The Daily Tribune from Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin • Page 3

Saturday, February 14, 1981 The Daily Tribune, Wisconsin Rapids, Wl Section 1 Page 3 Document proves he's Marilyn's dad -f? rJ' At the modest apartment where Mortensen lived alone in Mira Lorn about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, Ford said he found copies of Miss Monroe's birth certificate as well as marriage and divorce papers for Mortensen and Gladys Baker, Miss Monroe's mother. The birth certificate states LOS ANGELES (AP) Eighteen years after Marilyn Monroe's death, the widely held belief that the blonde sex symbol was born illegitimate has been disproved by authorities who found copies, of her birth certificate at the home of a dead man they believe was her father. Martin Edward Mortensen, biographers reported she was born illegitimate. But Mortensen, who worked as a gas company serviceman for 50 years before retiring in 1965, had told co-workers and his physician he was the late film star's father, giving details of his marriage to her mother that contradict the biographical accounts. 85, collapsed at the wheel of his automobile Tuesday in downtown Riverside and died of an apparent heart attack, a Riverside County corner's investigator Lisle Ford said in a telephone interview." been in mental institutions since 1953, and early studio biographies reported that her father was dead.

Some 7 I Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jean Mortensen on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles. Her father is listed as Edward Mortensen, address unknown, age 29. The marriage certificate is dated Oct. 11, 1924; the final Los Angeles Superior Court divorce decree is dated Aug. 15, 1928.

Also found at the apartment were several books about Miss Monroe as well as Mortensen's own birth certificate and his parents' marriage certificate. Ford said he is convinced all the documents are authentic. Details of her childhood were always cloudy, and a publicist said Miss Monroe wanted the studio biographies to say her father had died. "It was made up because Marilyn wanted it that way," said Jet Fore, the film publicist who wrote Miss Monroe's first studio biography for 20th Century-Fox. "She told me her father was dead." Fore said he later heard that her father had abandoned her mother, and was under the impression that Miss Monroe was illegitimate.

"That's what we all thought," he said. "It's in several books." Miss Monroe said her father's name was Mortensen, but "the feeling was It was a name plucked out of the air," said Maurice Zolotow, who wrote "Marilyn Monroe," one of the first biographies. SkU Or ilfttH Kcit AWOSLKS LOS ANGELES GLADYS MONROE WHITE EDWARD 1. WHITS Si(t icuu ieci wuiii or somtct-oinii. Jun, 5, 1926 ft Th it to certify, thai th foragomg is trv and topy of oppearfog cr rwdl of birth of th obov nomdl child, oi filed ift this erTk N.

Vv. VSVvT Officer rf Of liflCAfC SAitCiMIHEO LOS CALIFORNIA Oct. 24, .1.956 But Mortensen told gas company counselor Thomas Burns a different story about his marriage and his daughter's birth. "They were separated when she was born," Burns said. "Marilyn's mother left him and he didn't know she was pregnant at the time.

He said she was quite a wild gal, a lot like Marilyn was a pretty gal, but kind of wild." Burns said Mortensen didn't really know about his daughter until she was 7 and county welfare authorities subpoenaed him. Mortensen also disputed stories that he had repudiated Miss Monroe when she tried to reach him as an adult, Burns said. "He told me she told him she didn't want to have anything to do with him when she became a movie star. He said, 'I never bothered Star's father dies Eighteen years after film star Marilyn Monroe died, the widely-held belief that she was born illegitimate and that her father died years ago has apparently been disproved. Martin Edward Mortensen, 83, (above left), died Tuesday in Mira Loma, Calif.

A birth certificate found in his home indicates he is Miss Monroe's father. (AP Laserphoto) This is a photo of a document California officials believe proves Edward Mortensen is the father of the late film idol Marilyn Monroe. (AP Laserphoto) enility still a riddle to researchers medical exam to look for treatable ex-, planations. But the most common and tragic form of senility is Alzheimer's disease, which may produce 60 percent of all cases. For this, medicine has almost nothing to offer.

USC biochemist Caleb Finch figures the next decade or two will be spent mostly trying to identify the different brain diseases that lead to senility. A popular hypothesis is that some form of virus, probably one with a very long fuse, may be a major culprit. Such a virus might burrow into the nervous system like a hidden time bomb that will detonate years later. Heredity may have some role, although it probably only increases susceptibility to whatever outside forces actually cause the disease. Of one thing Finch is convinced: Alzheimer's is not apt to yield to an easy fix.

"Just adjusting your life habits isn't going to make it go away if you have it We're talking about something that is far more powerful than that." understood by relatives, senility remains mostly a riddle to researchers in search of causes, treatments and even definitions. Senility, or senile dementia in medicalese, fogs the final years of only 5 to 10 percent of Americans over age 65. But researchers emphatically agree it is not just another, natural effect of growing old. It is a disease or a dimly understood group of diseases that most often strikes in old age. But senility can also come sooner, as it did with Bill Starns.

Then it's called presenile dementia. Only the name changes. Scientists stressed that senility is not an inevitable part of old age. As proof, they point to the many alert, active and happy people in their 80s and 90s. The vast majority of elderly live their lives untouched by it.

"Normal aging," said a government report, "does not include gross intellectual impairment, confusion, depression, hallucinations or delusions. Such symptoms are due to disease and indicate the need for diagnosis and treatment." The classic form of senility, called "The tragedy," says Dr. Jarvik, "Is that so few people realize that even the most severely demented patient can be very aware of his deficits not all the time, but intermittently." USC, UCLA, veterans hospitals and other institutions now conduct workshops, counseling sessions and support groups for relatives so that, Zarit says, "both the family and the individual can do the best that's possible given the nature of this illness." The psychologist urges families to keep senile relatives at home as long as possible, reserving nursing homes as a last resort. He says warm, familiar surroundings offer an anchor to strengthen a weakening hold on reality. A textbook picture of senility begins with a growing inability to remember recent events the things that happened last week or this morning.

Then the past becomes increasingly cloudy until, Zarit said, "we see people who can't remember a spouse of 50 years, people who can no longer remember even who they are." By ROBERT LOCKE AP Science Writer Bill Starns was once an intelligent, well-read businessman. His life revolved around his family, and his future seemed full of promise. Today he can't remember the books or the business or the promise or even the children who watched, puzzled and helpless, as a tragically common disease stole his memory and deadened his mind. Ruth Starns remembers leaving her husband with their older son while she spent an afternoon shopping. "After we left, he asked our son, 'Who is that girl with your mother? I don't like her.

She's always taking Mother "That girl was his daughter." Bill Starns, just 61, is now helpless and confined to a nursing home with the final, irreversible ravages of senility. Probably no affliction is more feared by America's 24 million elderly. Often misdiagnosed by doctors and mis Alzheimer's disease, is a gradual and so far unbeatable slide into mental oblivion. But the report by a National Institute on Aging task force said many people diagnosed as senile can be helped and even cured. Symptoms that masquerade as senility are often byproducts of other, often-treatable medical conditions, the study said.

"All kinds of medical problems will cause some symptoms of senility," said task force member Lissy Jarvik of UCLA and the Veteran's Administration. "If we can remedy the medical situation, we can 'cure' the senility." Dr. Jarvik, a psychiatrist, estimates such treatable problems may account for 15 to 30 percent of senility. The NIA report concluded: "A key feature in maintaining mental health in old age seems to be continued mental as well as physical activity." Steven H. Zarit of the University of Southern California's Andrus Gerontology Center says Alzheimer's disease leads inexorably, if indirectly, to death.

Many elderly can be terrified by simple oversights. Almost everyone has forgotten an appointment or lost a car in a shopping center parking lot. "But when it's an older person, he'll often feel that he's starting to get a little senile," Zarit says. "And many younger people blame any sign of forgetfulness in an older person as senility." Senile-like symptoms can be produced by malnutrition, Infection, reactions to medicines, diseases of the heart, lungs, kidneys or liver and, perhaps most commonly, by deep depression over such things as the loss of a spouse, banishment to a nursing home or crushing loneliness. Still another major source of senility is called multi-infarct dementia repeated tiny strokes that choke off oxygen to different parts of the brain, which dies piece by piece.

Dead brain cells are gone forever, but the progressive damage can sometimes be slowed by controlling high blood pressure. The most important step for anyone with signs of senility, physicians say, is a thorough Liddy raps curbs on spies Were Nazca lines an astronomical clock? in one hand and a submachine gun in the other." Liddy, who is also a former FBI agent, contended most Americans who saw a shark fin moving through the water at them would "wave as if it were Charlie the Tuna." "Most American citizens cannot comprehend reality, or if they cun, they shun it," he said. Liddy made his remarks Thursday niht in spi'och to about 700 persons at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for which he was paid He has made more than 50 such appearances on the college lee (urr circuit since the start of the schixil year. MILWAUKEE (AP) An illusion of safety has led the United States to restrain its intelligence operations, spend too little on weapons and allow valuable technology to be sold to the Soviet Union, according to convicted Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy.

"The world is a very bad neighborhood at about 2:30 in the morning," he said. "It's up to us whether we want to be a little old lady with a fat pocketbook or a 6-foot, 7-Inch offensive tackle from Alabama with a baseball bat spent years just to determine the unit of measurement used to construct the lines a length of 1.60 to 1.70 meters, then about the height of a mun. Miss Reicke dismissed the theory put forward by some that the plain was used for huge religious ceremonies: "Religion is for the masses and the masses never set foot on the plain." The scientist said she would sorrx-dny train someone to follow in her footsteps, "not now In the future, yes." She said several lines point to the sun's location at the winter solstice on Dec. 22. The date coincides with the rains which bring water from the mountains to irrigate the desert.

The animals, she says, could be renditions of the constellations whose periodic appearance coincide with the arrival of water. "That would be the most reasonable explanation of the existence of such lurge figures of such perfect execution: They were made for the gods," she said. Such an astronomical clock would be welcome in Nazca, where it rains only half an hour every two years. Miss Reicke said she had world." Miss Reicke said it was Kosok who urged her to undertake the study which began in 1946. She dismissed the spaceman theory as a "fantasy." "Furthermore, spaceships would not need such long runways to take off," she said, visibly irritated by the idea.

Instead, Miss Reicke believes the lines are part of a giant, agricultural calendar, linked with celestial movements, which helped ancient people time the planting and Irrigation of their crops. She suspects the builders were water worshippers, unlike the Incas who later worshipped the sun. tangles in large clearings. Among the lines are some 30 animal figures: monkey, spider, humming bird and condor. They range from a few feet long to more than 600 feet from one end to the other.

The designs cover a 30-mile spread across the plain. They are nearly invisible from ground level. The best vantage point is from 1,500,, feet directly overhead. The lines were first discovered In 1926, but were not well-known until the 19.30s when pilots began flying over them regularly. Dr.

Paul Kosok, a history professor from Long Island University, studied the lines in 1941 and called them "the largest astronomy book in the "There is no doubt that this nearly superhuman effort was undertaken with a definite goal in mind seeking to eternalize knowledge for the future of humanity. For that reason they are so large, so as never to be destroyed," she said In a recent interview with The Associated Press. The lines have stimulated some imaginative theories, ranging from a prehistoric Olympic site to a landing field for spacemen In flying saucers. But no one else has studied the lines as long as Miss Reicke. And she Is the first to acknowledge the mystery of the desert remains.

The lines were made by clearing the stony surface of the plain perhaps a thousand years ago, hundreds of years before the Inca Empire was established. They stretch like shallow pathways for miles. Sometimes they run parallel across the plain and straight up the side of hills. They zigzag and oscillate and form trapezoids, triangles and rec By KERNAN TURNER NAZCA, Peru (AP) -Maria Reicke has toiled on the plains of Nazca for 35 years, searching for clues to unravel the mysterious lines and enormous animal figures traced on the ground by an ancient civilization. Her hair is white now; her pale ryes are failing.

Lines crease her thin face like the drawings on the desert she knows so well. Each year thousands of tourists and a scattering of journalists and scientists from around the world visit this small town, 280 miles south of Lima, lo see the lines and, if they are lucky, to talk with Miss Reicke. She can be found, when not in the desert, at the Hotel Turista either in her room or sitting at a table In the shade of the veranda facing the patio und swimming pool. The German-born mathematician, who Is In her 70s, switches between English and Spanish as easily as she speaks her native language. To John and Earl at Mid-State Datsun Mazda They Have Attained the National Institute of Automotive Service Excellence Certification! Come to the United Church of Christ Someone there will be Glad to see You Roger Brooks, Pastor 205 Market Nekoosa i 'A Rapids Assembly of God 7th Baker 424-1412 Robert Curie, Ptor 1 A mvues you 10 worsmp wun us This Sunday I 1 John Certified in engine repair, manual transmission and rear axle, front end.

and engine tune-up. Earl Certified In automatic transmissions, front end, brakes, electrical systems, heating and air condition Sunday Services 0 5g HAWAIIAN I Plover Road Highway 54 East 9:00 A.M. 10:30 A.M. Church School lL Wisconsin Rapids, Phono 421-2222 Feb. 14 9:00 AM.

9:30 a.m. Christian education. Classes for all ages. 10:45 a.m. Service of Worship.

Rev. Robert Curie speaking. "The Meaning of the Cross." 7:00 p.m. Service of Praise. Rev.

Randy Duggan, Youth Pastor speaking. The Story of the "Prophet" and the "Prostitute." Family Night 7:00 p.m. each Wednesday. valentines uay Swoothoart Special ing. WHAT DOCS IT MEAN? It means that the ob is being done by men who know their business.

It means more security In knowing that safety Items are being worked on by experts. It could also mean less "shoptime" for the family car, which means more value for the dollar and less Inconvenience. Mid-State Datsun Mazda 1910 West Grand Avenue Phone 423-6840 mi mm Sirloin For Two $11.50 Prim Rib $7.75, 14 oz. Lobattr $11.50 Ullanl Ham Sttak $4.95 Courtage to each lady having dinner. Resetvatlonsapproc Randy Dugqan, Youth Cantor.