The Secret

 My first wife Connie was raised as a catholic and her mother railed against abortion. When we lost what would have been our second child, Connie's mother decided to come clean and tell her the truth. I have been promised to secrecy but everybody's dead now anyway except for a few in my generation. About 1943, Connie's mother became pregnant by her boyfriend, Bill Walling. Mary was a pregnant, unmarried catholic girl and desperate so she had an abortion. Then she became pregnant by Bill Walling a second time and they married and Mike Walling was born in 1944, a few days before my birthday. Mike and I were friends. For 35 years Mary kept that secret from everyone while preaching all the evils of abortion to her daughters. It is possible one of the sisters had an abortion but I don't know that. But Mary poisoned the minds of her daughters with religious rules that she had not followed herself and she never told the other sisters. I tell that story for one reason only. I wanted to point out the huge hypocrisy of many religious zealots who say one life while living another. Did Connie's mother's mother know about the abortion? I suspect she did because Mary and Bill didn't have the resources to accomplish it. But many war girlfriends became pregnant and were forced to have dangerous abortions because of the attitudes of society then and because a lot of these young fathers were shipped overseas and killed before they could get married.

Bettie Louise Harris

 

My mother was born out of wedlock in 1922 and adopted by Jew Max Harris and his Kaw-Osage wife Louisa Victoria Hardy. Mom was raised as a Jew until she was about 11 when Max and Louisa divorced. I never understood my mother's religious feelings until I finally understood some of her Jewish childhood in Oklahoma City. With DNA and records search I have learned that my birth grandfather was George Dewey Dye Sr. and my birth grandmother was 14 year old Nettie Rutherford. I have since been in contact with both sides of my birth grandparents' families. I began using Dye in my name, only on Facebook. I wish I could incorporate my Rutherford name too but that's impractical. I favor and support adoption because I wouldn't be here without it but it's not the only path open. Over my lifetime I've had friends who were adopted and had a miserable experience because the parents who adopted them had no business having children. So everything is ultimately a gamble. My mother had a reasonably good life but with a lot of craziness in it. A man in Pawhuska once told my brother that at one time my mother was struggling so badly that he had to buy food for us. But my mom was a great mom and hung on through all the struggles of a single mother. Remember that a single woman couldn't even get a credit card in her own name until 1974? I wish my mother were here for this mother's day because there is much left unsaid. I wish you a happy mother's day.