aka.( Julia R Burdge, Julia Burdge, Professor Burdge, Dr
Burdge, Julie Burdge, Julie Bancroft, Julie Magooly, Julie, Mrs
Burdge, Mother, Wife, Ex-Wife )
This
is the story, a very sad story about the rise and fall of an American
family - it happens every day in the United States at an increasing
rate due to the incessant greed and ego in the consumerism society of the
post World War II period. This is a story of my attempt to raise an unbreakable
family that would endure against all foes. It is also the story of my wife, now my ex-wife Dr Julia R Burdge
and, as I always knew her in the beginning, Julie Bancroft. It is a story about what should be important in
life and what people in today's consumer
society so quickly forget in their attempts to reach fame and fortune. There is no
happy ending in this story for anyone, especially not my
children. Our three children will bear the scars of this for the rest of their lives and in the end they will be the judges of this affair. This is my story and it is now time to tell it.
I
sat for a great deal of time watching the waves roll into the beach
for many days trying to decide how to tell this story. It dawned on
me that the best way to tell it is publishing the actual communication and
documents, both personal letters and legal papers, and let them
speak for themselves. What you will read here are the email
communications I had with individuals and legal papers written at the
time to try and sort out and explain to others what was happening.
The period in Malta when much of this was written was truly a period
of discovery. Answers to questions, some of which painfully splintered my firm belief that my family could not be broken,
were finally answered. A big part of me died inside and I know from
watching my father, who suffered through very similar situations over
four decades in the past, that such wounds of betrayal never heal. He
lived on but never recovered and although I will fare better than he
because the knowledge gained from his traumas in life with my mother,
I, too, will never recover fully from what happened.
This
web site is not written out of vengeance. I always tell my children
that justice is necessary to have closure and prevent history from
repeating itself, but revenge destroys the person seeking justice. This is my story told in the hope that people who read it
will think first about what is really important in life. Forrest
Gump's mother said “you have to put the past behind you before you
can move on.” The contents and stories of this web site will enable
me to put this traumatic period behind me and it will expose the
truth about Julia Burdge. People who forget who they really are,
where they came from, and who made it possible, even saving their lives at times, are destined to take the road to the dark side.
I can say even today after all I have been through that I will always
love that girl I met at the university, fell in love with and married,
but the for person she evolved into I have only pity.
The emails and documents will
when appropriate have explanations to clarify and give continuity to
the material but other than that everything else is original and it
is my story.
In
The Beginning
Julia Bancroft and I first met at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. She was involved with a guy for 4 years at the university by the name of
Wesley Grimes. He was, as she would later poetically state, a total loser who
frequently cheated on her with what ever he could pick up on the
side. When Wesley graduated and moved away to another state for his
job as a farm supply salesman, Julie (as those close to he called
her) became available but was still attached to her long-term relationship with Wesley. Our unplanned official meeting came about in
one of those college events late one night at a nearby truck stop
where the hash browns with cheese on them were supposed to be
legendary. I asked her out that night for a weekend date and we went
to Aunt Maudes, one of the more upper scale restaurants in Ames.
That night and the weeks that followed, I saw in her a person with an astounding level of intellectual ability and humorous wit - she
would say in later years that I was the only one that seemed to
notice it. Although I had seen Julie before and had limited contact
with her because we were both in the Karate Club (over 300 members)
at the university I knew nothing about her other than her legendary
cheating boy friend Wesley she seemed to be totally oblivious
to. It is sufficient to say that things clicked between us and within 3
weeks she had given notice to Wesley and she and I were sharing her
water bed in her little rented shack not far from the campus.
What
I saw in her was a girl with a beautiful mind. What puzzled me was she had such unsatisfactory
grades at the university that after four years that they gave her a
final notice of expulsion unless things changed dramatically. She
would tell me over the years of our marriage that I was the only one
that ever saw her true potential. Part of her behavior can
be explained by her unbridled youth as a young college student living the wild life with
a matching boyfriend. What did not make sense was
this had been going on for four years and her situation had only steadily festered to the brink of expulsion from the university.
Julie also had a strong taste for Budweiser beer in the large cans
called tall boys which she consumed on a regular basis and
suffered from extreme migraine headaches to the point where, at one
time in particular, her doctor gave her an injection to put her asleep for a day and
a half to essentially put her out of her pain. Years later, her
bizarre behavior would be explained when she was diagnosed - after
extensive medical examinations - with clinical depression, a condition that was
hereditary and her father had been secretly diagnosed with it around
this same time period. This unfortunate fact and it's life-long consequences for our family are revealed in the emails which follow.
It
is accurate to say that late one night, about two in the morning,
Julie and I kissed on a deserted street corner in Ames, Iowa, and I
fell in love with her, so regardless of what medical problem she had,
even if we knew at the time, would have not mattered to me. The below
bold type letter was given to me by Julie on our second wedding
anniversary when we lived in our little cabin in the woods north of
Tampa, Florida. She was studying Chemistry at the University of South Florida as a straight “A” student by then. She was healthy and
mentally stable for the first time in her adult life. The letter
speaks for itself:
March
26, 1985
Chris,
You asked me the other night whether I ever felt disappointed about
where we are and what we have. I think this is a good time to tell
you just how disappointed I am. In two years I have learned more
about cars, construction, shells, business, hard work, and it's
satisfaction than I ever expected to know. Working alongside you has
been one of the most rewarding endeavors of my life. In that time I
have also grown to like myself and to love you more than I ever have.
You have encouraged me to do things I might never have attempted.
You've helped me bring out and develop talents I'd forgotten I had.
When I'm feeling low, you remind me of those good things about
myself, and you make me laugh. I've come to enjoy more than ever
being a woman and to truly appreciate what being a man means to you.
We compliment one another so perfectly, I believe, that I could never
be disappointed with you. On the contrary, always moving toward a
goal and having things to look forward to are part of what keeps a
relationship fresh. I have moments of self doubt, like anyone.
Sometimes I near despair at the thought that you might not know how
much I love you and how much our life together means to me and
satisfies me. At times everything good seems so terribly precious and
fragile. I want never to lose the feeling for life and love that I
have right now.
On our anniversary forever and always, I love you.
Julie
I
will stop here and let the following emails to my oldest brother
Barry, who has lived in Australia the past twenty-five years, explain. These
emails were written to him for two reasons: (1) I was still in the
state of disbelief and confusion in the first two months in Malta,
having not yet been able to admit to myself the truth of the
previous twenty-four years married to Julie, and was looking for some insight
in dealing with it all, (2) What started out to be only one email
blossomed out into many once I realized just how little of the truth
others really knew - one of the best examples of this was my
brother and everyone else I discuss this with thought Julie was some sort of scholar in school when I first meet her and
that it was me that she had to drag along like extra ballast weight.
The truth, which my brother did not realize until recently, was just
the opposite. Julie is such a great actor and I was one to never
speak of anything in public to embarrass her that allowed her to get
away with it until now. It is time to set the record straight so I
can put this all behind me and move on with my life.
