in Durant suggested 
to him that the warmer climate in the south would be better 
for all the family, he talked it over with Ida and they decided 
to go, making the eight hundred-mile trip by railroad. Ray, 
then sixteen, travelled with Star and the horses and fed and 
watered the animals during the journey.
Only Toilie stayed behind in Tilden. She was twenty-three and 
working as a nurse and secretary for Dr Stuart Campbell, who 
had opened a small hospital in a wood-frame house on Oak Street, 
just a block away from t~he Waterbury family home. Toilie was 
reluctant to give up her job and her parents readily accepted 
her decision not to go with them to Oklahoma.


12	Bare-Faced Messiah

Campbell, who had set up a practice in Tilden in 1900, had delivered 
Ida Waterbury's two youngest children, but it was the fact that 
Toilie was working for him that persuaded May to return to Tilden 
to give birth to her first child. With only a little more than 
a year between them, Nlav and Toilie had always been close, 
walking to and from school arm in arm, sharing a bedroom and 
incessantly giggling together over childhood secrets.
Toilie was waiting at the railroad depot in Tilden at the end 
of February 1911 when Nlay, helped by a solicitous Hub, heaved 
herself down from the train. Although Tilden was still no more 
than four dirt streets running north to south, intersected by 
four more running east-west, Ix. lay noticed plenty of changes 
in the short time she had been away - four grain elevators had 
been built, three saloons and two pool halls had opened, Nlrs 
Nlayes was competing with the Botsford sisters in the millinery 
trade and there was even a new 'opera house'true, it had yet 
to stage its first opera, but tile road shows were always popular, 
particularly since Alexander's Ragtime Band had set the nation's 
feet tapping.
Ixday did not have long to wait for the 'blessed event'. She 
went into labour during the afternoon of Sunday 10 Ix, larch, 
and Toilie arranged for her to be admitted immediately to Dr 
Campbcll's hospital. At one minute past two o'clock the following 
morning, she was delivered of a son. She and t luh had already 
decided that if it was a boy, he would be nanled Lafayette Ronald 
l lubbard.

Ida and Lafc x, Vatcrburv did not see their first grandchild 
until Christmas 1911, when ttub, Nlav and the baby arrived to 
spend the holiday with them in Durant. Lafe, who had been out 
treating a neighbour's horse, burst into the house, threw his 
hat on tile floor and leaned over the crib to shake his grandson's 
hand. Baby Ron smiled obligingly and Lafe whooped with pleasure, 
trumpeting at his wife: 'l.ook, tile little son of a bitch knows 
me already.'
The biggest surprise for the family was that Ron had a startling 
thatch of fiuffv orange hair. Hub was dark-haired and tile Waterburys 
had no more than a hint of auburn in their colouring - nothing 
like the impish little carrot-top who gurgled happily as he 
was passed from one lap to another. Seven-year-old Margaret, 
known in the familv as Nlarnie, spoke for evervone when she 
proclaimed her new nephew to be 'cute as a bug's ear'.
During that Christmas May told her parents that Hub had got 
a new job on a newspaper in Kalispell, Montana, and that they 
would be moving there from Omaha in the New Year. She was hopeful 
that it would prove to be a step up for them.
In tile spring of 1912, May began writing long ana enthusiastic

	A Dubious Prodig3.'	13

letters from Kalispell. Perhaps missing the family, she often 
hinted that they might consider joining her and Hub in Montana. 
Kalispell was a fine, modern city, she wrote, with paved streets, 
electric lighting and many fine houses. The surrounding Flathead 
Valley was famous for its fruit and at blossom time the orchards 
of apples, peaches, pears, cherries and plums had to be seen 
to be believed. One Kalispell farmer, Fred Whiteside, was so 
confident about the quality of his fruit that he boasted he 
would give $1000 to anyone finding a worm in one of his apples.
May's letters gave her parents much to think about, for they 
both recognized that the move to Oklahoma had not been a success. 
x, Vhen they first arrived in Durant, Lafe bought a livery barn 
on the outskirts of toxvn and for several months the whole family 
lived in the hayloft above the animals. They built a cookhouse 
on the property so they had somewhere to eat their meals and 
then started on a house.
None of the children minded the privations in the least - indeed, 
they rather enjoyed thinking of themselves as true pioneers 
- but Lafc found the humid summers very debilitating. It made 
May's description of the blossom in lx, lontana all the more 
enticing.
Ida had been deeply disturbed by an incident that occurred soon 
after they moved into their new house. A negro raped a white 
woman in tile town and while a posse was out looking for him, 
a rumour took hold that there was going to be a negro uprising, 
causing somctl~ing approaching panic, particularly in remote 
outlying areas. At nightfall. Lafe and Ray took guns and went 
out on horses to protect the approaches to their property, while 
the girls waited behind barred windows, watching flares bounce 
through the night and listening to the rattle of cartwheels 
as farmers shepherded their families into the safety of the 
town.
Although there was no uprising, both Ida and Lafe were concerned 
that there might be a 'next time' and the}' did not want to 
feel that their safety depended on their willingness to protect 
themselves with guns. In the fall of 1912, the Waterburys once 
again sold their house, packed up their belongings and loaded 
their livestock on to railcars, this time bound for Kalispell, 
lxdontana, 1500 miles to the north-west. Long delays at railheads, 
while waiting with their freight cars to be picked up by north-bound 
trains, added days to the journey and it was a week before they 
were hooked on to a Great Northern Railway train labouring across 
the Rocky Mountains through the spectacular passes that led 
to Kalispell.
The family reunion was the happiest of occasions and no one 
received more attention than Ron, who had learned to take his 
first faltering steps. 'He was very much the love child of the 
whole family,' said Nlarnie. 'He was adored by even'one. I can 
still see that mop of red hair running around.'


14	Bare-Faced Messiah

Lafe found a small house in Orchard Park, a short walk from 
May and Hub's home and only a block from the fairground, where 
he hoped to find work as a veterinarian. With only two bedrooms, 
it was not nearly big enough for the Waterbury tribe, but it 
had a barn that would accommodate all the horses and still leave 
enough room for the long-suffering and widely-travelled Star. 
Marnie and June, the two youngest children, were given one of 
the bedrooms and Lafe built a big wood-frame tent in the yard 
for the other four: inside, it was divided by a canvas screen 
- Ray slept on a bunk on one side and Midgie, Louise and Hope 
were on the other. They had a stove to keep them warm in the 
winter and were perfectly content. On summer evenings, Marnie 
and June often heard their older sisters whispering and tittering 
in the tent and sometimes they crept outside to join them and-share 
the cherries they stole almost every night from a neighbouring 
garden.
The Waterburys were happy in Kalispell: Ida and Lafe made no 
secret of the pleasure they took in being able to see their 
grandson every day; Midgie met her future husband, Bob, in the 
town; and Ray developed an impressive talent for training horses. 
Under his careful tuition, the family ponies learned tricks 
like counting by pawing the ground with a hoof and stealing 
handkerchiefs from his pocket. TIm Waterbury 'show horses', 
ridden bv the Waterbury children, became a popular feattire 
in the town parades and they always competed in the races at 
the fairground.
Baby Ron remained the centre of the family's attention and the 
star of the Waterbury photograph albums - Ron perched in an 
apple tree, Ron with Liberty Bill, their English bull terrier, 
on the porch of the Kalispell house, Ron tD'ing to measure the 
back yard with a tape. Having clearly inherited something of 
his grandfather's showmanship, Ron thoroughly enjoyed being 
in the family spotlight.
Lafe was walking down KalispelI's main street one day with Marnie 
and Ron when he bumped into Samuel Stewart, the governor of 
Montana, whom he had met several time3. 'Hey Sam,' he said, 
'I'd like you to meet my little grandson, Ron.' Stewart stooped, 
solemnly shook hands with the boy and stood chatting to Lafe 
for a few minutes. After he had gone, Marnie, who had been neither 
introduced nor acknowledged, turned furiously on her father 
and snapped, 'Why didn't you introduce me? Don't I matter?' 
Lafe had the grace to apologize, but lxdarnie could see by his 
broad grin that he was not in the least repentant.
As well as being favoured so shamelessly, Ron could always count 
on the support of his many aunts in any family dispute. While 
he was learning to talk, he would frequently drive his mother 
to distraction by running round the house repeating the same, 
usually meaningless,

	A Dubious Prodigy	15

word over and over again. One afternoon at the Waterbury home, 
the word was 'eskobiddle'. lXlay, at the end of her patience, 
finally shouted at him: 'If you say that once more I'm going 
to go and wash your mouth out with soap.'
Ron looked coolly at her and smiled slowly. 'Eskobiddle!' he 
yelled at the top of his voice. tx, Iay immediately dragged 
him off and carried out her threat. A few minutes later, Ida 
heard shrieks coming from the back yard and discovered Midgie 
and Louise holding .'May down and washing her mouth with soap 
to avenge their precious nephew.
Less than twelve months after the Waterburys arrived in Kalispell, 
IX, lay broke the news that she and Hub were going to move on; 
Hub was having problems with his job on the newspaper and had 
been offered a position as resident manager of the Family Theater 
in the state capital, Helena. Ida and Lafe were naturally upset 
but, as May said, Helena was only two hundred miles away and 
it was also on the Great Northern Railroad, so they would be 
able to visit each other frequently.
Nevertheless, it would not be the same, both doting grandparents 
gloomily concluded, as having little Ronald in and out of the 
house almost every day.

Helena in 1913 was a pleasant city of Victorian brick and stone 
buildings encircled bv the Rocky Mountains, whose snow-dusted 
peaks stippled with pines provided a scenic backdrop in every 
direction. The Capital Building, with its massive copper dome 
and fluted doric columns, eloquently proclaimed its status as 
the first city of Montana, as did the construction of the neo-Gothic 
St Helena Cathedral, which was nearing completion on Warren 
Street. Electric streetcars clanked along the brick-paved main 
street, once a twisting mountain defile known as Last Chance 
Gulch in commemoration of the four prospectors who had unexpectedly 
struck gold there in 1864 and subsequently rounded the city.
The Familv Theater, at 21 Last Chance Gulch, occupied part of 
a handsome red-brick terrace with an ornate stone coping, but 
it suffered somewhat from its position, since it was in the 
heart of the city's red-light district and could not have been 
more inappropriately named. Respectable families arriving for 
the evening performance were required to avert their eyes from 
the colourful ladies leaning out of the windows of the brothels 
on each side of the theater, although it was not unknown for 
the occasional father to slip out after the show had started 
and return before the final curtain, curiously flushed.
Harry Hubbard's duties were to sell tickets during the day, 
collect them at the door as~atrons arrived, maintain order if 
necessan,' during the show and lock up at the end of the evening. 
Although his title was


16	Bare-Faced Messiah

resident manager, he chose not to live at the theater and rented 
a rickety little wooden house, not much better than a shack, 
on Henry Street, on the far side of the railroad track. May 
hated it and soon found a snlall apartment on the top floor 
of a house at 15 Rodncy Street, closer to the theater and in 
a better part of town.
Travelling road shows, sometimes comprising not much more than 
a singer, pianist and a comedian, were the staple fare of the 
Family Theater. Ron was often allowed to see the show and he 
would sit with his mott~er in the darkened auditorium completely 
enthralled, no matter what the act. Years later he would recall 
sitting in a box at the age of two wearing his father's hat 
and applauding with such enthusiasm that the aodience began 
cheering him rather than the cast. He claimed the players took 
twelve curtain calls before they realized what was happening.4
\Vhen the Waterburrs paid a visit to Helena, }tub arranged for 
them to see the show, made sure they had the best seats in the 
house and solemnly stood at the door of the theater to collect 
their tickets as they filed in. Not long after their return 
to Kalispell, May heard that her father had slipped on a banana 
skin, fallen and broken his arm. She did not worry overmuch 
at first, even when her mother wrote to sav that the arm had 
not been set properly and had had to be re-broken. Indeed, her 
w<~rrics were rather closer to home, for l larry had been told 
by the owner of the Family Tt~cater that unless the audiences 
improved the theater might have to close.
The news from abroad was also giving cause for concern, despite 
x, Voodrow Wilso~l's promise to keep America out of the war 
threatening to engulf Europe. On Sunday 2 August 1914, headlines 
in the Ilelcna Independent announced that Germauy had declared 
war on Russia and a despatch from London confirmed: 'The die 
is cast . . . Europe is to be plunged into a general war.' Closer 
to home, rival unions in the copper mines at Butte, only sixty 
miles from Helena, were also at war. \Vhen the ix, liners' Union 
Hall was dynamited, Governor Stewart declared martial law and 
sent in the National Guard to keep order.
It was in this turbulent climate that the Family Theater finally 
closed its doors, for the audiences did not pick up. Harry ttubbard 
was once again obliged to look for work, but once again he was 
lucky he was taken on as a book-keeper for the Ives-Smith Coal 
Company, 'dealers in Original Bear Creek, Roundup, Acme and 
Belt Coal', at 41 \Vest Sixth Avenue..Xlay, meanwhile, found 
a cheaper apartment for the family on the first floor of a shingled 
wood-frame house at 1109 Fifth Avenue.
Back in Kalispell, Lafe \Vaterburv was still having trouble 
with his arm. [te was not the kind of man to complain about 
bad luck, but no

	A Dubious Prodigy	17

one could have blamed him had he done so. His arm had to be 
set a third time and just when it seemed it was beginning to 
heal he was thrown to the ground by a horse he was examining. 
He was never to regain full strength in that arm and although 
he was only fifty years old he knew he would not be able to 
continue working as a vet, with all the pulling and pushing 
it involved. Only the four youngest Waterbury girls were still 
at home, but Lafe did not think he could afford to retire, even 
if that had been his ambition. (His taxable assets were listed 
in the Kalispell City Directory at $1550, which made him comfortably 
off, but not by any means rich.) No prospects presented themselves 
immediately in Kalispell and Lafe and Ida began considering 
another move. It somehow seen~ed natural, since they had followed 
1May to Kalispell, that they should now think about moving to 
Helena.
In the summer of 1915, Toilie, back home on a visit from the 
East, drove her father to Ilclena in the family's Ixdodel T. 
Ford so that he could take a look around. They stayed, of course, 
with May and tlub in their cramped apartment on Fifth Avenue 
and Lafe was delighted to have the company of his four-year-old 
grandson every time he went for a walk in town.
Hub presumably talked to Iris father-in-law about his job and 
the two men almost certainly discussed tim ever-increasing denland 
for coal and tile business opportunities available in ttclena. 
As a bookkeeper, tlub knew tile figures, knew the profit lves-Smith 
was making and knew the strength of the market - it was information 
that undoubtedly influenced Lafe's decision to move his family 
to tlelcna and set up a coal company of his own.
The Waterburys arrived in 1916 and bought a house at 736 Fifth 
Avenue, on the corner of Raleigh Street, just two blocks from 
May and Hub's apartment. Lafe considered himself very lucky 
to get the property, for it was a sturdy two-storey house, built 
around the turn of the century, with light and airy rooms, fine 
stained glass windows, a wide covered porch and an unusual conical 
roof over a curved bay at one corner. It would quickly become 
known bv everyone in the family, with the greatest affection, 
as 'the old brick'.
The Waterbury girls had wept bitterly on leaving Kalispell, 
largely because their father had insisted that Bird, the Indian 
pony on which the)' had all learned to ride, was too old to 
make the journey and would have to be left behind. But their 
spirits soon lifted as they ran excitedly from room to room 
in their new home and imagined themselves as fashionable young 
ladies of substance.
Fifth Avenue was not yet a paved road, but it was lined with 
struggling saplings which offered the promise of respectability 
and, more importantly/, it was stl-addled to the east by the 
Capital Building,


18	Bate-Faced Messiah

a monumental edifice of such grandeur that the girls were all 
cteeply awed by its proximity. To the west, Fifth Avenue appeared 
to plunge directly into the lorested green flanks of Mount Helena 
and just two blocks south of 'the old brick', Raleigh Street 
ended in grassy hummocks which led up to the mountains and promised 
limitless opportunities for play. Nlarnie, then thirteen years 
old, could hardly imagine a better place to be.
Lafe rented a yard with a stable adjoining the Northern Pacific 
railroad track where it crossed Nlontana Avenue and put up a 
sign announcing that the Capital City Coal Company had opened 
for business. It was very much a family affair, as listed in 
the tielena City Directory for 1917: Lafayette O. Waterbury 
was president, Ray was vice-president and Toilie (recalled from 
the East by her father- 'It's time to come home,' he told her, 
'I need you.') was secretarytreasurer. Harry Ross Hubbard had 
also joined the fledgling enterprise, but the only vacancy was 
in the lowly capacity of teamster.
On 2 January 1917 Ron was enrolled at the kindergarten at Central 
School on Warren Street, just across from the new cathedral 
which, with its twin spires and grey stone fa~2ade, towered 
reprovingly over the city. Most days he was xvalkcd to school 
by his aunts, Nlarmc and June, who xvcrc at 1Iclcna I ligh, 
opposite Central School.
P, on, who xvas known to the ncighbourhood kids as 'brick' bccausc 
of his hair, would later clai~n that while still at kindergarten 
hc used the 'lumberjack lighting' hc had learned from bis grandfather 
to deal with a gang of bullies who were tcrrorizing children 
on their way to and from the school. But one of Ron's closest 
childhood friends, Andrew Richardson, has no recollection of 
him protecting local children from bullies. 'lie never protected 
nobody,' said Richardson. 'It was all bullshit. Old Ilubbard 
was the greatest con artist who ever lived. ,s

Although the war in Europe, with its unbelievable casualty toil, 
was filling plenty of columns in the Independent, local news, 
as always, received quite as much prominence as despatches from 
foreign correspondents. Suffragettes figured prominently in 
many of tile headlines and after the women's suffrage amendment 
was narrowly approved in tbe Montana legislature, the victorious 
women celebrated by electing one of their leaders, Jeanette 
Rankin, to a seat in the US Congress. V','omen voters also helped 
push through a bill to ban the sale of alcohol as the Prohibition 
lobby gained ground across the nation.
Even the news, m February 1917, that Germany had declared its 
intention to engage in unrestricted submarine warfare did not 
fully hit home until the following month when it was learned 
that German

	A l)ubious t'rodib'	19

submarines had attacked and sunk three US merchant ships in 
the Atlantic. On 6 April, the United States declared war on 
Germany; Congresswotnan Rankin was one of only a handful of 
dissenters voting against the war resolution.
Mobilization began at once in Helena at Fort t Iarrison, headquarters 
of the 2nd Regiment, but the wave of patriotic fervour that 
swept the state brought in its wake a sinister backlash in the 
form of witchd~u~ts for 'traitors' and 'subversives'. In August, 
self-styled vigilantes in Butte dragged labour leader Frank 
Little from his rooming house and hanged him from a railroad 
trestle on the edge of town. His 'crime' was that he was leader 
of the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical group viewed 
as seditious.
Although selcctive draft mustered more than seven thousand troops 
in Montana by the beginning of August, }larry tlubbard felt, 
as an ex-serviceman, that he should not wait to be drafted. 
I Ic had served for four years in the US Navy and his country 
needed trained seamen. Yes, hc had family responsibilities, 
but he was also an American. He knew his duty and May knew she 
could not, and should not, stop him. On 10 October, Hub kissed 
her goodbye, hugged his six-year-old son and left lielena for 
the Navy Recruiting Station at Salt Lake City, Utah, to re-enlist 
for a four-year term in tile US Navy. Two weeks later, little 
Ron and Iris mother joined the crowds lining Last Chance Gulch 
to watch Montana's 163rd Infantry march out of town on their 
way to join the figbting in Europe. Ron thought they were just 
'swell'.
After 1tub had gone, May and Ron moved into :the old brick' 
with the rest of tile family and May found a job as a clerk 
with the State Bureau of Child and Animal Protection in the 
Capital Building. If little Ron experienced any sense of loss 
from the absence of his father, it was certainly alleviated 
by the intense warmth and sociability of the Waterbury family. 
lie had grandparents who considered he could do no wrong, a 
loving mother and an assorted array of adoring aunts who liked 
nothing more than to spend time playing with him.
It was inevitable that he would be spoiled with all the attention, 
but he was also a rewarding child, exceptionally imaginative 
and adventurous, always filling his time with original ideas 
and games. 'He was very quick, always coming up with ideas no 
one else had thought of,' said Marnie. 'He'd grab a couple of 
beer bottles and use them as binoculars or he would write little 
plays and draw the scenery and everything. Whatever he started 
he finished: when he made up his mind he was going to do something, 
you could be sure he would see it through.'
Hub wrote home frequently and made it clear that he was enjoying 
being back in the service, the war notwithstanding. He had been 
selected for training as an Assistant Paymaster and if he made 
the


20	Bare-Faced Messiah

grade, he proudly explained in a letter to May, it would mean 
that he would become an officer. On 13 October 1918 Itarry Ross 
Hubbard was honorably discharged from enlisted service in the 
US Navy Reserve Force and the following day he was appointed 
Assistant Paymaster with the rank of Ensign. He was thirty-two 
years old, positively geriatric for an Ensign - but it was one 
of tile proudest moments of his life.
Eleven days later, the front pages of the ttelena Independent 
was dominated by a single word in letters three inches high: 
V~AC~. Underneath, the sub-heading declared, 'Cowardly Kaiser 
and Son Flee to t{olland.' The terms of surrender were to be 
so severe, tile newspaper innocently reported, that Germany 
would forever 'be absolutely deprived from further military 
power of action on land and sea and in the air'.
Unlike most wives whose husbands had gone to war, May knew that 
the Armistice did not mean that Hub would be coming home; hc 
}lad already told her that he intended to make a career in the 
Navy. It was a decision she could not sensibly oppose, for she 
was obliged to admit that he had been incapable of making progress 
in his varied civilian jobs and hc was clearly happier in tile 
Navy. Furthermore, his position with the Capital City Coal Company 
was far from secure, for she knew that her father was worricd 
almut tim business - tile>' were having ttiflicultv finding 
sofficicnt supplies of coal from Roundup and a third c~al company 
had opened up in town, increasing competition. The \Vatcrbury 
girls were helping with the company's cash flow problems by 
knocking on doors round and about Fifth Avenue to collect payn~ent 
for overdue bills.
Lafc \Vaterburv never alloxved his business worries to cast 
a shadow over his family life and for the children, Ron included, 
weeks and months passed with not much to fret about other than 
whether or not the taffy [toffee] would set. 'Taffy-pulls' were 
a regular ritual in the \~,'aterbury household: a coat hanger 
was kept permanently on the back of the door in the basement 
to loop the sugar and water mix and stretch it repeatedly, filling 
tile taffy with air bubbles so that it would snap satisfactorily 
when it was set. Liberty Bill would always sit and watch the 
proceedings with saliva dripping from his jaws. Once he grabbed 
a mouthful when the taffy looped too close to the floor and 
disappeared under a bush ill tile garden for hours while he 
tried to suck it out of his teeth.
One day Nlarnie and June were in the basement pulling taffy 
with Ron when they heard their father laughing out loud in tile 
front room. They ran upstairs to see what was going on and found 
him standing at the window, both hands clutched to his quivering 
midriff, tears streaming down his cheeks. Outside, a young lad3, 
in a tight hobble

	A Dubious P~odig3'	21

skirt - the very latest fashion in Helena - was attempting to 
step down from the wooden sidewalk to cross the road. To her 
acute embarrassment, she was discovering that while it was feasible 
to totter along a level surface, it was almost impossible to 
negotiate a step of more than a few inches without hoisting 
her skirt to a level well beyond the bounds of decorum, or jumping 
with both feet together. Eventually, shuffling to tim edge of 
the sidewalk, she managed to slide first one foot down, then, 
with a precarious swivel, the other. Bv this time Lafe was forced 
to sit down, for he could no longer stand, and the entire fanlily 
had gathered at the window.
Laughter was an omnipresent feature of life in 'tile old brick'. 
\Vhen Toilie brought home a bottle of wine and gave her mother 
a glass, the unaccustomed alcohol thickened her tongue and tile 
more she struggled with ever more recalcitrant syllables, tile 
more her daughters howled. Then there was the time when Lafe 
leaned back in his swivel chair, overbalanced, fell under a 
shelf piled with magazines and hit his head as he tried to get 
up - no one would ever forget that. On the other hand almost 
tim worst incident any of the children could remember was tile 
day when their mother's pet canary escaped through an open window 
into tile snow and never returned. Ida had loved that canary 
when she was lying in bed she would whistle and it would fly 
over, perch on the covers and pick her teeth.
In tile summer, the children speut every waking hour after school 
outdoors. 1Xlay, who had changed her job and now worked as a 
clerk in tile State Department of Agriculture and Publicity, 
bought a snlall plot of land iu tile footllills of the mountains, 
about two hours' walk from the family home and paid a local 
carpenter to put up a raw pine shack. It had just two rooms 
inside, with a long covered porch at tile front. They called 
it 'The Old ttomestead' and used it at weekends and holidays, 
taking enough food and drink with them to last tile duration, 
and drawing water from a well on a nearby property. l\1ost times 
Lafe would drive them out in tile Nlodel T. and drop them on 
the Butte road at the closest point to the house, from where 
they walked across tile fields. The children loved TIle Old 
Homestead for the simple pleasure of being in the mountains, 
playing endless games under a perfect blue sky, optimistically 
panning for gold in tumbling streams of crystal clear water, 
picking great bunches of wild flowers, cooking on a campfire 
and huddling round an oil lamp at night, telling spooky stories.
When they were not planning a trip to The Old Homestead, Ron 
pestered his aunts to take him on a hike up to the top of .'\Iount 
Helena, wilere they would sit with a picnic, munching sandwiches 
and silently staring out over the sprawl of tile city below 
and the ring of mountains beyond. One of the trails up the mountain 
passed a smuky


22	Bare-Faced Messiah

cave said to be haunted by the men who tlad used it as a hideout 
while being stalked by Indians in tile mid-nineteenth century. 
iMarnic used to take Ron, squirming with thrilled terror, into 
tlie cave to look for ghosts.
1Xlarnie and Ron, with only eight years between tbem, were as 
close as brother and sister. When she was in a school play at 
Helena Higb, taking the part of ~larie Antoinette, he sat wide-eyed 
throughout the performance tlien ran all the way home to tell 
his grandma how beautiful ~larnie was.
While the children remained blithely unaware of events outside 
tile comforting confines of 'the old brick' and The Old Homestead, 
few adults in ix, lontana were able to enjoy such a blinkered 
existence. After years of abundant crops and high wheat prices, 
postwar depression brought about a collapse in the market - 
bushel prices halved in the space of three months - and the 
summer of 1919 saw the first of a cycle of disastrous droughts. 
Every day brought further omin{~us tidings of mortgage foreclosures, 
banks closing, abandoned farms turned into dustbowls and thousands 
of settlers leaving tile state to seek a livelihood elsewhere.
In this gloomy economic climate, Lafc Waterbury was forced to 
close down thc Capital City Coal Company. For a while he tinkered 
~ith a smllll business selling atltomobilc spares and vulcanizing 
tyros, but the depression meant that motorists were laying up 
their cars rather than repairing tbcm and Lafc decided to retire, 
thankful tbat hc still had sufficient capital left to support 
his family.
1Xlay helped with the houschuld expenses, although she realized 
she and Ron would not be able to stay there forever. llub had 
been promoted to Lieutenant (Junior Grade) in November 19t9, 
and whenever lie cotlid had been coming bome on leave to see 
his wife and son. tie was still intent on a career in the Navy, 
although he had already suffered some setbacks. He had been 
obliged to appear before a court of inquiry in May, 1920, while 
serving as Supply Officer on tile USS At'oostock, to explain 
a deficiency in his accounts of $942.28. tte also had an unfortunate 
tendency to overlook personal debts. No less than fourteen creditors 
in Kalispell claimed he left behind unpaid bills totalling $125; 
Fred Fisch, high-grade clothier of Vallejo, California, was 
pursuing him for $10 still owed on a uniform overcoat; and a 
Dr McPherson of San Diego was owed $30. All of them complained 
to the Navy Department, casting a shadow over Hubbard's record.~ 
He had a long spell of inactive duty at the beginning of 1921 
while he was waiting for a new posting and he and 1May spent 
a great deal of time discussing their future. Hub expected Nlay 
to conform, like other Navy wives, and trail around the country 
with him from posting to posting; when he was at sea, he wanted 
her to be close to his ship's

	A Dubious P,odi,O.'	23

home port. 1May obviously wanted to be with ttub, but she was 
reluctant to move Ron from school to school and loath to leave 
her family. She had perhaps secretly hoped that ttub would tire 
of the Navy and return to civilian life in t lclcna, but the 
depression wiped out whatever miserable opportunities tie might 
have had of finding work and she realized it would never happen.
In September 1921, Hub was posted to the battleship/_~,%','~' 
Oklahoma as an Assistant Supply Officer. tte anticipated serving 
on board for at least two years, much of that time at sea, and 
the opportunities for visits home to tlclena xvould be severely 
curtailcd. As a loyal wife, May felt she could no longer justify 
staying in Helena. She and Ron packed their bags, bade the fanilly 
a tearful farewell and caught a train for San Diego, the I_"SS 
Oklahoma's home port.
Although Ron must have missed the convivial domesticity of 'thc 
old brick', tie did not appear to mind, in the least, being 
a 'Navy brat' - the curiously affectionate labcl applied to 
all children of servicemen, manv of whom needed more than the 
fingers of both hands to cuunt their schools. t lc was a gregarious 
boy, quick to make friends, and starting a new school held no 
terrors for him. After ahout a year in San Diego, the llubbards 
moved north to Seattle, in Washington State, xvbcn thc Oklahoma 
was transferred to Pugct Sound Navy Shipyard.
In Seattle Ron j~fi,lcd the bov scouts, an event that would 
tigurc prominct~tly in a hand-written journal which tie scrawled 
un the pages of an old accounts book, interspersed with sh{~rt 
stories, a few years later: 'The 3'ear Nineteen 1tundred and 
Twenty-Three rallied rountt and found me contentedly resting 
on my laurels, a tirst class badge. For 1 was a boy scout then 
and deaf was mv friend that hadn't heard all about it. I considered 
Seattle the best town on the map as far as scouting was concerned.'
In October 1923, Lieutenant Hubbard completed sea duty on the 
I_'SS Oklahoma and, after brief spells of temporary duty in 
San Francisco and New York, was assigned for further training 
to the Bureau of Supply and Accounts School of Application in 
x3/asbington DC. The US Navy, which clearIv despised any form 
of land transport, saved itself the cost of two long-distance 
train fares by giving May and Ron berths on the I_'SS ~'.S. 
Giant, a German warship acquired by the US Navy after the First 
World War, which was due to sail from Seattle to Hampton Roads, 
Virginia, via the Panama Canal. It was thus December, and the 
snow was thick on tbc ground, before the Hubbards were re-united 
in x, Vasbington after a voyage of some seven thousand miles, 
three-quarters of the way round the coast of tile United States.
It was on this trip, it seems, that Ron met the enigmatic Commander 
'Snake' Tbonlpson of the US Navv ix, lcdical Corps, a psychoanalyst 
hc


24	t3are-Faced Messiah

would later claim was responsible for awakening his youthful 
interest in Freud, although he only made the bridest mention 
of the journey in his journal. His style of writing was fluent, 
breezy, schoolboyishly cocksure and addressed directly to the 
reader. 'If obviously pusbed upon,' he wrote, 'I supposed I 
could write a couple of thousands [sic] words on that trip . 
. . But I spare you .'
He usually referred to hin~self in a gently ironic tone, perhaps 
to avoid giving an impression of thinking rather too highly 
of himself. x, Vhcn he arrived in x. Vashington, two troops 
of local scouts were battling for a prized scouting trophy, 
the Washingto~ Post Cup. Troop 100, he noted, belonged to the 
Y~ICA 'and would therefore probably lose', so he joined the 
other outfit, Troop 10, 'which must have sighed loudly when 
it perceived me crossing the threshhold'.
The journal also contained flashes of humour, delivered deadpan: 
'\;isualize me in a natty scout suit, my red hair tumbling out 
from under my hat, doing my good turn daily. Once I saved a 
man's life. I could have pushed him under a streetcar but [ 
didn't.'
Intent on pushing Troop 10 to victor}', Ron began acquiring 
merit badges with extraordinary speed and dedication. In his 
first two weeks, he xvas awarded badges for Fircma~lship and 
Personal |fealth, quickly folloxvcd by Photography, Life-Saving, 
Physical Development and Bird Study. lie determinedly thrust 
his way into the front rank of the x. Vashington scouts (it 
was absolutely not Ins nature to languish shyly among the pack) 
anti he was chosen to represent them on a delegation to tile 
x, Vhitc l louse to ask President Calvin Coolidge tu accept 
tile honorary chairmanship of National Boys' '~Veck. 1 le noted 
the invitation in his journal with characteristic cheek: 'One 
fine day the Scout executive telephoned my house and told me 
I was to meet the president that afternoon. I told'him 1 thought 
it pretty swell of tile president to come way out to my house 
. . .'
Brushed and scrubbed ('even the backs of my hands were thoroughly 
washed') hc waited with fort}' other boys outside the Oval Office 
until a secretary emerged and said the president was ready to 
receive them. 'x, Vith fear and trembling, we entered and repeated 
our names a few times as we pumped Cal's listless hand . . . 
I think I have the distinction of being the only boy scout in 
America who has made the President wince.' The great man spoke 
in such lugubrious tones that Ron compared the occasion to being 
invited to his own hanging.
In the boy scout diary he kept intermittently around this time, 
Ron was a lot less forthcoming than in the journal, which was 
clearly written with an intcntion to entertain. The most frequent 
entry in his diary was a laconic 'x. Vas bored.' ~.'et he would 
claim in later }'ears that the four months he spent in Vfashington 
was a crucial period uf his life during which hc received 'an 
extensive education in tile field of the

	A Dubious Prodig3'	25

human mind' under the tutelage of his friend Commander Thompson.~ 
He also noted - in his journal - that he became a close friend 
of President Coolidge's son, Calvin Junior, whose early death 
accelerated his 'precocious interest in the mind and spirit 
of man'.s
'Snake' Thompson was apparently a friend of Ron's father and 
a personal student of Sigmund Freud, under whom he had studied 
in Vienna. His inauspicious nickname was derived from his love 
of slithery creatures, but it was in his capacity as a student 
of the founder of psychoanalysis that he took it upon hindself 
to give the twelve-yearold boy a grounding in Freudfan theory 
as well as 'shoving his nose' into books at the Library of Congress.
[Ron would often refer to Thompson in later life, yet the Commander 
remains an enigma. He cannot Be idcntilied from US Navy records, 
nor can his relationship with Freud be established. Doctor Kurt 
Eisslcr, one of the world's leading authorities on Freud, says 
he has no knowledge of any correspondence or contact of any 
kind bet\vcen Freud and Thompson-9]
Presumably the hours that Ron and Thompson spent closeted together 
in tl~c Library of Congress were somehow dovetailed into the 
time he devoted to scouting, for on 28 March 1924, a few days 
after his thirteenth birthday, Ron was made an eagle scout.
'T~venty-one merit badges in ninety days,' hc recorded triumphantly 
in his journal. 'I was quite a boy then. x, Vritten up in the 
papers and all that. Take a look at me. You didn't know the 
wreck in front of you was once the youngest Eagle Scout in the 
country, did you?'
Neither did Ron. At that time the Boy Scouts of America only 
kept an alphabetical record of eagle scouts, with no reference 
to their
10
ages.


Chapter2

Whither did he l/Vander?

Fundamental to the image of L. Ron Hubbard as prophet are the 
tales of his teenage travels. At the age of fourteen, it seems, 
the inquisitive lad could bc found wandering the Orient alone, 
investigating primitive cultures and learning the secrets of 
life at the feet of wise men and Lama priests. 'lie was up and 
down the China coast several times in his teens from Ching Wong 
Tow to [long Kong and inland to Peking and Manchuria.'~ In China 
hc met an old magician whose ancestors had served in the court 
of Kublai Khan and a llindu whu could hypnotize cats. In the 
high t~ills of Tibet he lived with bandits whu accepted him 
because of his 'honest interest in them and their way of life'.z 
In the remote reaches uf western Nlanchuria he made fricZnds 
with the ruling warlords by demonstrating his horsemanship. 
On an unnamed island in the South Pacitic, the fearless boy 
calmed the natives by exploring a cave that was supposed to 
bc 'haunted and shuwing them that the rumbling sound from within 
was nothing more sinister than an underground river. '[)cep 
in the jungles' of Polvnesia he discovered an ancient burial 
ground 'steeped in the tradition of heroic warri~rs and kings 
. . . Though his native friends were fearful for him, he explored 
the sacred area - his initiative based on doing all he could 
to know more'.3
Tilere appeared to be no limit to the young man's abilities: 
'1 remember one time learning lgoroti, an Eastern primitive 
language, in a single night. I sat up by kerosene lantern and 
took a list of words that had been made bv an old missionary 
in the hills of Luzon [Philippines]. The Igorot had a very simpld 
language. This missionary phoneticized their language and made 
a list of their main words and their usage and grammar. And 
I remember sitting up under a mosquito net with the mosquitoes 
hungrily choreping their beaks just outside the net, and learning 
this language - three hundred words just memorizing these words 
and what they meant. And the next day I started to get them 
in line and align them with people, and was speaking Igoroti 
in a very shurt time.'4
Throughout this period, Ron was said to have been supported 
by his wealthy, not to say indulgent, grandfather and it was 
during Iris

	ltt~ither did he l{'antter?	27

travels in the East that he became interested in the 'spiritual 
destiny' of mankind. 'L. Ron Hubbard learned that there was 
more to life than science bad dreamed of, that Nlan did not 
know everything there was to know about life, and that ncitl~er 
East nor West, the spiritual and the material, had any full 
answer. To L. Ron Hubbard there was a whole field here that 
was begging for research.'s
It would, to be sure, have been an impressive start to any young 
man's career, if only it had been true.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

At the end of March 1924, the Itubbards left Washington DC and 
moved, once again, from one side of the continent to the other. 
tlaving finished his training at the Bureau of Supply and Accounts 
Schoul, tlarrv Itubbard was promoted to full Lieutenant and 
posted back to the Pugct Sound Navy Sbipyard at Brcmcrton, in 
Washington State, as Disbursing Officer.
Brcmcrton was a nice little town mushroomed around the great 
naval shipyard, the northern base of the Pacitic Fleet, which 
sprawled along the shore of Pugct Suund. Seagulls wheeled and 
cawcd over the quiet high street and the fishing fleet in the 
barbour and a tangy aroma of salt, tar and oil scented the brcezc 
off the Sound, where bustling ~hitc-paintcd lorries providctt 
tbc town's main link tu Seattic on the opp~sitc sh~re. The 11ubbards 
found a house tw~ blocks fnm~ tl~c shipyard and their son enrolled 
in the eighth grade at Union l ligt~ Schuol, on the curnor of 
Fifth and 1 ligh Avcnt~cs.
Run liked Brcmcrtnn on sight, as would any thirtccn-vcar-old 
with a taste for outdoor activities. After school in ti~c sumn~er 
hc invariably joined a group of boys to swim and fish and canoe 
in the S~und anti at weekends he cadged a ride out to Camp Parsons, 
the boy scout camp on the north-west shore of l luod Canal. 
Parso~s was a permanent campsite in the heart of the Olympic 
National Park and was considered by thousands of boys to be 
paradise. There were oysters, clams, shrimp and crabs to be 
fished from the canal and cooked over campfires; eagles soared 
in the thermals high overhead and the dense forest all around 
the camp was alive with deer, beavers, bobcats and black bears. 
Like countless fellow scouts, Ron's favouritc trek from Camp 
Parsons was the 'Three Rivers tlike', which started with the 
'poop-out drag'- a long climb up a sun-baked southern slope 
- and ended in the late afternoon at Camp Nlvsterv at the top 
of the pass, where there were meadows full of wild fluwets and 
thrilling views over the Olympic mountain wilderness.
It was a boyhood idyll that was to last for only two happy years; 
in the summer of 1926 his parents decided to move across the 
Sound back to Seattle. It was no trouble for t{arrv to commute 
to work at


28	Bare-Faced Messiah

the shipyard by ferry and they felt that Ron ought to complete 
his high school education in a bigger and more sophisticated 
school than Union High. So it was that Ron began his sophomore 
year at Queen Anne High, a majestic seminary built m sparkling 
white bricks on a hilltop overlooking Seattle.
He was barely into his second semester when his father received 
his first foreign posting. Lieutenant Hubbard was to take over 
as Officer in Charge of the Commissary Store at the US Naval 
Station on Guam, a remote, mountainous tropical island in the 
Pacific, three thousand miles west of Hawaii. Largest and southernmost 
of the lXlariana Islands, Guam had been ceded to the United 
States as a prize in the Spanish-American x. Var in 1898 and, 
as far as the Hubbard family was concerned, was so far away 
it might as well bave been on anotllcr planet.
May and Hub talked long into many nights about how the3' should 
accommodate their lives to this new upheaval. Guam was a minimum 
two-year posting and May naturally wanted to accompany her husband, 
particularly as there as no chance of him returning home on 
leave. ~,Vhat most worried them was what to do with Ron, who 
had immediately assumed tie would be going too. Then just sixteen 
years old, hc was thrilled at the prospect of exchanging the 
dreary routine of Qticcn :\nnc 11igh for life on a tropical 
islantt.
But officers rcturnin~ from Guam wcrc full of lurid stories 
about the islantt and its inhabitants. ~lanv of them concerned 
tile chartns of Guam's 'dusk)' maidens' and the uninhil~ited 
enthusiasm with which they pursued young Americans as p~tcntial 
husbands. There x~'as also much gossip about the horrendous 
strains of venereal disease which were endemic. Time and time 
again Itub was told by ex-Guam veterans that they would never 
let a son of theirs set foot in the place.
In the end the)' made the painful decision to leave Ron bellind. 
lxday arranged for him to move back into 'the old brick' with 
her parents and to finish high school in tielena. Ron made no 
secret of Iris disgust x~'hen his parexits broke the news, although 
he was slightly mollified by his father's promise to try and 
arrange for him to travel with his mother out to Guam for a 
short holiday before returning to Itdcna.
Lieutenant Hubbard sailed to Guam on 5 April 1927; his wife 
and son followed several weeks later on the passenger steamship, 
President Madison, bound for Itonolulu, Yokohama, Shanghai, 
Hong Kong and Manila, out of San Francisco. Ron took with him 
his ukulele and saxophone, two instruments he had been struggling 
to learn, and a headful of yarns, spun by his father's friends, 
about how anyone with red hair was instantly proclaimed king 
on arrival in Guam. To his great chagrin, his return passage 
was already booked for July, to get

	Whither did he ~nde~ ?	29

him back in time for the start of the junior term at Hdcna tligh 
School. May took sufficient books to tutor her son in history 
and English during the trip, to niake up for him not finishing 
the semester at Queen Anne High School.
Considering he was still only sixteen, Ron's log of his trip 
to Guam was acutely observed and literate, even if the prose 
was occasionally artless and self-conscious ('Westward tugged 
the ship's twelve ttlousand horses'). It was also packed with 
information, reflecting the unashan~ed curiosity of an inquisitive 
and extrovert young man travellixIg abroad for the first time.
Watching San Francisco's Golden Gate disappear from view, Ron 
admitted to a lump in his throat, although he was soon involved 
in the timeless and titnc-wasting pursuits that comprised life 
on board shuffle board and deck golf, a dance one evex~ing, 
a movie the next, and obsessire disctlssion about who was seasick 
and who x~'as not. Some of ttie crew tried to turn Ron's stomacli 
by describing revolting n~cals of salt pork and slippery oysters, 
but tic was pleased to record that ncitllcr he nor his niotllcr 
succumbed.
First stop, six da~'s out, was !{onolulu, where tlIc Presieh'nt 
.lh~dison was greeted ~n the barbour by flotillas of snIall 
hoats rowed by little, brown-skinned urchi~s who dived for quarters 
flipped o~,crboard from ttlc deck of the steamsbip. Thc~' used 
to dive for pennies, Ron noted laconically, 'tht~s has tile 
l lawaiian developed Ins conimercc'. Friends showed the l lubl~ards 
arountt the island while the ship was docked and Ron xnanagcd 
to get a swinl and a ride on a surf-board at XVaikiki beach. 
The waves were muctI longer than tllosc in California, he wrote, 
and sometimes attained speeds of sixty miles an hour.	-~
Outward bound fronl ttawaii, Ron made friends with the second 
engineer who took him on a conducted tour of tlie ship, including 
the galley, 'spotless with shixIing equipxncnt and Chinese cooks 
who grinned axid displayed blank teetiC.
Fifty xnilcs off the coast of Japan, they caught their first 
glimpse of the 'celestial beauty' of Mount Fuji rising through 
the clouds and cloaked in a 'pink robe of snow' suggesting, 
Ron thought, a 'garment for royalty'. They staved three days 
in Japan, first at Yokohama and then at Kobe. Ron ~ade mcticulot~s 
notes about eveD'tt~ing he saw, including detailed descriptions 
of tiow the people dressed. Much of the devastation caused by 
the earthquake four years earlier was still evident - including 
the ruin of a 'bideousl)' scrambled' fort guarding the harbour 
entrance in which 1700 men had died when the walls collapsed. 
Ron was generall)' unimpressed by Japan and clearly unprepared, 
as a young American innocent of foreign ways, for the sights 
and smells of the Orient - the disease and the dirt, the stinking


	30	Ba,~'-l"aced Messrob

slums and the beggars sleeping in the street. 'It doesn't look 
the happy land so pictured in stories,' he concluded. 'Only 
at cherry blossom time or in the romat~tic novel do I believe 
there is beauty in Japan.'
I lc was rather more cheered by Shanghai, the Preshtent Madison's 
next port of call, partly because the first flag to greet them 
as they entered the Yangtze river was the Stars and Stripes, 
flying from th~ stern of a US Navy destroyer. The bustling river 
traffic -'millions of fishing boats and jtmks' - astonished 
him, as did the fact that the 'ragged and decrepit' coolies 
who unloaded the ship only earned fifteen cents a day and 'fifteen 
cents iMex at that!' They lived, he added somewhat unnecessarily, 
'worse than anyone in the world'.
He and his mott~er accompanied the ship's chief officer, who 
was also from Seattle, on a drive through the town. 'Opening 
down the main avenue over which our car travelled were hundreds 
of narrow intriguing streets, teeming with life. Great fish 
floated here and there and paper banners hung overhead. The 
stores were stocked with every sort of junk. Dried fish rattled 
on strings in the wind. Queer looking foods and drygoods were 
side by side. Sikh policemen werc everywhere. They are big dark 
bearded fellows and in their turba~s and short trouscrs of khaki 
luok picturcsquc. They carry grcat rattan sticks and a ritlc 
acn~ss the back. Tommy Atki~s was very much in evittcncc a~tl 
the :\~11cricilll 111arillcs, as well as Jitpallcsc anti British 
marines. ()n the outside of the British conccssiun I saw a British 
tomn~y take a Chinaman by the coat and knock him across the 
street. On Bubbliug x, Vcll Roatl is a beautiful hotel nnce 
tile home of a Chinese gentleman. 'l'hc grounds are laid out 
with pergolas and fountains and the h~ncl has tapestries and 
mosaic tile ttoors.'
It was clear that bv tile time he reached Shanghai, Ron had 
adopted some of the more obvious colonial mannerisms, for he 
casually reported joining the *ladison crowd for 'tiffin' at 
the Palace |lotel later that day and would also soon be referring 
to the natives as 'gooks'.
From Shanghai they sailed for 1tong Kong, a citv that was 'very 
British on the surface and verv native underneath( May and goa 
took a tram up to the top of the mountain overlooking the harbour, 
but the3, found the heat and humidit), very exhausting, not 
to mention the throngs of coolies 'not caring where the)' spit', 
and they were glad to leave on the last leg of their voyage 
on the President Madison to .x, Ianila in the Philippines.
In .'x, lanila they were to transfer, with fifteen other Navy 
families, to a US Navy cargo auxiliary, the USS Gold Star, which 
was anchored across the bay at Cavite, waiting to take them 
to Guam. There ,.vas considerable confusion unloading the baggage 
from the

	t~'hithcr did ht' l~'a,tde, ?	3 1

President Madison, which Ron blamed on the 'lazy, ignorant natives', 
and it was some time before their trunks were safeIv on their 
way and ix. lay and Ron could relax with a glass of lemon squeeze 
at the Nlanila Hotel.
Next day Ron went sight-seeing with a Lieutenant ~IcCain from 
tile Cavite Navv Yard, an acquaintance of his father. To a boy 
who loved blood-and-thunder adventure stories, the old Spanish 
forts in Cavitc exercized a compelling fascination. 'All the 
old guns have been dismantled, but the emplace~lents remain. 
Such an awful place in which to fight. The places were traps 
as it takes four men to even open a door. There are tunnels 
connecting all of them to an ancient cathedral which is un-uscd 
and filled with snakes, bats and trash. Very mysterious. I looked 
it over well when Mr NlcCain told me that millions in Spanish 
gold were buried in those tunnels. Some day 1 am going back 
there and dredge [sit'] the wbolc place. Maybe.'
That evening hc was taken to 'I)reamland', one of the murc respectable 
bars in Nlanila ,.vhcrc girls were available for hire, for dancing, 
at five centunls a dance. 'Of course we didn't dance,' Ron was 
at pains to record, 'because by doing so one loses cast. TIm 
Charleston has just hit them, but it's too hot (I mean the weather).'
Two days later, tile/._ 'SS Gold Star weighed anchur and set 
course for Guam, a seven-day voyage across tim Philippine Sea 
which could not have offered a greater contrast to tile comparative 
luxury of a passenger ship like the Presitlent Madison. TIm 
accommodation ,.,.'as spartan, tim food was poor and the officers 
remained haughtily aluof from tl~cir luckless passengers, even 
eating at a separate table in the dining-room. To make matters 
worse, the weather was terrible and tile ship pitched and rolled 
and walloxvcd in a grey, relentlessly heaving sea with tbc constant 
threat of a typhoon gathering on the horizon. It was, said Ron, 
a 'gosh-awful trip'.
When a smudge of land appeared in the far distance and word 
went round that it was Guam, the relief was palpable. The C'S~",' 
G~ld Star hove to off Guam on Nlonday 6 June, thirty-six days 
after the Hubbards had left San Francisco. Hub ,.,.'as on the 
second tender that came out to the ship and Ron spoke for both 
himself and his mother ,.,.'hen he noted: '\Ve were sure glad 
to see him.'
Ron's first impression of Guam, with its thickl,.' lorested 
green hills and little red-roofed houses, was favourable. Even 
tile sickly sweet aroma of copra which filled tile air was distinctly 
preferable to the stench of open drains that had predominated 
at all their previous ports of call. The poverty, filth and 
disease which had been so prevalent else,.,.'here were kept 
in abeyance in Guam by the overwheln~ing presence of the United 
States Navy, which pushed, prodded and paid the local Chamorro 
natives to keep the streets clean and to observe basic hygiene.


	32	Bare4"a~'ed Messiah

Hub had been allocated a large bungalow surrounded by banana 
trees in the town of Agana, about five miles from tile harbour. 
It was still not fully furnistled when ~lav and Ron arrived, 
but Ron liked tile cool sparse rooms with ttleir highiy polished 
floors of black hardwood, reflecting the figtit filtering througll 
the bamboo screens. Ttle family had two houseboys and a cook 
and lived in a style ttlat none of ttlcm llact ever previously 
experienced. May, for example, llact never tlad servants in 
her life and very much enjoyed tile novelty.
Ron's father had arranged for him to spend part of the six weeks 
lie was due to stav on the island teaching English to Chamorro 
children in the local grade school, which was run by tile Navy. 
Ron did not object to undertaking this chore, but found it a 
more or less impossible task because of his red hair. Although 
he had not been instantly proclaimed king on arrival, he quickly 
discovered tbat his hair caused much excitement and interest, 
both on the street and in tile classroom. The Chamorros, dark-skinned 
people of Indonesian stock, seemed unable to believe that a 
human head could sprout such a fiery crinc and Ron's students 
spent their entire lesson staring uncompr~hcndingly at tile 
top of his head. His parents laughed wllcn he told them what 
was happening arid his nlothcr, drawing on her own teaching 
experience, softly advised him just to d›~ his best.
When hc was n~t trying to be a teacher, Ron spent a great ttcal 
of his time satisfying Iris natural curiosity by researching 
the island's history and culture. S~mc of his n~tcs about Guam 
and its people bear a strange siniilaritv to stories that would 
later be incorporated into the I,. Rozl l lubhard znythol~gy.
The Chamorro dialect, for example, which had originally contained 
some two thousand words and idion~s, had been reduced over tile 
years to ar~und three hundred idioms wittl an almost non-existent 
granlmatical structure - curiously akin tn lgnroti, the primitive 
language Ron was said to tlave learned in a single night by 
ttle light of a kerosene lanlp. And one of the Hubbards' house 
box's toid Ron about a devil ghost called 'Tadamona' whicti 
was believed to haunt ~lissionarv Point, where a fast-flowing 
underground river nladc eerie moaning noises at night...
In Guam, as clsexvt~ere, Ron was partictdarly intrigued by the 
forts, which held a special romance and nlvsterv he toiled to 
convey in his journal :'An especially interesting one is the 
fort of San Juan de 'Apra [sic] in Apra hatbout. Its doors have 
bccn sealed for years and, as if to hide the structure, vines 
wind ttlemselves about it. TIle walls were built with remarkable 
skill, especially the corners. Most of the prison and ttlrret 
tlave been eroded and have failed [sic] into decay, but tile 
powder huusc and firing steps renlain. The walks ttlat once 
heard the rhvtbnl of ttie sentrv's boat, and the crash of the 
evening gun are now

~'hither did he l~'antler?	33

the running place of lizards. One cannot imagine the solitude 
and depression that surrounds it. All that beauty and grandeur 
which surrounded it yesterday has faded as the rose which dies 
and leaves its thorn .'
Ron was due to leave Guam on Saturda,' 16 July 1927, on board 
an ammtmition ship,/~'SS Nitto, bound for Bremerton. His parexits 
drove him down to the harbour in the early morning and accompanied 
him out to the ship to help him with his bags, now cramriled 
with souvenirs and presents for the family back home in Helena. 
The three of them had a quiet breakfast together on board and 
at eight o'clock Nlay and Hub said goodbye and returned ashore 
on a tender, hardly daring to look back at the lonely figure 
of their son standing at the rail. The USS .Vitro sailed within 
the hour.
If Ron was sad to be leaving, he made no mention of it in his 
journal. tic 'felt rather Ionely' on the first day out, but 
the two boys with whom hc was sharing a cabin, Jerry Curtis 
and Dick I)crickson, x~'crc so homesick that both were close 
to tears. Ron did his best to cheer them up. 1 [c particularly 
liked Dick, who was from Seattle and whom lie had met at Camp 
Parsons. 'Dick and I have bccn rcatting up on atheism,' he noted. 
'Such a terrible tiring to make an issue of. Something is at 
the bottom of it. I'll find out in tbc States.'
Eour days out, the/~Lb'S ,X'it~o hove to off x, Vake Island 
so that the crew could'go tishing and swimming. Ron went ashore 
in a whale boat and discovered that the island was inhabited 
by matly strange and beautiful birds, apparently quite tinafraid 
of the sailors walking round their nests. In tile lagoon, lie 
wrote, the multi-cnlourcd tropical fish looked like 'a forth 
of July parade' and the water was so clear he could see through 
thirty fathonls to the rocks on the bottom.
Deprived of the recreations offered on board the President Matlison, 
Ron found the return voyage, courtesy of tile US Navv, to bc 
unremittingly dreary. tie liked to watch the stars at night 
Cnever in mv life have I seen such beauties') and during the 
day he enjoyed visiting the engine-room, but much of the time 
he was bored.
Ironically, Ron had seriously discussed with his father the 
possibility of a career in the Navy, although he certainly did 
nnt seem much enthused by his experience on the USS .\'itro. 
'If this ship is the cream of tile naval duty,' he wrote, 'I'll 
sure stick to milk. The officers work about an hour and then 
sit around and look bored. The enlisted personnel bear the brunt 
of the work.' Nevertheless, he could not have been completely 
deterred, for he noted that he and Dick would bc going to Annapolis 
(home of the Naval Academy) at the same time.
Off Hawaii, one of the officers told Ron he could go up to the 
lookout in the crow's nest. 'A moment later found me staring 
up the forward mast which looked ungodly high. I overcame a 
nervous


34	Bare-Fat'ed Messiah

tremor and climbed a rope up to the steel ladder . . . Nice 
prospect a fall was. Then I tackled the first fifty feet of 
ladder. It surely looked and felt insobsta~tial. About tlalf 
way up I thougilt I'll never been so ncrvotls before. After 
that ladder catrio an even smaller steel ladder. [lp I went 
all confidence by this time. In a moment I reached the nest 
and sure enougll tilere was tile Iookotlt reading a 'Western 
Story'. lie invited me to climb in. TIle last io itself is worse 
than the rest of it put together. One Ilas to dangle with nothing 
under him and work half way rollrid to tile other edge. Over 
tile side of the box I swtlng and then in. ~Iy God what a reliefS'
On 6 August, in thick fog, the USS Nit~o nosed into Bremcrton 
and moored to Pier 4A at the Navv Yard. Ron disembarked without 
a moment's regret, thankful to be back on dry land and away 
from ttle cranlpcd and stultifying atnlospl~ere of ttle ship. 
Next day !it caugtlt a train for 1tclcna, wllcrc he was welcomed 
by the Waterburys like tile prodigal son. In 'the old brick', 
savotlring the head} fragrance of Ills grandmotl~cr's baking, 
which he rcnlcmbcrcd so well, he regaled everyone witll tile 
tales of his adventures and if !it cnlbroidcrcd tile account 
just a little, who could Ilave blanlcd him?
Even a local newspaper apparently felt his exploits worth reporting 
in a d~ublc-column story under tile tlcatllinc 'Ronaltl l ltlbbartl 
Tells of ills 'l'rip to ()ricnt aml N!anv lixpcricnccs'. 'l'hc 
interview ch~scly f~lloxvctl the n~tcs Ron had made in Ilis 
j~urnal except for tile snrprising clainl, sonlctloxv neglected 
in. his tliary, tllat hc Ilatl witnessell an cxcctltion while 
he was in China. 'Ronald l lubbard Ilas tile distincti~m', the 
story concluded, 'of being the only boy in tile cormtry to sectire 
an eagle scout badge at tile age of twelve years.'
file hall, ill fact, been tllirtcen. But tills snlall slip-tip 
and tile ctlriot~s omission of tile 'execution' [ronx his journal 
were not nearly as puzzling as tile fact tllat it has never 
been possible to trace the newspaper from which the cutting 
xvas taken? It appears to exist only as a photostat in tile 
archives of the Church of Scientology labelled 'Clipping from 
t lclcna, Nlontana, newspaper circa 1929'.]
On 6 Sqncnlbcr 1927, Ron enrolled in the junior year at Itdena 
Itigtl School, a forbidding Victorian building of rough-hewn 
grey stone with castellated gables and turrets, just five minutes' 
walk from the Waterbtlrv home. A cousin, Gorham Roberrs, who 
was in the same year, introduced Ron to many of tlis new scllool-n~ates, 
but no one found it easy to settle down to work, for ttle whole 
scllool was distracted bv the frustrating knowledge that Charles 
A. Lindbergh was visiting 1 lclcna. I Ic was on a triumphant 
tour of the country, after flying the Atlantic alone in his 
tiny monoplane Spirit of St l~uis and returning as a national 
hero, and there was not a boy or girl in the school wllo did 
not fcrvetltly wistl to catcll a glimpse of him.

	Whither dM he tlhnder?	35

At first Ron seemed perfectly happy at Itdena High, perfectly 
happy to be back with his grandparents. In October he joined 
the l~lontana National Guard, enlisting at the State Armory 
on North lXlain Street and claiming he was eighteen to avoid 
having to wait months for his parents to send consent papers 
from Guam. As a private in tleadquarters Company of 163rd Infantry 
he felt hc cut quite a dash as he strode through tile town in 
his uniform broad-brimmed hat, khaki shirt and breeches, gloves 
tucked into the belt - to report for training at the Armory, 
where twin flagpoles rose from perfectly manicured patches of 
green grass.
At school, he managed to get himself appointed to the editorial 
staff of TIle Nugget, !tclcna Iligh's bi-monthly newspaper. 
tie would naturally have preferred to have been editor-in-chief, 
but as a newcomer he had to be satisfied with jokes editor, 
a position he held jointly with Ellen Galusha. !te was photograpl~ed 
with the rest of the editorial staff for tim year book, standing 
in tile middle of the group on the steps of tile school wearing 
a suit and a bow tie, cschcwing the faintly raffish literary 
style affected by his colleagues. 'The Nu,~,get is a really 
good paper . . .' the caption explained. 'The name originates 
{r~m the large expensive gold nuggets which the prospectors 
nilned in prcyious years on tile main street of 11clcna .'
Altl~ugh Ellen Galusha rather upstaged her follow jokes editor 
by winning first place in the district finals of the Extcmporaneous 
Speaking Contest, Run felt he kept his end up by having one 
of his essays selected to represent !Iclcna l ligh in the State 
Essay Contest. 1 lc had also written a short play which was 
performed by the junior branch of the Shriners and very well 
received.
After school on 2 December, Ron and a group of his friends rushed 
round to the showrooms of Capital Ford hoping to see the sleek 
new Model A. Fords which were said to have arrived in town that 
day. They found a crowd of around four thousand people jamming 
the street outside the Ford agency, all with the same idea. 
Replacement for the beloved Model T., the Model A. was not only 
a completely new design but was also available in a number of 
different colemrs, a development which caused Ron and his friends 
to gasp with amazenlent. Later, over sodas at the Weiss Caf~5 
on North Main Street, the boys hotly debated which of the models 
- roadster, sports coupd or sedan - was preferable and which 
colour each of them would be purcllasing as soon as they had 
some monev.
That winter was tile worst in living mcmorv for the people of 
llelena. On 8 December, Ron woke to find the overnight temperature 
had dropped fifty-eight degrees to thirty-five below zero, one 
of the coldest on record. Outside, a biting blizzard sxvept 
down from the mountains, obliterating the town and tim surrounding 
country.


36	Bare-Faced Messiah

Morning editions of the Helena Independent were full of terrible 
stories of families marooned and frozen to death, school buses 
lost in the storm and entire herds of cattle wiped out.
The snow had still not melted when Ron began preparing for the 
annual Vigilante Day Parade, the high spot of the school year, 
held on the first Friday in ~lay. Although the theme of the 
parade always harked back to the pioneer days, Ron plumped for 
a more unconventional role and decided he would go as a pirate. 
He somehow persuaded five doubting friends, two boys and three 
girls, to join him, camally brushing aside any objections based 
on the rather obvious absence of pirate involvement in Montana's 
early history. Aunt Marnie helped with the costumes by taking 
down her drapes and removing the brass rings to provide the 
pirates with suitable earrings, as worn on the Spanish Main.
Thus it was that as the Vigilante Day Parade, led by the Helena 
Itigh School Band, progressed along Main Street on the afternoon 
of Friday 4 May 1928, the settlers, cowboys, cowgirls, miners, 
trappers, prospectors, Indians and sheriffs were inexplicably 
joined by a small band of ferocious pirates with eyepatches 
and painted beards, waving wooden cutlasses. At the dance after 
the parade, 'Pirates by R. Hubbard' won one of three prizes 
in the 'Most Original' category.
The report on tim parade in the 11ch'na ltteh'pcn~h,nt next 
day positively glowed with pride: 'The parade was larger, more 
ingenious, spectacular, striking, imaginative and suggestive 
of the past this year than ever before. The high school students 
once more covered themselves with glory - besides having a jolly' 
good time and conm~unicating a lot of fun to the bystanders 
. . . As a success the Vigilante parade was complete, and once 
more advcrtized to the world that the Helena tligh School and 
Last Chance Gulch puts on a show once a year unmatched elsewhere 
oil the globe.'
A week later, Ron disappeared. When he did not show up for school 
on lx, londav 14 ~Iay, there were excited rumours in the junior 
year that he had been expelled. 'Certainly we believed he had 
left in a hurry, under something of a cloud,' said Gotham Roberts. 
'The story was that he had got mad at a teacher and put his 
butt into a waste-paper basket. Old A. J. Roberts, the principal, 
was a German from Heidelberg and a strict disciplinarian. Ron 
knew that he would never put up with such behaviour, so he didn't 
trouble to come back. ,7
Aunt lx, larnie explained it differently: 'He just got itchy 
feet. tie wanted to see something new. lle was an adventurer 
at heart. The wanderlust was in him and he couldn't see himself 
staying in a little town like Helena when there was adventure 
ahead. He went off to Seattle to stay with my sister lXlidgie 
and her husband Bob. They

	l~ither did he Wander?	37

tried to talk him into staying with them, but he went south, 
hopped a ship and worked his way back to Guam.'~
Whatever the truth, Ron never returned to Helena High. Two years 
later, he wrote two colourful accounts of the events leading 
up to his departure from Helena. Although they were only separated 
by a few pages in his journal, many of the details do not match; 
indeed some passages read suspiciously like the adventure stories 
he was constantly scribbling in his spare time.
It seenled he was driving his friends home after the Vigilante 
Day Parade in his 'mighty Ford' (presumably his grandfather's 
Model T.) when someone threw a baseball at them and hit him 
on the head. He stopped the car, chastized the offenders and 
dealt with them so severely that he broke four 'marcarpals' 
in his right hand.
'That was the beginning and the end. I couldn't wait and school 
faded from the picture. My hand was reset four times and life 
lost its joy. I sold the Ford and went West, taking Horace Greelcy's 
[sic] advice.'
He announced to his grandfather that he had decided on a 'change 
of scenery' and caught a train for Seattle, where he stayed 
with his aunt and uncle for a couple of days. On 7 June, trading 
on his 'scout prestige', tie moved to Camp Parsons for about 
a week, until it became too crowded and he decided to move on.
'I set out at noon, hiking a swift pace under a heavy pack through 
the lofty, virgin Olympics. At nine o'clock that night I made 
camp about two miles down the trail from "Shelter Rock". Twelve 
hours later I was limp on top of a boulder pile, saved from 
a broken spine by my pack. I gazed at the blood pumping from 
my wrist and decided it was high time ! went to visit herr Doetour.'
No explanation is offered for this incident or for how tie managed, 
in such a parlous state, to find his way back to Bremerton. 
It was there, while being treated by a Navy doctor, he was told 
that a US Navy transport, USSHenderson, was due to leave for 
Guam from San Francisco in a week's time (in the first account), 
or two weeks (in the second account). That night (first account), 
eight days later (second account), he was on a Shasta Limited 
overnight train heading south for California, apparently intent 
on rejoining his parents in Guam.
By the time he got to the Transport Dock in San Francisco the 
Hentterson had already sailed. With only twenty dollars left 
in his pocket, Ron invested a nickel in a newspaper and read 
on the shipping page that the liner President Pierce, bound 
for China, was moored at Dock 28. An hour later he was standing 
m line at the dock, waiting to sign on as an ordinary seaman. 
While in the queue, smoking to calm his nerves, he sudde;~ly 
decided it would be worth a call to Twelfth Naval District to 
find out where the Ilenderson was. Perhaps, he


38	Bare-Faced Messiah

thought, she had not yet sailed for Guam, but had just moved 
down the coast to another port. His hunch was correct - an officer 
at Twelfth District told him the tfc~zderson was in San Diego. 
Within half an hour - he appeared remarkably lucky with connections 
- he was on a bus bound for San Diego, five hundred miles further 
south.
When he finally caught up with the 1Ie~tderso~t in San Diego, 
'faint from lack of sleep and food', he was told that Washington 
would need to approve his request for a passage to Guam. Nothing 
if not bold, Ron called on the Aide to the Commandant, who turned 
out to be extraordinarily obliging and agreed to telegraph Washington 
immediately. Satisfied there was nothing more he could do for 
the moment, Ron rented a cheap room near the naval headquarters 
and slept for eighteen hours. When he woke, he learned that 
a signal had been received from Washington saying that his fathcr's 
permission would be needed before he could join the ship.
'With fear and trembling, I had a radio sent out to Guam . . 
. ! walked the streets of San Diego all that day with Old Man 
Worry gnawing at my brow. Would Dad reply "No~" or would he 
say "Yes"? You see, I had reason to bc worried. Tliis would 
be the first intimathn~ he would have of my portending return 
. . .'
Out in Gttam, l.icutcnant l luhl~ard n~ d~n~ht wundcrcd what 
the hell was going on when he received a message fnnn Washington 
infi3rmin~ him that his son was in San I)icgu requesting passa~c 
on a ship to Guam. It was t~ his credit that hc immediately 
cabled Iris !~crmission, which arrived in San Dicg~, according 
t~3 l(un, only an huur before the Ht'ttdcrson was duc to sail.
This does not quiet accord with the deck log of the lb,~Mcrsott, 
which records that 'L.R. t lubbard, son of Lieutenant l i. R. 
l lubi~ard USN, reported on board for transportation to Guam' 
at 16Z(} I~ours on Satorday 30 June. 'Fhc ship did not sail 
until 1330 the folloxving day. Neither do the dates match Lieutenant 
l lttbbard's navv record, ~vhich indicates that Ron wrote to 
the Navy Department asking about transports to Guam as early 
as 10 ~lay; hc submitted a formal application for a passage 
in the lh'~tderson on 28 ~Ia)' .'~
However, Ron never considered that strict regard for the truth 
should be allowed to spoil a good story and so he described 
how he was standing with his suitcase in his hand at the bottom 
of the gangway to the ship when the cable came through. He had 
lost Iris trunk, somewhere between San Francisco and San Diego, 
but he was unconcerned. 'The lIe~tderson sailed with me aboard,' 
hc noted triumphanti)'. 'My possessions were: two handkerchiefs, 
two suits underwear, one pair shoes, one worn suit, one thin 
topcoat, one tooth brush, two pair socks and two pennies. No 
wardrobe, no money . . .'
Hc ended this part of his journal with a jaunty little postscript

	~17titlter did t~e Wander?	39

addressed to the reader: 'I will tell you the secret of this 
strange life I had. Sssh! I was born on Friday the thirteenth.'
It was, unfortttnately, not qttitc true. 13 lXlarch 1911 ~.vas 
a Monday.


Chapter3

Explorer Manqu~

'The following years, from 1925 to 1929, saw the young Mr ttubbard, 
between the ages of 14 and 18, as a budding and enthusiastic 
world traveller and adventurer. His father was sent to the Far 
East and having the financial support of his wealthy grandfather, 
L. Ron Hubbard, spent these years journeying through Asia . 
. .
'With the deatll of his grandfather, the Hubbard family returned 
to the United States and IRon] enrolled at the George Wasllington 
University in the fall of 1930. At George Washington L. Ron 
Hubbard became associate editor of the University newspaper, 
"The Hatchet", and was a member of many of the Utliversity's 
clubs and societies . . . l lore, also, he was enrolled in one 
of the first nuclear physics courses ever taught in an American 
university.
'As a stutlcnt, barely 20 years oltl, he supp/~rtctl Ilinlself 
by writing and within a very few years bc had establisl~ed tlinlsclf 
as an essavist i~ the literary world... lie made the time during 
these same busy college years to act as a director wit}l the 
Caribbean ~1otion Picture Expedition of 193 !. The underwater 
films made oil that j~urncy provided the tlydrographic Office 
and the University of ~lichigan with invaluable data for the 
furtllerance of their
reSearCh.
'Then in 1932, the true mark of an exceptional explorer was 
denlonstrated. In that year L. Ron Hubbard, aged 21, achieved 
an ambitious "first". Conducting the %Vest Indies ~linerals 
Survey, he made the first conlplete minerah~gical survey of 
Puerto Rico. Thi~ was pioneer exploration in the great tradition, 
opening up a predictable, accurate bodv of data for the benefit 
of others...' (Mission Into Time, published by the Church of 
Scicntology, 1973)

I t t I t

Ttle ~'SS lh'nth'rson arrived off Guam on 25 July 1928 in heavy 
squalls and lay to on the lee side of the island for five days, 
waiting fdr an opportunity to enter the barbour. The weatt~er 
did not seem to bother R{n~. 'That trip was the best I ever 
took,' he wrote in his journal, 'and the best I ever hope to 
take. The Navy gave me a

	Explorer Manqud	4 l

kangaroo court martial, there were nine young grass widows aboard, 
we danced every other night, the movies were good.'
Ron omitted from his journal any mention of how his parents 
reacted to Iris return. After more than a year apart, l larry 
and May were no doubt happy to see their seventeen-year-old 
son again, but they could not have been too pleased by his impetuous 
decision to drop out of High School. Since there was no possibility 
of getting him back to the United States in time for the start 
of the senior year - even if he would agree to go - it was decided 
that he should stay on Guam and be tutored by his mother in 
preparation for the entrance examination to the Naval Academy.
In spite of the limitations of her teaching experience, May 
seemed undaunted by the task of bringing her wayward son up 
to a sufficiently high educational standard to get him through 
the reputedly tough and highly competitive exam. And with servants 
padding softly about the house, attending unbidden to every 
household chore, she had plenty of time to devote to her son's 
studies.
For his part, Ron could not have been happier to substitute 
the authoritarian regime of old A.J. Roberts at Helena High 
for what he considered to be the exotic tropical allure of Guam 
and tile gentle coaching of his mot!~er.
In Octnber, tile I lubbards had an opportunity to take a recreational 
trip to China on tile/~'SS Gold Star, tile ship that had brought 
May and Ron to Guam in tile summer of 1927. Neither of them 
bad much liked the ship, but tile prospect of ten days' sight-seeing 
in Peking outweighed any reservations they might have had about 
another voyage. Hub warned his son that he would only be allowed 
to accompany them on condition that he continued his studies 
while the ship was at sea. Ron readily agreed.
On 6 October, thirty families reported on board the USS Gohl 
Star for transportation to the China ports and return. Like 
the other officers on the excursion, Lieutenant Hubbard signed 
on for 'temporary duty'- he was Assistant to tile Supply Officer. 
As previously, Ron kept a log of the trip, using one of the 
accounts books that his father could always pr6vide. 'It is 
a delightful sensation', he scrawled in an early entry, 'to 
once more experience the pounding of engines below me and to 
hear the swish of a dark-blue sea outside our port.' At tile 
bottom of the page was a world-weary, elegiac postcript: 'Another 
boat caught. Is ever thus?'
After a stop in Manila, which he reported as being like 'Guam 
plus XXX and a few trimmings', they sailed north towards the 
China coast. Ron was reluctantly confined to a desk in Cabin 
9, claiming good progress with his studies.
The GoM Star re-fuelled with coal at Tsingtao, a busy port on 
tbc


42	Bate-Faced Messiah

Shantung Peninsula only recently returned to Chiua after being 
occupied for some years, first by the Germans, then the Japanese. 
Ron took the trouble to research Tsingtao's history and concluded 
that the Chinese, with all their corruption, were unworthy heirs 
to their own territory inasmuch as they had failed to profit 
from the efforts of Germany and Japan to clean up their country. 
'A Chinaman can not live up to a thing,' he wrote, 'he always 
drags it down.' On 30 October he noted thankfully: 'l, Ve have 
left Tsingtao forever, I hope.'
On the following day the Gold Star anchored off T'ang-ku, from 
where its passengers took a train to Peking.~ Like American 
tourists the world over, they made sure they got at least a 
glimpse of all the sights, which Ron described as 'rubberneck 
stations'. l|e was decidedly unimpresscd by Peking's historical 
and religious architectural heritage.
The Temple of Heaven, probably the supreme achievement of traditional 
Chinese architecture, he considered 'very gaudy and more or 
less crudely done'. The summer palace was 'very cheap as to 
workman-ship' and the winter palace was 'not much of a palace 
in my cstimatinn'.
The Lama temple, closed a few days after their visit by the 
newly-formed National Government, was 'miserably cold and very 
shabby . . . '!'he people worshippi,~g have voices like hull-frogs 
anti heat a drt,m and play a brass horn to accompany their singing 
(?).'
As for the Imperial palaces in the Forbiddcu City, one was 'very 
trashy-lo~king' and most of the ott~ers were 'not worth mentioning'.
Oulv the Great V~'all of China seemed to fire Iris imagination 
and that mostly because it was 'the only work of man's hand 
visible from lx. lars'. If China turned it intu a 'rollv coaster', 
he added, 'it could make millions of dollars even' year.'
, ,
Neither did the Chinese people endear themselves to the opinionatcd 
young American. He found them shallow, simple-minded, dishonest, 
lazy and brutal. 'When it comes to the Yellow Races overrunning 
the world, you may laugh,' he noted. '... [The Chinese] have 
neither the foresight or endurance to overrun any white country 
in any way except bv intermarriage. One American marine could 
stand off a great many yellowmen without much effort.'
Even the climate failed to please. Winter lasted from October 
to May, he said, the cold was intense, and it was so dry that 
dust formed ankle-deep in the roads and caused 'Peking sore 
throat', a formidable complaint that endured all xvinter.
'l believe that the most startling thing one can see in northern 
China', he wrote, 'is the number of camels. These are of a very 
mean breed but they resist cold and carry burdens xvhich is 
all the Chinaman requires of them. Every day in Peking one can 
see many caravans in

	Explorer .~,lanqud	43

the streets. They have a very stately shamble. They carry their 
head high; their mean mouths wagging and their humps lolling 
from side to side. All my life I have associated camels with 
Arabs and it strikes a discordant note with me to see the beasts 
shepherded by Chinainch.'
The Gold ,Star stopped at Shanghai and Hong Kong before headh~g 
back to Guam, but Ron tired of further descriptive writing, 
apart from taking a final swipe at the luckless Chinese race. 
'They small', he concluded, 'of all the baths they didn't take. 
The trouble with China is, there are too many chinks here.'
On the final leg of the voyage, Ron's devotion to his studies 
rather appeared to falter, for he began filling his journal 
with one-paragraph synopses of short stories that he had either 
written, or perhaps intended to write, for magazines like 3~le 
(~nft, ssmn and Adventure. It was clear from these entries that 
he was already thinking of a career as a writer, the Naval Academy 
notwithstanding. Indeed, he gave the impression that he had 
been grinding away at a typewriter for }'ears, ending one synopsis, 
titled 'Armies for Rent', with a nonchalant addendum that it 
would include the 'usual plot complications'.
Predictably, the Orient was his favourite setting and the hero 
was invaria!~ly a wt~ite adventurer, as in 'Secret Service': 
'Adventure. All iu a day's work. Casual laddie in ![ankuw. Saves 
town. J~i~s Brit SS to carry out such orders as "Giuvinni in 
M~kdcn exciting Communists. Use your own judgen~ent. CI3".'
None of hi~ effurts, it must be said, were startlingly original: 
'L~vc story. Goes to France. Meets swell broad in Nlarseillcs. 
She takes him to her sink, bedroom and bath where he lives until 
notable citovens object. l le stands them off and takes the 
next boat for America having received a long expected will donation 
.'
On page 119 of the accounts hook, Ron settled down to write 
a complete, though untitled, story which began: 'A lazy sun 
peeped over the horizon to throw glittering streamers of light 
across the breakers on the surf. The iaggoon [sic] lay blue 
and cool. Tropical birds winged about their daily business and 
two figures lay stretched
,
on the white coral sand. Two ragged figures, several feet apart 
. . .
Ron's grasp of English grammar was as uncertain as his spdling. 
It transpired that these two figures, a boy and a girl, were 
the sole survivors of a shipwreck. The girl roused the bov in 
traditional fashion ('Bob! Bob! Speak to me~'), whereup~m Bob 
spoke tht~s: "'Their [sic] gone, all gone, thev're dead and 
the ship is at the bottom."'
Alone on a desert island paradise, nature takes it course and 
they swear undying, though entirely chaste, love. But after 
being rescued and returning to the United States they drift 
apart. The story -


44	Ba~e-Faced lllessiah

interrupted on page 123 by the scribbled working of some hated 
algebra equations - ends with a poignant reunion in a San Francisco 
hotel lobby during which the couple laugh at their earlier foolislmess.
Although Ron's narrative writing was still immature, he demonstrated 
an obvious talent in the craft of short-story writing, structuring 
the narrative skilfully and compensating for what he lacked 
in literary skill by sheer productix'ity.
The Gold Star arrived back at Guam on 18 Decetnber and in the 
weeks and months that followed Ron turned out dozens of stories 
and essays, filling one accounts book after another. His mother 
took a photograph of him as a budding young writer, sitting 
at a desk in the bungalow with his fingers poised on the keys 
of a big upright typewriter, although he actually preferred 
to write by hand in a large, untidy script, frequently crossing 
out words or sentences, sometimes even whole pages, as he progressed.
Like all writers, there were some days when it just would not 
come right:
'The sun was hot, tile day was still, the palm trees gaudy green, 
lined the beach of that tropical isle . . .
'TIm sun was h~t, the day was still and Hospital Corpsman James 
Thurpc surveyed his tiny domain . . .
'The sun was h~t, the day was still . . .
'The sun xvas h~t and except for tile nlonotonotls drone of 
the sea beating the cruel rccf tile day was still . . .'
At the age of eighteen, Ron was a pink-faced, lanky youth with 
a cowlick of red hair and a spotty complcxi~m, but hc was writing 
as if he was a well-travcllcd man of the world, a carefree, 
two-fisted, knockab~ut adventurer with a zest for life. It was 
an image he was able to create by using the slender experience 
of his brief travels in the East to provide a gloss of verisimilitude 
on the overheated combustion of his imagination.
In this way, he felt able to philosophize about 'the untrust,'vorthy, 
lying, cruel, changeable, satirical Lady Luck', as if he had 
suffered more than once from her capriciousness: 'This humorist 
of humorists, this demon of demons has dragged men from their 
places in the sun into the slime of oblivion; has made beggars 
kings; has, with a whisper, made and crushed thousands; has 
laughed at the beings who supposed the,. ruled our destinies; 
and has killed enough men to patch hell's highway its blistcring 
length.'
Only when dealing, gingerly, with the opposite sex did the pubescent 
man of the world lose his assurance. The sto~' that began so 
tortuousIv with 'The sun is hot . . .' was about a male nurse 
in the Navy who fell for his native assistant. 'She took the 
chair with a sly glance at the boy and folded her slitn brown 
hands in her lap. The

	Explorer Manqu~	45

Corpsman was suddenly aware that she was beautiful. He swam 
for a moment in the depths of her clear brown eyes and then 
seated himself quickly upon the grass. He was somewhat startled 
by his discovery and told himself fiercely that she was native, 
native, native.'
When, inevitably, they fell into each other's arms ('Dimly he 
saw Ixlarie on the porch and in a moment he felt her in his 
arms . . .') Ron seemed unsure how to proceed with the story. 
I le scored through the next four lines so heavily as to make 
them illegible, then abandoned it.
As his attention was so diverted by his fantastic excursions 
into his imagination, it was perhaps no surprise that Ron failed 
the entrance examination to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. 
Mathematics, which he detested, let bim down.2 ttis father was 
disappointed but still convinced that Ron could get through 
the examination. Lieutenant Itubbard's tour of duty in Guam 
was soon coming to an end and he knew that his next posting 
would be to Washington DC, where he was to be Disbursing Officer 
at the Naval 1Iospital. He discovered that Swayely Preparatory 
School in Ixlanassas, Virginia - which was within the Washington 
DC metropolitan area - ran a special course for Annapolis candidates 
and after a lengthy exchange of tclegran~s between Guam and 
Manassas, he managed to enrol Ron for the 1929-30 school year.
The 11ubbards returned to the United States at the end of August 
1929 and went straight to ticlena, Montana, for a happy family 
reunion. (Their return was not prompted by the death of Ro~'s 
'wealthy grandfather', as suggested in 'official' biographies, 
since Lafayette 1,Vaterbury was still very much alive. tic died, 
agctl sixty-seven, on 18 August 1931.) Ill'lay, who had sometimes 
found the tropical climate in Guam exhausting, was particularly 
pleased to be home, filling her lungs with the sweet mountain 
air of Montana, and she decided to stay on for a while when 
the time came for 1 lub to take Ron to Washington.
On 30 September Ron started back at school in the leafy environs 
of Illlanassas. In Helena, Ixlay sat down to write her son a 
loving, but gently chiding, letter on the family's rickety typewriter:

Dearest Ronald,
Am thinking a lot about this, your first day at school. Do hope 
.you like it and that you study every lesson thoroughly. Remember 
you are paying for the information and so do not hesitate to 
ask a teacher again and again about anything that is not clear. 
I want you to hold to just this one job - getting through school 
and passing examinations at the top. Don't write anything outside 
your school stuff. Don't read anything outside of school requiren~ents. 
x, Vhen you are through with lessons, get outdoors for your 
health. If you stick to this rule you will win through.


46	Bare-Faced Messiah

I am feeling worlds better in this mountain air. It is a wonderful 
change from the tropics. It is too bad that dad could not also 
have had it instead of going s~ early on the job. He did it 
for yon so when you feel like slacking, I want you to rcmemt~er 
dad g~ve up his hard earned leave t~ put you where you are. 
There is only one way you can pa3' dad and tllat is by maki 
ng good. Your success is our biggest goal in life . . .

~lay went on to tell her son about the weather, a two-day fishing 
trip and the trout she had catlght, and Toilie being mad because 
he had not written her any letters. He was to let bee know if 
he wanted his hiking boots. 'I am on mv tocs to hear all about 
your school...' she concluded. 'Witb love and best wishes. Mother.'
Lieutenant I lubbard's heartfelt hope that his son would follow 
him into the US Navy through tbc Naval Academy was soon to be 
dashed. During his first semester at Swayely, Ron went to a 
doctor complaining of eye-strain and was sent to the Naval ! 
1ospital for tests. These revealed him to bc so short-sigl~ted 
that he stood no chance of passing tim medical requirements 
for entry to Annapolis. May, meanwhile, had arrived from I Iclcna 
and moved into a small house in Oakcrest, Virginia, which llub 
hatl rented for them. Many evenings she would sit with her husband 
fretting about Ron: I luh's gloom about what tbc [tilure held 
for Iris son was greatly cxaccrhatcd by the Wall Street Crash, 
which sccmctl as if it woultl cn~nlf tl~c cotlntry in catastnq~hc.
R~n Ilimsclf cxllihitcd little regret that a career iu the Navy 
was no longer an option. At Swayely he was made an associate 
ctlitor of the school's monthly ncxvspapcr, tht' Swa~'elv Setttinel, 
and he was also busy rehearsing for his part as Anatnl in Episode, 
a one-act comctly ~vhich was to launch the Swavclv Pla)'crs' 
season on 13 l)cccmbcr. In trnth, being an editor or an actor 
xvas a sight more alluring to him than being in the Navy, although 
he would never have admitted it to his father.
%Vfiile Run was happily itnmersed in school life at Swavely, 
his father was in frequent contact with the Registrar at George 
~Vashington University to try and find a way of getting his 
son accepted as an undergraduate. Lieutenant 11ubbard was advised 
that if Ron cotlid earn sufficient credits at a recognized school 
- Woodward School for Boys, a YMCA 'crammer' in %Vashington 
DC, was mentioned - he would not be required to sit the College 
Entrance Examination for the university.
Accordingly, Ron was enrolled at Woodward in February 1930. 
At the beginning of May he took time off from Iris studies to 
enlist as a Private. in the US Marine Cort~s Reserve, adding 
two years to Iris age and giving his occtlpation, for some reason, 
as 'photographer'. It seems he was tmconccrncd by such pifttmg 
mendacity, even on official

	Explorer Manqul	47

doct~ments, for his bold signature appears at the bottom of 
his Service Record, confirming both the errors and his physical 
description height 5'101/z'', weight 1651b, eyes grey, hair 
red, complexion ruddy. Six weeks later he was inexplical~ly 
promoted to First Sergeant, a leap in rank that was astonishing 
even by his own standards of self-regard.3
Ron's lack of concern for literal truth was exemplified by the 
persistence with which he claimed lie had once been the youngest 
eagle scout. Even when he won the Woodward school finals in 
tbe National Oratorical Contest, with a speech on 'The Constitution; 
a Guarantee of the Liberty of the Individual', the school newspaper 
did not fail to mention tbat he was 'at one time the yotmgest 
eagle scout in America', although it was not immediately apparent 
what tiffs had to do with oratory?
To the intense pleasure of his parents, Ron graduated in June. 
In a letter to another university (Lieutenant l{ubbard was clearly 
determined to keep his son's options open), his father wrote 
proudly: 'Ronald worked day and night to prepare for the several 
examinations and was successful in passing all of them. In my 
own opinion he has covered considerably more ground than is 
usual in any high school course and the fact that with all the 
handicaps he has encountered he has succeeded, he is therefore 
tbc best possible subicct for university and college work. ,s

On Z4 September 1930, Ron was admitted as a frcslm~an to tbc 
School of Engineering at George Washington University, with 
a major in civil engineering - a discipline suggested by his 
fatbee. lie was photugraphed for The Ctten3' Tree, the university 
year book, stantling in the back row of the student chapter 
of the American Society of Civil Engineers in a smart suit and 
spotted tie, staring solemnly at the camera, hair sinarmed back 
and instantly identifiable by his curiously protuberant lips, 
which often gave him an unfortunately sullen demeanour.	"-
The Gx, V Campus, in the heart of Washington DC, was a lively 
place to be at the start of the 'thirties, despite Prohibition 
and the worst depression in American history. Even though the 
newspapers were full of stories about children scavenging for 
food in garbage cans and pictures of gaunt faces waiting in 
bread lines, civil engineering students seemed to face a bright 
future, for people were already beginning to talk about the 
new erca of technocracy, tbc absol~lte domination of technology, 
and the 'Great Engineer' - Herbert Hoover - occupied the White 
|1ousc, just a few blocks from tbe campus. In New York, the 
Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world, was 
nearing completion, testimony to the vision, brilliance and 
the bright prospects of American civil en