#title My Forrest Gump Life
#author Michael Allen Hall
#date 2010
#source <[[http://www.myforrestgumplife.com/ted_kaczynski.html][myforrestgumplife.com/ted_kaczynski.html]]>
#lang en
#pubdate 2025-04-11T00:23:43
#topics
#notes I've only skim read this, so I've no idea of how likely it is that it's a fictional story. But, even if it is
complete fiction, it's possible the author doesn't know it's fiction, so it's amusing that people could be walking around with false memories of having met Ted.
#rights Not Copyrighted. The author doesn't believe in patent or copyright laws.
This is a compilation of encounters that I have had throughout my life with people who were either already famous or who later became famous or infamous. They are listed in the order of the encounters. This is not fiction - everything that follows actually happened to me. The probability of what has happened to me happening have to be astronomical, but it is what it is. If I'm not the inspiration for the Forrest Gump book then I should have been. You make the call.
----------
I had already decided that I was going to quit my job at Northrup Nortronics when my friend Jim came out to LA in early August. I asked Jim if he could wait two weeks until I could quit my job and then I would go back with him. Before we went back Jim said he wanted to spend a few days in San Francisco at the Berkely campus. This resulted in me having another encounter with someone who would later become nationally infamous.
Jim grew up in Chicago and said that the older brother of a childhood friend was living there and he wanted to visit him. After we were there a few days Jim must have talked to some people about my being one of the protesters burning their draft card in front of the Pentagon last October and that I had just quit my job in protest of the war because he told me that there was a math professor on campus who heard about me and wanted to talk to me.
Jim must have told him about my degree in math also. That night this young man named "Theodore" who reminded me of the 'Jaws' character out of the James Bond movies who had the powerful teeth came over. He seemed interested in hearing about my job and education and my decision to quit my job. I told him about it and we eventually got around to mathematics and I told him that the U of Ill offered a five year program with a BS in electrical engineering and a BA in mathematics. I told him that when I got to my senior year I really didn't want to leave school yet with the draft and the war and I only needed a few classes to get a BA in math so I decided to go for the five-year program.
I asked him what area of math he was into and he mentioned that he was into "boundary functions." He explained a little about it but it was over my head. Then Jim talked to him for quite some time. Jim was more anti-technology and anti-business than me and was giving his radical ecological terrorist rap which Theodore seemed in agreement with. Jim was always talking about ways to hinder the economy such as a nationwide human blockage of highways – that type of stuff. There was no way I wanted to get in the way of a truck driver needing to support his family. My main concern was just with stopping the war and legalizing marijuana. I asked Theodore when he was going to drop out and he said that he didn't like supporting the war either and that he would be quitting and dropping out soon.
A few days later, (August 29th) the night before Jim and I left for Champaign-Urbana Jim and I and Theodore watched the 68 Democratic National Convention in Chicago on TV at someone else's house. It got pretty emotional as the Chicago police were rioting. The next day Jim and I left to go back to Champaign-Urbana and I wouldn't hear of Theodore again till many years later.
***
In the summer of 78 I took a vacation from my electrical contracting business and went back to Champaign-Urbana for a visit. I looked up my old friend Jim and spent a day with him.
Jim mentioned something about a friend of ours being in Chicago and that he hoped he wasn't responsible for the recent bombing. I asked who he was talking about and he asked if I remembered Theodore from Berkely.
That was the first time I had even thought of Theodore since 68. I said yes, and he said Theodore was back in Chicago and there had been a bombing up there at Northwestern University. I wasn't sure if he was joking about Theodore being involved, but I didn't push it because I really didn't want to know.
We went to a bar and got into political discussions which I really enjoyed because for the first time in our relationship I think I expressed disagreement with him over politics. It was his left wing economic views.
As we left Jim asked if I wanted to go to his pad just like old times, but I turned him down. At the time I was taking my new political views too seriously and I regret that I let them interfere with my relationship with a good friend.
I left Champaign-Urbana and lost contact with Jim and have not talked to him since. Thinking about it now I feel I must have been trying to demonstrate my intellectual independence from Jim who had influenced my political views from 65 - 72.
***
When I read about the Unabomber's 1985 killing of a computer store owner it particularly concerned me given my current profession. I still was unsure if the math professor I had met in 68 was the Unabomber and my lingering prejudices from the FBI's involvement in the cover up of the JFK assassination prevented me from finding out.
It wasn't until September 1995 when the Unabomber's manifesto was published and he came up as an issue on one of the local radio talk shows that I called in to voice my opinion. I didn't mention that I might have met him and help inspire him because I couldn't be sure if Theodore was the Unabomber. I was aware of the one million dollar reward being offered for information leading to his arrest which I now realize I certainly could have provided, but didn't because of my lingering antagonism for the FBI's involvement in covering up the Kennedy Assassination.
I mentioned that the reason he didn't see anything wrong with killing humans was because he wanted to go back to the population we had in the world before industrialization. I pointed out that 90% of the world's population would have to die off if we went back to the lifestyle of the 1700s.
Then I mentioned a book that I had read entitled "Who Wrote the Bible" by a biblical scholar named David Friedman. The word Bible in the title was referring to the old testament and in the book Freidman reviewed scholarship concerning the authors of different parts of the old testament along with his theories.
I was fascinated by the techniques used by these scholars to find out who wrote something written 2500 years ago and wondered why the FBI couldn't get some of these people to look at the unabomber's writings and figure out where he was from and what university he attended. I mentioned that he probably attended a university on the “left coast” but I didn't mention Berkely. It wasn't long after that that his brother gave him up and he was caught.
While in the Butner, NC Federal prison in 2003 I picked up a book about the Unabomber and as soon as I opened the book I saw a picture of the young man that I had talked to on the campus of Berkely in 1968. It wasn't until then that I was positive that Ted Kaczyncski was the mild mannered Theodore. As I read the book I realized that Ted was the brother of the friend Jim had grown up with in Chicago.
I'm sure I had some influence on Ted dropping out as did his university education and probably Jim's talk also influenced him. At the time my major concern was the war and I really didn't believe in most of the other far left propaganda as Jim did. I can't accept any responsibility for Ted's violent actions but I do feel some guilt about possibly being partly responsible for the world losing the services of such a brilliant mathematician. I love individual freedom and that includes unhindered by government buying and selling and what technology can do to make life easier. The earth has been here long before us and will be here long after we are gone. In a couple hundred thousand years after humans there will be little trace left of our existence on earth. We need to live in harmony with other species, but we have to realize our welfare comes first. When dinasours ruled the earth were they concerned about our ancestor's welfare?