Back to the Beginning
Ava’s Story: The Other Sister
A Secret Revealed To Ava.
After my father died in 1990, I discovered that I had a sister I never knew existed. My dad, Buster, was a hill man, born and raised in the beautiful Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, in the time when men fought to live by their own law – and he was no exception.
The Beginning.
Buster was a good-looking, softhearted man, who had many friends and known to be a man of his word. His friends and neighbors, and even strangers, could always count on him for any kind of help. I remember one freezing winter day when he went into the general store and bought a pair of long cotton stockings and brought them to me to give to a barelegged playmate whose parents had hit hard times. (Harder times than we all had then in the 1930’s, which were hard, indeed).
That’s one way to describe my dad.
He, however, was a hard-drinking man who also had many enemies. He had an explosive temper with a streak of cruelty and would fight at the drop of a hat. He ran whiskey and had a few ‘shoot-outs’ with the sheriff before he was called upon to serve his country in the U.S. Navy during World War II. I loved him dearly, but was also scared to death of him. He didn’t hesitate to pull off his belt and use it to discipline his children. It wasn't easy being his daughter.
A Picture Worth A Thousand Words.
After Dad’s death, I went to visit my uncle Ray, his youngest brother and the only one of his siblings still living. Uncle Ray showed me an old picture of Dad taken in the 1920’s. He was sitting on the side of a sawmill, very young and handsome sporting one of those old-fashioned newsboy type caps. He was holding the hands of a pretty young girl wearing a white dress and plainly pregnant – she was not my mother.
Uncle Ray told me that when my grandmother became old and ill, she gave him the picture and told him it was of Buster and the girl who had gotten pregnant by him – and that she had given birth to a little girl. Grandma had kept the picture all those years and she entrusted Uncle Ray to keep the secret. He kept the secret well, not even letting Buster know he had the picture. He felt it was now time we knew.
I knew I had to find that little girl, who would now be in her sixties, and I began to trace back in time. My first clue in finding my sister was the sawmill in the picture; I remembered that one of Dad’s cousins, Edith, who now lived in Missouri, had told me that when she was a little girl Dad had come down from the mountains one summer to stay with them and work on a sawmill with her father. That was in 1925, nearly 70 years earlier.
I immediately got on the phone to Edith and asked her, “Do you remember ever hearing that Dad got a girl pregnant when he was staying with your family that summer and working at the sawmill?”
She was surprised, “Oh! I had forgotten all about that, but, yes, since you mention it, yes, I do remember, but I was so little, I didn’t know who it was. However, I have a friend, Charlie, who still lives there and he remembers everything. I’ll call and ask him right now.”
Arkansas People Remember Everything.
After only a few minutes Edith called back and said she had talked to Charlie, who was well into his 90’s and still sharp as a tack. He remembered clearly the time when Buster came to work at the sawmill. Edith recounted the conversation:
“Charlie, did you ever hear that Buster got a girl pregnant when he was staying with my family?”
“Yes, I remember that very well.”
“Do you know who the girl was?”
“Yes, she was my sister, Lily.”
Edith was stunned. “What happened, Charlie?”
“Well, She was 15 and Buster was about 16 or 17 and he didn’t want to get married, so he took for the hills. When my Dad found out my sister was pregnant, he got his shotgun and went hunting for Buster to kill him. We all liked Buster and didn’t want Dad to shoot him, so we helped him hide out until he made his getaway back to the mountains. My sister married another man shortly before the baby, a little girl, was born.”
Charlie said that before he could give us his niece’s address, he would call Lily, who was now widowed and living in another state, and make sure it was alright with her. Lily freely gave her consent, saying since it had all happened so many years ago, it didn’t matter anymore. Charlie gave the message and phone number to Edith, who relayed it to me.
The Other Sister.
My other sister’s name is Lola and she has lived in California since she was 17 years old, in the same area where Dad and my mother and their five children had lived and worked for years. I wondered if I had passed her on the street, or maybe even talked to her without knowing who she was.
By the time I called Lola, her mother had already called her and she was expecting my call. She said that she had always known her biological father’s name and I asked her:
“Why didn’t you ever try to find him or any of his family?”
“Mother always told me that my father got killed in a car accident when she was pregnant with me. I didn’t know he had other family.”
She told me her mother and stepfather had somehow obtained a birth certificate for her with his name as her father, although he never adopted her. She also told me that her early life was very unstable. She had several brothers and sisters, but her stepfather was hard. She went to live with an aunt when she was thirteen, later moving to California. I told her how bad I felt for her, growing up apart from us, but I also told her it had not been an easy life for us, either.
Still, I just could not understand how Dad could have known all those years that he had another daughter and didn’t try to find her. In spite of his harsh ways we knew he loved us and doted on us most of the time. I felt sad that I didn’t know Lola growing up.
My mother and dad were married in 1927 and my older sister is three years younger than Lola. I am seven years younger than her. When I found out about Lola, I called my older sister and she said that our mother had told her many years ago about Dad getting his young sweetheart pregnant. After our mother died, my sister asked Dad about it but he seemed confused and said he wasn’t sure that she had a baby. I often wonder who told Mother. I don’t think Dad did, so maybe it was my Grandma, his mother.
Edith told me that Lola’s mother and stepfather were good friends with her parents and they came often to visit. She said her parents adored Lola and now she knows why. Lola was actually their great niece. It must have been Edith’s father, who was a brother to Buster’s father that gave grandma the picture.
What’s amazing is that the whole process of identifying, locating and making contact with my sister all happened in the space of one afternoon. We stayed in touch after that, calling each other often.
Finally a Face!
In March of 1992, for my 60th birthday, my family threw me a huge surprise party – and it really was a surprise! The morning of my birthday, they sent me to a spa for a makeover. My husband came to pick me up that afternoon and I still had those pedicure things separating my toes, so I just wore them home. As we drove up to the house, I could see smoke billowing up over the rooftop from the backyard and I thought, “Oh, my God, the house is on fire!” I jumped out of the car and as I hobbled barefoot through the house and on into the backyard, a live band started up and there were over a hundred of my friends and relatives gathered near a huge barbeque grill that was causing all the smoke.
I burst into tears when I first saw my two sisters and sister-in-law from California. The next person my eyes lit on was Lola. I knew her instantly, and the tears really flowed then. She looks so much like Dad, I wish he could have known her. We are a lot alike. We have a similar sense of humor and she cooks like I do.
Lola’s Side Of The Story.
We have gotten especially close to Lola’s daughter, Karen, and from her we found out how Lola was affected when I contacted her:
“Lola was shocked that she had other family. She had made up stories such as her father was dragged to death by a plow, or he had died in an airplane crash. She was embarrassed about being illegitimate. When Aunt Ava contacted her, it was like a door opened. She never thought she was a very special person and to have someone seek her out was overwhelming. It turns out they have similar personalities. Both were ‘women libbers’ before that was even a word.”
After Lola moved to California, she married a good man who provided well for her. Together, they made a beautiful and happy home in which they raised his two daughters from a previous marriage and a daughter of their own. Now a widow, Lola is the center of her family and dearly loved by her daughters and her grandchildren.
It was important to me to find Lola and include her in the family from which she had been excluded all those years. I admit that my feelings for her are different from the ones I have for the two sisters I grew up with, but, just the same, I feel a kinship with her and I love her.
I had no idea this reunion would help propel us into a career as private investigators, but that is exactly what it did. I’m sure it didn’t hurt that this reunion happened so easily. If only all our cases could be so simple and straightforward.