Adoption Completed

In January 1945, we became a family of women, plus one baby boy. My paternal grandmother was in and out of the house, too. She and my maternal grandmother had become good friends when they were next-door neighbors when my parents were preteens. That friendship continued to the end of their lives.

My parents, with approval from my paternal grandmother, decided they should formally adopt my baby cousin. How, though, do you complete an adoption when one of the parents is stationed in Europe? During wartime, the American Red Cross has a critical role in helping maintain communication between deployed military members and their families. The Red Cross took care of all the paperwork to complete the adoption. I have a very vague memory of going to adoption court with my mother and baby Curtis. I don't think I remember being asked but have been told many times that the judge addressed me, a toddler of less than two. He asked me who the baby was. I immediately responded, "He's my brother." The next words from the judge were, "Adoption granted."

We lived quietly in my mother's childhood home, so she, my grandmother, and my aunt were all known to the neighbors. The closest neighbors knew the story of my aunt's death and the adoption. However, some of the neighbors were given fuel for gossip. My mother had left to follow my father across the country. She came home and bore a baby girl. Eleven months later, while my father was still overseas, she brought another newborn home from the hospital.

Transportation during the war was problematic, but my paternal Grandmother Liz was acquainted with two brothers, who were too old for the draft. These men, Jim and Ben Writer, made it their mission to help the women and children n the homeland. I believe there was a distant family connection with Ben's deceased wife.  Both men were skilled carpenters, Ben a fine cabinet maker and Jim a carpenter for a chain of clothing stores. (Jim would play a very important role later in our lives.) The two men shared a car and were available if a mother needed transportation to the doctor with a sick baby, or for other critical errands. I'm sure the women in my family made their gas rations available to the Writer brothers, known to me and my siblings as Uncle Ben and Uncle Jim.

Grocery shopping and other routine errands were normally accomplished on foot. Longer trips, such as to work locations, were achieved on the electric red streetcars that once covered the sprawl of Los Angeles. In the 1940s, even though the city covered a huge area, it was divided into neighborhoods in which people could walk to their local groceries, pharmacies, laundries, and other essential businesses. I remember going to the grocery store for my mother when I was younger than age nine.

A Growing Family

My first cousin, born Curtis Jean Pearsall, arrived on January 10, 1945. His mother Elizabeth (Betty) Beitzer was only sixteen years and tragically died in childbirth. Heartbroken, my paternal grandmother, known to us as Grandma Liz, had to make arrangements to care for her first grandson. (Interestingly, a second grandson was also born the next day, January 11, to my father's brother Robert. I don't know if my grandmother was aware of his birth at the time.) So, within two days, I had two male infant cousins. (Both lost their lives to illness within a couple of years of each other in their mid-sixties.)

My Aunt Betty had become pregnant by a young man who was no longer in the picture. I don't know if he was unaware he was a father or if he did not want the responsibility of being a husband and father. Before the birth, she married a young man by the name of Pearsall, who apparently knew the baby was not his. He declined to take baby Curtis home and departed, never to be heard from again. Thus, it was left to my paternal grandmother, as the next of kin, to decide how to care for baby Curtis.

Grandma Liz sat down with my mother, my maternal grandmother Norma Kent Marsh, and my young aunt to discuss options for the newborn. Grandma Liz was willing to take on his care, but she worked full time and was short on domestic skills. Ultimately, the four women concluded that my mother, who was already in full baby care mode, would take custody of baby Curtis. There was some concern because Curtis was jaundiced, but little was known in 1945 about the causes and treatment of jaundice. He began to thrive physically, but he seemed on some level to be aware of his difficult start in life. He was a fussy baby who was very physically active. Almost before he could walk, he would climb things and get into things--sometimes dangerous things. He scaled shelves, he opened cupboards, he took the tops from containers. Curtis became a full-time job before he was a year old.

I was a different kind of baby, colicky at first but quickly settling into a reasonably contented existence once the colic ended. I began talking very early, and a family joke is that I never stopped. There's probably truth in that!