Mary Sue Hubbard

Mary Sue Hubbard (née Whipp; June 17, 1931 – November 25, 2002 ) was the third wife of L. Ron Hubbard, from 1952 until his death in 1986.

She was a leading figure in Scientology for much of her life.

Mary Sue Whipp was born in Rockdale, Texas, to Harry Hughes Whipp (Sept 2, 1893 – Oct 30, 1942) and Mary Catherine (née Hill) Whipp.

She grew up in Houston, where she attended Rice University for a year before moving on to the University of Texas at Austin, from which she graduated as a Bachelor of Arts.

She became involved in Hubbard's Dianetics in 1951, while still a student at the University of Texas at Austin, becoming a Dianetics auditor.

She originally intended to work in petroleum research, but a friend persuaded her to travel with him to Wichita, Kansas, in mid-1951 to take a Dianetics course at the Hubbard Dianetic Foundation.

She soon began an affair with Hubbard, who had just been divorced from his second wife Sara, and moved in with him within a few weeks of arriving in Wichita.

She obtained a Hubbard Dianetic Auditor's Certificate and joined the Foundation's staff.

The Hubbards had four children: Diana (born 1952), Quentin (1954–1976), Suzette (born 1955), and Arthur (born 1958).

She soon became involved in a relationship with Hubbard and married him in March 1952.

She became pregnant in February 1952, and married Hubbard the next month.

By this time, the Foundation had filed for bankruptcy, and Hubbard's erstwhile backer, Don Purcell, was left to deal with its substantial debts.

A bitter dispute broke out between the men over the ownership of the Foundation's remaining assets, with Hubbard resigning to start a rival "Hubbard College" on the other side of Wichita.

Mary Sue was given partial responsibility for running the new Dianetics establishment.

After six weeks of operation, it was replaced in April 1952 by the Hubbard Association of Scientologists, established in Phoenix, Arizona, to promote Hubbard's newly announced "science of certainty".

The Hubbards traveled to England in September 1952 when Mary Sue was eight months pregnant.

According to the Church of Scientology, the reason for the trip was that "amid the constant violence of the turncoat Don J. Purcell of Wichita and his suits which attempted to seize Scientology, Mary Sue became ill and to save her life, Ron took her to England where several Dianetic groups had asked him to form an organization."

Russell Miller gives a different explanation: "Hubbard wanted to go to London to establish his control over the small Dianetics group which had formed there spontaneously and Mary Sue insisted on accompanying him."

Three weeks later, on September 24, 1952, she gave birth to her first child, Diana Meredith de Wolfe Hubbard.

The Hubbards returned to the United States in November when their visa expired and moved into an apartment in Philadelphia.

She accompanied her husband to Phoenix, Arizona, where they established the Hubbard Association of Scientologists – the forerunner of the Church of Scientology, which was itself founded in 1953.

She was credited with helping to coin the word "Scientology", going on to play a leading role in the management of the Church of Scientology and rising to become the head of the Church's Guardian's Office (GO).

They went back to London in December on a fresh visa and stayed there until the end of May 1953, before departing for an extended holiday in Spain.

In October 1953, they returned to the US where Hubbard gave a series of lectures in Camden, New Jersey, and established the first Church of Scientology.

By this time, Mary Sue was well advanced with her second pregnancy and remained largely confined to a rented house at Medford Lakes, New Jersey.

They traveled to Phoenix for Christmas 1953, and it was there on January 6, 1954, that Mary Sue gave birth to her second child, Geoffrey Quentin McCaully Hubbard.

The Hubbards lived at a house on Tatum Boulevard (now 5501 North 44th Street) on the slopes of Camelback Mountain in Phoenix for the remainder of 1954.

By this time, Mary Sue had become a key figure within the nascent Scientology movement.

Although Hubbard himself was much admired by Scientologists, his wife was said to be much less popular.

Russell Miller notes:

"They were indeed an unlikely couple – a flamboyant, fast-talking extrovert entrepreneur in his forties and a quiet, intense young woman twenty years his junior from a small town in Texas. But anyone who underestimated Mary Sue made a big mistake. Although she was not yet twenty-four years old, she exercised considerable power within the Scientology movement and people around Hubbard quickly learned to be wary of her. Fiercely loyal to her husband, brusque and autocratic, she could be a dangerous enemy."

A family friend, Ray Kemp, later recalled: "their relationship seemed OK, but there never seemed to be a lot of love between them. She was not the affectionate type, she was more efficient than affectionate. They used to have fierce husband and wife domestic arguments."

Joan Vidal, a friend of the sculptor Edward Harris, who was commissioned by Hubbard to create a bust of him, described Mary Sue as "a rather drab, mousy, nothing sort of person, quite a bit younger than him."

Mary Sue became pregnant again four months after Quentin's birth, and on February 13, 1955, in Washington, D.C., she gave birth to her second daughter, Mary Suzette Rochelle Hubbard.

Ken Urquhart, who worked for the Hubbards as their butler in the 1960s, commented that Mary Sue "could be very sweet and loving, but also very cold."

Cyril Vosper, one of the Saint Hill staff at the time, noted the differing impressions left by the Hubbards: "I always had great warmth and admiration for Ron – he was a remarkable individual, a constant source of new information and ideas – but I thought Mary Sue was an exceedingly nasty person. She was a bitch."

In August 1978, she was indicted by the United States government on charges of conspiracy relating to illegal covert operations mounted by the Guardian's Office against government agencies.

She was convicted in December 1979 and was sentenced to five years' imprisonment and the payment of a $10,000 fine.

She was forced to resign her post in 1981 and served a year in prison in 1983, after exhausting her appeals against her conviction.

In the late 1990s, Hubbard fell ill with breast cancer and died in 2002.