This is part of an ongoing theme here on TA. The willingness of family members to demonize their own family is horrid .. whether the hatred comes form Kim Jung Un, Bill Young or my own brother. Freud explained all this very well. It is sad that even today so few understand the workings of the Id.
From the Tampa Bay Times: How a Congressman demonized his family
Bill Young divorced his wife of 36 years and married his former secretary eight days later. One Christmas, the Congressman sneaked into his old house to leave presents. A son, Terry, asked his father to come inside. The kids were giddy to see their grandfather, who had thrilled them on Christmases past by playing Santa Claus.
“I’m sorry, Terry, I just can’t,” Bill Young said. According to Terry, Bill Young never tried to contact him or the grandchildren again.
When Bill Young died last Oct. 18 at 82, he was given a funeral befitting a legend. By the time he showed up at Terry Young’s house with the Christmas presents, Bill Young was more than halfway through his second decade as a U.S. representative. Speakers — including House Speaker John Boehner and high-ranking military officials — praised Representative Young’s skills at crafting legislation and advocating for his constituents.
Afterward, questions swirled about the congressman’s first family. Why were they absent from the service and why were their names not included in most obituaries?
The proof had arrived on June 21, 1984, when the congressman and his secretary, Beverly, had a son — Charles William Young II — while he was still married to and living with his wife. His first wife, Marian, doesn’t remember exactly when her husband admitted that the child was his. After the birth, Marian said, Bill Young asked her to take a ride with him to the hospital to see Beverly’s baby. Marian believes he wanted an arrangement where he could stay married to her but still have a relationship with Beverly. “He didn’t want the divorce, actually,” she said. “But there was no way I was going to hang around.”
Within a few months of Billy Young’s birth, Marian filed for divorce. It took about a year. A critical part of the agreement, she said, centered on keeping the affair and the baby a secret.
“My attorney said, ‘If all of this comes out, the congressman may be in jeopardy of losing his seat. If we can get alimony from him to keep you from letting everybody know about that, that would be beneficial,’ ” Marian Young said.
“I said, ‘Done.’ ”
The divorce became final Nov. 15, 1985. Its records were sealed.
“I asked my attorney why did he (have the records sealed),” she said. “He said, ‘It’s because of the child.’ ”
Eight days later, Young married Beverly in the House prayer room of the U.S. Capitol.
• • •
Less than a year later, Young was awarded the Family and Freedom Award from the Christian Voice, the nation’s largest conservative religious lobby.
He received the award because of how he voted on “key moral issues.”
This story, like so many family feuds, is a sad tragedy. Unlike many GOP politicians, Young wasn’t born to privilege. He had a hardscrabble childhood and clawed his way up in the world. When he was 18, and a high school dropout, he married a 17-year-old classmate — not an unusual thing in blue-collar communities of the late forties. He served in the Army National Guard for 9 years, which undoubtedly help put food on the young couple’s austere table. He was smart, worked hard, and after working as an insurance salesman he eventually owned his own insurance agency. You might disagree with his politics, but he was the genuine article, a self-made man. Then, through circumstance (with perhaps a dollop of human frailty thrown in), he became patriarch of two families. Two wives, two sets of children, multiple or divided or conflicted loyalties. I would go slow in judging this man. He probably was wrong about some things, and he probably did some things wrong, but who isn’t and doesn’t? He was not, at least, a brazen hypocrite in the mold of Newt Gingrich. But neither did he know what a good thing he had in his first wife, or appreciate how much he lost when he gave her up for a lesser woman.