Wondering about Wanda - A question over coffee at Meijer led a Springfield woman to discover her mother had another family she'd never mentioned and allowed that other family to find out what happened to the mother who had disappeared so long ago.
Stafford, Tom. Dayton Daily News, April 19, 2007, pg. Z-5.
SPRINGFIELD — When her first husband banished her in 1942, Wanda Arletta Grenier left four children behind.Wanda Arletta Hendricks would have two more children from a second marriage.
But never did she breathe a word to them about the first family. Nor, over the decades, did she ever try to contact her children from that first marriage again.
When Wanda died in 1977 in Arizona, her secrets went with her to the grave.
And there they remained until last October, when Betty Smith had a chance encounter at the Meijer store in Springfield.
Kingston, N.Y., was what brought them together. Flossie Hulsizer's grandparents had lived there, and Smith's family had, too.
The two got to talking about it last October in Meijer because "we were the only two women at the big table of men over there," Hulsizer said.
The Kingston connection led to more talk about family and Smith mentioned something she'd been curious about over the years.
"I always wanted to know about my mother's family," said Smith, recently retired from the Clark County Department of Job and Family Services. "She told us she left home when she was real young and she never went back."
For decades a member of the Ohio Genealogical Society's Clark County Chapter, Hulsizer is an affable, able veteran of family searches and volunteered to help.
Armed with online sources, the unusual name pairing of Wanda and Arletta and with a last name of McAfee, she made progress quickly.
Hulsizer found 5-year-old Wanda with her parents in a 1920 census in Rolette, N.D. But that wasn't the surprise.
The surprise came when she went to Ancestry.com and found Wanda Arletta McAfee Grenier.
"And it had children," Hulsizer said — the first four of Wanda's children.
"Flossy says, I found your siblings, and I said, 'I don't have any siblings but my brother, and I know him,' " Smith recalled.
Smith was sure there must have been a mixup — that the children must have belonged to one of her mother's sisters.
Hulsizer knew better.
And she passed along the clue needed to take the next step.
On Aug. 14, 1998, a posting on Rootsweb.com mentioned Rolette, N.D., a Wanda McAfee born in 1914 and a marriage to an Adrian Francois Greiner, born eight years earlier. It included a mention of children in foster care and asked for any information about Wanda "as to living or dead, remarried?"
Hulsizer responded, but the e-mail never got through. Fred Jones, had by then changed e-mail addresses, and there was no forwarding mechanism.
But Hulsizer did find a name and address for an Ernest Getchell believed to be a relative and passed it along to Smith. On Oct. 16, Smith sent a letter out telling what she knew of her mother's history and what she wanted to know.
Two weeks later — as Smith was about to write a follow up note — she found a message on her answering machine.
It was a woman named Wanda, to whom the letter had been forwarded. Smith recalls the content of the voice mail: that the caller thought her mother was Smith's sister, or at least half sister. "From that moment on," Smith said, "I was flying." "I've always wanted a sister," she explained. "All I had was a brother, and I fought him until we were grown up." Soon, she was talking to Berniece Jones, of Bremerton, Wash. "I don't even think I asked her" permission to visit, Smith said. It didn't matter. "She was as excited as I was," Smith recalled.
And on Election Day, Smith and her husband, Earl, were headed for Bremerton in a rented Pontiac Vibe.
Said Smith, "We voted, and then we went."
By the time they got in the car, Jones had filled the Smiths in on her family's heartbreaking story.
When their parents' marriage came apart, "I was 6, my little brother (Dale) was a year old, my oldest sister (Marlene) was 9 and my older brother (Lloyd) was 8," Jones said.
Jones blames the 1942 breakup on her dad, whom she calls "a very selfish person."
"At the time, he was working in a shipyard in California. And mom was young, and she wanted to go out and enjoy herself sometimes, and Daddy would never take her. So she started going out on her own and having fun, and he told her to leave."
All sense of normalcy disappeared with her.
"My sister and I had to quit school to take care of my little brother," Jones said.
Soon thereafter, their father realized he couldn't make it on his own and took the four children back to his native North Dakota.
"Us kids were farmed out," Jones said.
"We were put in one place or another, taking care of other people's kids and scrubbing and anything you want do, we did," Jones said.
Before their father left for Colorado in 1948, he signed the adoption papers for the youngest child, Dale.
And by the end of that year, the father was dead, apparently from an undetected natural gas leak in his Denver apartment on New Year's Eve.
Things got worse.
Jones and her older sister were taken to Fargo, N.D., to stay with what she describes as "evil people."
"It was a dentist and his wife," she said. "We weren't allowed to talk to one another in the afternoon when we got home from school until we had our chores done."
Nor were they allowed to eat in the dining room with the couple. They ate only in the kitchen.
"They got paid to take care of us, and we worked our tails off for them."
An appeal to the priest supervising their care resulted in a move to better circumstances. And through it all, the children kept track of one another by letter and with summertime visits, when possible.
Occasionally, the topic of their mom would come up.
Jones' older sister, Marlene, "said she didn't want anything to do with Mom, because she left us," Jones said. "I know mothers aren't supposed to leave their children behind, but I never resented my mother, because I knew how my dad was."
She always wondered what happened to her mother, of course. And Jones will never forget the call from her daughter, Wanda, last October.
"I'm about to cry right now" thinking of it, Jones said.
"Mom, we found your mother," she was told. "And we found your sister, too."
"I broke down," Jones said. "And then my husband took the phone and (our daughter) Kelly was here comforting me."
As for the visit?
"It was wonderful," Smith said. "It was like we'd known one another forever but we hadn't seen each other. We started hugging, and it was just like normal family. They opened up their house and we stayed with them."
Jones said Smith "looks just like my (late) older sister. A perfect picture of her."
Over dinner, late-night conversations and hours spent together peeling potatoes for a neighborhood gathering, the half sisters started becoming sisters.
"They received me like a long lost brother, too," said Smith's husband, Earl.
The two-day stay in Bremerton was followed by stops in Eugene, Ore., to meet Jones' daughter, Wanda; in Colorado Springs to meet half brother Lloyd; and in California to update Smith's younger brother, Bob, on the happenings.
There also was a call to Dale in Baldwin City, Kan., a visit to the Indiana home of Jones' son and an invitation the Smiths have accepted to a July wedding in Minnesota of Jones' grandson.
"I went from being the oldest of two to the second youngest of six," said Smith. "I like that."
"This is (like) all of my Christmases (put together)."
Still, Wanda Arletta's choices still seem puzzling.
"I don't remember my mother being a wild woman," Smith said. "How could she have a whole other family and not tell me?"
From the other side of the divide, Jones has her own take on what her mother did — and didn't do.
"All she had to do was get a hold of anybody back in North Dakota, and they could have told where I was or any of the kids were," said Jones.
"I'm sure Mom just thought we hated her totally and probably never wanted anything to do with her," Jones said.
Although disappointed that her mother never contacted her, Jones is thankful for her new half sister and half brother. And she's thankful to know what happened to the mother she'd not heard of in nearly 65 years.
"At least we have closure now," Jones said.
"I just wish my older sister were still alive. We lost her five or six years ago from cancer.
Despite Marlene's stated disdain for their mother, "In my heart, I know if Mom walked in the door, she would have welcomed her with open arms," Jones said.
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