Meghan Misunderstood

2

Loving Day

Doria couldn’t miss Tom Markle. He was six foot three, well-built with a shock of red hair. She, on the other hand, was slim and striking. Meghan would later comment, ‘I like to think he was drawn to her sweet eyes and her afro, plus their shared love of antiques.’

He had also come from a relentlessly white background in his home state of Pennsylvania. Meghan described it as a ‘homogenised’ community where the ‘concept of marrying an African–American woman was not on the cards’.

Coincidentally, his ancestors had also made a dramatic move in search of a better life. In their case, they left their mining community in Yorkshire during the reign of Queen Victoria, in 1869, in pursuit of the American Dream. His great-grandmother, Mattie Sykes, was just a baby when they crossed the Atlantic.

News that Meghan may have had British connections caused a flurry of interest in her family tree when she was first linked to Prince Harry. It was even worked out that the couple were themselves seventeenth cousins, due to a tenuous link she had with King Edward III, who ruled England for fifty years from 1327 to 1377.

When she joined Harry on an official visit to Dublin in July 2018, it was established that she had an Irish connection as well. Highlighting the family tree of an important visitor to Ireland has become a common practice. Meghan was presented with documents showing she was descended from a Belfast girl.

The American connection began in the mining community of Mahanoy City, which despite its grand name has a population of less than 4,000. It’s a bit in the middle of nowhere, some eighty miles from Philadelphia, and not exactly a step up from the north of England in Victorian times. It was a harsh environment and Mattie’s father, Thomas Sykes, died from heart failure at the age of 43, leaving his widow to raise five children.

Meghan’s ancestors hadn’t moved far by the time Tom Markle was born, in July 1944, as World War II was drawing to a close. He grew up in the borough of Newport, Pennsylvania, seventy miles away from Mahanoy City, where his father Gordon worked for a time at an air force base in nearby Harrisburg before winding up in admin at the local post office. Tom’s mother Doris worked at the J. J. Newberry’s five and dime store in Newport. She would eventually be acknowledged as the matriarch of the family and someone loved and respected by Meghan.

The royal author Andrew Morton, who wrote the groundbreaking Diana: Her True Story, described Tom’s childhood as being like something out of Mark Twain’s classic The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The family, including his two older brothers, lived in a modest white clapboard house on Sixth Street that was conveniently near woods and a river where the three boys would fish for catfish. Doris was a superb cook, filling her sons with homemade pies and making jam from the blackberries they picked in summer.

Such an idyllic-sounding youth was not enough to persuade any of the brothers that they wanted to stay in Newport, however. They all moved away. Meghan painted a less sentimental view of her dad’s roots, who, she said, ‘came from so little in a small town in Pennsylvania, where Christmas stockings were filled with oranges and dinners were potatoes and Spam.’

The eldest of the three brothers, Mick, joined the United States Air Force and worked for many years in communications for the government, prompting speculation that he in fact had a job with the CIA. Understandably, he’s never confirmed that rumour but he would prove helpful to his niece in the world of diplomacy some years later.

The middle brother, Fred, moved to Florida and found religion. He became the self-proclaimed leader of a little-known order called the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church and was known as Bishop Dismas F. Markle. The unusual ‘Dismas’ comes from the Greek and is generally acknowledged to be the name of the good thief, the man who repented on the cross next to Jesus. It’s not clear how many followers his church actually had, but some reports suggest it was about forty. Bishop Dismas has seen little of Meghan over the years – apparently she was aged six the last time they met – but to his credit has had nothing to say to journalists and very little to his friends about his family connections.

Tom, meanwhile, had grown into a strapping young man, but even he could not match his giant grandfather Isaac ‘Ike’ Markle, who stood 7 foot 2 inches tall and worked as a fireman on the railways. Tom was a popular figure at Newport High School. One of his contemporaries there, Loretta Strawser, who also lived on the same street as the Markle family, recalled that he was ‘a nice person to be around.’ Others remembered him as being laid-back and down to earth. He took an interest in the visual arts but it was only after leaving school that a hobby became a career.

First, though, he drifted from job to job, earning some going-out money. He set up the pins in a local bowling alley while he decided what to do next. He soon realised that he was never going to amount to much in Newport and needed to try his luck elsewhere. Although he didn’t go on to college, Tom spent the equivalent of his gap year in the Poconos, the mountainous resort area in the north of the state. He found work at a local theatre where he had to muck in helping with everything, including the important technical tasks backstage.

Tom didn’t return to Newport. Instead, he tried his luck in Chicago and found a job as a lighting technician at the WTTW television studios. He had to manage one potential problem with his career; he was colour-blind. It was testament to his dedication that he succeeded in keeping that hidden.

Instead, he thrived in his new direction in life, climbing his way up the ladder from the bottom rung. As well as his work at the TV station, he did extra shifts at the Harper Theater on Chicago’s South Side in the Hyde Park neighbourhood of the city, ten minutes down the road from where the family home of Barack Obama has become a tourist attraction.

Tom’s particular skill was lighting, and his flair soon grabbed the attention of the Harper’s new owners, newspaper proprietor Bruce Sagan and his wife Judith, who was particularly influential in the world of dance. It was a golden age for the playhouse and as well as prestigious productions of Chekhov and Pirandello, Tom was on hand to help with the first Harper Theater Dance Festival, which swiftly became one of the highlights of the arts calendar in Chicago.

Tom worked hard, but it was the sixties and he liked to play hard as well, hanging out with college and television friends and enjoying a free and easy lifestyle. He was nineteen when he met a young clerk at the Illinois Railroad Company. Roslyn Loveless was an elegant eighteen-year-old and they clicked immediately. She thought him ‘tall and handsome’ with a ‘great sense of humour and charming smile’.

Roslyn was soon expecting her first child and she and Tom moved into a one-bedroom apartment, got married and celebrated the birth of a daughter, Yvonne – who would later change her name to Samantha – in November 1964. Cracks in their relationship appeared soon after.

Roslyn gave a devastating account of those days in an interview with the Daily Mirror, a version of events that Tom has strongly denied, describing her accusation as ‘not valid’. According to Roslyn, he had a bad temper: ‘He would scream, “Fuck you”, “Fuck off”, “Leave me the fuck alone”, or “Get the fuck out of here.” Everything was fuck.’

An addition to the family, Tom Jr, in December 1965, did not improve things between the couple. For a while she moved to Newport, Pennsylvania, and lived with Tom’s mum and dad, Doris and Gordon, who were very kind but could not meet the financial demands of supporting a young mum and her two small children.

Back in Chicago, Roslyn claims that Tom lived the life of a single man, mixing in circles where cocaine was commonplace and enjoying the company of other women. She said he did not give her the money she needed even to feed the children properly and she was reduced to shoplifting in the local store just to get enough food.

A friend came to her rescue and said she could stay with her, so Roslyn and the children took flight from the family apartment. She refused to sign divorce papers in which it was said he had been a ‘true, kind and affectionate husband’.

They were eventually divorced in 1975, although by this time Tom had made the journey across country in pursuit of his personal dream to work in Hollywood. While he continued to work hard to make progress in his career, Roslyn and the children moved to Albuquerque in New Mexico to start a new life, encouraged by her brother Richard, who already lived in the city.

Tom didn’t completely forget his Pennsylvanian roots, returning every year for family and high school reunions in Newport. After struggling for eighteen months to get a start, he had carved out a good life for himself as a lighting director on General Hospital. The famous daytime soap began in 1963 and is the Coronation Street of American television, so it was a prestigious job.

He was living close to the beach in Santa Monica where his daughter Yvonne, a restless and ambitious teenager, joined him when she was fourteen. She had her sights set on a Hollywood career as an actress or model, or both.

When he became a teenager, Tom Jr joined the household as well. He had decided that high school in laid-back California would suit him better than New Mexico. They moved to a large and very comfortable four-bedroom family house on Providencia Street in Woodland Hills; down the road from an exclusive country club, it was a property that would probably fetch more than $1 million if sold today.

Yvonne and Tom Jr were typical teenagers – bickering and squabbling and preferring the company of their own friends and social lives. Their father kept out of things, immersing himself in his work. And then he met Doria on the set of General Hospital. She was undoubtedly a ray of sunshine in his life, a thoughtful and calming presence in the household, except, it seemed, for Yvonne, who apparently referred to her dad’s new girlfriend as ‘the maid’, which at best was the sort of casual racism that masqueraded as a joke, or at worst was blatantly racist.

Doria was twelve years younger than Tom, so, ironically, she was much closer in age to Yvonne, but that did not encourage any bond between them. One highlight in the uneasy household was when Doria invited them all to join the Raglands for Thanksgiving dinner at her parents’ house. Jeanette, Alvin, Joseph Jr and Saundra were all there and Tom Jr was impressed by the sense of family they had, something that seemed to be missing from the Markle clan.

Six months after they met, Doria and Tom married, two days before Christmas in 1979. She chose a venue and ceremony that reflected her growing interest in yoga and alternative religions. The Self-Realization Fellowship Temple on Sunset Boulevard stood out with its faux Moorish entrance, including gold orb-topped turrets and stone elephants. The Fellowship was founded in 1920 by the charismatic Paramahansa Yogananda, regarded by many as one of the twentieth-century’s most important spiritual figures and described by the Los Angeles Times as the first superstar guru.

He embraced the value of meditation and of Kriya yoga – influences that help give Doria an inner strength that has been of huge benefit to her daughter. Perhaps his most famous follower was the late Steve Jobs, the billionaire co-founder of Apple who would read Yogananda’s book Autobiography of a Yogi at the start of each year. He made sure everyone attending his memorial service was presented with a copy.

Doria and Tom’s ceremony was presided over by Brother Bhaktananda, a much-respected Buddhist priest in Los Angeles who followed Yogananda’s philosophy for a simpler, more thoughtful life. In 1979, an interracial marriage was still a big deal in the US. While in the UK, the drawbacks might have been based on social stigma and entrenched attitudes, in America there was a long history of legislation to overcome. Amazingly, that had only happened in 1967, little more than a decade earlier, when The Beatles were singing ‘All You Need is Love’.

In the US, what was really needed was ‘Loving’, the name of the couple that bravely took on racist laws and won. They had married in Washington, DC, in 1959 but were arrested when they returned home to Virginia, pleading guilty to ‘cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth’. They were offered one year in prison or a suspended sentence if they chose to leave their home state.

They left but were rearrested in 1963 when they visited family, triggering a legal battle which they eventually won four years later at the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice concluded, ‘To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications … is to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty.’ Now there’s a national Loving Day every June in the US to celebrate the end of this absurd prohibition.

On her wedding day Doria wore a simple white dress with flowers in her hair, while the groom put on a sports jacket, shirt and tie and carried a bunch of orange blossoms. It was a lovely afternoon and Doria, surrounded by her family, looking like a teenager in love, sparkled with happiness.

They had been married for eighteen months when their daughter, Rachel Meghan Markle, was born before dawn on 4 August 1981 at the West Park Hospital in Canoga Park, a suburb in the San Fernando Valley just north of where the family lived in Woodland Hills. She was and will always be a California girl.

Tom, now thirty-five, was at the hospital and was ‘thrilled to tears’ when his baby was handed to him to hold for the first time. This time round he threw himself enthusiastically into the role of dad. She was, he declared, his ‘pride and joy’. His son, Tom Jr, confirmed that he was a changed man: ‘Before then, Dad’s work took priority over everything, but she became his whole world. She was her daddy’s princess.’

He was still working all hours, though, a dedication that was more than paying off when his work on General Hospital was being more widely recognised within the industry. After being nominated twice, he and his fellow crew on the soap won a daytime Emmy for ‘outstanding achievement in design excellence’. This was big news. Before his retirement, Tom would end up being nominated nine times, testament to his ability in a crowded marketplace.

Meghan was a very cute baby and her delighted father was always happy to be the first to pick her up if she was crying. One big difference to becoming a dad now than when he was a younger man back in Pennsylvania was that he was making good money and could properly afford a child. She became the ‘most special thing in his life’.

3

People are Fighting

Doria, twenty-three when Meghan was born, was not faring so well. She had to cope with not only looking after a small baby but also maintaining the peace in such a fractious household. The two older siblings, who have been paid many times for interviews, have often changed their accounts of life in the Markle household, but one fact is clear: they were teenagers and Meghan was a newborn.

Woodland Hills was a pleasant, middle-class, predominantly white neighbourhood in the Valley, as it was called. Meghan summed it up: ‘It was leafy and affordable. What it was not, however, was diverse. And there was my mom, caramel in complexion with her light-skinned baby in tow, being asked where my mother was since they assumed she was the nanny.’ While they have never publically acknowledged how difficult it was for them being an interracial couple in Woodland Hills back then, it’s easy to imagine it was a constant battle. Meghan herself has said that she was too young to understand that they were living with institutional prejudice. With hindsight, this was not the best location for them.

The Markle household was one where everyone seemed to have their own set of friends. Doria relied on her own mother, Jeanette, who had been at the maternity hospital with her, as well as friends interested in practising yoga, which had become a passion that would last a lifetime. When he wasn’t working, Tom liked to socialise with his TV circle and would bring his little daughter downstairs to proudly show her off when they went back to the house.

Elder daughter Yvonne was often out on the town with other budding actors. Her father had helped her secure a walk-on, uncredited part in General Hospital but her career wasn’t going anywhere and she didn’t seem at all interested in helping with Meghan. Tom Jr was happy to smoke weed with his pals, although his father insisted they didn’t indulge around the new addition to the family.

Perhaps inevitably, the presence of a young baby in such a fraught environment put a strain on Tom and Doria’s relationship. Some family friends have hinted that Tom found fault with everything – something a strong-minded woman like Doria was not going to tolerate for too long. He admitted that he just wasn’t home enough.

Doria moved back to her mother’s house and took Meghan with her. For the sake of their young child, they stayed on reasonable terms and there was never a question of Tom not being fully involved with their Flower’s upbringing. Meghan proudly states, ‘I never saw them fight.’ Although Meghan was just two when they split up, her parents did not divorce until 1987, when she was seven and at primary school. Whatever their feelings towards each other, they were determined that their daughter’s world would be a safe and happy one.

Tom tried his best to ensure she felt no different from any other little girls her age. Meghan revealed in her now-famous blog, The Tig, that when she was seven she had her heart set on a family set of Barbie dolls for Christmas. They were called the Heart Family and consisted of a mum, dad and two children, but there was a problem: the ‘perfect nuclear family’, as Meghan described it, was only available in all black dolls or all white ones.

Tom was not happy with that so he marched into a Toys “R” Us store in West Hollywood and carefully customised a set just for his daughter. As he saw it, he was not going to allow her to be disadvantaged by the colour of her skin, even if it was just a Christmas present.

Meghan recalled Santa’s gift: ‘On Christmas morning, swathed in glitter-flecked wrapping paper, I found my Heart family: a black mom doll, a white dad doll and a child in each colour.’ The new family ‘echoed her reality’. It was a sweet gesture for his daughter but also a serious one that she never forgot. The question of her racial identity was one that would absorb Meghan as a child and as an adult.

Meghan’s first school was well-known and an important influence on her even at such a young age. The Hollywood Schoolhouse was founded in 1945 as a private nursery school that welcomed and encouraged ethnic diversity during the post-war years when many other private schools did not.

The renowned founder and first headmistress, Ruth Pease, had her own inspiring story. She herself was the only child of deaf parents and from a very young age would communicate with the hearing world for her parents. She would be teased about it by other children and grew up understanding the hurtfulness of casual and thoughtless remarks and prejudice.

During the war, she and her husband took in a little boy whose father was Chinese and mother was white. His parents had trouble finding day care for him, almost certainly because the locals thought he was Japanese and the US was at war with Japan. Ruth’s daughter, Debbie Wehbe observed, ‘My mother wanted no part of that attitude. To her, children needed someone to take care of them: Period.’

The school just off Highland Avenue was originally known as the Hollywood Little Red Schoolhouse simply because Ruth’s husband Robert painted the original building that colour. They added a distinctive bell tower that made the school’s appearance seem like something out of a fairy tale or nursery rhyme. It was welcoming to nervous children and uncertain parents.