NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...

They teased her about her ears: they stuck out lik
e Dumbo’s. Or, as Hollywood rumors had it, they st
uck out like Clark Gable’s. Ms. Lewis’s mother dre
ssed her in bonnets to hide them. When Ms. Lewis w
as 7 her ears were surgically altered to make them
less prominent.
Until Ms. Lewis, as an adult, confronted her years
later, Young did not acknowledge that Ms. Lewis w
as her biological daughter, or that Gable was Ms.
Lewis’s father. When Young married and had two chi
ldren with Tom Lewis, a radio producer, Judy took
his name but remained the family’s "adopted" daugh
ter.
And though conceding the story privately to her da
ughter — and later to the rest of her family — You
ng remained mum publicly all her life, agreeing to
acknowledge the facts only in her authorized biog
raphy, "Forever Young," and only on the condition
that it be published after her death. She died in
2000.
But Ms. Lewis revealed the story of her parentage
in her own memoir, "Uncommon Knowledge," in 1994.
She described feeling a powerful sense of alienati
on as a child. "It was very difficult for me as a
little girl not to be accepted or acknowledged by
my mother, who, to this day, will not publicly ack
nowledge that I am her biological child," she said
in an interview that year.
After Ms. Lewis released the memoir, her mother ref
used to speak to her for three years.
The lightning bolt that gave Ms. Lewis the first h
int about her parentage came during an identity cr
isis before her wedding day. Two weeks before her
marriage in 1958, Ms. Lewis told her fiance, Tom T
inney, that she did not understand her confusing r
elationship with her mother and that she did not k
now who her father was. "I can’t marry you," she s