Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [29]
At some point, Felix’s father escaped captivity at a concentration camp and rejoined the family for a time, but he soon left to fight alongside the British Expeditionary Forces. This voluntary departure was almost worse than the first. Good fathers weren’t supposed to leave their families, and without his dad, Felix felt lost and unprotected once again.
Years later, the family was reunited in Marseilles, thanks to an ad Felix’s father had run in a French newspaper seeking their whereabouts. For a brief time, Felix attended boarding school in France before crossing into Spain with his family, where they converted to Catholicism to gain entry. From Spain, they traveled to Portugal and eventually boarded a ship bound for the United States.
It’s not known what effect, if any, the involuntary change of religion had on young Felix. An autopsy revealed that, despite his Jewish heritage, he had never been circumcised, possibly to protect him from persecution in war-ravaged Europe. Years later, he would joke of his conversion with friends, who described the psychologist as “culturally Jewish.”
In 1941, the Polks landed in America and eventually settled in Harrison, New York, where Felix’s father set up a retail business that quickly succeeded. Throughout his life, Eric Polk exhibited a remarkable ability to rebound from tragedy, and America was the perfect venue for his resilience, as he quickly established two profitable five-and-dime stores in Rockland County.
Despite his father’s success, Felix, who was nine when the family made the transatlantic voyage, proved least able to adjust to life in the land of opportunity. He resented that his family no longer enjoyed the financial status they enjoyed in Austria. He had no time for play because his father expected Felix to work in the family business. His was a Victorian upbringing; crying was not allowed in the Polk home.
In 1949, at the age of seventeen, Felix left the comfort of his parents’ New York home for St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, where he had earned a scholarship. Even though Felix started high school late, he still managed to graduate with his class. Nevertheless his parents weren’t satisfied with his academic performance, and they constantly held up the achievements of his twin brother, John, as the example to follow. Felix resented the comparison and John’s ease in forming many friendships. Neither came naturally to Felix. He was plagued by a foreboding he couldn’t explain.
Once at college, Felix’s academic interests flourished. Philosophy became his passion, and he immersed himself in his studies to the point of obsession. While the work was invigorating, his constant self-analysis seemed to alienate his classmates, and Felix made few friends on campus. Similarly, family members reported that Felix’s dark letters home were filled with “marked preoccupations” and “esoteric discussions,” and that he exhibited “fluctuating moods of unhappiness” during his visits home.
Upon graduation from St. John’s with a bachelor of arts degree in 1953, Felix enlisted as an officer in the U.S. Navy to meet his military obligations. That summer, he was sent to Officer Candidate School (OCS) at the U.S. Naval Reserve Station in Newport, Rhode Island. Within walking distance of the sandy ocean beaches and the hopping downtown, it was a grand place to be stationed in July and August.
However, Felix rarely enjoyed these surroundings. According to U.S. Naval records, the twenty-two-year-old officer-in-training was “under greater strain than other students” at OCS. “He disliked the routine, but got through the program,” records stated.
After amphibious training at a base in Little Creek, Virginia, Felix was assigned to a Landing Ship Tank (LST) on the West Coast and cruised to Japan. An LST carries supplies and troops and has a top speed of ten knots, slower than a champion woman marathoner, and the four-week crossing seemed endless. Aboard ship, Felix held the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade (JG) and served as a stores officer. Though not always