Our Father

Henryk de Kwiatkowski

Just ask Marylou Whitney. She will tell you. Henryk de Kwiatkowski is obsessive about his children. Indeed, Mrs. Whitney has declared the Polish-born horse breeder and polo player (a sort of Onassis of the air who made his fortune by brokering aircraft) the father of the century.

Of the century? "I take my children everywhere," says the divorced father of six: Michelle, twenty-four; Nicole, twenty-three; Conrad, twenty-one; Arianne, nineteen; Stephan, fifteen; and Lulu, fourteen—all of whom have racehorses named after them. ''Accept me, accept my children. Before I go to Mrs. Whitney's parties, I tell her I am bringing my children. 'Not all six?' she asks."

Several years ago, Kwiatkowski went to China on business, calling each child nightly to recite the Lord's Prayer before bed. ''One day I was summoned to the embassy. A tape was played. It was my conversation with the children. The Chinese couldn't understand. They didn't recognize the Lord's Prayer, and since every night my sequence changed—I included the names of various dogs and horses—I managed to destroy the Chinese intelligence decoding system!"

William Norwich