Well, there was this from a few years ago… Not exactly what you were looking for, I suppose, but indeed each of those facts has been verified by three journalist sources, a doctor, and a Vatican Jew.
Maybe “Mrs. Adams” is his mother.
In the answer quoted above, he describes her as a former woman friend who later became Mrs Adams, so that rules out her being his mother.
What if his father remarried?
How come the U.S. uses 120 volt electricity, not 240 like the rest of the world? (20-Nov-1992) “Three-phase power is used primarily in commercial applications, not homes. When I was an electrician’s apprentice, I remember we installed it in a garment factory for use with portable electric cloth cutters.”
In addition to such jobs as machinist’s helper and electrician’s apprentice, Cecil’s been an on-air radio host. What are the three English words ending in -gry? (from 19 Aug 1988) gives us at least one cite of Cecil’s days of hosting a Straight Dope style radio show:
There are other examples of Cecil’s on-air activities in a number of early columns; this is the one I found first. Anyway, if he was a radio host, his voice must have been heard by some of the Teeming Millions. So has anybody heard it?
Hi, Chrismoody, welcome to the SDMB!
Here are a couple of old threads on the subject:
From 2002: What We Know About Cecil.
From 2004: What do we know about Cecil?
He has been threatened with a gun at least once; in one column, he talks about staring down the wrong end of a gun. Can’t find the cite at the moment, though.
I’m not sure if anybody really wants to know this , but Cecil has revealed certain information about his wife’s , umm… circumferential measurements, and how they affect her ability to run.
We know it. Look at #7.
This bit of info surfaced in one of the earlier threads, as well.
Then Mrs Adams would be his stepmother not his mother. Nobody would describe their own mother as having been a “woman friend” they knew.
I infer, by the end of this report, Unca Cece is probably Pro-Life:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/020405.html
Found the gun quote; it’s at the end of the “who has jurisdiction” column about city, county and state cops: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_146.html. The quote is: “Having faced the wrong end of a six-shooter in my day (no joke), I must say they confer considerable powers of persuasion.”
In addition to nearly destroying a building with a crane, Cecil had a high school teacher who caused a colossal mess out in the yard by goofing up an ill-conceived train switching maneuver called a flying switch.
Or maybe not. Men of a certain age and persuasion often refer to the Mrs. as being 29 in perpetuum. Especially when referring to them in print.
This is gallant, it prevents the quote from being inaccurate when read years later, and it saves one the trouble of actually counting up someone’s age. So it’s a threefer. Here in the office we recently celebrated an “anniversary of his 39th birthday”, rather than having to request a personnel file and do the math.
At one point, he took a college course from Northwestern professor/1950s TV personality Bergen Evans:
So, there I was, minding my own business, reading today’s columnwhen I came across the following quote:
This got me to wondering so I looked up the news article mentioned and found that it was written by one mister Steve Twomey.
Prior to writing for The Washington Post, Mr. Twomey wrote for The Philadelphia Inquirer where he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987.
Looking up **Steve Twomey ** on Who’s Who of Pulitzer Prize Winners revieled the following information:
This puts Cecil Adams, if he was indeed a former roommate of **Steve Twomey ** (and I have no reason to doubt that he was) in the 56 year old bracket, an attendee of **Northwestern University ** (which I think has been mentioned elsewhere) and quite the prodigy as it seems he may have started writing this column when he was 22.
I did not, however, find Mr. Twomey’s phone number because
- That would be going too far in my book.
- He is probably covered under the same NDA as the Admins on this board.
- Hi Opal.
- I’m just too damned lazy.
According to his MySpace page he is 62 years old, married, and a Leo.
Cecil once addressed a Mensa convention.
From the linked 1988 column:
Given that this would have happened 20 years ago, it seems improbable that Cecil addressed them via remote hookup. And it’s also hard for me to believe that some guy claiming to be Cecil Adams addressed a Mensa convention while wearing a mask or hood, without word getting around about it.
Maybe, just maybe, Cecil makes shit up about himself.