Honoring My Grandmother

In 1916, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Lou Stark was born to James Coleman and Mabel Irene Stark on this date in Eads Tennessee. It is my understanding that her father was a difficult man and quite old when he began to have children. Lizzie was the oldest and her nieces and nephews called her Aunt Lou.

It seems that her siblings and my grandmother each escaped their family home as soon as they could. One can surmise that my grandmother chose the possible opportunities of the big city, Memphis, to her west. There she would meet an older man who had become both widowed and had lost one of his children not long before. Most likely he was attached to a big WPA project building a hospital in Memphis.

So they married but his children and the mother to whom he was devoted and who supported him by caring for one or more of his children caused his heart to remain in Arkansas. For reasons I will never be able to explain, he left her in Memphis four months pregnant. Whether it was considered an end or a temporary separation can never be known.

What I do know is that my grandmother was sent away to Virginia to give birth to my mom. Most likely, she was an embarrassment pregnant with no husband in sight in a very conservatively Christian community. I suspect she was supposed to leave my mom in Virginia but she could not.

I cannot believe she brought my mom back to Memphis with any intention of giving her up for adoption. Juvenile Court records do show that she reached out for my mom’s father over in Arkansas but he did not respond. In his defense, there began a Super Flood on the Mississippi River the month my mom was born. Refugees poured into Memphis from Arkansas who bore some of the worst destruction. My grandfather was out shoring up levees.

My grandmother found the going difficult in Memphis. The people who had been supportive of her previously were suffering from charity fatigue. In desperation, my grandmother sought temporary care for my mom in an amazing citadel of an orphanage with a storied history. The superintendent there betrayed her to Georgia Tann who was a master at separating children from their natural parents.

After being given a no win choice (surrender your child or be declared unfit – a threat with teeth in it because the Juvenile Court Judge Camille Kelley was good friends with Tann), my grandmother tried to get my mom back 4 days later. But Tann had a paying customer on her way from Arizona by train to pick my mom up and no way would the baby thief give my mom up.

Such a sad story. She never had another child . . .

Before and After

I’ve only just started reading the nonfiction sequel – Before and After – to Lisa Wingate’s bestselling fictional novel Before We Were Yours. Sadly, the true life stories of Georgia Tann’s victims are all too familiar to me and her methods clear in my family’s own circumstances. I may have more to say about the book when I finish reading it.

There actually was an adoption ring in Memphis in the decades from 1930 to 1950. The movers and shakers in Memphis were all to happy to make Georgia Tann the scapegoat and bury the evidence along with her – when she conveniently died of the complications of cancer. It was an opportune moment, just before criminal charges were going to be filed against her. And those charges would have only been profiting illegally from the placements and not the worst accusations against Tann.

Her legacy of wrongs emerged as her story came back to light in the early 1990s and eventually caused a law to open the sealed adoption records for the victims by the state of Tennessee. I have that law to thank for my mom’s adoption file. Sealed records remain a hindrance for adoptees in many states even today. I know, I’ve hit locked doors in California, Virginia and Arizona.

Thanks to Lisa Wingate’s fabulously popular telling of the Georgia Tann scandal in a compelling story, the whole story is being added to and told yet again. This brings some justice to the victims and their descendants. I am one of an unfortunate community of such persons. There are thousands of us.

In our family’s story – the adoption ring was composed of Georgia Robinson (the superintendent at Porter-Leath Orphanage who conveniently retired early just before the scandal report was released), Juvenile Court Judge Camille Kelley (who was forced to retire because of it) and of course, the Baby Thief herself, Georgia Tann. Miss Robinson seems to have escaped the scandal with her “good name” intact but it was she who betrayed my original grandmother. Porter-Leath took my mom in for TEMPORARY CARE. Miss Robinson alerted Georgia Tann to the presence of a “highly marketable” blond baby girl less than a year old.

Judge Camille Kelley was involved in my original grandmother’s life when she first returned to Memphis, after having given birth to my mom in Virginia. Since my grandmother’s widowed father and siblings still lived in rural Tennessee east of Memphis, I can only assume her father sent her away to have my mom after her husband seemed to desert them. I will never have the answer to the questions that weigh heavily on my heart about why that seemingly good man – my original grandfather – did that. Later, when my adoptive grandmother was on her way to collect her prize, Judge Kelley threatened my original grandfather with a subpoena if he didn’t sign the surrender papers.

There is no doubt in my mind that Georgia Tann exploited my desperate grandmother with a no win demand – surrender or be declared unfit (her only deficiency being a financial one). It is also clear that 4 days after signing the surrender papers, my grandmother tried to recover my mom – but Georgia Tann had a paying customer and no way was she going to let my mom go out of her control.

Trauma and Stress

The possibility of trauma passing down through generations as genetic mutations affecting health had reason to re-enter my awareness last night.

My mom was an adoptee. I know for a fact she suffered because of it. She told me so. She died believing she had been stolen. While her made-up story based upon other stories that were sadly all too real under the reign of the notorious Georgia Tann were not entirely accurate, I do believe deep in her soul “stolen” was not that far off. She died believing it and now that I have her adoption file from the state of Tennessee, I know that her mother never intended to give her up and was trapped into an impossible situation.

She had left my mom at an orphanage in Memphis (Porter-Leath) for temporary care. That was a decision point from which there was no return of the mother-child bonding for my mom and her mother. My grandmother was allowed to see my mom one final time before she was ripped away and placed with strangers. I have those black and white photos now. The happiness upon seeing her mother again is evident in my mom’s body language.

The adoption file tells me she screamed all the way from Memphis to Nogales Arizona as my adoptive grandmother carried her home. No wonder my mom felt stolen. When they reached Arizona, she was drugged to calm her down. Eventually, with no other choice, she adapted to her circumstances and coped.

Yet, the health impacts left her a medical basket case all her life and I believe her stress at conceiving me as an unwed high school student impacted my health. And it may go on down the line to my daughter and granddaughter. Medical science is discovering through research some truth to these theories on my part but they have a lot of work to do yet.

It does appear that genetics loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger. Some people are born with genetic vulnerabilities and circumstances can then cause those vulnerabilities to manifest as disease. This is true for every adoptee, regardless of what the manifestations are or how minimally impacted that adoptee may appear.

A Lifetime Of Regret

Adoption narratives rarely focus on the original mother from whom the child was taken. I do believe both of my grandmothers experienced regret over giving up their babies.

I believe the one to suffer the most was my maternal grandmother. She was honestly victimized by a lot of different factors, the Great Depression, a charity fatigue caused by the response in Memphis to a SuperFlood that sent thousands of refugees, many from Arkansas, into the city as well as a husband with conflicted loyalties (to the children of his deceased wife and to a mother who he was always the favored son of) who was WPA and fighting that same flood and not responding to her dire calls for help.

In my mom’s adoption file it is clear how hard she fought, though she lost, to keep my mom. She suffered a secondary infertility which is not uncommon among women who give up a child to adoption. Her childish nickname for Elizabeth – Lizzie – was on my mom’s birth certificate and though for much of her life, she would sign her name Elizabeth and nieces and nephews called her Aunt Lou – on her gravestone is the exact same name that she gave birth under. I think it not a coincidence. Just as my mom yearned to know her original mother, I believe her mother never gave up hope that my mom would find her again.

It was left to me to find her grave near the small town area that my grandmother grew up within. So sad and tragic.

My dad’s mom also lost him though it seems to have been less damaging in some ways than the exploited pain of my maternal grandmother. It is believed that she did sorrow for her firstborn son but she went on to have 3 other children. It does not appear she was as devastated though certainly carrying regrets, I think especially so, as she raised other children and probably believed it should have been possible to raise my dad.

There is a shift in adoption thinking that it really isn’t a beneficial choice. A variety of reforms attempt to make the situation better. Family preservation is probably the best – where caring individuals seek to support and encourage an intact family.

Freed From A False Story

So very much like Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, the author of this month’s Science of Mind Daily Guides, Dr Temple Hayes, describes her family’s lifelong belief that a great-grandmother was Native American. Eventually, an inexpensive DNA test revealed the truth that they were not.

Such advances in what was once expensive medical technology are freeing people from false stories that they have been told all their lives. This allows the newly liberated person to create a new, bright and dynamic existence.

When we believe a false story we feel disconnected from our family. On an energetic level, we may simply feel that something does not add up, the shoe doesn’t fit. My mom believed she had been deceptively “stolen” from her original parents. While the story she concocted wasn’t accurate, the general circumstances of exploitation to take away a baby were the truth. The story I had made up about my dad’s origins – that a Mexican woman named Maria had left him on the doorstep of the Salvation Army – also turned out to be false.

I never expected to know what I know now. My parents had to be taken away from the families they were born into, in order to come together from the families they were adopted into, so they could marry, so my self and my sisters could be born. I cannot regret my very life.

I am happy to have had my false stories proven to be the mistaken ideas that they were. I am now more interested in everything to do with Denmark or Scotland than I was just a very few years ago. I prefer reality. Most people honestly do. Adoptees deserve to know their reality. All efforts at reform are seeking that outcome.

Follow The Money

How did the effort to find homes for orphans who no family would claim or street urchins who did a bit of mischief turn into an industry motivated by profits ? Just follow the money.

In 1916, adoption was so uncommon, children were placed in “foster” homes where they were expected to “work” in return for their keep.

Before that, throughout history, babies were routinely murdered at birth by their parents. Infanticide was practiced and condoned even in ancient Greece, endorsed by Aristotle and Plato.

It is grim. Sickly, disabled or female infants were suffocated, drowned or dashed against rocks. More often unwanted children were “exposed”, abandoned in marketplaces or on hillsides. Most died of starvation, others were forced into slavery or maimed for exhibition.

When my oldest son was an infant, I became aware of this song as performed by Peter, Paul and Mary – it is grim.

Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry
Go to sleepy, little baby
When you wake you shall have
All the pretty little horses

Way down yonder in the meadow
Lies a poor little lambie
Bees and butterflies, picking out its eyes
Poor little thing’s crying, “Mami”

Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry
Go to sleepy, little baby

Poverty was so pervasive and contraceptive methods so ineffective that the killing of children continued. Infanticide was the most common crime in Western Europe between the Middle Ages and the 18th century.

The first orphanage in the US was established by Ursuline nuns in 1727 but such institutions were rare. People were reluctant to support homeless children financially.

When adoption became a profitable business, there was an improvement for many of the most unfortunate children. Then, exploitation of women who would have rather raised their children became a profitable enterprise. After that, corruption set in.

Lifelong Sorrow

It is clear in my mom’s adoption file that my maternal grandmother, shown above holding my mom for the very last time, never intended to surrender her. She was pressured and exploited by circumstances and the expert manipulation of that baby thief, Georgia Tann, in Memphis.

I read a statistic that said that more than 30% of women who have relinquished children never have another – either because they chose not to, or could not. There is an increased incidence of secondary infertility among natural mothers.

I know that my grandmother never had another child. I know that while her birth name was Elizabeth, my mom’s birth certificate had her name as Lizzie. I saw her sign Elizabeth to a note and a postcard she sent to Georgia Tann after losing my mom. Yet, when she died in her 60s after marrying a second husband, Lizzie is what is on her gravestone. I can’t help but believe she hoped my mom would find it someday. My mom died without fulfilling her desire to know about her original mother. I was the one to find the gravestone and sit beside it and talk with her soul.

There is no way to know why my maternal grandfather left my maternal grandmother in Memphis four months pregnant. It seems her widowed father sent her away to Virginia to have my mom and I doubt she was supposed to bring my mom back to Tennessee. It is clear my great-grandfather was unwilling to take the two of them into his home.

It appears that the only time my maternal grandmother had any communication directly with my maternal grandfather (after he left her alone and pregnant) was when he decided to go ahead and divorce her 3 years after they married and two years after my mom was born. The divorce papers also show her name formally as Elizabeth. I believe that having lost their child, my grandmother was so filled with shame, she could not face him. The divorce freed her up to remarry and not long after that he remarried. My heart is glad they didn’t die alone.

My mom’s adoption file is a constant reminder to me of what they had not done, of the courage they somehow lacked to fight back and of the child in the middle (my mom) they both lost. I come close to tears every time I revisit this story in my heart’s mind.

The Effects Of Relinquishment

In my mom’s attempt to receive her adoption file, which was denied her, she said to me – “As a mother, I would want to know what became of my child.” She also believed she had been stolen and I believe she wanted to determine if that was true or if there was some other explanation (there was another explanation). I now possess her file thanks to the baby stealing and selling scandal of Georgia Tann in Tennessee.

Before relinquishment, it is clear to me that my maternal grandmother wanted to keep my mom. She worked very hard to make that happen but her timing and the situation around her were not kind. It was deep into the Great Depression and Memphis had just experienced a superflood that began the month my mom was born in Virginia. My grandmother arrived in Memphis with my mom in the midst of charity fatigue because thousands of refugees had poured into the city from Arkansas.

My mom’s father was in Arkansas shoring up levees and doing other flood related work for the WPA. Therefore, when the Juvenile Court wrote him about my grandmother and her baby’s needs he didn’t respond. I’ll never know why he left her with her father 4 months pregnant but I do have some kind theories that I prefer over any kind of brutal one. He didn’t divorce her for 3 years but then how could she face him having lost their child ?

My grandmother never had any more children. I believe she hoped throughout her lifetime that my mom would find her. When my mom tried, she was told her mother was already dead and that devastated her. My grandmother was clearly pressured and exploited by Georgia Tann with a no win choice. She even tried to undo the damage but with a paying customer on the train coming from Arizona to pick my mom up, Miss Tann was not about to give her back.

Porter-Leath

I went looking for a photo of Georgia Robinson who was the superintendent at Porter-Leath orphanage at the time of my mother’s adoption. My maternal grandmother walked right into a trap when she sought and was granted TEMPORARY care for my mom while she tried to get on a more solid financial footing – after my mom’s father failed to answer a letter from the Juvenile Court of Memphis about his obligations to them.

It is interesting that there is no photo readily available for this woman but the adoption file clearly indicates that she alerted Georgia Tann almost immediately to my mom’s presence there. Miss Tann had a repeat customer who had been waiting almost a year for a baby sister to complement the little boy she had adopted a few years earlier.

In the investigation into Georgia Tann’s baby stealing and selling legacy, Miss Robinson appears not to have been directly implicated but it is no small wonder to me that just before the criminality was made public, she suddenly decided to “retire”. She moved out to California and lived with her sister in good health for over a decade.

In the book, The Baby Thief, the author notes –

“Prominent among them was the superintendent of a Memphis
orphanage that housed over one hundred children. She informed
Georgia of the arrival of particularly attractive children with a
speed that convinced the Children’s Bureau social worker
that the superintendent was being bribed by Georgia. Another
social worker told me that the superintendent was dismissed
from her job in 1950 because of her relationship with Georgia.”

What I found in contemporary newspaper articles was, at the time, Georgia Robinson was lauded for her long years of work there at Porter-Leath and was generally respected. Though the author doesn’t name the orphanage, I’m relatively certain the vague mention was actually the orphanage that Miss Tann sourced my mom from.

Taking Care Of Women and Children

The same people who want to dictate medical decisions involving women don’t want to provide a good quality of life for them.

The American Social Safety Net Does Not Exist

After welfare reform, poor people were supposed to be able to find work. Not all of them could—and then the jobs disappeared. And according to Andrew Yang, a 2020 Presidential contender, the problem is only going to get worse.

In 1996, Aid to Families With Dependent Children—that is, welfare as we knew it—ended. The Republican Party, which had dominated the federal government since the Reagan Revolution, had had welfare in its sights ever since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society expanded antipoverty programs. Liberals and progressives labeled welfare reform one of the worst things President Bill Clinton did, and rightly blamed it for the increase in child poverty that followed.

For the right, though, shrinking welfare was part of a larger effort to decrease the size of government and appeal to working-class whites who had come to believe—erroneously—that AFDC largely benefited urban black recipients who didn’t want to work. Antipoverty advocates on the right argued that work was a better way out of poverty, and in the booming 1990s, this was partly true.

~ The Nation, published October 3 2016

My husband has heard local people directly express the belief that their tax dollars are providing welfare to black people in St Louis and they do not like that. It is sad. Our county is one of the poorest in Missouri and their tax dollars are just as likely supporting a neighbor.

The problem with the Pro-Life movement is that it doesn’t provide for the children it wants to see born. It doesn’t provide a quality life for those children. It may even be that due to a diminishing stock of babies available for adoption (due to access to contraception and changing morals in our young people) there are not enough children to provide new converts to the cause ? Am I cynical about the reasons they seek to overturn Roe ? Yes, I am. Actions speak louder than words.

My sister was forced to give up her daughter to adoption because she was turned down for public assistance when in financial desperation she moved back in with our parents. She was a waitress her whole life, retiring from Denny’s, where the pay was so low that without tips it would have been exploitation. Come to think of it – it was exploitation.