Men's Health Uncategorized June 29, 2026 0 Comments

Unlock the Untold Secrets Behind James Michener’s Legacy and How It Can Transform Your Fight for Purpose and Power!

Ever wonder if the stories we tell ourselves about where we come from are really the whole truth? I sure did, growing up with the peculiar belief that James Michener—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author known for his sweeping novels like *Hawaii* and *Centennial*—might just be my “real” dad. It’s funny how life throws these curious puzzles at us, blurring lines between myth and memory. Born in New York City to Morris and Edith Diamond, my family’s official narrative was straightforward: love, struggle, and an experimental fertility procedure that led to my arrival. Yet, whispers from the past—tales of another man vying for my mother’s heart—hinted at a more tangled origin. Michener’s life, marked by literary triumphs and enigmatic beginnings, intersected with mine in ways that have shaped my journey, even if biology says otherwise. This story isn’t just about lineage; it’s about identity, legacy, and the unexpected mentors who guide us through life’s twists and turns. Care to dive deeper into this tangled family tapestry? LEARN MORE

I grew up believing the famous author James Michener might be my “real” father. I am sure I’m not the only person to believe our true-family origins are different from what we’ve been told. I was born on December 21,1943 in New York City to Morris (Muni) Diamond and Edith Kohn Diamond. My father was born on December 17,1906 in Jacksonville, Florida. My mother was born on October 6,1908 in Toledo, Ohio. James A. Michener was born on February 3, 1907, in New York City.

My mom and dad met in 1927 at a Jewish youth league meeting in Jacksonville. They moved to New York in 1929–He to pursue an acting career. She to pursue adventure. Her motto:

“Bring it on. I’ll try anything once.”

I grew up hearing romantic stories about their life in Greenwich Village, their political activism, and being poor but in love.

The official story was that they met, fell in love, and were married in 1934. They tried to conceive but were unsuccessful until an experimental procedure of injecting my father’s sperm into my mother’s womb was successful, and created the new life that is me. Over the years I heard stories from my mother’s younger sister, Florence, that suggested my “origin story” may be different than the one my parents told me. I learned that there was another young man, a young writer living in New York, who was competing with my father for my mother’s affections.

James A. Michener is one of the world’s most popular writers. He won the Pulitizer in Prize in 1948 for his book Tales of the South Pacific and wrote more than 40 epic best-selling novels including Hawaii, Centennial, Texas, and Alaska. Although there is a great deal of mystery about James Michener’s early life, we do know that he left New York in 1943, the year I was born, to join the navy.

James A. Michener

In his memoir, The World is My Home, published when Michener was 85 years old, he begins with a childhood memory.

                “I have been impelled to attempt this project because of an experience that occurred eighty years ago when I was a country lad of five, and was of such powerful import that the memory has never left me.”

                “The farmer living at the end of the lane had an aging apple tree that had once been abundantly productive but had now lost its energy and ability to bear any fruit at all. The farmer, on an early spring day I still remember, hammered eight nails, long and rusty, into the trunk of the tree.”

                “That autumn a miracle happened. The tired old tree, having been goaded back to life, produced a bumper crop of juicy red apples, bigger and better than we had seen before. When I asked how this had happened, the farmer explained: ‘Hammerin’ in the rusty nails gave it shock to remind it that its job is to produce apples.’”

                “In the 1980s, when I was nearly eighty years old, I had some fairly large rusty nails hammered into my trunk — a quintuple bypass heart surgery, a new left hip, a dental rebuilding, an attack of permanent vertigo — and like the sensible apple tree, I resolved to resume bearing fruit.”

                “Between the years 1986 and 1991 I would write eleven books, publish seven of them, including two very long ones, and have the other three completed in their third revisions and awaiting publication. It was an almost indecent display of frenzied industry, but it was carried out slowly, carefully, each morning at the typewriter and each afternoon at research or quiet reflection.”

James Michener died October 16, 1997 at the age of 90.

Morris (Muni) Diamond

My father died April 26, 1996 at the age of 89. He never became famous though he fulfilled his dream of becoming an actor in New York and later playwright in Hollywood. He was part of the generation of artists whose commitment to social justice and the working class ultimately made them targets during the McCarthy era and the Red Scare. Later in life, he was best known as a street puppeteer in Los Angeles and later in San Francisco under his stage name, “Tommy Roberts, the Puppet Man.”

On May 22, 1996 an article in the San Francisco Chronicle headlined “Requiem for S.F. Puppet Man.”

                “The Tenderloin said goodbye to Tommy Roberts, the puppet man, with tears in its eyes and cookies in its mouth. The puppets were there, sitting on a small table. There was a king, a dog, a scarecrow and a bunch of little men. All were silent, an unusual condition for a Tommy Roberts puppet, which worked harder than any other marionettes in history.”

                “If they could have talked without him, they would have recited the poet about Union Square, or the one about the public library. Over the past thirty years, Roberts had a way of showing up on college campuses and in city parks with paper bags full of ragged homemade hand puppets. The puppets, only slightly smaller than their 4 foot-8 master, would share Roberts’ poetry without being asked.”

                “The puppet man died last month, at the age of 89. ‘By the standards of society my father was not a success,’ said his son, Jed Diamond, at his memorial service. ‘He didn’t make a lot of money. He was labeled as mentally ill. He liked to live among people that society pretends do not exist.

“A month before he died, he asked his son to walk with him to the new San Francisco library still under construction. ‘It took us nearly an hour to get there,’ Jed said. ‘He loved books and wanted to leave his poem, The Public Library, for the workers. After a short rest he told me it’s time to go home. The first paragraph of the poem captures my father’s spirit:

The Public Library-

Here is my cathedral, my castle, my hallowed halls.

Here I am gallant knight, victorious leader,

Gypsy Wild — dreamer, artist, poet, wide-eyed child.

Here I’ve been nurtured and fed on spirit bread.

Here I’ve grown from crawling provincial bigot

To standing, seeking, universal man.

Finding truth and light to brighten mind’s night.

From dreamers molded out of our native clay.’

Jed Diamond

I will be 83 later this year and for more than fifty years I have been a leader in the field of Gender-Specific Medicine and men’s mental, emotional, and relational health. I have written 17 books including international best-sellers Surviving Male Menopause and The Irritable Male Syndrome: Understanding and Managing the 4 Key Causes of Depression and Aggression.

I feel I’ve got at least another ten years of productive life and have had my own health challenges including being diagnosed as having bipolar disorder. James Michener may not be my biological father, but he certainly has been a life-long mentor and guide for me.

My work as a healer began early when my mid-life father took an overdose of sleeping pills when I was five years old. He had become increasingly depressed when he couldn’t make a living to support his family doing the work that he loved.

Fortunately, he didn’t die but was committed to Camarillo State Mental Hospital. I grew up wondering what happened to my father, when it would happen to me, and what I could do to keep other families from experiencing the pain and suffering our family went through.

Following my graduation from U.C. Santa Barbara, I went to medical school. I wanted to become a psychiatrist and help prevent the feelings of hopelessness that leads too many men to want to end their lives. I soon found medical school too elitist and limiting for the kind of healing I knew was necessary.

I transferred to U.C. Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare where I earned a master’s degree and developed a full-time practice helping men, women, and families. At age sixty, I returned to school and got a PhD in International Health. My dissertation study was published as a book, Male vs Female Depression: Why Men Act Out and Women Act In.

My book, My Distant Dad: Healing the Family Father Wound explored the healing journey that has spanned multiple generations. I have an online course for those who want to explore their own father wound.

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