Introduction
"Kites rise highest against the wind"
Most of my life I have lived in silence; deep within me dwelling in the shadows
of memory lived another identity from my early childhood, one suppressed by fear; The memory of a little girl lost but never
forgotten.
Home to me until I was ten years old, was my father Ben, my little brother Bennie, my Uncle
Ernest and his daughter who was a few years older than me.
We all shared an apartment in a housing complex in Orange called Riverside.
It had been converted to a housing complex from an old military base. Most of the people that lived there were poor, as we
were.
My father had Uncles and Aunts who also lived in Orange
and the surrounding area.
I was a happy child back then and felt very loved and safe.
My life seemed normal to me. I went to school and I had friends. I knew that we were poor
and there wasn’t much money but I also remember going every Saturday morning to the matinees with my cousins to see
a movie and on Friday nights to the old gym in our housing complex where old movies were shown. On Sundays I went to Sunday
school and Church.
My family spent time together fishing, camping, hunting and swimming at the river. I remember
daddy teaching me to swim in that River. He went out in the water a little ways out from the bank and coaxed me into jumping
to him promising he would catch me. When I finally got up enough nerve I jumped and he caught me and first taught me how to
doggy paddle, then later when I had learned to love the water, to swim.
After a day of swimming and picnicking we would
go out after dark and hunt for possums. I don’t know what we did with the possums, probably sold them, but I remember
how much fun it was to see them hanging in the trees upside down by their tails when we shined our flash lights on them.
By the age of twelve I had totally forgot what my beloved daddy looked like and although
I remember exactly what everyone else in the family looked like, in just a few short months after being adopted it became
impossible for me to recall what daddy looked like.
I remember very vividly my Uncle Ernest, daddy’s brother, dressed in his Khaki’s
clothes and always smelling of tobacco. He was tall and very thin. I idolized my older cousin.
She was a beautiful girl and I shared a bedroom with her.
So it was In December, 1955 the last thing I remember before I left Orange, Texas to be adopted was getting my beloved raggedy
ann doll from my daddy for Christmas and being in the Christmas play at school.
I was so proud and had so much fun being in that play. I wore a little yellow satin costume
with Christmas balls sewed around the edges. I sang and danced to a popular song at that time, “Singing in the Rain”
and performed it with an umbrella as a prop. Tears flow even today whenever I hear that song. What a happy time it was for
me then.
How could I a happy child, ten years old, have even suspected that my world, my identity
and my name, in just a few short days would come to an abrupt end? My life would
end and someone else would take my place in this life.
Why a change was even necessary remains a mystery.
I know that my father loved me with all his heart so whatever happened that lead him into agreeing to giving me and
my little brother up for adoption at such a late age, I know he agreed to only because of that love. Perhaps he felt that
by giving us up he was giving us the greatest gift of all, a life he would never be able to provide us.
I don’t remember welfare or any state agencies being involved in any way but it could
have been possible since we were poor, my father had problems finding work and we living with relatives. Because we were sharing a small apartment with uncle Ernest and his daughter, the system may have felt that
my father was not providing well enough for us and pressured him into giving us up or they would take us away from him and
put us in an orphanage.
I only know that I was never hungry or abused in any way.
All that I experienced in the ten years that I lived with my father was that I was loved, protected and safe. Looking back now I realize that at no other time in my life have I ever felt as loved
and safe as I did those years I lived with my father.
Although I will never know the reason or the circumstances that led daddy into giving us
up, I know that he sought help from the pastor of the First
Methodist Church in finding
us a good home.
The minister of the first Methodist church in Orange
at that time was Rev. Monroe Vivian. He began a search for someone in Texas to adopt a ten-year-old girl, and a eight-year-old boy. It was
understood that my little brother and I were to be kept together, not split up.
Rev. Vivian did not have to search long. Longtime friends of his and his wife lived in nearby
East Texas. They were around the same age as my father, financially secure, socially prominent
and had no children. He contacted them and told them of my fathers’ plight.
After several weeks of talk, the couple agreed to the adoption and my father was notified
and began filling out the necessary papers and relinquished his parental rights. A
date and time was set for when the Coats would pick us up.
Now daddy was faced with having to tell my little brother and me.
My father was not a young man when I was born in 1945; he was 45 years old, and was 55 years
old when he gave me up for adoption in 1955.
He had divorced our mother Lorene shortly after my brother was born in 1949 claiming that
she was unfit to raise children. The courts agreed with him and had granted him a divorce and full custody of us with no visitation
allowed to our mother. The divorce decree says the court did not allow her any visitation rights finding her personality and
behavior not fit for young children to be around.
She did not show up to defend herself in court or to fight for us. She simply signed the
necessary release forms giving up custody and parental rights, mailed them back to the court and went on with her life.
Being a single parent was not new to my father. He had married and divorced twice before
he met my mother and had custody of my half sister by a former marriage, who lived with him. It is believed that he had
married a woman from California in the 1930's and had children with her before his marriage to my sisters mother.
He worked in the oil fields of West Texas and New Mexico
and being a single man had to leave my sister to be cared for either by friends or foster families until he could return
from the fields and reclaim her. She lived with him the times that he could not find work in the oil fields and stayed
home working locally as a carpenter.
It was while he was away working in an oil field in Artesia,
New Mexico in 1944 that he met my mother, Lorene.
My father was 44 years old and Lorene only 16 when they met.
In 1944, Lorene was a very young, beautiful, petite girl working as a waitress in an oilfield
café where my father ate his meals. She was only 16, married and already had a baby.
She longed to be free of the responsibilities of marriage and being a young mother. She longed to have fun like the
other young girls.
She and my father were attracted to one another
and began dating. It made no difference to either of them that she was twenty something years younger than him or that she
had a husband and an infant son.
When the job finished he returned home to Midland,
Texas, taking Lorene back with him.
My mother was shocked when she arrived in Midland
with Ben and discovered that he had a ten-year-old daughter living with him that he had failed to tell her about.
After arriving in Midland
and discovering Ben had a child, she also discovered that she was pregnant with his baby. That child was me, conceived out
of wedlock while she was married to another man.
She had to get a fast divorce from her husband back in Artesia to be able to marry my father
before the baby was born and the only way her husband would agree to a divorce was for her to give up total custody of their
son to him.
Lorene quickly signed the papers giving up her son and got a fast divorce. She and my father
were married in Midland, Texas,
December 4, 1944 and I was born July 16, 1945. They named me Judy. Two years later they had another baby, my little brother.
They named him after my father so Lorene gave my little brother the nickname Bennie.
My young mother was angry and still not happy with marriage or being a parent. Since marrying
Ben she was left not only with two babies to care for now but also a ten year old stepdaughter
who caused problems between her and Ben who was gone most of the time, working in the oil fields. She hated the responsibility of taking care of a house and being a mother.
She wanted to go out, party and do things a young girl did so as soon as my father left for work she would take off
leaving my sister to take care of us and clean the house.
Lorene disliked housework and when she did
any she was not very good at it. My sister said that she came home from school one day and was surprised to see
Lorene was washing the dirty dishes in a pan outside. When sister looked in the water it had the contents of a soiled
baby diaper floating in the water where Lorene was washing dishes. Sister
asked her if she had washed the dirty diapers in that water and Lorene said yes, Sister, disgusted simply got clean water
and redid the dishes.
Sister would report to daddy when he came home on the weekends that Lorene was dating
men and partying all week while he was at work and that Lorene was using most of the grocery money daddy gave her weekly to
buy food and milk for us on buying clothes and jewelry for herself. Sister would
have to ask for credit at the local grocery store to get milk and food for us until our father came back from the oil fields.
At the age of ten, Sister was the mother that Lorene should have been to my little
brother and me. She and Lorene were only a few years apart in age and they never got along together and fought constantly.
After only a few years of marrying my father and having two more babies, Lorene soon found
another man and left my father and us to be with him.
After she left, my father filed for a divorce and got total custody of me and my little
brother in 1949. My little brother was two year old. I was only four. After my parents divorced, my sisters mother came and made her leave daddy to come
live with her.
My daddy, age 49 was now alone and had to try and take care of my brother. It was necessary
as he had done with sister to leave us with foster families or friends when he had to go out into the oil fields to work. When he could find work locally he would stay home and we lived with him.
My mother Lorene had given away all of the three children born to her in two marriages before
the age of twenty. She saw my father only one more time before he would disappear
from her with us forever. By that time she had married again and was expecting her second child in that marriage. After that
meeting, a few years later she heard that he had moved to Orange
with us.
So it was a few years later on a cold December day in 1955 that my father, holding us in
his lap, explained that he had to go away to work in another state. Bennie and I would have to go stay with this very nice
couple that he had found to take care of us while he was away.
As I try to recall that last day I spent with my father I remember that it was windy, cold,
and overcast.
Christmas was just over. We were still home from school enjoying Christmas vacation playing
noisily outside. It was after lunch because I remember having gone in and eating two bologna sandwiches and chips then taken
my raggedy ann doll outside with me that my father had just given to me for Christmas and was playing dolls with my friends
with a big cardboard box serving as our dollhouse.
My father called Bennie and me into the house and asked us to climb up on his lap so he
could talk to us. His face was drawn and he looked very sad and tired. He pulled us close to him and hugged both of us very
tightly as he told us he had to go away for a while to work and we would have to go stay with these nice people because Uncle
Ernest couldn’t take care of us and our cousin was getting married. There
would be no one to take care of us.
My brother cried out angrily, “No Daddy, I want to go with you”. But my father
told him “No, you can’t, but you will have a very good time with these people Bennie.
They have lots of toys and they even have a pony for you to ride”. Excited about owning
his very own pony, Bennie jumped down from daddy’s lap and ran outside to tell his friends.
Still sitting on my father’s knee, I looked up into his blue eyes and wiped away the
tears rolling down his cheeks. I felt his sadness and held on to him tightly “Judy I want you to go stay with these
people and be daddy’s good little girl. Take care of your little brother. Remember always that your daddy loves you.”
“I will daddy, I promise. I love you too” I whispered in his ear as he hugged
me tightly for a moment, then he put me down from his lap and slowly, without looking back, walked out the front door.
I sat there thinking about what he had just said.
He had left us before to go off to work but this time it just felt different than before. Suddenly I felt very afraid. I jumped up and ran out the door after him as fast as I could go screaming
as loudly as a ten-year-old little girl could scream crying out, “Daddy, Daddy”, but he didn’t answer. He was gone.
No one knows where my daddy went that day after he told us he was leaving. It has remained
a mystery all these years. He never again contacted anyone in his family. He just quietly, slipped away from everyone and
every place that he had ever been. He just quietly slipped out of my life forever.
Before disappearing, he had made arrangements with my Aunt to come to our house, pack our
things and take us home with her where we would be picked up as planned by Rev. Monroe and taken to meet the Coats, our new
adoptive parents. I did not know that we were to be adopted by these people;
daddy had said we were only going to be staying with them while he was away at work.
Daddy always came back to get us when the job ended.
My aunt helped us to pack our things. I carefully packed my raggedy Ann doll daddy had given
me for Christmas and my dance costume that had been especially made for me for the school play. I put them on the very top
of the box so that I could see them making sure that they were not left behind. I cherished these two things more than anything
I owned.
Finished packing, we sadly said good-bye to our Uncle Ernest and Cousin and left with our
aunt.
After dinner that night a man appeared at our aunt’s door and told her that he was
Rev. Monroe and that he had come to pick the children up. She showed him where our boxes were and told us to start bringing
them out to the car, but Rev. Vivian told her it was not necessary. The adoptive parents did not want us to bring anything
with us. They would buy us everything new.
“But my dolly”, I cried. I have to have my Raggedy Ann”. The man smiled
at me, patted me on the head and told me that I would get lots of new dollies. “But
I want my dolly, my daddy gave her to me” I said as they pulled Raggedy Ann from my arms and put her back into the box.
My aunt hushed me and told me to go on with Rev. Monroe and do what he told me to do. Holding
hands and crying, Bennie and I walked out to the car with this stranger and got into the back seat of his car. Mrs. Monroe
was in the front seat and tried to quiet our crying.
After driving only a short distance, they pulled into the parking lot of a Mexican Food
restaurant and parked the car. They told us to stay in the car they would be
back shortly. Bennie and I sat alone in the dark, cold night, waiting.
“I want to go home,” Bennie cried. “We can’t Bennie, we promised
daddy we would go and stay with them until he comes to get us. “It’s all right” I said as I wrapped my coat
around him to keep him warmer. I laid his head in my lap and whispered, “daddy had to go to work Bennie, Don’t
be scared. I’ll take care of you till he comes back for us”.
After what seemed to be hours to us, the strangers returned to the car. With them were a
white headed man and a tall silver-haired woman.
They took us out of the car and Rev. Vivian said, “This is Mr. and Mrs. Coats. You
will be going to live with them. They don’t have any little children and they would like for you to be their little
boy and girl”.
After the adults talked awhile longer, we were put into the back seat of another car. After
saying good-byes, the Coat’s car backed out of the parking lot and drove off into the night.
I stood on my knees, looking out the rear window of the car at the city lights as they got
further and further away. “My dolly”, I whispered softly; “Daddy” as the tears flowed down my cheeks.
Slowly, I turned around in the seat and put Bennie’s head back in my lap. I could
feel his wet tears on my bare legs as the car kept taking us further and further away from the lights of the city we knew
as home, and the family and friends we loved.
Totally exhausted we finally fell asleep. How could we have possibly known that with the
ending of this day our life as we had always known it had also come to an end?
Tomorrow it would still be the month of December, the same year, 1955, but it would be the
beginning of a brand new life for me. In the morning, everything and everyone I knew and loved would be lost to me forever.
I would become a brand new person and the person I now was, would cease to be. I would in
total reality be born again into this world at the age of ten.
Every life is a story and we merely the players. We cannot always
control the events in our lives but we can always control our response to them and the actions we take as a result.
My life journey has not been an easy or ordinary one but it has been an exciting
and blessed one.
Transformation into a total new identity at the age of ten was very difficult
and had a profound affect on my life, my relationship with others and most profoundly, on me.
My life story is unique only in that I was an older child, age ten when my
father gave me up for adoption. I would be forced psychologically, mentally and
legally to be born again into this world, not via a mother’s womb, but through the systems womb, better known as “adoption”. No one explained to me that I was being adopted or what it meant. I was not given any choices.
I was told very simply that they
were changing my name and I would talk to a man called a judge at the court house who would ask me if I wanted to live with
the Coats and that I was to answer yes.
My identity and birth name was totally changed and taken away from me through
the court system in January, 1955.
All information pertaining to my family, my blood line, my life prior to the
adoption was sealed permanently in a folder at the county court house not to ever again be opened or accessible to me
or anyone.
The father and the family I had
lived with and loved all my life was taken away from me and lost forever.
January 1, 1955 in Woodville, Texas Judy Johnson legally ceased to exist. In
her place Sallie Sue Coats was born and Sue’s life begins.
Bracing for what lay ahead, Judy now known as Sue, holding her little head
up high, eyes straight ahead, chin up, begins that new journey of transformation. Facing the fear of the changes she did not
want she bravely steps out into the unknown; like a kite, floating against the wind.
I am Judy, that little 10 year old girl and the following is my story.
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[End Of Introduction]
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