Angel brings family together for first time
Published: December 30, 2005
OUR mouth slightly ajar, we listen to Janice Gullion of Eldridge tell how she is entering the new year with a brother she never knew she had.
She has met and hugged a handsome, mustached fellow named Craig Daughtery. He is from Sarcoxie, Mo., a small town 528 miles south and west of the Quad-Cities. “He is my unknown brother, without question,” she says.
It is a bizarre tale, authenticated because of dimples on the chin and things like peanut butter, which only add to the story.
Without getting complicated — as things can be with genealogy — Janice has found a brother her parents never told her about. His existence has been a family secret for 54 years. Only because of a “Search Angel” — a generic term for people who hunt out other people touched by adoption — was the mystery solved.
Craig’s birth parents, whose names were James and Paula (let’s not get into last names) lived in Viola, Ill. James was a young farmer who had been courting Paula, a school teacher, for eight years. They had put off marriage, always intending to be wed “soon.”
As such things will happen, Paula became pregnant. Only three people knew — James, Paula and Paula’s mother, Margaret. In a small town 54 years ago, it would have been embarrassing for a teacher to be in a family way. So, during summer break, Paula was scurried away to Kansas City to spend the final months of her pregnancy at a home for unwed mothers.
A son was born on Aug. 9, 1951. Hospital records say he was named Durwin, for no evident reason. His father was listed as “not living,” a common practice at a time when both the mother and father intended for the newborn to be adopted out. Paula and James returned to Viola, with James never seeing his son.
That was that. The new baby was adopted by a couple who renamed him Craig. Six months later, James and Paula were married. They had three other children — Scott, born in 1952 and now living in Colorado; Geraldine “Jerry,” born in 1956 and living in Texas; and Janice, who lives in Eldridge, born in 1959.
There was never mention of another brother. Says Janice: “If Paula’s mother, Margaret, ever thought that we knew about that secret baby, she would have had a cow.”
The years passed until Craig began a search for his birth parents. He needed to know about them because his child has a medical problem. He worried that it was something genetic. He had his birth mother’s name, and little more, to go on. A Search Angel began a hunt. Records where Craig was born were key to a circuitous path to Janice’s brother, Scott. He, too, was interested in genealogy. All the names jibed, all the pieces fit.
Says Janice: “One night Scott called and asked, ‘Are you sitting down? I have a whopper of a story to tell you. Mom and dad once had a baby boy and never told us about him.”
What were the siblings to do? Craig’s birth mother, Paula, is dead, but his father, James, lives with Janice in Eldridge. He is very ill. When asked about another son, James nodded and said it was true. He said “We gave him up because we weren’t married.”
All had a reunion in Viola. When Craig met up with his birth dad for the first time, there was no animosity over a secret being kept more than a half-century. Still, Craig can’t quite call his birth father, “dad.” He hugs him and calls him “pop.”
Janice says, “All of us — brothers and sisters — have dimples in our chins. We have similar mannerisms. I knew he was my brother because both of us are crazy over peanuts and peanut butter.”
When Janice and Craig met, the greeting was simple.
“I’m the sister you never knew you had.”
“And I’m the brother you never knew you had.”
Janice says she didn’t cry at the moment. “It was just too overwhelming.”
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