Say it Ain’t So, Diana! [Diana Nyad Fact Check Annex]

Let’s review. In Find a Way, Nyad writes:

Today I’m listed in all those books where people live out the meaning of their names, a phenomenon referred to by the term “aptonym.” (p. 44)

In a previous post, I wrote that I could only find one such book: Steven Busalaachi’s Wacky News Names. I recently bought a copy and learned that not only did Busalaachi leave Nyad out of his book, he described why he left her out, naming her specifically. From the introduction:

One of my neighbors, Jesse Ishikawa, suggested I include Diana Nyad, the lady who has repeatedly tried (and failed) to swim from Cuba to Florida. I wracked my brain over that suggestion and came up empty.

He explained: “In Greek mythology, the Naiads…were a type of nymph who presided over fountains, wells, springs, streams, brooks, and other freshwater.” Clearly, it’s possible to over think this stuff. (pp. x-xi)

One could argue that Busalaachi, by being so specific about not including Nyad, does include her. But that still leaves us with “all those books” being just this one and with Nyad lying about it.

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If that’s not enough treasure for one day, here’s a gem from England’s General Register Office: the marriage certificate of Diana’s step-father, Aris, and Nelly Fröhlich, Aris’s second wife. The certificate names Aris’s hitherto unknown first wife, Charlotte Vivienne Stratford, in column 4:

It’s impossible to know what information on the document is true and what’s a load of manure. But Stratford is a real person, born in 1920 in San Francisco. I can’t find any other record, though, of her having married or divorced Aris other than an indication on his 1946 U.S. Army enlistment record that he has a wife. Given Aris’s con-artistic nature, it’s anybody’s guess what was going on.

Adding to the marital intrigue, Charlotte’s father, the successful engineer and inventor Charles W. Stratford, left Charlotte’s mother, Georgette Moulin of Paris, for a much younger woman in 1949. Georgette was 13 years Charles’s junior. Audrey Markham, his new wife, was 39 years younger.

Curiously, Stratford checked the “widowed” box on his marriage license application even though Georgette lived another 40 years. Maybe he didn’t want to go to the trouble of getting a divorce.  Upon his death in 1963, Charles W. left one dollar each to his three daughters. All the rest went to Audrey and her aunt:
Coincidentally, Georgette had a previous marriage as well. Before Charles, she wed fellow Frenchperson Raoul Gaeton Simon Angeli. A British genealogist who has researched the Stratford family told me that Angeli neglected to divorce Georgette before he married wife number two. Maybe Angeli also tried checking “widowed.” But it didn’t work as well for him as it did for Charles, and Angeli spent two years in prison for bigamy.

O, what a tangled web we spin
when we stick it to our kin.