He Had a Sweetheart in Every Port the Navy Shipped Him To -and a Fortune to Back Up His Honeyed Words

By Gene Coughlin
DESPITE the vigilance and protection of the U. S. Navy, a doting mother, and even the FBI, Johnny Ochsner as a 20-year-old managed to get Involved in three hectic romances, one marriage and a suit to have the marriage annulled. No wonder, then, that Honolulu, San Francisco and Reno are waiting expectantly to see what he does now that he is 21 and his own master, as of May 30, and in possession of (1) a line of “sailor sweet talk” and (2) an estate valued at $2,000,000 a few years ago.

Possibly the estate shrunk during Johnny’s service with the Navy and romance, but his scrapbook didn’t. It tells how one teen age beauty stowed away to follow him to Honolulu, where another pretty girl became stowaway to trail him back to the States, where he said good by to both and eloped with a divorcee. Along with his fortune, Johnny may have inherited his romantic tendencies from his father, the late Washington Henry Ochsner, Stanford University geology professor When Ochsner died in 1927, leaving 2,500 acres of land appraised at $500, his estate attracted no particular attention. A year later, however, when oil was discovered on the 2,500 acres in the fabulous Kettleman Hills district, the value of his estate skyrocketed to $10,000,000 and three women. his widow and two divorced wives- went to court.

After seven years of litigation, this settlement involving 60 per cent of the estate was reached: Ex wife. No. 1, Mrs. Frances Ochsner, who said she had not learned of the divorce decree until his death, received 10 per cent of the estate. Ex-wife No. 2, Mrs. Nancy Ochsner Baldy, mother of Winifred and Eliz abeth. Ochsner. received five per cent. The widow, Mrs, Hilda Carling Ochsner, Johnny’s mother, got 25 per cent. The three children, Johnny, Winifred and Elizabeth, it was decided, would divide 20 per cent when they reached their majorities,

Johnny’s romantic complications started last year when, as a seaman, he met Marguerite Faye Human at a dance in San Rafael, Cal. Johnny said good-by when the Navy shipped him to Honolulu. Marguerite didn’t say anything- then. She stowed away on the next ship with $2 in her purse and landed in Honolulu to reclaim her Johnny, preferably at the altar. “It was love at first sight.” said Marguerite. “His money doesn’t mean anything to me. I’m young too only 18.” In San Francisco, Johnny’s mother sent out an SOS to the Navy.

The Navy looked up Hawaiian law and found a minor couldn’t marry without parental consent. Marguerite was placed on probation and went to work In a Honolulu dime Johnny wrote his mother: store. “Please, don’t worryy about me. Margie doesn’t mean a thing to me. In the interim, while relations between Johnny and Margie were still friendly, he met a friend of hers, Teresa Briston.

Teresa later told Navy authorities that she and Johnny took long walks on famed Walkiki Beach, when the moon was shining. As a result of other statements she made to the naval authorities, Johnny was thrown into the brig on serious charges, His mother, in California, sent out another SOS. She then sent an attorney to Honolulu to investigate. Pretty soon. the charges were dropped for lack of evidence. Johnny was released and sent back to San Francisco.

A few days later Teresa reached the Golden Gate, a stowaway, and told reporters: “Johnny is the only boy I’ve ever loved. He never proposed to me, but I sure wish he had.’ Police, spurred on by Johnny’s mother, found $900 in Teresa’s hotel room. She explained a taxi driver had given her the money in Honolulu. On the ship, Teresa said, she had “rolled” a passenger, obtaining $2,050, and had spent $1.000 on a “shopping tour.*

The FBI stepped in, because the $2,050 theft had occurred on the high seas. Teresa was sentenced to serve three years in the Utah State Indus trial Home for Girls. Johnny stayed behind tie shelter- ing walls of the Navy’s Camp Shoe- maker for two months. and then was given his discharge.

He went home to mother, but not for long. Five weeks after he met Beth Galley, pretty blond divorcee, they drove to Reno and were married. Mama Ochsner, understandably weary from her efforts to keep women away from her son, and vice versa, didn’t react immediately. It wasn’t until last April, seven months after the marriage, that she asked the courts to have it annulled. She claimed Beth was legally married to another man at the time and that Johnny was still a minor at the time.

On one point, his two discarded loves and the woman he married agree. “He sure talks sweet,” they sighed.