Wow, the Dope is amazing! engineer_comp_geek, if you have a chance - at your leisure, of course, there is no rush - I’d be thrilled if you could review the Evening Sun classified ads of December 2, 1961 and see what you can find. (BTW I have e-mailed the historical society, but not gotten a response yet. It’s only been about 36 hours and they seem to operate on volunteer staff, so I won’t give up on them yet.) Also, thanks to Edward the Head for his offer, too.
Since it looks like something may actually come of this, here is the TLDR background on why I want the ad (some of it is hearsay and I doubt I’ll ever know the exact story):
In 1958, my birth mother became pregnant with me out of wedlock. She did not tell my birth father, but one of her friends did. He then pressured her into a marriage she didn’t want, apparently because he was abusive to her.
After I was born my birth mother was desperate for a divorce, but the only way my birth father would grant it is if she would relinquish custody of me to him, so she did. I then lived for the first three years of my life in and out of orphanages, foster homes, and with my birth father.
It must have been next to impossible for a single father in 1961 to care for a toddler, and eventually he placed an advertisement in the paper looking for a family to care for me. My adoptive parents responded, I went to live with them, and after keeping me a while they decided they wanted to adopt me. My birth father did not want to relinquish custody and my parents went to court to force him to do so. It was an acrimonious battle and my adoptive father even bought a gun in order to threaten my birth father.
My parents eventually managed to legally adopt me, and I grew up in their care, hearing stories about what a bastard/sociopath my birth father was. One of the epithets they used to describe him was that he was an “intellectual snob.” My parents often recounted, “He thought he was so intelligent and so exceptional – you know how we got him to give up custody of you? We deliberately tricked him by casually saying, ‘Ordinary people wouldn’t give up custody of CairoCarol in a situation like this, of course.’ He was desperate never to appear ordinary, and so when we said that, he immediately agreed that we could adopt you.”
As to the advertisement, I knew that it had been placed but I’m not sure if my parents ever showed me the physical copy. My father had apparently kept the clipping in his wallet, but about a decade ago his wallet was stolen. I “remember” – but surely this is a false memory – being told, as evidence of my birth father’s snobbery, that the ad said something like, “Homeless little girl needs someone to care for her. Intellectuals preferred.”
My father died in 2008 and my mother passed away a few months ago. When I was going through her papers, I found a neatly typed letter responding to the advertisement and noting the name of the paper and the date that the classified ad ran. That’s why I now know it was published on December 2, 1961 in the Evening Sun.
On the back of the letter in my mother’s handwriting, it says, “Show to CairoCarol in 1983.” I don’t know what she was thinking when she wrote that, but she never did share the letter with me. We were not especially close. She wasn’t the worst mother ever, but as one example of her parenting choices, she would occasionally accuse me of having sociopathic/arrogant tendencies like my birth father, and observe, “At least no one will blame your father and me if you turn out badly – you are adopted, so they will say it’s just ‘bad seed.’”
I’ve always wondered about that advertisement, and at last I can locate it without stirring up any trouble. Did it really call me a “homeless little girl”? More importantly, did it really say something like “intellectuals preferred”?
I’m betting “yes” to the first question and “no” to the second, but who knows?
And so, to the Dopers who actually read this far, that is why I want a copy of the advertisement. I will be happily share what it actually says.
