The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III: Multiple Universes, Mutual Assured Destruction, and the Meltdown of a Nuclear Family

by Peter Byrne

  Nancy’s poor scores on the Graduate Record Examination did not reflect her natural intelligence or abilities. Her verbal ability was ranked in the 58th percentile, i.e. 42 percent of the test-takers scored higher. On the literature test, her strong point, she scored in the 74th percentile, but she sank to the 9th percentile for the advanced literature test. She barely registered as having a brain wave in physics, chemistry, biology and social studies, scoring in the 4th percentile overall for quantitative abilities.

  After graduation, she moved back in with her parents, and worked as a counselor at Camp Najerog. If she had stayed with the family business, fashioning a career for herself from her love of nature and outdoor activity, her life would have taken a very different course; instead, she took classes in shorthand and typing at a local business school. In April, 1953, she moved to Princeton to start an entry-level job at Educational Testing Services (ETS) (owners of the Scholastic Aptitude Test and the Graduate Record Examinations). The job paid $220 a month, which was enough money to rent a small room, eat well, and entertain herself. Her Princeton diaries chronicle her boredom with clerical work. She failed to impress her supervisors because she often arrived late, she day dreamed, she made careless mistakes. But she had an active social life, attending Episcopal church services and singing in the choir, biking, sailing, playing tennis, going to beer parties, square dancing, and “air-plane spotting.”

  Cold War culture

  Like hundreds of thousands of young people in the early 1950s, Nancy volunteered with the Ground Observer Corps, watching the skies for Russian bombers. Because radar systems could not track airplanes flying under 4,000 feet, volunteer clubs were tasked by civil defense agencies to monitor the night skies, especially in states that bordered oceans. “Highway billboards and movie shorts solicited volunteers. Local chapters hosted talent shows, beauty pageants, square dances, ice cream socials, and bake sales.”2 Even prison inmates and Catholic monks meditating on mountaintops were recruited to watch the heavens for enemy aircraft.

  The function of the Corps, “like so much of the macabre apparatus of nuclear war, was primarily ideological: a genuine defense being impossible, a symbolic one was provided instead.”3 Not only was it technologically futile, but conventional sexual morays were, no doubt, tested as legions of young watchers stayed up all night, lying on their backs in the dark, staring at the stars. It certainly kept Nancy up till the wee hours, making her sluggish at work.

  Day dreaming of landing a job as an executive secretary in a publishing company, Nancy kept banging her head on shorthand classes, never mastering that skill. Dreaming of travel, she consider joining the Foreign Service (and was rejected after failing an aptitude test). Desiring to write a novel based on her life experiences, she began an outline, but became distracted by a romantic crush and abandoned the project.

  Nonetheless, she pondered important issues, including the nature of God, the viability of democracy, the merits of capitalism versus communism, and the omnipresent threat of atomic warfare. Her political thoughts were shaped by Cold War liberalism. She favored granting civil rights to “Negroes,” distributing welfare checks to the urban poor, and sending foreign aid to starving masses abroad. Her support for liberal government policies was not particularly rooted in altruistic feeling, but stemmed from the view that alleviating poverty might put a damper on social unrest and revolution; she was for “containing” the spread of communism through police actions by the military.

  Like many intellectuals of her generation, Nancy was attracted to the idea, but not the practice of communism. She worried about losing her life in a nuclear conflagration, but she also worried about losing her “individualism” in a communist take-over. As she came of age, the country was plagued by McCarthyism, which aimed to stamp out political dissent. Anti-communist paranoia seeped into every corner of the culture. Liberal intellectuals walked in fear as careers and families were destroyed by accusations of socialist sympathies and secret black listing. Nuclear hegemony was promoted by the political culture of military-industrialism as the guarantor of freedom and democracy against the Communist Menace—embodied by Hollywood as body-snatching aliens and Godzilla.

  Not long after Nancy moved to Princeton, she wrote in her diary:

  McCarthy’s speech tonite. I think he’s damn right about communism, but a liar … making it a party issue and blaming Democrats for being party-minded. You certainly cannot blame all the c[ommunist] infiltration on one man, Truman…. Its bad when people are motivated by fear … but I think that is why Eisenhower got in so overwhelmingly last year. I for one was scared to vote for a Democrat.

  She sought solace in religion:

  To me communion is a reminder: a time to remake your vow. Simply to remember why you are living and to remind self to live by the creative spirit that is in all people…. I shall keep on trying to do so just as long as I am able to receive assurance that God does exist in life.

  Considering the pros and cons of sharing an apartment with Milly, a “party girl,” Nancy reflected,

  Egads: I hope I don’t (should the opportunity occur) choose a husband as blindly as I seem to be choosing a roommate.

  A visit to an impoverished section of Trenton,

  inspires me to do social work. (But will I ever?) Heel! I think I’ll take one of those aptitude tests to see what combines appreciation of the arts, outdoors, and sports for a living no less.

  In addition to continuing the torture of learning shorthand, she took courses in Comparative Religion and English at Princeton Adult School. She studied French Conversation and Figure Drawing. She read books by Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, and Theodore Dreiser, but gave up on Henry James, whose writing she found full of “innuendo.” Theodore Dreiser, on the other hand,

  was genuinely concerned about the drastic difference in living standards and privileges between ‘lower’ and ‘upper’ classes. But I think he was feeling sorry for himself, too, which tainted his philosophy. He turned to communism finally for an answer to the problem, not knowing any better, I believe. I don’t think he could see beyond the immediate problem.

  Like many young Americans, she thought,

  Communism doesn’t look so bad on paper, I s’pose; and maybe some forms of it are workable. Maybe a combo of communism (little ‘c’ please note) and ‘democracy’ is the answer to the problem … I believe there are good pts in each and bad pts in each as they are being practiced today.

  At the end of February 1954, after a romantic set-back, her mood sank:

  I refuse to recognize the fact that I exist. This makes for one long period of … nothingness … of being a blob of protoplasm, a disgusting form of being…. What a frightening feeling to have that you are not existing. Its like that damn tree that falls down in a forest. There is no one there to hear any sound—was there any noise when the tree fell? It’s the same with me now…. My life is one big mass of irrelevant nervous twitches with no pattern holding them together.

  One day, she befriended a young Latvian couple, Aria and Voldus, who had immigrated to America after the Second World War, fleeing Soviet repression. Of her new friends, Nancy wrote,

  They of course appreciate American democracy more than I could start to conceive of…. [In the Soviet Union] kids don’t have a chance. They can’t think for themselves at that age. The Communists therefore start with the youth organizations…. If they didn’t join they were suspected…. And we worry about social inequality. God.

  She grappled with a particularly Latvian view of post-war politics.

  Another point Voldus brought up which I had never heard concerns Jews. The way he sees it, people who are Jews have been responsible for mass atrocities in Latvia and elsewhere, because they are sheltered by Russia. Russia makes use of them while other countries persecute them. The Jews are evidentially given the power in satellite countries …

  It looks as tho’ these particular Jews are completely mercenary—playing ball with the powers that be. I don’t know
where their religious beliefs fit into this, but I should think it wouldn’t be hard to fall back on wealth, money, power as the most important value for keeping them alive after the way they have been persecuted. What do they have to live for—no country. Who can they trust?

  Voldus mentioned before about Jews having all the power in N.Y.C…. but last night he said McCarthy was persecuting Jews in this country, just as affectively [sic] as done in other countries…. But this I’m not taking as a fact yet! It just happens that Rosenberg, jailed spy, is a Jew.4

  Kennan speaks

  Nancy was invigorated by hearing George F. Kennan of the Institute for Advanced Study speak:

  [Went] to hear Kennan tonite, [the] former ambassador to Russia. Very good. Tempted to skip class tomorrow to hear him again. He even help[ed] complete my understanding of the conflict in America betw. the ‘American Dream,’ tradition etc. vs. realism etc., or always looking at the bright side of nature vs. accepting differences as such and attempting solutions to problems, not ignoring them. The world is not that rosy.

  After serving as a State Department official in Moscow during and after the Second World War, Kennan had written a politically influential paper calling for the “containment” of the Soviet Union. Later, hard line American militarists used Kennan’s paper to justify increasing the production of nuclear armaments and upping the level of confrontation with the communist states. Ensconced in Princeton, the enraged Kennan loudly objected to such bellicose use of his ideas, saying he had assessed the Soviets as definitely not interested in world domination. He believed that the Stalinist “autocracy” would crumble in the face of internal democratic movements, and that a nuclear arms contest would only prolong the existence of that autocracy. Kennan insisted that his call for “containment” was a call for economic and political isolation, not military encirclement. Allied with J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was his boss at the Institute, he had strongly opposed America’s engineering of the hydrogen bomb, seeing it as an impediment to peaceful co-existence with the socialist bloc.

  A few days later, Nancy went to hear Kennan speak again:

  He “seemed” very comforting in that he expressed a sober view of situation, but very alarming in that he expects so much of the American people and gv’t. He said, in short, that Russia must work out her own problems from within…. Any thought of war on either side is ridiculous in that it solves no one’s problems…. He says [the Russians] are only misguided people, not out to envelope the world (but they are?) … We could only attack in retaliation if we ever need to otherwise no one would be on our side! (Now [I] see why McArthur [was] taken out of Korea so fast) … I can see where [Kennan] could be branded by some to be a ‘pinko’ or ‘subversive’ because he is ‘against war’—but I am all for him (mostly, tho’, it isn’t all clear)….

  He says, in summary … [Those who want war are] the McCarthys who cause fear and dissension, the capitalists who demand war profits, the service leaders, and, I suppose, many people in higher up positions who think in terms of ‘civil defense’ and nothing else.

  The next night, enthralled, she attended a third lecture:

  Tonite, Kennan emphasized [the] duty of Americans to be open-minded enough to respect others’ opinions, and to accept and give positive suggestions to [other] countries’ problems…. [He] treated [the] U.S. just like [a] psycho patient, as being neurotic and provincial, [and] unable to receive stimulus from outside if [we] put up protective barriers!! (immigration laws, military defense fear, witch burnings etc etc!!)

  SO—we ALL need positive direction…. Marge seemed more interested in snagging interesting looking males at [the] lecture. At least she admits what Jeanne and I don’t, I s’pose? But there is a time and a place for almost everything.

  But after talking some more with her Latvian friends, Nancy was no longer sure if she agreed with Kennan that socialism was evolving toward democracy.

  For these people, death by cobalt bomb is better than [the] life of terror they now endure (which we have no conception of).

  Paradise lost and regained

  In April 1954, Nancy met a Ukrainian friend of her Latvians, an artist named Marco Stefanovitch Zubaretsky, “a dashing creature from a far-off land,” with whom she embarked on a tempestuous affair (losing her virginity). She neglected to write in her journal for four months. In August, she returned,

  I’ve been living in a whirlwind of activity, but … there’s no meaning to it…. I can’t write what I really feel, although I s’pose no one will ever read this.

  On a separate piece of paper, tucked into the diary, she penned her thoughts about having sex with Marco, with whom she was squabbling:

  My next husband [sic] won’t like it, but he will understand what he’s got. It meant a lot to me to be a virgin when married; but a life lived with one who is a mature person means more, call me what you will … I was and still am under [Marco’s] physical power—seduced, mesmerized or whatever … It does not follow that if a person is taken, conquered physically, and conditioned to being with one person perpetually, that [a] person will not be able to live happily without the other. It does NOT follow that LOVE grows from physical relationship alone…. [But] I can’t live without [Marco’s] physical presence.

  Marco moved to nearby Camden, and the relationship alternately cooled and steamed. By December, Nancy’s bosses at ETS were fed up with her inattention and mistakes. They asked her to find a new job, telling her that she could not use ETS as a job reference.

  Stuck in a behavioral pattern that stayed with her for the rest of her life, Nancy rode a roller-coaster of uncontrollable emotion—rising in a moment from the pit of rejection to the height of romantic joy and falling again into despair and ennui superceded by skyrocketing elation. She became desperate to break with Marco:

  I am dabbling beyond my ken. He is of some other world which I can never grasp [the] meaning of.

  Eager to change, she gave up cigarette smoking, but it did not help:

  I must, I think I really must leave Marco. But I can’t really face the problem sensibly since there is nothing logical about the whole relationship. I’m afraid it will go on like this until he finds someone to marry. Then he will drop me…. but in spite of his horribleness I can not yet let him go. Fool.

  In September 1954, she typed a long letter to Marco, who was attracted to socialism:

  Don’t you know yet that there is no easy way to achieve social justice, if there should be any such thing? … I have a vague idea that [the] United States will certainly not stay the same as it is now forever; that some day it will be socialistic rather than democratic; all well and good if we’ve ironed the little problems, like loss of individual choice, and a lot of other things that you actually want.

  Then, nothing in her diary until Feb 27, 1955:

  I try to understand Marco through Nietzsche in whom he believes as I believe in Christianity. Damn oh damn…. It is a world of dog-eat-dog, but if you are passive like I am, and slow, then the other fellow is going to be using me…. God, we don’t have much to say about our lives, I swear to God we don’t … Damn it, I am mad and scared because I am afraid of becoming a whore, prostitute, slut or something. I’ve never been tempted before, and now, at [the] tender age of 25, I am falling fast….

  Impulsively, she slept with another man.

  And then, out of the blue, with no forethought or intent of malice. I’ve done what I’ve always been afraid of [doing] since Marco has been fading from the picture. (I hope my grandchildren enjoy this, but better to learn.) Now I’m afraid to go out with any one.

  In April, she found a job as an administrative assistant at a community planning firm in Princeton. As the United States rattled its nuclear saber at China for coveting Taiwan, Nancy’s world view took an aggressive turn:

  Shall we drop [the] A Bomb on China and get it all over with? Maybe!?! They’re just baiting us to see how much they can get away with without starting a war (a real one). Well, the sooner an end
is put to it the better!!

  Then, she stopped writing in her diary until February 22, 1956, seven months later. On that day, we learn that her heart has been won by a new man, Hugh Everett III, whom she met at a “physicists party” at the graduate school in June. He had helped her move her furniture into a new apartment. He was taking a class in ballroom dancing with her. “When I met him, he was looking for a typist” [for his dissertation].

  She has “exchanged” Marco for Hugh.

  When I used to watch Marco paint, it made me want to do it, and when Hugh is madly writing on his thesis (must finish 1st draft by April 1st), it makes me want to write and [face] myself a little … I am unsatisfied, even unhappy with my existence.

  Portrait of Hugh Everett III, circa 1958.

  Portrait Nancy Gore Everett, circa 1958.

  She reflects:

  I must look at human relationships as a game like Hugh is able to do, but [I] can’t get out of self. Poo.

  And in June 1956:

  And NOW that Hugh has gone the way of all Princeton Grad students and has had to seek work in Washington…. I [realize that I] have allowed myself to live perfectly happily, obliviously, under Hugh’s influence, even tho’ I can only admit to myself that we will never be serious [and] marry…. I tried to believe that we might someday, but I just don’t think we will. But now I feel alone again, as after Marco. You do have to have someone once you have had someone, it seems. That is what I’m afraid of.