Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end.
Or at least that is what Mr. Spock would often tell Captain James T. Kirk on the cult space show Star Trek.
Unfortunately for one Florida man, logic has ended a decades long delusion that he was the flesh and blood of the man who played Captain Kirk.
Peter Sloan, who legally changed his name to Peter Shatner last year, admitted this week that William Shatner is not in fact his father.
What is more, Shatner/Sloan says he now will never get to meet his real father, according to comments reported in the Tampa Bay Times.
In 1984, Shatner/Sloan’s biological father told him that his birth father was either William Shatner or a man she could only remember as “Chick.” But she was more certain that the dad was the larger than life Canadian octogenarian.
For the next 36 years, Shatner/Sloan lobbied the actor for a DNA test but William Shatner refused time and again, the media outlet said.
Shatner/Sloan was adopted by a family whose name is Sloan.
In 2009, Shatner/Sloan sought answers by adding his DNA to Ancestry.com and looking for genetic matches through William Shatner’s relatives.
That is how, 11 years later, he found his connection to Chick’s children. In October, the daughter agreed to take a DNA test.
“The test came back positive that she was my half sibling,” Shatner/Sloan, now 63, said.
Chick was a nickname. Benjamin Freedman was a Canadian citizen who died in 2001.
The disappointed Shatner/Sloan, who lives in Clearview, Florida, admitted that he is disappointed that he will never get to meeting his biological father.
“I will never have the opportunity to sit and talk to him.”
But there is also closure in finally knowing for sure who his father was.
“I just wanted to know where I came from,” he told the Tampa Bay Times.
That is also why Shatner said he is not embarrassed by his pursuit of a DNA test from William Shatner that in recent years made headlines around the world.
“It was never about wanting his money and I always made it clear I would renounce any inheritance in exchange for a DNA test,” Shatner/Sloan said. “If you are not adopted, you could never understand. I had to know who I am.”
Shatner was born on Dec. 9, 1956, and then given up for adoption in New York by Canadian actress Kathy Burt, who is also now dead.