Star Cursed Love

[00:00:01] There were always questions about Muriel Pfeil's marriage to Neil MacKay. And let's admit it, that poets and painters and philosophers have all tried and mostly failed to explain love. [00:00:16] And believe me, there were lots of inexplicables about those two. The age difference, for one. [00:00:23] She was 33 when they married. He was 45, a 12 year gap. [00:00:28] And, and let's put that in context. He participated in World War II while she watched it from grade school. [00:00:40] Now, maybe that's not an impossible difference. Her own parents were separated by 13 years. So yeah, she had an example. [00:00:50] But often, perhaps too often, what we run into is an older, successful man who wants nothing more than a trophy wife, someone who makes him look good. [00:01:02] And as far as I can tell, there was nothing about Muriel Pfeil that wanted to be a trophy wife. [00:01:10] In fact, my most profound sense is that she wanted a marriage of equals. That's what she'd seen in her own life between her parents. Her mother was a school teacher who became a school principal. Her father worked his way up from an immigrant citizen from Germany to become a member of the Anchorage City Council, owner of Land Apartments, a downtown department store. So Muriel had, I don't know if I want to say expectations, but she had lofty examples of the kind of relationship she wanted. [00:01:46] So maybe there was something else, something more fundamental, like opposites attract, or maybe the hard charger mentality that they shared, both MacKay and Pfeil. [00:02:00] And then there was the wouldn't we be the power couple of all power couples angle. He the lawyer and entrepreneur, she the queen of Anchorage's travel business. [00:02:11] Because remember, in those days, Anchorage was not much more than an overgrown small town with all the attendant social stratification and elute maneuvering and hoity toity got some brigades. [00:02:25] So in that context, let's not put the age difference too high in the equation. Let's instead look at who Muriel Pfeil was. Because there's something in her that made Neil MacKay think that he was a different person than he really was. [00:02:43] Within that is Muriel's social savvy and sophistication in a town still rough on the edges and nested within that is the notion that it's Muriel who holds the power of attraction, and it's she who wants, requests, requires control of her own situation. [00:03:02] And we know this because her own life before Neil MacKay provides the proof. [00:03:42] Let's start with Muriel by acknowledging that she was the youngest of three children, which means she had role models as she charted her own path. Her brother, for one, was incredibly accomplished, a graduate of West Point, a senior pilot for Alaska Airlines. [00:04:02] Her sister, only two years older, became a nurse, married a doctor. [00:04:06] And it's here that we slip into the immigrant story. [00:04:12] I mentioned her mother, but her mother was in fact the daughter of Swedish immigrants. Her father emigrated from Germany, 1913. [00:04:22] He thought he was going to go to California, pan for gold, but it was a little late for that. [00:04:29] So Alaska, and, and both of her parents found success there. [00:04:35] We've already mentioned that. [00:04:37] And, and so there was a lot to emulate. That's, that's what I want to sort of stress here. [00:04:44] And that's kind of a proof point of this. [00:04:48] You know, I can go through the newspapers of the day and look for my name and, and those days and, you know, I'm not going to find much. Most of us aren't. But Muriel's case, again, partially because her family was part of that social strata that was looked up to. But she's in the newspaper a lot growing up. [00:05:10] In fact, between 1951 and 1953, when she was in high school, she was featured one way or another in 30 separate stories or news bits. [00:05:21] We learned that she was a very good skier, a fast skier, usually number one. [00:05:26] And her race, 1951, she was also the local star in a, quote, lavish skating show featuring professional performance. [00:05:35] Two years later, she took a job at the Sun Valley Ski Resort in Idaho. She's part of an outdoor skating exhibition. You get my drift. But that's not all. [00:05:45] There were multiple leadership positions. An officer in the Rainbow Girls, chairman of the Alaska Circus Committee. [00:05:53] She was a cheerleader. And not just, of course, in the Alaska context at games, but also part of community events. And then anna's another turn. 1952, she shared the role of the, quote, beautiful sister in a play called Dear Ruth. [00:06:14] The next year, 1953, the year she graduated high school, Muriel was the alternate lead in "Our Miss Brooks" comedy. Some of you may have seen it in TV if you're really old. [00:06:26] And, oh, by the way, she was editor of the high school annual, the Anchor, and a recipient of the National Scholastic Press Association Award. So you get the picture. The question was not if she could go higher, but how high she would go. [00:07:05] Now. And in those days, if you were a high functioning, talented student and you were going to go to university, your choices in Alaska were actually really limited. There was only one university in Fairbanks, so a lot of Alaska students who wanted to go on to college left to stay. They went, as they say in Alaska, outside to the lower 48. [00:07:35] So for Muriel she went to the University of Washington in Seattle. [00:07:42] And we don't hear too much about her academically. We do see photos of her as part of the sorority ski racing team. [00:07:51] She was already a champion in Alaska, helped her high school win all sorts of championships. [00:07:58] But then there's a break. And by the fall of 1954, she transferred to the University of Colorado at Boulder. [00:08:07] And that was a pivotal year not only for Muriel, but her family. [00:08:13] On September 30th of that year, 1954, her father, Emil, and a companion took off from Anchorage's Lake Spenard in a float plane. They were about to go duck hunting. [00:08:26] They never made it past the lake. [00:08:30] The plane crashed into dense fog, trapped Emil underneath the pontoons, and all attempts to rescue him failed. And there they were, Muriel in Colorado, her sister Caroline in Seattle, and the University of Washington's nursing program. [00:08:46] They both hurried home. Dad's funeral was only three days later. [00:08:53] You can imagine there were some pretty big changes that come out of this. [00:08:59] Her brother Bob, for example, who graduated from West Point Military Academy, served as a top military advisor in Alaska. He had his eyes on becoming a medical doctor. He was going to attend the University of Washington. And that was derailed. [00:09:17] He gave up his place at med school, took over the family businesses, and became, as his mother said, the man of the house. [00:09:28] Muriel also seemed to take that event with a renewed seriousness. [00:09:36] Gone were the ski photos of her freshman year, even though she was in Colorado now. Much better snow than the Pacific Northwest, trust me on that. [00:09:46] She disappeared into the weeds and instead emerged with a political science degree three years later, more serious than ever and more determined. [00:09:56] I say that because immediately upon graduating, Muriel took another big leap. [00:10:02] Building on her degree in political science, she received an international relations scholarship that took her to the University of Erlangen outside Nuremberg, Germany. [00:10:12] For those of you with a history bent, Nuremberg was home to the 1946 International Military Tribunal, where the Nazis were finally confronted with their war crimes. [00:10:58] And and soon enough, her sister Caroline, now an army nurse, managed to get job herself. Nearby, at the Landstuhl Regional Medical center outside Stuttgart was a cross cultural baptism for both of them. And of course, now you have two pretty American women, young women traveling in Europe. [00:11:27] There was kind of a tribute piece to this as well, because her father, Emil, had traveled to Germany himself right after the war, initially in 1950, came back in 1952. [00:11:42] First because he had a brother whom he hadn't seen in decades. And more than that, he wanted to experience occupied Germany firsthand. And he wrote news stories about his experiences, then sent them to the local newspaper in Anchorage. [00:11:57] So this was something close to his heart. [00:11:59] And not surprisingly, he saw lots of suffering. [00:12:03] Now Muriel's experiences proved something else. [00:12:09] She was more intrigued by the social aspects of German life. She immersed herself in the German language so she was able to navigate quite easily. I mean she was going to class. [00:12:22] It wasn't just sort of sit around to twirl your thumbs and go skiing all the time. Which by the way, she and her sister did quite a bit of. [00:12:30] They even managed to buy a Volkswagen Bug to make it easier to get around. [00:12:37] But like I said, was not all play, no work. [00:12:42] And when Miro finally returned to the United States in 1959, her resume was deep enough to lend her a job at the National Planning associations in Washington D.C. that was an organization deep into strategizing the future of Soviet controlled East Germany. Serious stuff. [00:13:03] And there she was in in the midst of it. But as in much of her life, there was an unexpected twist awaiting Muriel File. [00:13:14] Back in Anchorage during the summer of 1961, she got a job at the Brad Phillips Travel Agency and realized this is it. [00:13:24] But she didn't jump, not just yet. She took a side trip, a job with Radio Free Europe in Munich. [00:13:33] But back in Anchorage, she really decided it was a travel agency business that really intrigued her and she decided to form her own company. Opened in 1963. She called it Professional Travel Service. [00:13:49] And look, let's be very specific here. [00:13:52] Starting your own business in your early 20s and your own space is not something just any old buddy can do. [00:14:03] She had something not available to everyone else. It's called generational wealth. [00:14:10] That said, this is also where she meets her very next twist of fate. [00:14:17] Choosing an office building in downtown Anchorage, close proximity to the city's most beautiful hotel. The Captain Cook gave her a landlord named Neil McKay. McKay not only owned the building, one of several he owned, in fact, he had an office there, a law office. [00:14:37] So suddenly they were in each other's company. There's some flirtation. I mean, do I have to imagine that there's some flirtation going on? Which was rich because Neil McKay was married. [00:14:51] I'll give you some background though. [00:14:53] His wife, whom he been with since they were in high school, actually wanted a divorce. But we'll get to that a little later, the details. [00:15:06] But that aside, the two of them could pretend they already knew each other. He was her family's attorney, their former banker. He. He partnered with the files to co develop an annex to his landmark high rise apartment. Building in like the files, he had leveraged his wealth and his connections. [00:15:25] And it was a propitious time. [00:15:29] Anchorage was on the cusp of a generational shift. With oil exploration starting to pop, petroleum discoveries on the North Slope would send Anchorage and all of Alaska sky high. [00:15:43] When the Prudhoe Bay discovery finally came in 1968, Miro File was five years into her business and well known enough to be named one of the city's best dressed women. [00:15:54] And it's through that lens that we actually get to see her serious side. [00:16:00] There was a story lauding her best dressed woman of anguish honors she was not alone or several others. And in that piece, the journalist refers to her as, quote, the pretty brunette. Muriel emphasized something else. She told the news writer that she worked 10 hours a day and a minimum of six days a week. [00:16:25] So when that oil money started coming in, when Arco and Exxon struck black gold, Muriel was there to grab her share. In fact, by the time of her death in 1976, her travel service was the biggest and most successful in the state of Alaska. [00:17:18] So let's shift to the other half of this. I, I'm calling it an equation, but like in my brain, I call these two star cursed lovers. So let's start with the other half of these star cursed lover pair. [00:17:38] Like Muriel, Neil McKay was a child of immigrants. His parents were Scots refugees from the Highland clearances that saw vast swaths of northern Scotland brutally forced into sheep grazing by the land barons. So the people working those lands, little small farmers and et cetera, had to go. And Neil McKay's parents were among them separately and, and they both settled in, in Glasgow, which is of course a major sea part. [00:18:14] But some of these immigrants kept going. It's. This is an old story and say what you will about immigrants, there's a difference between those who go only so far and stop and those who keep going. [00:18:30] And the latter, the keep going people, are often more motivated, more resourceful, more determined to succeed. And Neil's parents were those they met actually in Winnipeg, Manitoba, which if you've ever been to the Canadian prairies. [00:18:49] Winnipeg is a wind ice covered city on the Canadian prairie and the weather can be unforgivable even compared to northern Scotland. So pretty soon the newlyweds, Hector and Marianne decided they were going to go elsewhere and they fled the blizzards of Manitoba for the sunny promise of Los Angeles. [00:19:14] Hollywood was calling. [00:19:17] Neil was six months old, so pretty much does not remember that. [00:19:23] But interestingly enough, this is where we slide into slightly. No, not even Slightly into more tragic waters in, in California the, you know, the land of sun and surf. And because it was in Los Angeles, in a house by the way is now a freeway on ramp that Neil Sutherland McKay experienced his own life shattering event. [00:19:52] The date was August 28, 1928. His father Hector, who was working as a telephone cableman was involved in an automobile accident. [00:20:03] Details are scant but appears that he was in a one vehicle accident hitting perhaps a building or a tree or some other immovable object. I say that because the official report reads like follows crushing in front of skull auto accident, driving own car. That that's it. That's it was pretty succinct. The accident site was Ford Ranch, California in the valley outside la. [00:20:33] Hector was immediately taken to Murphy Memorial Hospital where he died five hours later. [00:20:39] So now his wife and their two children. [00:20:43] He had a sister now named Carolina, had been in the promised land all of five years and now it's kind of in a way over. [00:20:53] They've lost their chief breadwinner now as one might expect, that news soon made its way to Winnipeg where it reached Neil McKay's maternal grandmother. [00:21:08] The Winnipeg Evening Tribune carried a story of Hector McKay, age 39 years, former well known resident of the city where he is employed by a number of years by the Canadian National Railway Shops at Transcona was killed instantly Tuesday in an automobile accident in Los Angeles, California. [00:21:31] And not surprisingly wasn't long before his grandmother has taken the train and coming down to Los Angeles for the funeral accompanied by her own daughter Nelena. [00:21:44] Yeah, Grandma was on the way. [00:21:47] And this is a grandmother who would soon become notorious for things such as shutting off the cave family water. [00:21:56] Okay. It was a time of water shortages. LA had that problem. If you've ever seen the movie Chinatown, you'll know all about it. [00:22:04] And in fact the newspapers in LA were filled with lurid headlines. Los Angeles Aqueduct Dynamited Dynamiters Hunted by City Police Plan to arrest Owens Gang Aqueduct guards asked. [00:22:19] Okay, so, but those details notwithstanding, Neil McKay came to hate his grandmother. [00:22:29] But, but those indignities were of course significant compared to his father's death. And it's, it's interesting scientifically know that. Well, there's a phenomenon called childhood amnesia which pretty much means we forget a lot of the things that happened to us in our early years. It's, it's been tested over and over and over again. [00:22:55] Except if there's some trauma, trauma, trauma. Traumatic memories persist much younger ages. [00:23:08] For example, a two year old may well remember a sibling birth or a trip to the Hospital or a death in the family. [00:23:20] Death in the family. And so yeah, he was five. He remembered it. In fact, years later, almost 50 years later, he wrote this. And it's a. It's essentially drawing a parallel between the loss of his father and the car accident and Scotty's loss of his mother and another actually car related incident. [00:23:58] Quote. I am far from being an expert in many areas but from my own personal experience I know how it feels to lose a parent. My father was unexpectedly killed in an automobile mishap when I was approximately five years old. [00:24:14] I still have clear and unpleasant memories surrounding my father's death. But I do have the fondest remembrances of him. [00:24:25] In fact, friends who knew him and Anchorage talked about the fact that Neil always missed his father. [00:24:35] And to make matters worse, when his mother remarried some years later, he gained a stepfather who was not kind to him. [00:24:45] And the friend added, let's say the discipline was brutal, the beatings never far behind. [00:24:53] This stepfather was quite a bit older than his mother, already had children. He was a railroad boss. [00:25:01] And on top of that he decided to take the family to a God forsaken railroad town called Yermobil. [00:25:10] If you live in Yermo, I love it. [00:25:15] But it's smack in the Mojave Desert. [00:25:19] In the desert, not much going on there. [00:25:22] And all of this kind of takes us to I guess my deeper question and perhaps the question at the heart of this marriage between Muriel and Neil, that's the something deeper thing. The dad tragedy. Maybe, maybe they, they both had a dad that they loved and lost. [00:25:48] Okay, but. Okay, but let's not get too overboard on this. Love is a tricky thing. A vibe, a look, a gen. [00:26:00] That said, by the time Neil McKay met Muriel, he had seemingly moved on. [00:26:06] He arrived in Alaska in 1955, one year after Emil F's death. [00:26:12] And he kind of seamlessly transitioned to a much higher status bank, vice president, owner of a funeral home. [00:26:22] Then he took up his legal practice and moved on to property development. [00:26:29] And it was during this phase of his life, the property development phase, then he went into partnership with murals family that became so intertwined that a 1965 lawsuit names McKay as both a co defendant with the files and as their attorney. [00:27:20] Let us also point out that by the time Neil McKay started flirting with mural File Barbara Hayes McKay, his childhood sweetheart, longtime bride, had become, and I quote, his long suffering wife. And that revelation came from none other than Barbara's sister in law, the. The wife of her brother, according to a 1987 police report. Yeah, we're jumping in ahead of time because we need to right now. [00:27:47] McKay's sister in law told APD investigator Joseph Austin that, quote, Neil and Barbara had trouble in their marriage because McKay was a heavy drinker. She said they had no real marriage for a long time. [00:28:02] Barbara's brother Frank added in that same interview that quote, McKay graduated from the Southwest Law School and was the president of their high school student body. [00:28:12] He said that everyone looked up to Neil McKay, that he was hard working and wanted to get ahead. [00:28:19] Reminded the the detective that Hayes and McKay were, were going together in their senior year and all that was true. [00:28:30] McKay was indeed president of Barstow High School 1941, class of 1941. He was on the varsity baseball team and his wife Barbara's mother was best friends with Neil's mother. So small town stuff. Small town. [00:28:49] But given the state of their marriage, it was no surprise that Barbara asked Neil for a divorce and he refused. Refused, that is, until the spring of 1968. [00:29:02] Because from almost the moment Neil McKay met Mira, he was smitten. [00:29:09] Smitten, not smitten. [00:29:12] And he couldn't have Muriel until that April when he finally granted Barbara her divorce. Now Barbara turned around and quickly married a guy named Alan H. [00:29:26] Prominent Anchorage physician, Dr. Alan H. [00:29:30] And then on New Year's Eve of 1968, Burial and Neil got married themselves. It was a, actually it was a comedy of errors because they had a marriage license but they hadn't decided when they're going to get married. Oh, maybe the afternoon of December 31st. Yeah, we can, we can. [00:29:59] So that's when they got married New Year's Eve. [00:30:04] Muriel didn't even tell her sister and, and to sort of as a, as a note of how messed up it was, Mira didn't even tell her sister Caroline about the marriage until the day of surprise, we're married. [00:30:20] What could possibly go wrong? [00:30:32] See you next time. [00:30:37] And, and we're not done yet. Here is a bonus. [00:30:42] There are lots of things written about Neil McKay and I happen to know someone who knew him back in the day, as we say in the 50s when Neil McKay first arrived in Anchorage from California. [00:31:05] This guy, later, of course I'll keep him unnamed, later became an Alaska state trooper and he worked with McKay when McKay was vice president at the bank, when this guy was a process server so early in his career, he said they were friends in a professional sense of the word, worked together for about five years. That's. Well, McKay is still in the bank and, and not yet becoming and pursuing his career As a lawyer, he describes him as a nice enough guy, about 5 10, friendly, nice looking when he was dressed in a suit and a tie. [00:31:56] Thought he was even a good attorney while he practiced law. [00:32:01] Definitely said he was kind of intense, definitely not laid back. [00:32:09] And if there was a break, it was definitely during his divorce. He, as this guy says, didn't go out much, became a recluse. [00:32:21] Then he tells the story of when he and his wife decided to do something different one Christmas and go to Hawaii. [00:32:30] And at the airport, who do they run into but Neil McKay. McKay was really friendly, but kind of glommed onto him because of course he knew this guy had moved up in the ranks of the police, really moved up. [00:32:49] And he asked them where they're going to stay. And my friend admits, stupidly, I told him we're staying at the rainbow. [00:32:59] And McKay immediately responds, oh, that's a block from my condo. We should get together while you're here. [00:33:08] He thought maybe they saw him once, but they kept getting the call. [00:33:16] When they got back, this is where there was really kind of that tell 1983. [00:33:26] And he sent the guy several handwritten letters on legal paper. [00:33:32] And it was clear to this guy that he was trying to explain his position in relationship to his legal disagreements with the files. [00:33:43] And as my friend says, even a criminal wants to explain himself, you know. [00:33:51] Of course, those letters soon found themselves turned over to the Alaska State Troopers. They went and to evidence. [00:34:03] Turns out this guy, this trooper, also happened to be in the hotel Captain Cook when the explosion that killed Muriel File went off. [00:34:18] He said, of course we had to go there and see what was going on. It was a mess, just a horrible scene. I asked him, were there a lot of people there? He said, no. [00:34:30] There was a pause and then he said, after a while there were.