Steve Jobs, Mona Simpson, and Paternity: It's all in the family

How history repeats itself in families in so many ways. In the family of Steve Jobs, we know that he was adopted, and though he found his natural family, he also "abandoned" his own daughter, Lisa, who was the daughter of his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Chris-Ann Brennan, since high school.

Lisa Brennan-Jobs: Look like dad much?

Job's father, Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, did not marry his pregnant girlfriend in grad school, Joanne Schieble, because her father was opposed her marrying an Arab, and so Jobs ended up being given up for adoption. When Jobs was 23, his­­ on again/off again girlfriend Brennan gave birth to a daughter, Lisa in 1978. Jobs denied paternity for two years--while the mother and daughter were on welfare--even going so far as to swear in court documents that he could not be Lisa's father because he was "sterile and infertile, and as a result thereof, did not have the physical capacity to procreate a child." (He has three other children with his wife of twenty years.)


Oddly enough, Jobs gave Lisa's name to an Apple computer that was invented the year she was born, though Jobs and Apple Inc. claimed that the name was an acronym for Local Integrated Software Architecture. Right. (The computer, by the way, was a flop. Only teckkies have ever heard of it.) Lisa, the daughter, did not have an easy time growing up, as she and her mother moved constantly. Not until 1986--when Lisa was eight--did Lisa finally met her famous father. Although awkward initially, the relationship got better as time went on. He sent her to Harvard where she realized a flair for writing--like her famous aunt, read on. Despite that daddy was paying for her ivy-league eduction, apparently she published a biting profile about growing up with an absent father in the The Harvard Advocate that I have not been able to find.

Now 33, Lisa is a journalist and magazine writer. In the February 2008 issue of Vogue, she touched on her “illegitimate” childhood growing up with her mother:

"In California, my mother had raised me mostly alone. We didn’t have many things, but she is warm and we were happy. We moved a lot. We rented. My father was rich and renowned and later, as I got to know him, went on vacations with him, and then lived with him for a few years, I saw another, more glamorous world. The two sides didn’t mix, and I missed one when I had the other."

The story goes on how she for a while found a rich, luxurious life living with a wealthy pedigreed Florentine man. “I’d found the beauty and ease [my mother and I] had dreamed of for so long,” she wrote.

TOO LITTLE TOO LATE

Jandali and Jobs: No question they are father and son

As for Steve Jobs's fractured relationship with his biological father, Jandali did reach out to his son via email in the last year before the technology genius died last week, contrary to the report we had the other day. According to  an interview in the Wall Street Journal, he said he sent simple emails, wishing Jobs a "Happy Birthday," or "I hope your health is improving," and that a couple of times Jobs replied with a simple "thank you." The last one, he said, arrived six weeks before Jobs died. The whole story takes on the air of a Greek tragedy; Jandali reached out to this son through the filter of email; Jobs responded in kind, but barely. And the whole surrender to adoption of the boy who would become Steve Jobs seemed unnecessary. It was the worst of times.

Jandali was pursuing his doctorate in political science at the University of Wisconsin when he became involved with fellow grad student, Joanne Schieble. It was the Fifties, girls did what their families dictated. Her forceful father forbade the marriage, and Jobs was given up for adoption. Soon after her father died, the couple did wed, and upon his graduation, they moved to Syria where Jandali hoped to work in foreign service. But by then the government was in transition, disrupting his plans to become a diplomat. Instead, he said, he managed an oil refinery. Joanne was unhappy in Syria and moved back to Green Bay, where she gave birth to their second child, Mona, who later took the name of her stepfather. Jobs's natural/birth mother goes by the name Joanne Simpson. Jandali is still quite vigorouos, and at 80, was made general manager of the Boomtown casino outside Reno, Nev. last year. He presides over a staff of around 450 casino workers, a job that certainly calls on diplomatic shills.

JOBS SEARCHES FOR HIS REAL FAMILY
Jandali added that he learned of his son's death when a stranger called him on the phone. Previously I said I didn't know who found whom, but it was Jobs who began the search for his biological mother in his teens and was ready to give up when he finally discovered at age 27 that he had a younger sister. As Jobs told a columnist for Indie Wire in an interview:

“I was adopted. I love my adoptive parents; they were great. But I wanted to find out who my real parents were. So I started searching. I looked for years and I never could discover who my biological parents were. Then I was given the name of a doctor in San Francisco who I was told might have some knowledge. I thought this would be my last chance. So I went to see him. He was retired and I talked to him at his home. He said he was very sorry but he couldn’t help me. He knew nothing about my birth or adoption. I left thinking he was my last hope, I might as well give up. Everything turned into dead ends. I’d done everything I could.

“A few weeks later I got a letter from the doctor telling me the story of how I was adopted. It turns out this doctor had delivered me, but he had promised my biological parents he’d never tell who they were. In those days that was how things were done. But after meeting me, he felt he had to tell me. However, the doctor had died just as he finished writing the letter to me. The letter was found on his desk."

Mona Simpson, another look-alike

Jobs said that the executors of the doctor’s estate had sent the letter to him, and since he was well-known at that time they had no problem finding him."

Jobs was thrilled to learn that his sister was an artist because he liked to think of himself like an artist too, in a different field. Simpson once introduced Jobs to the audience at a literary event, and they remained close. He also had a relationship with their mother, Joanne Schieble, but apparently everyone was so estranged from Jandali, who had remarried and has other grown children, that he was not told who his son was until 2005.

Lorraine

Interestingly, Simpson mined her family background for her novels. The Lost Father is the title of one of the books, and that is also a theme of Anywhere but Here. Although she apparently bristled when interviewers noticed the similarities between real life and her fiction, as Maureen Dowd writes this morning in her column, one of her books is based on a character called A Regular Guy, an "emotionally disconnected fruit-loving Silicon Valley biotech entrepreneur named Tom Owens. He lives in a barely furnished mansion once owned by a copper-baron, as Jobs did; he losses control of his company to suits, as Jobs did; he tried to decide whom to marry by asking his friends which of his two girl friends was more beautiful, as Jobs did;" and yes, Tom Owens even forms a belated relationship with an out-of-wedlock daughter. Case closed.

As for coincidences, Mona is married to a man named Richard Appel; he was once a  writer for the Simpsons. You couldn't make this up. --lorraine
_______________________
See also: Like father, like son...John Jandali and Steve Jobs
and Single fathers today stay to raise their children

Jobs adoptive parents are Paul and Clara Jobs. Although Joanne, his first/birth mother, had requested her son be adopted by college graduates, the first couple lined up did not take the boy; but Paul, a high school dropout and a machinist, and his wife, Clara, an accountant, promised to send him to college. Jobs dropped out of Reed College after one semester, and "dropped in" on classes for the next 18 months. As a note over language, I couldn't help noticing how Jobs referred to his, er, real parents in the interview. And interestingly, I have noticed an appreciable lack of use of the word "birth" mother or "birth" father in the stories. Me thinks in this case "biological" is best. Your thoughts?