Things in my House Thursday #26

This week we're out of the pantry and into the closet, my place to store most of my keepsakes.

My paternal grandmother raised two boys, Billy and Gary:


I never knew my uncle because Billy, her firstborn, was killed in Korea just a few days before his two-year enlistment expired. He was 21.

I also never knew, until about three months before my grandmother died, that she'd had a baby girl, Betty Jean:

As Grandma was telling me the detailed story - there was a pain in her voice as if it had happened the day before versus nearly seventy years earlier. I missed or just can't recall all the specifics she shared because I was so surprised that I'd never known, and so heartbroken for her.

When the three children were very young, my grandparents were poor and uneducated. When Betty Jean was around two years old she came down with some childhood illness, and it was all Leroy and Ethel could do to have one of them get her to the hospital for care. Leroy was finally able to take her but couldn't stay because he had to be back at work.

When they were able to scrounge up enough transportation money to go back to the hospital the next day, together, the doctors told them that their daughter was going to die, there was nothing they could do, and for my grandparents to just let them handle the burial. They basically refused to let them see their little girl, and they left the hospital without ever seeing her again.

This happened during the era of the Georgia Tann baby-stealing operation, and I sensed that the possibility that Grandma's daughter was stolen from her tormented her even more than the toddler's alleged death.

Tann was a highly respected director of an orphanage in Memphis, Tenn., who used her position to oversee more than 30 years of baby-stealing, baby-selling, and abuse.

While she is credited with popularizing the worthy undertaking of adoption, she corrupted the mission by arranging adoptions for profit to the rich, the famous, and the unfit to parent.

These children came to her after being seen by "spotters" who either targeted babies ripe for abduction or located desperate single women seeking a better future for their child. She was involved in more than 1000 adoptions in New York.

Many of the birth certificates she provided as part of the adoption process were altered, and she was the chief force behind the legislation that sealed these records. Tann and her cohorts convinced the powers that be that her stolen and kidnapped children, as well as all other legally or illegally adopted children, should be forevermore barred from accessing the simple facts of their birth that most people take for granted.

After my grandmother died, I found among her things a yellowed ziploc bag with her baby girl's birth certificate, dated April 9, 1931, and this little silk and satin coat and wool hat:

I'm certain the coat used to be a brighter, baby pink color, but is now faded, and that the hat was a creamy white.

My grandmother kept up with this tiny collection for decades; I'll preserve it for as long as I can.

EDITED TO ADD: Jessica commented that this was depressing; I say, it is sad, but Grandma never wasted time being depressed or feeling sorry for herself. She was always positive, energetic, and caring; near the end of her life she was just reflecting on what was and what might have been.

Or maybe she was simply looking forward to seeing Billy and Betty Jean again soon.

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