Mary Ann Seiwerath comments on Ethel Marie Hindery

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At a 7 A.M. breakfast interview recently at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, during one of his frequent business trips to New York, the 50-year-old executive recounted how he had left home at the age of 13 to fend for himself.

His parents didn't bother looking for him, he said, because "they didn't care if I left. It was cheaper having me out of the house," Mr. Hindery continued. He said he lost touch with his family -- was "living with people," that "the Jesuits got me through" and that he joined the merchant marine at age 16.

Father LeRoux, Michael Hindery and his mother, Marie, could not recall a stint by Leo Hindery in the merchant marine.

Confronted with these discrepancies late last week, Mr. Hindery said that his recollections of events that took place decades ago were less benign than those of others, and he stood by his accounts of a difficult childhood.

"I never exaggerate about that," he said. And he insisted that he had spent several summers working on a ship called the U.S.S. Avila off the Northwest coast. "The past hurts, and I don't like it," Mr. Hindery said.

Mr. Hindery boasts that he is a master of reading people. "I know people. I know them better than anyone knows them. I don't talk about it much, but I never make mistakes," he said. But he isn't always so good at getting along with them.

He attributes that drive to his "weird" childhood in Tacoma, Wash., where, he said, "I started paying for everything in my life when I was 9 years old. I used to work in the fields, and I would give the money to my family, partly because that was how my family worked and partly because I was so mad at them," he continued. "I had a such a crummy childhood. You just can't know how cruel my parents were. Nobody beat me, but there was just a total absence of affection. I got a Christmas gift once. It was a belt, a size 38 belt. I weighed about 125 pounds."

Mrs. Hindery acknowledges that she has had her share of emotional problems. In telephone interviews, she said she suffered from the eating disorders of anorexia and bulimia, had low self-esteem and was estranged from all three of her children.