Dusty Angels and Old Diaries
by
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Our Mother’s Grief
She hurried along in the gathering darkness. Fear clutched at her heart. Her shoulders bent with the weight of her sadness. All the tears in the world would never erase the pain of leaving her four small children in the city that never sleeps.
Would she ever gather baby Sandra into her arms and sing soft lullabies? Or wave 8-year-old Tommy off to school again? Would 6-year old Allison come skipping into the kitchen for a cool glass of milk? Would 4-year-old Linda with her dark brown eyes and ringlets of hair remember a mother’s touch at end of day?
On August 12, 1954, she had left her two smallest babies at Saint Barnabas House, a temporary shelter for women and children in New York City. She promised to return soon when she was able to care for them.
She had left Alison and Thomas at the Edwin Gould Services for Children, Lakeside School in New York City since they were older and needed to be in school. Then she vanished without a trace!
Five years earlier, Dorothyann had married Robert Brantley, a young dashing navy sailor. It was the day before her 21st birthday. They had gotten married at St. Michaels’s Church in New York City on December 11, 1949. Linda was born a little over nine months later in September, and baby Sandra was born June 15, 1952.
But her joy lasted a few short years. As she shivered in the cool darkness, it seemed like a lifetime ago since she walked away from seemingly insurmountable difficulties of trying to support her children and care for her sick mother.
The death of her mother combined with Robert leaving and saying he would not return, was the last straw and simply more than Dorothyann could handle. She had walked away from them all! She never saw Robert again.
Slipping open the latch of the small rented room, she felt the icicles of loneliness reach from the shadows and tighten around her. She unconsciously brushed the soft brown curls from her face wet with tears as she sat at the table and began to write a letter that would be postmarked 6 p.m. October 22, 1954.
“My Dearest Daughters,
I guess you think your mother has forgotten you. I have not. Mother had to go away for a while and did not know she would be gone so long. I hope that you are being my good (girls) and that your daddy will write to you too.
Linda, are you taking good care of Sandra for me? I hope that by next week I will have a permanent address and will get in touch with Miss Hall as to where I can be reached.
Please tell Miss Hall that I have not forgotten my children and will be back for them soon..
After that, Dorothyann disppeared without a trace. The letter lay forgotten in the orphanage file for almost 40 years! Allison and Thomas would forget they had two younger siblings. Linda and Sandra would suffer unimaginable hardships. Linda would grow up always searching for her siblings. She vowed to never give up until she found them all again! But, this is only the beginning of my story...
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About the Book
Everyone has a story to tell. Most are lucky if they find one person who will listen. This book shares over 40 years of personal diaries that give birth to the unusual story of my life.
When I was three years old, my mother wrote a goodbye note and disappeared without a trace. Her four small children were placed in the custody of the State of
Separated from our older brother and sister, my sister and I grew up fleeing from child protective service workers who only saw a glimpse of the conditions in which our grandmother was raising us after she illegally took us from the orphanage.
This book tells my story based on a lifetime of my old diaries that relive the abuse and pain suffered at the hands of an unbridled, angry woman; the slow death of a turbulent marriage; the birth and blessings of two wonderful sons; and the lifelong search for my lost siblings. It describes the agonizing search for my mother – and the pivotal moment when I found her, almost forty years later!
This autobiography is not about the ancestry of the Brantley family, the Mascunana family, or the Cash family. It is about innocence and power. It is about weakness and strength. It is about those who helped create the paths I took.
I must write this so that my children will know the journey that I traveled before they were born, so my brothers and sisters will know who I am, and so my mother will understand why I can forgive her.
It is a gift to myself and to you, the reader. It serves as my legacy for the future! Put on your soft slippers and walk with me a while.
About the Author
Linda’s writing career began when she was a small child, hiding in the cold attic to escape her grandmother’s savage beatings. Surrounded by scampering mice and long-legged spiders, she scribbled tiny words into her little red diary that had been a Christmas present from relatives who had no idea about the suffering and enforced hardships of her isolated childhood in the wild backwoods of Missouri. As the years went by, the growing pile of assorted diaries became her lifelink to keep her sane in a world she did not understand. The faded time-worn red diary and its sister memoirs are the foundation for Linda’s first published book, Dusty Angels and Old Diaries. As a teenager, Linda worked nights to put herself through LPN (Licensed Practical Nurse) school. Soon thereafter Linda married and had two sons, Billy and Philip. Always juggling several jobs and an entrepreneur at heart, Linda was a newspaper correspondent for the Herald Palladium in