Over the years I have felt an enormous attraction to her and we've had this indefinable relationship, which has caused me to be utterly fascinated with death and the "beyond." I've lived my years in awe of the unreality of life and the reality of death. I'm certain this is because my mother was abruptly enveloped in her own death before I could know who she was. To this day I can't conjure up in my mind a vision of what she looked or sounded like, only the photos of a stranger that relatives tell me was her.

As a youngster I selfishly thought of Donna as that mother I couldn't have a relationship with (when I thought of her at all); not as a woman whose life was, according to sources, a fascinating study of contrasts of emotions.

I know that Donna left a legacy of two sons and two daughters, each as different, complex and human as are strangers and twins. Donna brought each of her children into the world as though that child were her only one, into an environment as different for each as the desert is different from the forest. I know that each of her four children sees her as though Donna was four distinctly different people, each with a personality that is a reflection of that child.

To reconstruct a picture of Donna as a person would be difficult enough, attempting to define her personality and character, and all those other things people write about other people, if I were recalling my intimate days with her. But, I didn't know her...at least with a mind mature enough to have recalled her as an individual. Instead of as my nurturing mother, I've had to look at Donna over the years through the eyes of other people and accept their perspectives. This is fine, as far as it goes. But those other people see with their eyes and their minds, not with mine. They drew from her what they required for their personal interactions, not for my requirements. Their conclusions were not my conclusions. Their opinions and biases were not mine.

* * *

What I wanted to do for Donna was remove for a while the cloak of adoration that I had clothed her in for fifty years, and to present her in memoriam as the flesh and blood woman she was and, I hope, would have wanted to be seen as...perhaps not every blemish, but all her real happiness and hurts, her tears, joys, injuries, her sorrows and her triumphs. And, perhaps, some of the unfairness done to her by this thing we call "life."

I've collected all the history I could find on Donna; all that there is in birth and death certificates, that type of documentation; plus her year-to-year record in the Akron City Directory; her school records; and so on.

I searched out all the people I knew who knew her, including one or two whose whereabouts required some detective work. I even managed, after a two-year effort, to lay my hands on the Cleveland Clinic report of her brain surgery. With the patient and able assistance of my wife, Abbie, we managed to decipher the gobbledygook copy.

I made handwriting analyses of her signatures on her three marriage license applications. And, finally, I resorted to personality profiles as interpreted based on works on astrology.

For many years my curiosity about the nature of things drew me to a hot/cold interest in astrology. I discovered Heaven Knows What and Astrology for the Millions by Grant Lewi (1902-1951), both of which offered uncannily accurate personality profiles. In Lewi's words:"The chief usage of the horoscope is its aid in self discovery, and in one's discovery of what makes one's friends tick. The horoscope shows the basic underlying psychological and emotional drives of the individual."

Lewi, a highly respected astrologer and noted author of the Forties, and editor of Horoscope magazine, predicted his own death in 1951, purchasing an insurance policy to protect his family.

I am just as certain that the presentation of an accurate description of Donna's life and interpretation of her personality based on second, third, and fourth-hand information and interviews such as I have herein assembled, would be as debatable a single picture of her as would be the astrological profiles. It was all there was to go on, and a picture did emerge that I recognized in the dark recesses of my subconscious. And no one else has attempted to reconstruct Donna's biography.

So for better or worse, this is the best truth I have been able to learn about the person who was my mother --- in order to give her her day in the sun so that she could cast her own shadow.

* * *

My older brother Ron had in his possession a number of old family photographs that he had inherited when our family matriarch, grandmother Florida Gay, or "Fay", passed away in 1959. On Donna's death we four had been placed in the Children's Home through the late Forties. Grandma Fay, who struggled to make a living in the Akron tire factories, was able to get custody of Ron and me, to take us home and try to raise us. She wanted to keep us together as a family, but she couldn't afford to pay a baby sitter to watch the girls, who were little more than babies.

On a visit to Ron's home, Abbie and I were browsing through a box of family pictures. Ron named names of relatives, people who were for the most part strangers to me. It occurred to Abbie and me that when Ron passed on the people in those photographs would have no identities for our families...Bosleys, Vernons, or for our sisters, Jacquie and Patty Ann. These photos would be meaningless, the names of our kin would be lost to our side of the family.

We encouraged Ron to label and identify the photos. And thus began a journey into our family history, starting with an effort on Ron's part to set to paper a biography of Grandma's Ramsey family, taken from what he knew and learned from relatives. His efforts, drawn up in several pages, of our contemporary family history, were circulated to family members.

I decided to probe a little deeper into our history myself in an attempt to learn something about my mother Donna, and to see if I could learn who my father was...and where he was. My curiosity grew to include what history I could learn about our fathers, with plans to share my discoveries with the family. I wanted to know whom all those strangers in the photos were, who my mother was, my father, and all our fathers.

I started out using the names and dates Ron supplied in his Ramsey biography. With this information I attempted to probe beyond Grandma's time into the records, starting with Donna and Grandma in the Akron City Directory. In time this beginning would take me to courthouse records, school records, to the locations where these people lived at various times. I was surprised to learn that Donna had moved around so much, and shocked to find that most of the places where she had lived had been torn down...almost as if someone had wanted to erase any trace of her.

Donna lived a short and troubled life. A little under 32 years old when she died, she left an intriguing record of one individual's trek through the Twenties, Thirties, and into the Forties. Much of the record of her life simply invites speculation. But the speculation doesn't require too vivid an imagination into the trauma Donna experienced.

Abbie and I made many, many trips from Cleveland to do our research at the Akron Public Library and about town. We spent hours going through the city directories searching for some history on Donna, Gay, and my father, Bill Vernon. I made up file folders into which I stuffed every scrap of paper and notes I collected on them. Eventually, my research spread out to include the ancestral span of the entire family, and I found myself engaged in the dual project of researching Donna's life, and tracing each family line of Donna's family and that of her children's fathers.

A family ancestry is something that after the initial thrust of searching for specific family members, develops into a family history told so well by the arrangement of data in the records. It is written person by person, year by year, bit by bit, with each piece of information being individually sought and found. Occasionally one finds a bonanza of family data not previously known to any contemporary family member, which gives insight into lifestyles and enlightens some hazy, vague memory of one or another senior member of the family.

I began this endeavor some time in 1980. At this writing I've worked on this project for at least ten years, pretty much full time for the past four. My research into Donna's life has turned up significant quantities of facts and figures; data, some factual, some speculative. But my search has turned up very little on whom Donna was, the quality of her life. Much of the factual aspect of her life simply fuels speculation, but doesn't tell of the impact her life had on her.

Since this book of family history is written in her memory and involves all those people who were related to and involved with Donna, I have decided to write down all the facts I've learned about her, some of the speculation from interviews with relatives and friends, and all of her family ancestral lines...which are considerable...as I have discovered them. I am more than satisfied that this is as close as I can get to a personal analysis of Donna's life, to the events that touched her life, and her reactions to these events.

This is as close a reading and a feeling to these things as I will probably ever get since there are few people left who can give me firsthand accounts of mother's personality and her thoughts. Those readers of this journal who lack sufficient broad-mindedness to humor my methods can ignore it.

This project has taken on significant meaning and importance for me. It has helped me to find my two sisters, to identify my father and to locate his remains. It has, in a real sense, become a life's goal. The story of Donna's life has become the story of my own life, my own sense of loneliness, ambition, the conquering of my own inferiority complexes.

Being able to see Donna as a human being has enabled me to take her off the pedestal of glorified motherhood and accept her as the mother I lost before I was ready to leave her. Having helped raise five children of my own toward adulthood, and having raised my own achievements to a dignified level, I've felt little guilt over the past years in dedicating myself to the business of leaving a record of my family for all our future children and for all posterity.

In my trek through Donna's short life and long history I've discovered many cousins, re-discovered many close relatives, including my sisters Jacquie and Patty Ann (after 39 soul-wrenching years); I've discovered my father, James William Vernon; his sister, my Aunt Katherine, and her family. I've re-discovered my brother, Ronald; our maternal grandmother, Fay; and most importantly, I've discovered my mother, Donna Lenora.

In my sweat to discover the facts of Donna's family and history I sincerely hope that I have not and do not cause any hurt or hard feelings toward any of my kin in the writing of this book, but I feel I owe it to Donna to present her short and mysterious life, and her family, to as lasting an historical record as I can.

In memory of Donna Lenora Davis and her children, this is her family history.