Post by Admin on Mar 24, 2014 18:25:35 GMT -4
The late Mary Wells known for My Guy fame.
Mary Wells had a tough childhood. She battled two serious illnesses in her childhood. Beginning at the age of three, she was bedridden for two years with spinal meningitis, a disease that left her temporarily paralyzed, partially deaf, and temporarily blind in one eye. Mary was not expected to live but the doctors gave her a new medication, which saved her life.
Her birth certificate listed Arthur Wells as her father. But Wells is a shadowy figure.
Except for his name on Mary's birth and death certificates, Mary claims he was brutal to her mother, little else is known about Arthur Wells.
His birth and death records can't be found.
Mary always referred to him as her stepfather, never as her father.
For most of her life, she told her friends and boyfriends (Wilson Pickett, David Ruffin, Curtis Womack) that her real father was a handsome black man named George Windell or Wendell. Oddly, George cannot be found, nor can any records pertaining to his life or death.
In 1981, Mary told several reporters that her biological father was a white man whose family had employed her mother as a maid. Mary said her grandmother had revealed the information to her and she found it deeply disturbing.
Then she said her father was a Sicilian man.
Others say they never thought Mary's father was white. Annette Helton, one of the Vandellas, said Mary never appeared interracial in appearance. Helton adds: "If Mary would have been interracial, the matter would have come up in conversation."
Sally Womack (who Mary lived with for a year) says: "Mary never indicated any white parenthood."
C
