Mothers

Since Mother's Day is next month, I thought I'd share a little about my mother. Please feel free to leave comments and/or talk about your mothers. Mother is no longer with us, and some days I wish she were, when I have a problem that only a mother can solve.

My mother, Leona, was born in Brooklyn, New York. She lived with her mother, father, brothers and sisters in a tenement apartment. When she was only seven, her mother passed away from tuberculosis. I don't know the reason, but a couple of months later her father put his six children in the orphanage and then walked out of their lives. I was told by the founder of the Orphan Train Heritage Society that men could not raise their children alone, especially the girls. This could be the reason. Or perhaps he was overwhelmed at first his wife's death and then the responsibility of so many children, the youngest just a baby. As far as I know, my mother and her siblings never saw or heard from him again.

Anyway, my mother lived in the orphanage from 1919 to 1921, when she was put on a train headed West. A young minister named Charles Loring Brace had founded the Children's Aid Society in the 1850s. To get the homeless children off the city streets, the CAS started a placing out program to find homes for the orphans and half-orphans in western states. This would be similar to today's foster care program. Leona's journey ended in Bowie, Texas.

Her foster parents lived on a farm, and had a son and daughter who were grown and both married. It must have been frightening for a young girl to find herself so far away from her brothers and sisters and the only world she had ever known. In a letter I received from the Children's Aid Society, she had been placed in a home in New York earlier, but it did not work out, and she was sent back to the orphanage. Luckily, her new parents were kind and patient with her, and treated her like their own child. The following year they even sent for her baby sister and raised the two girls together. 

Mother loved her new parents. I loved them too. As far as I knew at the time, they were my grandparents, and we spent many Sunday afternoons visiting with them in Bowie. I never heard her talk about her mother and father in Brooklyn. What her feelings about them were I do not know, but my mother was as close to her foster sister, Mamie, as she was to her real sister.

She never talked about the orphanage, except to say that she hated oat meal because that's what they ate in the orphanage. Perhaps the memories were too painful or too sad. Perhaps she was too happy in Texas to bring up the past. If we'd asked her, she might have told us about it, but I had never heard of the Orphan Trains until I read an article about them in the Dallas newspaper many years later. Then I put the clues together and discovered that she was one of them. Letters to the CAS confirmed that she was. They even sent me reports made by the agent that visited her foster home from time to time. She was gone, however, and it was to late to ask her.

My mother never complained about her past. She did locate one of her sisters in New York, and the corresponded for years, but never got to see each other again. I did meet my aunt, a few years back, and she looked so much like my mother. Our meeting was closure for her, and I'm so glad we had the time together. Along with my father, Mother taught my sister and me to respect others. She made our home happy and gave us the love and security we needed. She worked hard after her husband died. I am honored to be her daughter.

She is my hero.