Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

The Bare-Faced Messiah Interviews
Interview with Robert MacDonald Ford,
Olympia, Washington, 1 Sept 86
Robert MacDonald Ford, a former member of the United States Senate, was a close personal
friend of L. Ron Hubbard during the 1930s and 1940s and helped Ron to get his long-sought
commission in the US Armed Forces in 1941. (Ron had been applying, unsuccessfully, for six
years.) Ford was interviewed in September 1986 by the British writer and journalist Russell Miller
for his biography of Hubbard, Bare-Faced Messiah. The following is a transcript of that interview,
which sheds some interesting light on Ron's character and rather convoluted private life. As his
regular contact with Hubbard had pretty much ended before the war's end, without a falling-out with
Hubbard or Scientology - a rare event for Miller's interviewees - his account can be regarded as free
of any biases which might have arisen as a result of a grudge or ill-feeling.
Note the reported claim that Ron wrote John Wayne's classic Western, Stagecoach! This is one
which, for some obscure reason, has not been repeated in recent years...
Interview - 1 Sept 86
We first met about 1938. I had an insurance agency in Bremerton, Washington. Ron's father was a
supply officer in the US Navy Yard and one of my policy holders ran into his mother's car and did
$15 worth of damage. We issued a draft and I delivered it to her. I thought she might know
someone who needed insurance. She thought Ron should insurance - he didn't have any - so I
called him on the phone. He says he should take some basic insurance and she would pay for
half. I figgered if his mother was going to pay half I'd be able to get the premiums. They were pretty
hard up. Ron was always in fairly dire straits at that time. We wrote it over the phone.
My in-laws lived at South Colby a mile or so from where he was living. One weekend when I was
visiting the in-laws, I wandered up there to see them [the Hubbards]. Polly was up and invited me in
for coffee. Ron had been up all night working so he was sleeping. Polly invited my wife and I up for
dinner that night when Ron was going to be up. We went up and had dinner. Just a couple of days
before, he had bought this 30ft boat, an old [inaudible] hull gaff-headed ketch, so we were talking
about that. Polly had been making some ballast bags for the boat and so Ron and I went down to
the County gravel pile and got enough off the pile to fill the ballast bags. There wasn't that much but
we had no damn business taking it.
We hit it off because Polly and my first wife Nancy were very good friends, were both avid gardeners
and were excellent cooks. We had a son and daughter of the same age and used to see them off
and on until the war years. I went in the service in the spring of '42 and I only saw him once after
that. He had come back '45-'46 just to see the kids and was taking them to a show and I ran into
them. I don't think he was supposed to be in the state because I don't think he was divorced from
Polly and had married someone else.
At that time he was writing science fiction. As matter of fact Street and Smith had started a
magazine called Unknown to feature a novelette by Ron every month. I knew this because I'd seen
the correspondence with Street & Smith. He'd write a novelette and as soon as the grocer was
satisfied and wasn't pressing him he'd play for a while. We both liked to sail and play with boats.
They were getting along financially but the grocer would press him. The place they had wasn't of too