Post Mortem

Things usually change after a father's death ... and not just that he isn't around anymore.

It's "usually," because we can always look to the example of Wang Hsiueh-Hong, founder/majority owner of companies that make the majority of the world's smart phones. Her father, the late Wang Yung-Ching, Taiwan's god of management, was one of the richest men in the world and spread both his wisdom and his wealth among his nine children and his native country. Although daughter Wang steps on to the stage and even as someone who made her wealth on her own, she will always be overshadowed by her father.

Which a court has decided won't quite be the case for an Arkansas child born two years after his/her father's death. The child was conceived in vitro in June 2001; the father died on the job in July 2001 and the the widow gave birth, thanks to the implanted embryos in March 2003. Among other results, the Arkansas Court of Appeals ruled the child is not a dependent. His death benefits will not apply to his child. Making the baby child and not-child to the father.

That not-child status seems the sort of vague moniker also assigned to another who achieved great celebrity (and even best seller status) without ever really stepping beyond his father's shadow. Christopher Buckley, son of founder of modern conservatism William, was cut from his father's will and is fighting to establish a relationship with a son by a mother to whom he is not married.

He has also been publicly tossed from the magazine that served as the publicity engine for his father's philosophy (although as owner of one-seventh of the publication he can't be privately thrown away quite as easily. The Buckley father-son status will surely be chewed over if not quite resolved for history when young (55?) Buckely's "Losing Mum and Pup," a 40 day or so treatise of creative mourning is published next year.