Finding Family

by Richard Hill

  I had to admit that those dates eliminated him from consideration. He could have been lying, of course. But I didn’t think so.

  Roy told me he would be gone the following week on a trip. But if I wanted to meet with him in person, he could arrange something in April. He even offered to meet me halfway between Livonia and Grand Rapids.

  I couldn’t see any reason for us to meet. I felt he was being straight with me. Plus, he wouldn’t know anything about Jackie’s love life in the crucial August time period. So I thanked him for the offer and we ended the call.

  Faced with the realization that I had drilled another dry well, my spirits sank again. I decided to take a break from my search.

  Still, in the back of my head I had this vague feeling that I had missed something important.

  27

  GIRLFRIENDS

  There’s something magical about December. No matter when my search stalled out, it was most likely to restart in the weeks before or after Christmas.

  The seasonal lessening of my business workload was sometimes a factor. But our Christmas card list now included my brother Mike, Aunt Lynn, Cousin Linda, my almost-father Conrad, and my grandfather Tony’s widow, Harriet Hartzell.

  Exchanging cards and letters with these people could not help but remind me of the unfinished search for my biological father.

  December 1992 was a perfect example. I had not done a thing on my search since Roy Klann had eliminated himself twenty-one months earlier.

  Suddenly, I remembered Conrad’s comment that Jackie was close to a girl from the South who lived in the same rooming house. If I could find her, I thought, there was a good chance she would know the identity of my birth father.

  In a moment of perfect hindsight, I thought back to all the interviews I did back in the eighties. I had only asked about Jackie’s boyfriends. I now realized that I should have also been asking about her girlfriends.

  Maybe it wasn’t too late. There had to be people still living in the Detroit area who remembered Jackie. I reasoned that I might reach some of them through a classified ad in local newspapers.

  Finding an inexpensive source on the Internet, I set up a toll-free phone number that rang into our home phone. Then I wrote the following ad and placed it in several small, local newspapers that covered Plymouth, Livonia, and Northville:

  REMEMBER JACKIE HARTZELL BOJANZYK, Plymouth girl killed in 1947 Jeep accident? Her son, born 5-20-46, needs identity of biological father for medical reasons. Call days or evenings.

  I also tried to place the ad in the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, but they would not run an ad with a last name other than my own. That restriction made no sense to me, but it was their policy.

  My first caller was a woman named Kay. She remembered Jackie as a waitress at Cavalcade Inn and recalled that the bar’s owner, Tom Martin, was the driver of the Jeep. She wondered if Tom might be my father.

  She had no knowledge of a relationship between them. She just knew that Jackie had been in the Jeep with Tom, who had quite a reputation as a ladies’ man. She also did not know anything about Jackie’s personal life or any of her female friends.

  I took down her comments and thanked her for calling. Once again, I shuddered at the thought of Tom Martin being my father. While driving drunk, he had killed a total of four people in two separate accidents.

  On New Year’s Day 1993, I received my second and last call in response to the ad. It was from a woman named Martha.

  She had known Jackie and Jackie’s sister, Joyce. In fact, she used to bowl with Jackie. She had met Jackie through a friend named Cordie who, like her, was from Tennessee. In fact, Cordie had been Jackie’s roommate.

  That’s the one, I thought excitedly. Cordie must be the girl with the Southern accent who Conrad remembered as living in the boarding house with Jackie.

  “Is Cordie still around?” I asked anxiously, almost holding my breath that the woman was still alive.

  “I believe so,” Martha said. “I have not talked to her in about three years, but she was still in the Detroit area at that time.”

  Martha promised to call the number she had for Cordie and get back to me, which she did in less than an hour. Cordie was still in the Detroit suburbs and was thrilled to hear that I had called.

  According to Martha, Cordie knew all about Jackie’s pregnancy and her long stay with my adoptive parents in Lansing. She also knew the identity of my biological father.

  I had finally hit the mother lode. Cordie had been Jackie’s best friend at the time of my conception and knew my whole story. I was thrilled beyond words.

  Impulsively, I asked Martha if Pat and I could drive down and meet her and Cordie somewhere. She checked with Cordie, called right back, and said they would be happy to meet us. We set up a meeting at Cordie’s home for the next day, which was a Saturday.

  As Pat and I made the two-and-a-half-hour drive, we reflected on all the earlier trips I had made alone for research and all the trips we had made together to meet people.

  With luck, I thought, we might soon be making another trip to meet my birth father.

  There was also a certain irony that I could not escape: In a decade of searching, I had just now thought of using a newspaper ad to find people who knew Jackie. And I was in the advertising business!

  Upon reaching Cordie’s house, we received a warm, excited reception from both Cordie and Martha. Then we all sat down around Cordie’s kitchen table and I brought out my pad of paper to take notes.

  Cordie first met Jackie at Dann’s Tavern, where they both worked as waitresses. She and Jackie became close friends and then roommates at the boarding house on Church Street in Plymouth.

  Jackie and Cordie shared a number of girlfriends like Martha, Wanda, Marilee, Shirley, Betty, and a second Martha. Most of the girls were from the South. Wanda was the only other one who worked at Dann’s.

  Except for Cordie and the Martha sitting across from me, the others were all gone, either having died or moved out of state decades before.

  Although the others may have heard or guessed about Jackie’s pregnancy, Cordie felt she was the only one with whom Jackie shared her most personal feelings.

  According to Cordie, all Jackie ever wanted was to marry and have children. But even though she loved her husband, Leonard, he had been so cruel to her that she had to leave him. Jackie also loved her son, Michael, and it broke her heart to give him up. But she had no way to support him.

  When Jackie discovered she was pregnant again, she quit her job at Dann’s and worked for a little while in a restaurant. Then she dropped out of sight.

  Cordie believed she was the only friend who knew Jackie had gone to Lansing to live with people who were going to adopt her baby.

  “She left the area in early January, right after the holidays,” Cordie said. “Your parents supported Jackie for several months and paid all her medical bills.”

  Then, as if another memory had come flooding back, Cordie continued. “When Jackie came back in May, I asked her if she might try to get the baby back someday. She told me she would never do that because your parents had been so good to her.”

  When I heard that, my eyes started to water. Jackie’s words made me proud of her and my adoptive parents. They had worked together to ensure that I would grow up with a family to love me.

  Cordie went on to explain that the rooming house had filled up by the time Jackie returned and she could not get back in. So Jackie rented a room from a couple on Blunk Street in Plymouth.

  The homeowner worked at Burroughs, as did Cordie by then. So Jackie soon got a job there, too. Then every weekday this man drove Jackie and himself to work, picking up Cordie along the way. Cordie could not remember the man’s name, only that he had a wife and children.

  “Jackie and I also worked off and on at Cavalcade Inn,” Cordie continued. “A lot of my Southern friends hung out there. It was like a big family gathering.”

  That reminded me of Tom Martin.
/>   “I hope you can assure me that Tom Martin was not my father,” I pressed. Cordie and Martha both laughed. Cordie herself had dated Tom for awhile, but she assured me that Jackie never did.

  “I spoke to Jackie the day she was killed,” Cordie said. “She had eaten dinner at Barney’s Grill, as she often did. She called me and wanted me to stop by Cavalcade Inn. She mentioned that her sister was in town and she was trying to find someone who would give Joyce a ride home.

  Martha spoke up.

  “I did hear,” she said, “that Tom paid for the girls’ funeral.” Hmmm, I thought. That was the least he could do.

  Cordie then surprised me by mentioning that she still visits Jackie’s grave in Grand Lawn Cemetery occasionally. She rattled off the section, block, and grave numbers from memory.

  They must have been incredibly close, I thought. Jackie has been dead for forty-six years.

  I also thought, somewhat ashamed, that in all my trips to Detroit I had not even bothered to find the cemetery. That was odd, I thought. While some invisible force kept driving me to learn the details of Jackie’s life, there was no pull to visit her grave. Maybe you have to know someone in life to attach any importance to his or her final resting place.

  Our discussion so far had been informative and mesmerizing. Cordie’s stories meshed well with what I already knew. But she still had not gotten around to answering my most important question: who was my birth father?

  28

  BOYFRIENDS

  The suspense was killing me. Cordie had been Jackie’s closest friend at the time of my conception. This woman was sitting on the answer to my biggest question and I was champing at the bit. I wanted to hear it now.

  Looking directly at Cordie, I blurted out my question.

  “Martha said you knew the identity of my biological father.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Jackie told me who it was. I can see the man in my mind. He was short with light-colored hair, but for the life of me, I cannot remember his name. It’s been so long.”

  Sheesh, another short guy, I thought. Jackie married Leonard and dated Conrad and both of them were short. Wasn’t she attracted to anyone over five foot eight? Was she infatuated with Mickey Rooney types?

  Cordie continued, “He was the only guy that Jackie ever saw steadily. He was a bartender at Dann’s.”

  What? Steady boyfriend? A bartender? Nooooooooo! I screamed in my head. To my utter amazement, she was talking about Conrad.

  Nearly overcome with disappointment, I asked in a somber tone, “Was his name Conrad?”

  “That doesn’t sound familiar,” she replied.

  Having brought my files with me, I dug out the photo of Conrad as a young man that he had given me at our first meeting.

  “Is this the guy?”

  “That’s him!” Cordie exclaimed. “He was quiet and well mannered and everybody liked him. He and Jackie seemed quite compatible. But she was not ready to marry anyone and she warned me not to tell him she was pregnant.”

  “According to Conrad,” I replied, “One of Jackie’s girlfriends did tell him.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Cordie said with conviction. “I kept my mouth shut.”

  I did not doubt Cordie’s statement. When Jackie dropped out of sight for five months, other people must have guessed she was pregnant. And lots of people must have known that she and Conrad had been a couple. Someone else had told him.

  “Was Jackie certain it was his baby?” I asked soberly.

  “She never expressed any doubts to me. Why do you ask?”

  Letting out a sigh, I explained to Cordie and Martha that Jackie had indeed named Conrad in the adoption papers. But when I found Conrad, a DNA paternity test proved he could not possibly be my father.

  “Well, I always thought it was him,” Cordie replied, obviously perplexed.

  I could see she was thinking, so I kept my mouth shut. Then Cordie broke the silence. “Now I remember…his name was Connie.”

  Pat spoke up. “That sounds like a nickname for Conrad.”

  I didn’t share my thoughts, but Connie seemed like a strange name for a man. Then I remembered an old-time baseball player/manager called Connie Mack. So maybe it wasn’t so odd back then.

  “Jackie must have had sex with another man about the same time she was seeing Conrad, perhaps just before they started dating in late August,” I said. “When she said he was my father, she was either mistaken or lying. If she lied, it might have been to cover up an affair with a married man.”

  “Jackie did not date married men,” Cordie snapped defensively.

  “I’m not saying she did,” I answered. “I’m just describing the possibilities.”

  “Well, Jackie wasn’t a slut,” chimed in Martha.

  “I’m not saying that, either,” I responded. “I’m just reporting the fact that Conrad is not my father. It has to be some other man and I’m just trying to find out who it is.”

  Finally accepting the fact that Jackie had been wrong about Conrad being the father of her baby, Cordie and Martha tried to remember other men whom Jackie had dated. I also went through my notes and raised some possible candidates.

  They confirmed that some of the men on my list, like Jerry Jarskey, had dated Jackie after I was born.

  Other names I had, like Roy Klann, were unfamiliar to them. Either Jackie saw those men without their knowledge or these women had forgotten the names.

  I even asked if Jackie knew anyone named Gerald, since that was the name she gave me when I was born. No luck.

  “Jackie worked nights and I mostly worked days,” explained Cordie. “So I have no way of knowing who she may have met at the bar. Most of the young guys from town were still in the service in 1945. Yet nearly all of them came by the bar whenever they were home on leave.”

  Cordie and Martha added some new names I had not heard before. My eyes reminded them of Arnold Ash and Harry Bowman. My smile made them think of Bud Murphy. They saw a man named Neil Curtiss in my expressions.

  Although Jackie would have known all of these men, Cordie and Martha had no memories of her dating any of them. Besides resembling me in some way, the men had one other thing in common: they were all dead. Tracking them down for questioning was not an option.

  On the other hand, Cordie did not think I looked like Tom Martin or Lester Barney.

  According to Cordie and Martha, Jackie had been interested in some other guys whose names they could not remember. She went out once or twice with a guy from the Northville Bar. Although she liked him a lot, he was involved with someone else. Cordie also remembered that Jackie liked another guy from Northville who was in the Navy.

  I then pointed out that the probable date of my conception would have been just a few days after V-J Day, when the Japanese surrendered to end World War II. That brought a smile to both their faces.

  “Oh, boy,” laughed Cordie. “That could explain why Jackie did not remember anyone but Conrad.”

  She continued, “Did you ever see that famous photo of the sailor kissing the girl on the street? I think it was in New York. Well, that’s how it was here, too. The parties and drinking went on for days.”

  I asked if they remembered any specific V-J-Day celebrations involving Jackie. Cordie thought she and Jackie went together to the Box Bar in Ann Arbor one night. But other than that, she had no idea what Jackie was doing.

  “We were all drinking like crazy and anything could have happened.”

  That’s just great, I thought. My mother was already one of the most popular girls in the Plymouth-Livonia-Northville area. Now it looks like my father could have been a soldier or sailor in a drunken, one-night stand!

  How could I discover the truth if Jackie didn’t even know the truth?

  Having exhausted the subject of Jackie’s life in 1945, Pat and I thanked Cordie and Martha for taking the time to meet with us. Both women provided their phone numbers in case I had any further questions.

  I had to admit that I did learn a lot o
n this trip and I was thrilled to meet some friends of Jackie face to face. Yet it seemed like the chances of ever learning the truth about my biological father had plunged to a new low.

  What could I do next? What ground hadn’t I already covered? Like many times before, it would be Jeanette, my search adviser from Adoptees Search for Knowledge, who suggested the critical next step.

  29

  SOCIAL INSECURITY

  After returning home from our visit with Cordie and Martha, I got on the phone again. My first call was to Aunt Lynn. I wanted to see if she remembered these girlfriends of Jackie. She did remember Cordie but not Martha.

  Next, I called Conrad. He did not remember Cordie’s name, but he was certain I had found Jackie’s roommate and closest friend. Hoping he could remember some other men that Jackie dated, I went through my latest notes and recited all the names I had just heard. He did not recognize any of them.

  “It’s just been too long for me to remember names,” he sighed.

  Since we last talked, however, Conrad had remembered a couple incidents about other men Jackie had dated.

  First, he remembered that Jackie had gone out a couple times with the owner of Dann’s Tavern. Conrad could not recall the guy’s name, but on one occasion, he had borrowed Conrad’s car to take Jackie out because his wife was using his.

  That memory caught my attention, because it conflicted with Cordie’s assertion that Jackie did not date married men.

  In Conrad’s second recollection, Jackie borrowed his car keys and disappeared one night when they were working together at Dann’s. She returned with a man Conrad did not know and the two of them sat at the bar having drinks and acting a little too cozy for Conrad’s comfort.

  “Jackie and I dated steadily but not exclusively,” Conrad explained. “She had never agreed to stop dating other men. But when she used my car to do it, I felt she was taking advantage of me. That’s when I broke it off with her.”