Jack’s Tragic Childhood
Jack Ulcer – The Gorilla Boy
Jack Fitzgerald Ulcer was born June 27, 1960 on a small private aircraft flying above the Coast of New England. The birth was unexpected, one week early, and Jack’s mother had no other choice than deliver the baby on the plane. Co-pilot Marcus Hansen and a solitary Sharp-shinned Hawk flying on the left side of the aircraft witnessed the birth of baby Jack.
Jack was the only child of a commercial airplane pilot Samuel Fitzgerald Ulcer and a housewife and dressmaker Lena Maria Ulcer, who died on June 28, 1960, a day after Jack was born. It was said that Jack was a giant of a child and Lena had struggled to deliver such a large baby and died from the complications caused partly by Jack’s abnormal size and partly by the difficult circumstances of the labor. Lena’s death was a tremendous shock for Samuel Ulcer who soon after Lena’s funeral started to take more and more risks as a pilot and flying in weather and parts of the world that no one else was courageous or crazy enough to fly in. Samuel also created a stubborn drinking habit and normally started his day of flying with two whiskeys and a gin and tonic.
In January 1962, Samuel was flying through a severe storm system over eastern Zaire (Republic of Congo), Africa, and for an unknown reason, his plane crashed into deep Jungle. Samuel died instantly and a rescue party, funded by Jack’s employer Star Jets, recovered his body 3 weeks later. Little Jack, who had been with Samuel on the plane, was nowhere to be found. The rescue team searched for Jack for 14 days, but finally came to a sad conclusion that the boy had been eaten by wild animals or accidentally flown out of the plane before it had crashed into the deep vegetation. The case was closed, and the story of the Ulcer family had reached its tragic end.
According to the Morning Star Magazine, a local villager had been collecting firewood on the smoky mountains nearby his village and encountered an unbelievable sight: a young boy was living and eating with gorillas and seemed to be communicating with them.
This amazing story soon reached, Dr. Daniel Kirk Callahan in the USA. Dr. Callahan was so bewildered by the story that he could not sleep for weeks and started to draft a rescue plan for the boy in order to bring him back to Wyoming with him. Dr. Callahan had sadly lost his own boy a few years earlier and had been thinking about adopting a child ever since. He felt that it was more than a coincidence that he had seen the news about the gorilla boy and was sure that it was his destiny and duty as a man to raise this child. He proudly announced to his relatives and friends that his son would be coming home from Africa and that they should prepare a welcome party for him.
Dr. Callahan traveled to Zaire in September 1968 and, after 2 months of hard work and various setbacks, managed to get the boy out without harming him or the gorillas. The local villagers were happy the boy was getting a new family and the gorillas seemed to accept the fact that their hairless guest was leaving. Somehow the gorillas appeared to know that the boy was just visiting, and probably concluded that something that drops from the sky cannot be permanent.
When back in Wyoming, Dr. Callahan soon discovered that the boy was Jack Ulcer, a victim of a tragic plane crash in Zaire in January 1962. He knew the story well and remembered being extremely sorry for the unfortunate Ulcer family and their life of tragedy. Dr. Callahan was now even more confident that it was his responsibility to raise this child and give him the best chance possible to become the great man he was meant to be. He also knew that the open skies and great landscapes of Wyoming would offer an excellent growing platform for the young boy with a very special upbringing.
Jack was now 8 years old, had no human communication skills and behaved like a wild animal, and more particularly, like a mountain gorilla. Dr. Callahan was intrigued by Jack’s unusual behavior and soon realized that the boy was smart, even though he was unable to communicate with him in any human language. Dr. Callahan took Jack to a local zoo and tried to make him communicate with a large silverback gorilla, but soon realized that, like humans, gorillas must have several languages and different groups cannot just instantly communicate with each other. At least this was Dr. Callahan’s conclusion, since the silverback and Jack did not exchange more than a few suspicious looks.
It took 5 long years to rehabilitate Jack and by the time Jack was reaching late puberty, he could speak and write good English. Jack was also getting along well with the other kids in the neighborhood and none of the children remembered the gorilla story anymore. Jack was pretty much a normal kid, well respected and even admired by his peers. There was however something very special about little Jack. Dr. Callahan noticed that Jack was always drawn to wilderness and preferred to stay out in the woods rather than watching TV or playing games with other children.
Jack had a great childhood in Wyoming and learned to take care of himself very early. Dr. Callahan was a kind and caring foster father and taught Jack sciences and educated him about the importance of nature and all living creatures. Jack was also a good student at school, but did not really feel comfortable spending long hours inside a school building and was always looking ways to get out of the classroom and back to the forest and mountains where he felt most comfortable with himself. When Jack turned 25 he was a professional outdoorsman and highly praised wilderness guide. Jack was at ease with all animals and someone even claimed seeing Jack communicating with a moose during a hiking trip to southern Wind River Range. Jack never used a map, but was always the one who found the way back home and the one who guided others to the best fishing rivers and the most spectacular mountain trails. There was something about Jack. Something mysterious that people around him could not quite put their finger on.
One member of Jack’s trekking party described this mysterious side of Jack to Dr. Callahan with the following words: “It seems like Jack can absorb the humming of the ancient forest trees and hear the mountain stream talking to him. It’s like Jack can sense the movements of the creatures traveling in the nightly woods and feel the vibrations of the trout swimming in the deepest trenches of the lake. Jack can sit hours under the starry sky and silently listen the forest around him talking, like it would be revealing him the forbidden secrets hidden forever from mankind. Like it would be talking to one of its own.”
- The facts taken partly from the diary of Dr. Daniel Kirk Callahan -