Lost, Ignored, and Forgotten
I thought I might try to comprehend the ugly thing that happened to my brother, and three sisters. There has never been anyone to attempt to bridge the gap between our surname and our family. We were the bastard children of Cecil Clyde Fleeger (that is the indication on my birth certificate).
Those years of the 1940's and 1950's were bitter years when good folk didn't dare talk about unwed mothers, or recognize the children with any more regard then they would a dead fish.
It would be impossible to explain how it felt. To know you are somehow related to people with the last name you saw almost every school day, but you had no attachment points or bearings.And no one would volunteer the slightest shred of information.
Iwas more fortune than my brother Russell, and my sisters Mary Ellen, Helen, and the baby girl (I was too young to remember her name) that disappeared when we were split up when I was four. I was taken in by the McGarvey family of North Washington just after I finished first grade. There I stayed, grew in knowledge and athletic skills until I left at 17 to enter as a freshman at the U.S. Miltary Academy at West Point.
I thrived under the pressures of the academy and graduated 125 in a class of 800. Not bad for a kid from the sticks of Pennsylvania.
Now it is 36 years later. I have my own children, an advanced degree in engineering, U.S. patents, and a rapidly growing firm.Yet, I know so little of the people who are closely related to me, and surely by now those who would know are long dead.
If you know something, any thing; help me connect the dots.
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Re: Lost, Ignored, and Forgotten
Margaret Helminska 8/30/10