Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS. : MISCELLANY / NEWSMAKERS AND MILESTONES

Gloria Barron walked into a hospital’s intensive care unit two years ago to see her husband, who had suffered a massive heart attack.

But another woman there also claimed to be his wife. And during Thomas Barron’s stay at two hospitals, a whole crop of “wives” and girlfriends showed up to visit the dying man.

“After he was admitted, all these women started showing up claiming they were his wife,” said S. Henslee Smith, a lawyer who tried to arbitrate the dispute earlier this year. “It’s the wackiest case I ever heard in my life.”

The two hospitals appointed Barron’s oldest son, David, as the arbitrator between the women. As a result, Gloria Barron said, she was made to “stand on the outside and look in. . . . It was terrifying and humiliating and degrading.”

Barron, claiming she was emotionally damaged after the staffs of Humana Hospital West Anaheim and Anaheim Memorial Hospital refused to intervene to let her see her husband, filed a $1-million lawsuit.

Thomas Barron died July 23, 1984, at the age of 57. He left no will.

In addition to Gloria Barron, Angie Orsuga, Thomas Barron’s partner in an auto repossession business, claimed to be his “common-law wife.” Also at the hospital was a woman named Carol, whom Thomas married in 1960 and divorced in 1984, according to Smith. Carol had five children by Thomas--and they all came to the hospital, said Edi M.O. Faal, Gloria Barron’s lawyer.

Two other women, Rowena and Mildred, also claimed to be Thomas Barron’s wives, Smith said. David, who is not the son of any of these women, also “named about eight other women who showed up at the hospital as his (Thomas Barron’s) girlfriend,” Smith said.

“David said at the arbitration hearing that his father had so many girlfriends in his life that he could not begin to count them,” Faal said.