IMMIGRANT DAUGHTER #23

To grow up and never hearing loving words or any one caring what happened to him, you can understand why he was so rebellious most of his life thinking no one loved him. All through school he displayed he was not dumb. Not having any one to encourage him made him a loner. He had been in more than 14 foster homes both in Indiana and Michigan. This was his life all through school.

To graduate the eight grade he was to make a current events booklet with newspaper and magazine cut-outs. Where he was staying there weren’t any. Needless to say he did not make one and when he was told he wouldn’t graduate he got up and left the class and never went back. The foster parents did not even try to find out what really happened and rather than stay there Carl left home running away from that home.

He stayed with a lady who had a son and also named Carl who was two years older and he too had quit school. Her husband had died and she was struggling to manage the food and bar business alone. Carl had pick up some odd jobs to have spending money. He worked in the bowling ally and one day while walking to town he met someone he new and asked him where he was going? As they talked his friend said he was going to join the army. That didn’t appeal to Carl but the navy did. Carl was living in Michigan while in grade school and used to look out the window seeing the large ships on Lake Michigan and wanting to be on a ship. His friend and he headed for Detroit to join the Army and Carl the Navy.

When Carl got to the recruiting office he found out there were a lot of things he did not have that he needed to join the Navy. First he needed a birth certificate that showed his date of birth. He did not know for sure what that was. The recruiters told him it is a certificate proving how old he is and where he was born. He had to go through the Children’s Aid Society and the court to produce a document birth certificate so he could join the navy. When he found out he was 6 months shy of being 17 the needed age to join the navy, he had to wait until then.

Now the judge asked him what his name was and he said Carl M. and the judge said that is not what the paper he was holding indicated. Carl was given a different name at every foster home he lived so who knows what the judge had in front of him. The courts between Indiana and Michigan gave him a birth certificate from Fort Wayne, Indiana where he was born. It read his mothers name as Elsta M. and Father as Henry H. S. and a male child given mothers last name M.

The mother and father were not married at the time of his birth, and they did not marry until a month later not giving the child his birthright name. In fact he grew up thinking he was an orphan and that his parents were killed in a car accident. He did not learn any of this until he was grown. He lived in many foster homes and realized no one cared what he did. While in foster care they were obligated he went to school because they were being paid by the state. He went to school where you stayed in the same room all day with the same kids some of which were very well dressed and had a mother, father and brothers and sisters.



In his mind he began to question where was his family and why if he was born in Indiana, he was now in Michigan. Needless to say he became restless and bored as he approached his 17th birthday he sat in school staring at the boats on lake Michigan going out of sight. He decided he would leave school and join the coast guard. The next stage in Carl’s life was a period of growing up and learning that there was so much more to learn. He enrolled in every school the Navy had to offer and when I met him he was in the waiting process for yet another school and now I begin my story in how I became his wife for 58 years. Until then, I am IMMIGRANT DAUGHTER.