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convinced the world’s leading experts that he was as he claimed to be.

But, we’re getting ahead of our story.

To paraphrase Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz: The best place to start is at beginning.

THE BEGINNING.

He was born over 101 years ago as Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Jr., on 21 December 1921, in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

While growing up in the lower southwest area of Lawrence, he was simply called “Fred” instead of Ferdinand by friends and neighbours.

Fred’s father, Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Sr., worked in the olde Theatre District in Lawrence as a movie projector operator. He prospered enough to relocate the entire family to the more affluent area on Jackson Street, an upperclass section of the city known as Tower Hill Neighbourhood.

Unfortunately, as with many others, Fred’s father was hit hard by the Great Depression which necessitated the family to move from the more exclusive Tower Hill Neighbourhood to a much poorer area of towne.

During these financially hard times, young Demara, Jr. decided to run away from home in 1937 bartender, “Don’t mind us; we’re joined at the hip. I’m John, he’s Jim. Two Molson Canadian beers, draft please.”

The bartender, feeling slightly awkward, tries to make polite conversation while pouring the beers. “Been on holiday yet, lads?”

“Off to England next month,” says John. “We go to England every year, rent a car and drive for miles. Don’t we, Jim?” Jim agrees.

“Ah, England!” says the bartender. “Wonderful country... the history, the beer, the culture...” when he was only 16-years-olde and proceeded to join the Cistercian monks in Rhode Island. ing to ride a 10-speed bike from Phoenix to Flagstaff. He got as far as Black Canyon City before the mountains just became too much and he could go no farther.

The rigorous self-denying life of a monk proved too austere for him so he moved on.

WHEN HIS “IMPOSTER” & “IDENTITY THEFT” DAYS STARTED.

Demara began his great imposter lifestyle when he joined the United States Army in 1941. It was there when Demara borrowed the name of his Army buddy, Anthony Ignolia, and decided to go AWOL (absent without authorized leave).

HE FAKED HIS OWN SUICIDE.

Still AWOL from the U. S. Army, he then joined the U. S. Navy and trained as a hospital corpsman. Not satisfied with his training career he decided to fake his own suicide masterfully.

He did so by leaving a small parcel (a package wrapped in paper) with a few clothes inside. He left all of this on the wharf, close to the loading-and-unloading area for ships.

The topper was that he even left a most convincing suicide note, complete with emotional farewell.

His life of deception was now off to a nefarious start.

He stuck his thumb out, but after three hours hadn’t gotten a single person to stop. Finally, a guy in a Corvette pulled over and offered him a ride. Of course, the bike wouldn’t fit in the car.

COLLEGE PROFESSOR OF RELIGIOUS THEOLOGY. At one time he stole the identity of a certain Dr. Robert L. French, a Naval officer who held a Ph.D in religious psychology. Posing as a fake professor, Demara taught brilliantly on the academic subject of psychology at Gannon College (now a university) in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Still pretending to be Professor French, Demara proceeded to study theology, cosmology, and epistemology at Chicago DePaul University.

TODAY’S EXPERTS & AUTHORITIES CONTINUE TO DISCUSSING HIS ABILITY TO FOOL SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITIES.

The uncanny ability for Ferdinand Demara to ‘pull off’ these faked roles with technical success has been greatly discussed by experts in the various fields in which Demara placed himself into.

Speculations on Demara’s great success in his various charades was that he may, in fact, have possessed a true “photographic memory,” scientifically referred to as “eidetic memory.”

Eidetic memory is clinically defined as: “The ability to recollect an image so vividly that it appears to be real.”

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120 mph. He then relayed, “...and you’re not going to believe this, but there’s guy on a 10 speed bike honking to pass.”

•••

Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.

A man comes into a restaurant and asks, “How do you prepare a chicken here?”

The waiter says, “We just tell them they’re going to die.”

•••

Three old guys out walking. First one says. “Windy isn’t it? “ Second one says, “No it’s Thursday”!! Third one says. “So am I. Lets go get a beer!”

•••

Siamese twins walk into a bar in Canada and park themselves on a bar stool. One of them says to the

“Nah, we don’t like that British crap,” says John. “Hamburgers and Molson’s beer, that’s us, eh Jim? And we can’t stand the Englishthey’re so arrogant and rude.”

“So why keep going to England?” asks the bartender.

“It’s the only chance Jim gets to drive.”

••••

A man decided that he was go-

The owner of the Corvette found a piece of rope lying by the highway and tied it to his bumper. He tied the other end to the bike and told the man that if he was going too fast, to honk the horn on his bike and that he would slow down.

Everything went fine for the first 30 miles. Suddenly, another Corvette blew past them. Not to be outdone, the Corvette pulling the bike took off after the other. A short distance down the road, the Corvettes, both going well over 120 mph, blew through a speed trap.

The police officer noted the speeds from his radar gun and radioed to the other officer that he had two Corvettes headed his way at over

We never really grow up; we only learn how to act in public.

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

They begin the evening news with ‘Good Evening,’ then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is

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According to scholar, Annette Kujawski Taylor: “In eidetic memory, a person has an almost faithful mental image snapshot or photograph of an event in their memory.”

Many experts in the field claim that a person who possesses eidetic memory has, “the ability to briefly look at a page of information and then recite it perfectly from memory.”

According to Herman Heine Goldstine, mathematician and computer scientist who helped develop ENIAC, the world’s first modern electronic digital computers, he claimed that his colleague, John von Neumann, was a genuine “eidetiker” (a person who possesses an eidetic memory). According to Goldstine, the mathematician, von Neumann, was able to recall from memory every book he had ever read. (John von Neumann was one of the scientists who secretly worked on America’s most top-secret endeavor, The Manhattan Project, which succeeded in building the world’s first atomic bombs.)

A scientific investigation published in a 1970 issue of Nature by Harvard vision scientist, Charles Stromeyer III, found that his future wife, Elizabeth, was able to recall poetry written in a foreign language – a foreign language which she did not understand -- years after she had first seen the poem. She remains the only documented person to have passed such a test.

WITHOUT ANY PRIOR TRAINING: HIS MEDICAL & DENTAL SKILLS CONTINUE TO BAFFLE EXPERTS TODAY.

If photographic memory truly exists, it would certainly seem to have played a critical role with Ferdinand Demara’s various successful medical skills, for example.

But eidetic memory, alone, would not have sufficed for Demara to successfully become a medical surgeon. There were other factors at play here.

Demara also possessed an extraordinarily high I.Q. – another indispensable arrow in his quiver of deceptions. In short, he was an (abnormally-skilled quick-learner) on top of his photographic memory, all of which empowered him to bring whomever he impersonated, into seeming reality.

As a practicing surgeon he was, as one source put it:

“Apparently able to memorize necessary techniques from medical and dental textbooks. And then, ingeniously, apply this data with amazing improvised skills.”

“SPEED READER” WHO COULD “SCAN-READ” ENTIRE PAGES AT A MERE GLANCE.

Demara was also said to be able to read at an alarming rate of speed – scanning the pages as quickly as he could turn them.

This, apparently, all came to fruition when Ferdinand Demara befriended a young medical doctor named Joseph C. Cyr, who was fresh out of medical school from Quebec’s Laval University. Demara secretly obtained copies of all relevant documentations, including high school diplomas, test scores, medical school records and degrees, of Dr. Joseph C. Cyr. For Demara, the rest was easy.

In 1951, Demara joined the Canadian Navy as Dr. Joseph Cyr. He was quickly assigned as a trauma surgeon aboard the HMCS Cayuga, a Royal Canadian Navy destroyer, during the Korean War.

The moment of truth came shortly thereafter.

Sixteen Korean soldiers were brought on board the HMCS Cayuga and all of them were badly in need of a trauma surgeon – their injuries were so serious that they required immediate medical attention or they would surely die!

Adding to the urgency of medical necessity was that there was only one surgeon onboard.

Dr. Joseph Cyr (Ferdinand Demara in disguise) was quickly summoned.

Arriving on the scene, Demara immediately commanded that these various wounded soldiers be transported quickly into the ship’s operating room and prepped for surgery.

While that was being done, Demara disappeared into his ship’s quarters and proceeded to ‘speed read’ various related medical procedures for each wounded soldier. His alleged photographic memory quickly formed crystal-clear images, along with various surgical techniques, into his brain.

Still parading as Dr. Joseph C. Cyr, Demara emerged from his personal quarters. He would proceed to astound the world with his uncanny medical accomplishments – of which he had no prior physical experience, whatsoever,

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