UPDATE!!! MISSING SIBLINGS FOUND!
Reunited 4/30/2005
Givenright donated their time and effort to locate Ellen Loftin's
siblings, she has reunited with one brother and talked to her other
siblings who she will reunite with the first week
of May when they will be visiting her.
Now for the story...
October 2004
64-year-old woman hopes to reunite with
a sister and three brothers she has not seen since she was 12
By
LYNN WINTHROP Staff writer, Cox News
More than five decades
ago, 12-year-old Ellen Elizabeth Davis climbed into the back
seat of her adoptive parents' car and turned to wave goodbye to four
younger siblings standing outside the Edna Gladney Home in Fort
Worth. Three brothers and one sister stood behind a fence and
waved back. The youngest, a brother named Tommy Joe, tried in vain
to reach out for his big sister as the car carried Davis to a new
home in Humble and
out of her siblings' lives for more than 50 years.
Davis' last
name was soon changed to Williams by her adoptive parents. A marriage
to William Clayton meant yet another last name, and a second
marriage to Thomas Loftin provided her with the last name she uses
now. Ellen Loftin, now 64, has no idea what names were given to her
younger siblings Tommy Joe, Nelle Delores, Don and James she
hasn't spoken to them since the day they were separated 52
years ago. "They were adopted at the same time I was, but I was the only
one adopted by myself," Loftin said. "I haven't seen them since
I was 12 years old."
Her last memory of her
family is a heart-wrenching one. "I remember Tommy standing behind the fence waving to me," Loftin
said. "That's when those people who adopted me were taking me
to Humble. I remember Tommy standing behind the fence, and trying
to come to me trying to get to me."
(LEFT: Ellen reunites with brother James on April
30,2005.)
The memory
stirs strong emotions in Loftin. Sitting in a wheelchair
at Castle Pines Health and Rehabilitation Center in Lufkin
where she's undergoing chemotherapy to fight bone cancer,
she dabs at tears in her eyes with a tissue clutched in
her left hand, and shakes visibly while recounting the day. Her
right hand rests on a Bible in her lap. Sue Jasper, who
became friends with Loftin while visiting her own mother at the
center, said the Bible is never far from Loftin's side.
Neither is God, she said. Loftin's self-described "rough life" has
taken many precious things away from her, but it has never
taken away her faith. God may be Loftin's last and best
hope for help in finding her siblings before she succumbs to cancer.
She's leaned on Him for strength through the years, and
is now asking for one last favor, she said.
"I'm asking Him
to perform a miracle," Loftin
said. "It would be a nice blessing to see them again. I
want to see how their lives turned out. I hope they had
a better life than me, because the people that adopted
me ... I didn't have a real good life." Jasper is trying
to help.
The Edna Gladney Home, now called the Gladney
Center for Adoption, operates a registry for adoptees
but siblings can only be matched if they both sign up, and
both agree they want to meet. Just getting Loftin's
name on the registry was a lengthy process, complicated by red
tape and legal requirements, according to Jasper. She's
encouraged by the possibility, however, and has faith
herself that something good will happen. The application was mailed
last week. Loftin, too, has been encouraged by the
effort and looks forward to finding out something anything,
really about
her long lost siblings.
"I hope I do get to see them," Loftin
said. "I
hope they're alive, and I hope they're in good health." Loftin
said she doesn't have many memories of her birth parents,
other than living on a farm in Paris, Texas, and an unpleasant
incident involving the family's drinking water. "I remember
that a rat got in the cistern, and I can remember my Daddy
accusing my little sister Nelle of having something to
do with it," she said. "He somehow blamed her for
the rat getting in there and ruining the drinking
water."
Memories
of living with her grandparents are a little more
vivid. Loftin said she remembers working on a farm with her younger
siblings ‹ "If
we didn't work, we didn't eat," she said and having
to watch her little brother even as she worked
her way down the endless rows of cotton.
"Yes, I remember that
we worked on farms picking cotton, and I can remember my
little brother Tommy riding on the cotton sack," Loftin
said. "I would push the pulled cotton aside, and Tommy
would lay down on the sack as I pulled it down the row." The
Davis children lived with their grandparents until a fire
destroyed the couple's home. "That's when the state took
us," Loftin
said. "A lady from
the home came and picked us up."
Loftin said her adoptive
mother was cruel. The woman would pit Loftin
against her biological daughter twirling
baton or roller skating, for example and then
punish her when she ended up being better at
the task. The woman was also addicted to morphine, she said, and
served prison time for embezzling money from
her employer. Mr. Williams later told her the adoption was the woman's
desperate attempt at prolonging what had been
a bad marriage. He had threatened to leave her once the couple's biological
children were out of school.
Living with the
Williams family did result in one hopeful moment, however. While
visiting Mr. Williams sister in Grand Prairie, Loftin
thought she spotted a picture of two of her brothers in a Sunday
news magazine. She recognized the pair as James
and Don. "The
first names matched both of my brothers," Loftin said. "And
for some reason, I just thought that was
my brothers in the picture I kind of feel
like two of my brothers are in Dallas."
Loftin
married one month shy of her 18th birthday,
partly in order to get out of the situation at the Williams' home,
she said. That was 1958. Since then, she's made several unsuccessful
attempts at finding her family. "I
went up there twice to try and find out where my brothers
and sisters were, and they told me that Mrs. Gladney had
died, and that all of the documents she had were sealed," Loftin
said. "I asked a caseworker
where my brothers and sisters were, and
she told me she couldn't tell me who they
went to or where they were at."
The
caseworker did reveal that Loftin's siblings
were adopted in pairs. The two youngest, Nelle and Tommy, went to one
family while the two oldest boys, James
and Don, were adopted by another family. Loftin said her brothers and
sister were all born around two years apart, which means they
would be in their late 50s or early 60s
now. An older brother, Rufus George Davis, wasn't adopted, but Loftin
said she lost contact with him over the years, as well.
Loftin's
marriage to Clayton produced two sons.
The oldest, a 25-year U.S. Navy veteran, lives in Washington state
with Loftin's two grandchildren. He keeps in touch as
does Clayton and has visited
her a couple of times in Lufkin, she
said. A younger son lives in Lufkin,
but Loftin said she doesn't have any
contact with him. Her second husband
is deceased.
"I just
hope and pray that I can find my brothers
and sister," Loftin
said. "And
I hope they've had a good life. That's
my prayer. 'I just leave it in the
hands of God," she continued. "If
it's His will, then I know it will
be the right thing."
Lynn
Winthrop's e-mail address is lwinthrop@coxnews.com. |
