| Back From the Dead Saturday, October 26, 2002 A set of siblings finds a sister they believed had died during childbirth 43 years ago. By AMY WILSON The Orange County Register |
| ANAHEIM – On April 26, 1959, Geneva McCashland, already a mother of four, delivered twins at Newport Beach's Hoag Hospital. She came home a few days later and told her children that the babies had died. One of those babies, now 43, came home to Orange County late Thursday. In the Anaheim home of her newfound brother Kenny, Rose Morelock compared body parts - little ears and bent fingers and big teeth and hearty laughs - with her four just-discovered sisters: Margie Gutierrez of Downey, Linda Mercado of Bell Garden, Mary Ellen Coley of La Mirada and Judy Bassett of Spring Break, Texas. Rosalyn Gilreath Morelock was born Cindy McCashland, a name she never knew she had. Her twin brother, Monty, was born with the name of Cevin. Three days after they were born, they were taken to the doorstep of Cavett and Gertrude Gilreath, an Indio architect and his nurse wife, a couple who could not conceive children. In exchange for $1,500, the babies were handed over by an intermediary named Mrs. Lancaster. Monty Gilreath died 21 years ago in a freak industrial accident. Since that day, Rosalyn - she goes by Rose - has been without brothers or sisters. Today, she has six. It is, the siblings say, the story of a blessed miracle, something so unlikely to have been discovered that surely their finding one another "was meant to be." But it is also a story that starts out as a quiet, uncomfortable lie, is compounded by years of silence, then vexed by whispers and disbelief and hurried by a vague confession. It is also a story about the power of eavesdropping and the magic of the Internet. Leland and Geneva McCashland were poor, that is certain. Leland, who was withered by polio, worked at the Reeves Rubber Factory in San Clemente. In 1959, the family of six lived in a two-bedroom house. The teenage girls divided the front porch into their respective sleeping spaces. They lived off tortillas and put cardboard in their shoes to make them last. The McCashlands' older daughters, Judy and Linda, remember picking boysenberries and selling boxes for a quarter apiece so the family could afford milk. Geneva McCashland's decisions to give away not only the twins in 1959 but a newborn son almost exactly a year later were not supported by her husband. He would not sign the papers but did not give away the terrible secret. Linda McCashland Mercado, who was 14 in 1959, remembers that her mother cried when she came home childless. "But I thought it was because the babies had died." There was no funeral, but no one thought much about that. Until later. Linda is sure that her parents never saw the $1,500. How Geneva came to the decision to give away her children isn't known. It is clear that in both instances, while at Hoag, she was approached by a Mrs. Lancaster, who offered to take the children. Geneva believed that the children were raised by the nurse or rich relatives of the nurse. Geneva's name is on the adoption papers, as is the name of Bill Lancaster, who posed as her husband for the purposes of the court. (Hoag Hospital has no employment records dating to the 1950s to verify the story.) The McCashlands had two more children - Kenny in 1961 and Margie in 1963 - whom they kept. Leland McCashland complained about missing Wyoming, so he divorced Geneva and left most of his family in 1968. Linda does remember overhearing her mother talking to her aunt about the three babies not actually being dead. "I told my sisters this all their lives, but they didn't believe me," she says. She adds, in their defense, that she didn't have any proof. The youngest sister, Margie, was 19 when Linda shared what she knew with her. Before her mother's death in 1996, Margie says her mother said simply, "I gave away three. A lady came and took away the twins." She had borne 11 children. Two had died shortly after birth but this was confirmation of something else. Linda had an ally at last. Margie, now 39, began to search for answers. In April 2001, armed with California birth records found online for Cindy and Cevin, Margie and Linda convinced their computer-savvy sister Judy, who lives in Texas, to help. "That proved to me they were born alive," says Judy. "I was shocked. I had believed my mother." Judy searched endlessly on adoption Web sites, leaving a trail of registrations and detailed pleas across the Internet. Margie spent her time trying to get court records unsealed and death certificates notarized and social-services forms filled out to the state's satisfaction. Then "by luck or stupidity," says Judy, "I lost everything on the computer." She lost a year of research and all her favorite Web site addresses. She entered all the information all over again. Before she finished entering the data in adoptionregistry.com, information began to pop up: a twin, born at Hoag on April 16, 1959. Seems that Rose, at the urging of a friend, put her name into a single database and never looked at it again. Rose says her parents always told her "you have six or seven siblings out there. I knew I was born in Newport Beach, but it wasn't something we talked about like that. We knew we were adopted. My parents always said they picked us because we were the prettiest babies." After her brother died, she would lie in bed at night and cry, her husband, Mike, remembers, saying how much she wanted siblings, "especially sisters, so much." Still, Rose was a realist. "I didn't think my siblings knew I was alive." When the phone rang in her suburban Fort Worth home at 9:30 on the night of Oct. 1, she knew differently. They have not had an awkward moment since. Judy lived only four hours away from her. They arranged a meeting. Kenny and Linda drove 17 hours straight to see her as well on Oct. 3. Friday, she came home to meet Margie and Mary Ellen and a host of nieces and nephews, cousins and an aunt. Judy says the family went looking for Rose because "she is ours and we are hers." Rose gave Margie a picture of Monty, Rose's fraternal twin. Margie and Monty share the same face. Rose doesn't spend a lot of time agonizing over her birth mother's decision. "She did absolutely the right thing for my brother and I. We were raised in a loving family and we didn't have to want like my siblings did. I absolutely believe she did it out of love. I do not dwell on how difficult it must have been." The family, delirious in their find, wants one more thing: To find the missing brother born April 29, 1960, also at Hoag, also delivered into the hands of Mrs. Lancaster, the helpful nurse. She, in turn, offered the child to Rose's parents, for a fee. With 1-year-old twins, though, their hands were full and they declined. "To find him," says Margie, "would make us complete. My mother would probably like that." Long Beach Press Telegram Los Angeles Newspaper Group Article Published: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 - 10:41:52 PM PST Sisters meeting after 43 years Family: Siblings separated after mom gave three up for adoption. By Kristopher Hanson Staff writer DOWNEY- It's a family get-together 43 years in the making. When sisters Margaret Gutierrez and Rosalyn Gilreath meet tonight for the first time, years of anticipation, searching and wishful thinking will come to an end. The meeting, which both had nearly written off as impossible, marks the culmination of a long- shot cross-country sibling search that began with no sibling names, addresses or dates of birth. For 39-year-old Margaret, the meeting brings life to a sister she once was told had died at birth. For Rosalyn, a 43-year-old Texas resident, the meeting is a chance to connect with the biological family she always knew was out there but never thought she'd meet. "It's something I've been waiting on for a long, long time,' Margaret said Wednesday. Rosalyn, in a telephone interview from Texas, admitted to being nervous and apprehensive but "extremely excited' to final ly get the chance to embrace a sister she's never seen. "This whole thing is really surreal,' said Gilreath. "I don't know what to expect. I just hope they like me.' The story of the long-lost siblings began in 1959, when their desperately poor mother gave Rosalyn and her twin brother Monty up for adoption only days after they were born in an Orange County hospital. When the mother returned home, she told the other children that the babies had died. And so the story went for the next 30 years. Margaret, born in 1963, grew up believing that a total of five of her mother's 11 children had died in infancy. However, as Margaret would later find out, only two had died. Her mother had given up three for adoption. "She just wanted them to have a better life,' Margaret said. "We were very, very poor growing up, and she didn't want them to live that kind of life.' They didn't. It turned out that Rose and Monty were adopted by a well-off couple who lived first in Southern California and later in Texas. The twins grew up comfortable and knowing they had been adopted at birth. "We were told from day one that we had brothers and sisters somewhere out there, we just didn't know where,' Rosalyn said. "I would lie in bed at night and dream about meeting them and finding out who they were, but I never really went out and tried to find them.' Unfortunately, Monty died in a 1983 work-related accident. Three years ago, Margaret began searching various Internet adoption agencies with the hope of finding the two brothers and one sister her mother, before her death, had told her she had put up for adoption. After a search of birth records that located the missing siblings birth names, she took the information and plugged it into a computer search engine. No response. Around that same time, at the urging of a friend in Texas, Rosalyn entered her name in an adoption agency Web site. "I didn't really care, but my friend urged me to put my name in,' Rosalyn said. "I promptly forgot about it. In fact, I didn't check the site for the next two years.' Meanwhile, Margaret and her older sister Judy continued searching for their siblings. On Oct. 1, 2002, they hit a match. Rosalyn's long-forgotten Web site posting was somehow found. The sisters hearts raced as they contacted the woman on the other end of the e-mail. "When I found out it was her, it was like a miracle,' Margaret said. "We spoke for about 45 minutes that night and, as strange as it may sound, it felt like we had known each other for our entire lives.' Today, Margaret and Rosalyn will finally get the chance to meet when they are united at their brother Kenneth McCashland's home in Anaheim. "You better get the tissues ready because it's going to be an emotional moment,' Rosalyn said. Still, there's one missing sibling that both women long to meet. A brother whose birth name is also Kenneth McCashland, born on April 29, 1960. "We're definitely looking for him,' Margaret said. "We don't know if he's dead or alive, but we want to find him.' Siblings united at last Family: Mother gave up 3 babies for adoption during hard times. By Kristopher Hanson, Staff writer ANAHEIM There were no awkward moments, uncomfortable pauses or strange stares. Instead the women wrapped their arms around each other and hugged. Separated for almost 40 years, the long-lost sisters embraced Thursday night after an exhausting, cross-country search led them to one another. "It's just overwhelmed to be here,' said Rose Morelock, the sister who was given up for adoption shortly after her birth. "But in a way, I feel like I've known them all my life.' Rose's story began in 1959, when her mother, on the verge of bankruptcy and saddled with mounting debt, gave Rose and her twin brother Monty up for adoption days after they were born. They were raised first in Southern California and later in Texas, where Rose now lives with her husband, Mike. Her twin, Monty, died in 1983. "I think she did it so Monty and I wouldn't have to live in poverty,' Rose said. "She made the decision she felt was best for her children, and she was right.' Rose's six siblings were raised by their poor mother and father. The truth about the babies came out a few years ago when their mother told her children that she had given up three of her babies for adoption. The admission set off a chain of events that led to a family reunion planned for today in Anaheim. It wasn't until nearly 40 years after Rose's adoption that the four sisters and two brothers began actively searching for their siblings. They found birth certificates that showed Rose, Monty and another still-unknown brother. Judy Bassett, the oldest sister in the family, began scouring adoption agencies on the Internet in search of her long-lost siblings. After several years, she found Rose on Oct. 1. Rose said, "It was really surreal to have someone you're related to, but whom you've never met, talking to you on the other end of the line.' This week, Rose and Judy, who both live in Texas, flew out to California to meet two sisters whom Rose had never met: Mary Coley of La Mirada and Margaret Gutierrez of Downey. "We can start out as good friends and leave each other as best friends,' she told them. Today Rose, along with her brother Kenny McCashland and sisters Linda, Judy, Margaret, Mary and extended nieces, nephews, cousins and spouses, will celebrate a family union, marking the first time everyone has been together. |
