Forrest J Ackerman family name Ackerman
Early years
Ackerman was born Forrest James Ackerman (though he would refer to himself from the early 1930s on as "Forrest J Ackerman" with no period after the middle initial), on November 24, 1916, in Los Angeles, to Carroll Cridland (née Wyman; 1883–1977) and William Schilling Ackerman (1892–1951).His father, William, Chief Statistician for the Associated Oil Company, and assistant to the vice-president in charge of transportation, was from New York and his mother was from Ohio (the daughter of architect George Wyman); she was nine years older than her husband.Ackerman attended the University of California at Berkeley for a year (1934–1935), then worked as a movie projectionist and at odd jobs with fan friends prior to spending three years in the U.S. Army after enlisting on August 15, 1942, where he rose to the rank of staff sergeant, held the position of editor of his base's newspaper, and passed his entire time in service at Fort MacArthur, California.Personal life
Ackerman had one sibling, a younger brother, Alden Lorraine Ackerman, who was killed at the Battle of the Bulge.Ackerman was married to a German-born teacher and translator, Mathilda Wahrman (1912–1990), whom he met in the early 1950s while she was working in a book store he happened to visit. He eventually dubbed her "Wendayne" or, less formally, "Wendy", by which name she became most generally known within SF and film fandoms, after the character in Peter Pan, his favorite fantasy. Although they went through a period of separation during the late 1950s and early 1960s, they remained officially married until her death: she suffered serious internal injuries when she was violently mugged while visiting Italy in 1990 and irreparable damage to her kidneys led to her death. By choice, they had no children of their own, but Wahrman did have a son by an earlier marriage, Michael Porges, who did not get along with Ackerman and would not live in Ackerman's home.Ackerman was fluent in the international language Esperanto, and claimed to have walked down Hollywood Boulevard arm-in-arm with Leo G. Carroll singing La Espero, the hymn of Esperanto.Ackerman also received a diploma from Sequoia University, unaccredited higher education institution in Los Angeles, California, in April 1969, which named him a Fellow of the Sequoia Research Institute.Ackerman was an atheist at age 15, but did not emphasize that fact in his public life and welcomed people of all faiths as well as no faith into his home and personal circle equally.
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