When Forry Met Wendy

Posted by Earl Roesel in A Walk Through the Forrest with Earl Roesel, Books, Latest News on December 19th, 2009

How did FJA and his beloved wife of many years, Wendy, first meet? The Ackermonster himself related the story like this:

“One day at the big department store called the May Company, I had picked out a batch of books that I’d intended to purchase. So I walked up to the counter where the clerk would look over the books to tell me how much I owed. And the first words the clerk ever said to me were, ‘May I help you, sir?’ I saw and heard the most fascinating face and voice before me. On the spur of the moment, I said, ‘Oh, where did that interesting accent come from?’ She’d been born a Polish Jew in Germany and her parents spoke a lot of Polish and Hebrew while she was growing up. She’d then learned German as a young girl, then French when she’d become a midwife, and picked up somewhat of a British accent while in London undergoing the Blitz, and I guess a little bit of Cuban had rubbed off on her. So together it was fascinating combination of accents. She replied to me, ‘Oh, my ancestors were highly civilized while yours were hanging by their tails from trees!’ It’s a wonder I ever spoke to her again.”

Forry and Wendy encounter Vincent Price, circa 1969. Note the FM, its Boris Karloff tribute issue, tucked under Forry's arm.

The Bride of Ackerstein was, as Forry indicates, a cultured European woman who was extremely proud of her ancestry. Her name at birth was Mathilde Wahrman; after her first marriage it became Tilly Porjes. Forry would later re-christen her Wendayne Mondelle Ackerman, a name only a mind as seriously steeped in sci-fi as Forry’s could conjure.

When the world suddenly found itself without its only Wendayne Mondelle in 1990, Forry would regularly produce a circular titled WWW: World Without Wendy. The wife of Mr. Sci-Fi (as her headstone reads) nevertheless was still at the side of her beloved husband – via a huge portrait that loomed vigilantly over his bed.

The oversized portrait that overlooked Forry's bed in the Russell Ave. address.

I remember asking Forry, almost offhandedly, whether he thought he would ever see Wendy again. He nodded his head yes, which is all the more surprising for his lifelong and repeatedly reaffirmed atheism. I chose not to explore this seeming contradiction any further, however, and it must forever remain a side of FJA we’ll never quite understand.