A Taxi Driver In Chicago Turns Out To Be The Missing Governor Of West Virginia
Bill Marland was a driver for the Flash Taxicab Company in Chicago and lived in the basement of a YMCA. One day, he quipped to a passenger headed to West Virginia that “I used to be governor there.” That passenger casually mentioned this to his friend Margery McElheny, a reporter for the Chicago Daily News. McElheny, for some reason, decided to go verify this random cabbie’s joke.
The Crazy Past:
William C. Marland was elected governor of West Virginia in 1953. He desegregated schools and put forward a included a massively controversial tax on coal companies—yes, Marland had the balls to be publicly against coal and racism in 1950s West Virginia. Thanks to that, plus inexperience, nepotism, and crippling alcoholism, Marland kinda crashed and burned as governor.
After losing two senate races, Marland moved to Chicago in the late 1950s to become, of all things, a sales director at a coal company, but his alcoholism became even worse. By 1960, he basically disappeared, and no one knew where he was. After a stint in rehab in 1962, Marland decided to become a taxi driver. The story broke while Marland was out driving and Flash Taxicab’s dispatch radioed him to return to base because reporters were mobbing the place.
Marland explained to the reporters that his ambition led to his alcoholism and he found that driving a cab provided structure and kept his ambition in check. The story became national news. There was a huge outpouring of public support for Marland, who landed a new job running a horse racing track in West Virginia. And then he abruptly died of cancer, because the author of this tale randomly decided it needed one more twist, a cruel one.
5 People With Wild Past Lives They Kept Hidden
Source: Pinoy Daily News
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