The Tampa Bay Times published a scathing story this weekend about the late Rep. Bill Young (R-Fla.) and the secrets that emerged at his funeral, no thanks to his witch of a widow, Beverly Young. Making her something of a cliché in American politics, Beverly is young’s second wife and 24 years his junior. The starter wife was Marian Ford, now 81, who never spoke up all these years because she wanted to get that monthly $2,000 alimony check. Young’s second marriage is a real quaint love story: Beverly was the 26-year-old secretary in his congressional office at the time the 51-year-old married congressman knocked her up. In a move that can only be viewed as chivalrous, in 1985, eight days after his divorce, he married Beverly in the House prayer room of the U.S. Capitol. The couple had three children (one adopted) and eight grandchildren.
Rep. Young died in October after battling secret health ailments that included blood cancer that he hadn’t shared with constituents. His first marriage lasted 36 years and sprouted three children, seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, suggesting the couple shared at least some sexual contact. At the funeral, Robert Young, who Young and his second wife adopted, startled guests by reading the names of his father’s previous children. As he put it, “I just didn’t think it was fair that they weren’t being noticed.” Young’s children from his first marriage are reportedly not contesting his will.
But let’s take a look at some of Beverly’s more shockingly horrible comments to the Times.
Bill and Marian (at left) in obviously happier times judging from the matching and embarrassing Hawaiian shirts.
Meanwhile, anyone up for an exorcism for Beverly?
7. “They are going to use the media to try to get back at me,” Beverly Young (pictured above) said. “It’s been 30 years and it’s a joke. He had nothing to do with them and he wanted nothing to do with them after he tried in the beginning. He would tell me to tell you they are not his family.”
6. To Beverly Young, Terry has come forward now because he “is trying to get rid of his guilt for being a horrible son.”
5. Young even once claimed that he “never had a son named Terry,” his wife said.
4. Mrs. Young, 58, said she has wondered if her husband’s first children resent her for being younger than they are.
3. “Bill had no relationship with those kids,” she said in a phone interview. “Not by his choice, by their choice.” (A “direct contradiction of accounts given by the first family.”
2. “… It’s sad, that after thirty years (Marian Young) still can’t accept the fact that he never loved her. … She attempted to make him stay in a loveless marriage by having her children, but once they were out of his home and grown adults he wanted to experience real love, life and happiness. And that’s what we did. We did it when, where and how we wanted to.”
1. Asked whether any photos of Young’s first family were included in the photo montage at his funeral, Mrs. Young replied: “Hell, no. Why would I do that? Why should they be? They played no part in his life whatsoever. Consider that courtesy of me.”