Tell My Story
This project began when I met my biological grandmother and she asked me to write her story, which I understood to be a story about surrendering a child for adoption in 1946, my father. I crafted what I thought was a suitable response, a story about how she was the youngest daughter of an evangelical minister at the end of WWII, a nurse who met a sailor. She said she was in love. He said they would marry. She became pregnant. She told me she had written to him at the naval base and that the letter was returned unopened, marked "Return to Sender, Deceased". She said she destroyed the letter. At the time, I figured that was the end of the story, at least from her perspective. How sad that we didn't have that envelope because I might have been able to find out more about the man if I had that information. His name, according to her, was Charles Johnson, Johnson being the most common last name in this state. I spent a lot of time looking for ...
