Chapter 2

3 November 1940.

     Patricia Ann Corbin was born at City Hospital in Akron, Ohio on 3 November, 1940. She was the first daughter born to Elmer J. Corbin and Donna Lenora Davis-Stout.

     Donna Lenora was born 21 October, 1914. She was born in Elkins, West Virginia to Florida Gay Ramsey and Dallie A. Davis, people bred on farms in a Scots-Irish atmosphere.

     Donna Lenora's parents separated when she was just about two years old, possibly over the death of Donna's older brother who died at two and a half years, before Donna was born. She was left with her aunt in Elkins while mother migrated to Akron, Ohio to work in the new rubber factories. It was several years before Donna would be reunited with her mother in Akron.

     At the age of fifteen and a half, Donna Lenora married her first husband in 1930 and bore him a son. They divorced just months after their marriage, and she moved back with mother.

     Donna Lenora had developed a benign brain tumor, and in 1936, she underwent a craniotomy to remove the egg-sized lesion. The invasive procedure pathologically affected Donna Lenora's personality, leaving her with marked personality changes from "giddiness to dark depressions," according to her oldest son.

     By a lover, she bore in 1938 a second son whom she named Dallie A., after her father. She married again in 1939 and produced two daughters. Her family of husband and four children were disrupted in November of '45 by the Summit County welfare department, her children placed in the county's children's home. Donna Lenora died sixty days later on 26 January 1946 of a stroke. She was not quite 32 years old.

     Elmer J. Corbin was born 24 February 1913 to Jess W. Corbin and Anna Margaret Seemann in Akron, Ohio. He was the third of six siblings.

     Elmer's last wife describes him thus: "He had quite a colorful life. (He) was in CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) in California (during the Depression), in several forest fires, and was declared dead twice. Came back and drove a bootleg car from West Virginia for a while, worked for a carnival for a while--"The Mighty Sheatsley"; worked on the railroad; was a prizefighter for a while. (He) used to drink, but got put in the 'chain gang', and never took another drink. This I know, because we were married then. I was his fourth and last wife, Donna his second, so I don't dwell on his love life. I know (that) if I could see better I would write the story of his life. I know I could sell it to at least a True Story magazine."

     Elmer died in September, 1977 in Canton, Ohio. He apparently had a heart attack; perhaps complicated by the diabetes he lived with most of his life. He never saw his daughters after they were adopted, but he left both with his legacy of diabetes and vacant memories.

     Mom and Elmer had been married just over sixteen months, marrying on the thirteenth of July, 1939 when Patty was born. Even so, Patty Ann had two older brothers by mother Donna.

     It was a difficult time, the nation mixed up in that terrible European war, providing war materiel to Great Britain. War fever was nationwide, with the Doves trying to keep America out of the war, Hawks trying to get the U.S. government to commit.

     Most folks had never lived through the circumstances of their homeland at war, and the threat was palpable. For average people, it was living from day to day. All the same, life for Patty Ann was the life of an infant. Soon she would have a little sister, who was born in May of 1942, several months after a Japanese aerial attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii finally brought the U.S. into the war. Not long after, a story ran in the local newspaper. . .

"CARDBOARD HUT

Couple Sent To Jail

For Child Neglect"

said the headline on page 17 of the Akron Beacon Journal. Dateline, Tuesday, November 20, 1945.

     "A Tallmadge father and wife today began 60-day terms in county jail for neglecting their four children found huddled and hungry in a cardboard shack.

     Charged with neglect of the four children..aged 14, 9, 5 and 3..the couple, Elmer and Donna Corbin, R.D. 8, Tallmadge, was sentenced by Judge Oscar Hunsicker after pleading guilty Monday.

     Investigators who went to the house after a neighbor's complaint reported that the children were living in a make-shift cardboard hut while the parents left them for long periods of time. The shack had a stove, two beds, a table, and no windows, investigators said. For food, there was only a part of a sack of flour, they reported.

     After being given necessary treatment to rid them of lice, the children were placed in the Children's Home, juvenile authorities said."

     Actually, it was a mother and husband, as two of the four children weren't his. And if the children were "huddled," they were huddled out of fear of the intrusion of strangers into their home. There was a thirteen year-old sibling to look after the children while their parents might have been out trying to get food or help. And lice is a condition which is contracted from "lice carriers" one comes in contact with, as has been reported to have been contracted in schools as recently as 1996's newspapers.

     The "hut" was constructed of wood with temporary pieces of cardboard for insulation, as material was difficult to come by in the war years.

     Like most young couples their age, Elmer and Donna struggled to make a home for their family. They were trying to buy this plot of land. The newspaper didn't report on that.

     It also neglected to report that Mrs. Corbin..Donna Lenora..had had brain surgery within the past couple years and was incapacitated by it.

     The children's ages were given wrong, and the place had windows..the windows didn't have glass, as glass was difficult to get. They used waxed newspapers to cover the windows in the summer, as did money-pinched families when windows were broken or being replaced. This was the war years of the early forties. And mother and children weren't going to go hungry, if Grandmother Ramsey-Davis had anything to say about it, as she had so often before. It was a sad and reprehensible way to break up a family.

     My brother, six years older than me, married first. I followed as, when I turned eighteen, I quit high school and got a job in a machine shop. I had just turned nineteen when I got married.

     Off and on over the next 20 years I tried to locate my sisters. The times didn't lend themselves to such a task. My sisters had been adopted, and those records weren't available. I must confess I really didn't try hard, what with the distraction of raising a family. But then, I was a very naive young man, and such efforts were not within my expertise.

     One evening in March of 1982 my wife, Abbie, was treating me to a birthday party at home. The phone rang, and Abbie picked it up. "It's for you," she announced as she gave me the phone. "Happy birthday, Dallie," said my brother on the other end of the line. We usually traded birthday greetings, after a fashion. "I've got a birthday present for you," he said. "Melissa called me. I have her phone number, if you want it." If I wanted it!

     The last time to my knowledge that we had been in touch with Melissa was when I was stationed in Ozona, Texas with the U.S. Air Force in 1960. Ron had written me to announce that Melissa had contacted him, and in fact was living with him and his family back in Akron, Ohio. I was ecstatic. I hadn't seen or heard from her since I lost touch with the girls in 1946 at the Home. To my memory, the Children's Services people were notorious about keeping orphan siblings separated. And I'd spent much of my young married life searching, off and on, for some clue as to what had become of my sisters.

     Once I had enlisted the curiosity of a renowned Akron journalist to help me find my sisters. But this unfortunate lady was killed in an auto accident before she could interview me. And so went my only hope of finding the girls at the time.

     Upon hearing from my brother that Melissa had joined him, I immediately wrote to her of my joy at our reunion through Uncle Sam's mail system, even though I was stuck in Texas, and wouldn't get my discharge for about another fifteen months.

     Time went by and with discharge in hand, I hurried home with my family of wife and three boys to finally meet my little sister after twenty one years of separation.

     But Melissa and Ron had had a disagreement, and she had moved out some months earlier. He hadn't written to tell me. And so, I would go on searching, and wondering what had become of my sisters.

     As for Patty Ann, I had reluctantly decided that she probably had grown up and either moved somewhere out west, or was dead. I'd never see her again.

     And now, here was my brother on the phone, asking me if I wanted my sister's phone number. Yeah. YEAH!!

     I called Melissa. She answered with a sleepy and distant. "Hello?"

     "This is Dallie. Your brother. You called Ron a few days ago. He called me and gave me your number."

     "Hello big brother," is about all I remember of our conversation, except I remember that we agreed to meet at a popular restaurant located between our respective residences for Sunday breakfast.

     We talked small talk. I didn't know what to say. I suspect that I blathered to Melissa, and she thought her older brother a mental case. Fact of the matter, I was.

     I suggested she follow me home and meet Abbie. After the introductions, we just sat around a short while getting comfortable with one another.

     Melissa and I went for a walk up the street. We chatted about yesterday, and walked. Suddenly she ran ahead a few feet, and kicked a can. She followed the can as it skittered from stop to stop, I tried to follow her in a half-trot. I strolled over to her, and she said, "There. That's for the lost childhood we never had." I guess she had made her point. Yesterday was gone. It was today.

     We got back to the house and settled in. I broke out the scotch and we all had a drink. And another. And so on. This, before the noon hour. I found myself sitting at Melissa's feet, rubbing her ankles. She was uncomfortable at the familiarity, but she was too gracious to say so. We were all getting blotto.

     Somehow, we found ourselves standing at the door in a somewhat heated conversation, when Melissa hauled off and slapped me. Hard. We said something else, and she slapped me again. Harder. At that point she looked over at Abbie and asked, "He doesn't hit back, does he?"

     "I don't think so. He hasn't yet."

     To which I said, "If you slap me again, I think I'll start."

     Melissa was slapping me for not being there all those years. I understood that. We said our goodbyes, and I watched her drive off in her little pickup truck. We spent a difficult few months getting reacquainted.

     Some time during the year of 1983, Ronnie had mentioned to me there would be an annual reunion at the Summit County Children's Home for 'alumni' in August. I received a notice in the mail August 15th concerning the date, time and place of the reunion.

     I was filled with mixed emotions. This was the institution that had broken up my family when I was seven years old. My memories of the 'Home' were not good ones. We were in the Children's Home during the years following World War II, and I have always assumed the reason I found my experiences at the Home cold and structured was because of tensions brought about by the war overseas. But a seven year old doesn't comprehend explanations, especially when he sees his world dissolving around him, being filled by strangers. I don't recall one single experience prior to the cold shock of losing my family and being placed in the Home that I would describe as a distasteful or unpleasant memory. All the memories I have of an unpleasant life began that day I was taken into the Home clinic for a delicing and scrub-down. And it remained an unpleasant experience for me, until that glorious day Grandma came to take me home with her. At that time, Donna (or "Mom" as I remembered her) was the vaguest of memories.

     But going to the reunion at the Children's Home meant the possibility I might find Patty Ann there also, and to miss that opportunity was unthinkable. I was prepared to risk dealing with all my old fears and apprehensions of that cold place in order to find Patty Ann again. Besides, Ron was going, and I believed Melissa would also go, even though she had expressed reservations (and I couldn't blame her for her reluctance).

     The events of that first trip are mostly a jumble in my mind, but I remember driving up to the ominous-looking group of brick buildings, looking for all the world like a medieval fortress, heading around the side street toward the driveway, and turning in toward the parking slots. There was a roofed picnic pavilion in a large grassy area behind a collection of buildings, where kids were running around and playing. Food was laid out on picnic tables.

     Abbie and I strolled around waiting for Ronnie, since I didn't see his car. I scanned the faces of people milling about for a familiar face. I didn't expect to see one, since I remembered no one from the Children's Home. But I had brought along the only picture I had of Patty Ann and Melissa, which was taken prior to our stay at the home. I thought someone might recognize Patty Ann and know what had become of her.

     I walked around a couple of buildings, pointing out to Abbie where the dining hall had been, where there was a back entrance to my wing, remarking how small it all seemed when I got up close to it. I remembered the halls, the dormitory, the dining room as being enormous; the other kids as strangers, even though we all shared the same accommodations for at least a year and a half. For me it was like coming back to visit a prison I'd spent half a lifetime in, after an absence of ten years or so.

     Ron showed up with his longtime friend, Luke Warner and Luke's wife, Jean. Luke was one of Ronnie's wing mates, with whom he had struck up a lifetime friendship.

     Abbie and I joined them for a short walk around, then headed back to the group to watch for any sign of Patty Ann. There was one woman several alumni were hovering around. Arvilla Turner, who apparently had been a Home resident for many, many years.

     I showed her my picture of Patty Ann, and asked if she remembered her. Surely this person who'd been there so long would recognize Patty Ann. No, she couldn't say she did. I was a little dismayed. How could this woman have been in the girls' wing for so many years and not remember Patty Ann? Well, as with most of my personal experiences with this institution, this trip back was proving to be disappointing.

     I must say that even though I didn't find Patty Ann there, going back this close to the object of many waking nightmares was therapeutic for me. It wasn't as big as I remembered it, and if you looked at the buildings just the right way, it wasn't even foreboding. It was simply representative of a life-jarring experience I had early in life that marked the way I would see things for many years of my young life.

     I was into doing my family's genealogy in the '80s, and as she had come back into my life, I was keeping Melissa up to date on my discoveries on her side of the family. Melissa and I decided to try to locate Patty Ann together.

     On October 1, 1984, under the newly relaxed federal law permitting family data to be given to family members, Melissa called the Summit County Children's Services Board as the children's home now calls itself, asking for information about Patty Ann's adoption. She received in the mail a letter from a Mr. Walter Junewicz stating in effect that Melissa's request had been turned over to a Mrs. Chema, the social worker researching the case record, and indicating that she would respond as soon as her heavy case load permitted. The letter included her phone number at the Home.