“WE HAD to keep wearing our long winter underwear for much longer during spring than our friends.” That’s how Dr. Benjamin Spock remembered his Dutch-strict upbringing. “And we were never allowed to wear sneakers.”
He landed on his feet decently enough, as a super tall descendant of Amsterdam’s Spaak family. Made his name as an educator, sold more than 50 million copies of his book on mothers and babies, lived off the royalties, and made his home on pretty ships for twenty years after retirement.
That said, “Until we were 12, we had to eat our dinner of porridge and applesauce at five-thirty at a children’s table and then stay inside the house until we had to go to sleep at a quarter to seven.” Hands above the covers: “We were fervently urged never to touch ourselves ‘down there’.” Not the best childhood, he thought.
But Dutch tall, 6’4″. That made Ben an excellent athlete. He won Olympic gold in rowing in 1924, and continued to win prizes in his spare time, bronze at 84. Always neatly dressed in suits until his 40 years younger second wife managed to make him wear jeans for the first time in his life. He was 75.
Benjamin Spock from Amsterdam had two sons. The youngest became director of a museum on child rearing. He had a son of his own, who climbed onto the roof of the museum and jumped to his death.
Benjamin himself lived to be 94. His remains rest in Maine, not far from The Daily Dutchman in Maine.
