#title Pal Remembers Making Bombs (Preview)
#authors Anne E. Kornblut and Corky Siemaszko
#date April 5, 1996
#lang en
#pubdate 2026-08-25T01:09:34
#author Anne E. Kornblut & Corky Siemaszko<br>Daily News Staff Writer
#topics old news stories
#source Daily News. <[[https://archive.org/details/img-3991_202607][www.archive.org/details/img-3991_202607]]>

Even as a kid, suspected Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski had a knack for making bombs.

“Ted was very good at chemistry,” said childhood pal Dale Eickelman. “I remember Ted had the knowhow of putting together things like batteries, wire leads, potassium nitrate and whatever, and creating explosions.”

Eickelman, now an anthropology professor at Dartmouth. said that as teenagers they used to concoct bombs from household chemicals and items purchased at hardware stores. They exploded them in the fields near their suburban Chicago homes.

“We were just bright kids who read a lot of science books and experimented.” Eickelman told the Daily Southtown newspaper in Chicago.

Eickelman said Kaczynski, the son of a sausage factory manager, also displayed the tactical skills that would reportedly help him elude authorities for 18 years. When they played chess. Kaczynski almost always-on

But the feds check-mated Kaczynski Wednesday when they flushed him out of his ramshackle Montana cabin.

The deadly Unabomber who railed against technology as he shipped his deadly packages around the country may turn out to be a 53-year-old grubby hermit who rode a beat up bicycle, officials said.

Born May 22, 1942. in the Chicago suburb of Morton Grove, Kaczynski and his brother, David, were the sons of Polish immigrants, Theodore and Wanda Kaczynski.

Home was a brick Cape Codstyle house in the Catholic, working-class suburb of Evergreen Park. But Kaczynski’s parents did not share their neighbors’ conservative values. They were liberals with a capital L’ and wrote letters to the Chicago Tribune championing progressive causes.

In April 1990. Wanda Kaczynski complained about the lack of high-tech healthcare for uninsured Americans. Her husband. Theodore, was battling terminal cancer at the time and soon after committed suicide. Kaczynski did not attend his father’s funeral.

As a child. Kaczynski clung to his mother. Relatives recalled her reading to young Ted from Scientific American. “His mother kind of protected him.” said an aunt, who declined to be identified.

The aunt said that as a child Kaczynski exhibited yet another trait that reportedly would help him elude his pursuers — the ability to blend into the woodwork

Kaczynski was intellectually gifted — especially at math. But, at Evergreen Park High School he was the “class nerd.”

“He was brilliant student, but a loner,” said former classmate Tom Libensorger. “He looked sort of glum most of the time.”

Evelyn Vanderlaan. an Evergreen Park neighbor of Kaczynski’s family, said: “Teddy was unusually smart. I’ve never known anyone who had a brain like he. He made it through high school in three years.... I didn’t see much emotion, just quiet”

In the mid 1960s. the Kaczynskis moved to the more rural suburb of Lombard. But Kaczynski’s mother tried to broaden her son’s horizons by taking him to museums.

Kaczynski was a National Merit Scholarship finalist, belonged to the German and coin clubs, and skipped classes en route to a Harvard scholarship Once there. Kaczynski distinguished himself as a brilliant mathematician and horrible roommate.

“His room was an unholy mess, the worst mess I’ve ever seen in my life.” former roommate Patrick McIntosh, now an astronomer in Boulder, Colo., told the Boston Globe.

After graduating from Harvard at age 20. Kaczynski earned a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1967

Michigan Prof. Peter Duren, who served on Kaczynski’s doctoral committee, described him as smart, ... [end of preview]

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