Mom (10 page)

Dennis:
I spent a lot of time in the Shriners Hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts. A few years ago, we drove through Springfield. It suddenly dawned on me what an incredibly long trip that was—and we were on interstate highways. I thought,
Well, in 1948 most of these roads didn’t exist.
So what did you have to do to come and see me?

Theresa:
We could only visit on Saturday. The hours were from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon—no exceptions. For quite a while, your dad and I used to go by car. Then your dad and I separated, and I didn’t have a car. So I had to take the bus to Springfield. I had to work at the time, and we were living with my parents. So I would get out of work at midnight and take a bus to Portland, and then from Portland to Boston. Then when I got to Boston I had a two-hour wait for the bus to Springfield, and I was afraid to go even out of the station, so I’d wait right in the station for two hours until the bus came.

The hospital was on the outskirts, so when I got to Springfield I had to take another bus from the city to the hospital. But I couldn’t go and see you until eight o’clock in the morning, and so I’d wait at the station until I knew that I could get into the hospital to see you. I’d spend the whole day with you. At four o’clock on the dot everybody had to leave, even though a lot of us traveled very far. One little boy in your ward lived in Canada, and his parents could only come once in a great while, but when they came they had to leave at four o’clock just like the rest of us.

It was very difficult leaving you, because the minute you’d see me putting on my coat or getting ready to leave, you’d start to cry . . . and then I’d hear you crying all the way down the hall. So that was very difficult, but every minute that I spent with you was well worth it.

Dennis:
When I was fourteen my legs were amputated. Up until that point there wasn’t much that I couldn’t do. And then when that happened—this sounds strange—but it was a very liberating experience because my legs were sedentary: they were just there; I couldn’t use them. I worked well around them—but then without them, it was almost like there were literally no limits at all.

Theresa:
Well, you had wonderful doctors, and when the doctors told me the best thing for you, even though it sounded cruel, would be to amputate your legs, it was very difficult. But one doctor told me, “Dennis will roll with the best of them after he has his legs amputated”—and you always have.

Dennis:
A particularly hard time I remember was when they said, “Well, now that you no longer have your legs, you have to go away and be rehabilitated.” I remember being furious about that. I asked them, “Why?” and they said, “Everything is different.You have to relearn all these things.” It made no sense to me whatsoever because up until that point I had adapted to everything.

Theresa:
Well, I didn’t feel that you needed to go and learn everything all over again, and I told the doctors that. They said, “He really has to go. And for the first couple of weeks you shouldn’t come and see him, because he’ll be very homesick and he’ll want to go home.” So I took you. It wasn’t easy to leave you, because I knew that you knew everything that they were going to teach you. About two weeks later I got a telephone call. I said, “Oh, he’s homesick?” And they said, “Oh, no! On the contrary, he’s keeping this place alive. But he already knows everything that we’ve tried to teach him,” which we tried to tell them in the first place, “so you can come and get him.” It didn’t take me long. When I got there, I said to the receptionist, “I came to get Dennis.” She said, “If you can find him—he’s all over the place.”

So you came home, and you’ve always been very independent and capable of doing everything. One day you came home from work at the watch shop in Portland, and you said, “I’ll be home late tomorrow.” I’d never ask questions because I knew when you said something, you had a reason for it. This went on for quite a while: about twice a week you’d get home late, and I thought,
I wonder what he’s up to?
One day you came home and you said, “Ma, I can swim.” I said, “You can swim?” You said, “Yeah, I’ve been going to the Y, and the instructor there told me if I came at a certain time on certain days that he would teach me to swim all by myself in the pool.”

People always treated you like you were no different from anybody else: the kids let you play football; you were the pitcher on the softball team. They let you do everything that they did. I remember one instance where you and the neighborhood kids were on the back porch.The window was open, and I could hear you talking about, “What are you going to be when you get big?” One was going to be a policeman; someone else was gonna be a fireman. When it got to you, somebody said, “What are you gonna do, Dennis?”You said, “I’m goin’ in the army.” And one of your friends said, “You dummy, you can’t go in the army—you can’t march!” You said, “No, but I can ride in a jeep!” [
laughs
]

So, that’s the attitude you had all the time. I’m not just saying this. A lot of people that I know—even today—will say, “Boy, he can do just about anything, can’t he?” And I say, “Yes, he can—and he always could.”

Dennis
: I have a son now, and he’s two years old. When he looks at me, he just sees his papa. And we were talking about the fact that when he gets older, he’s going to have a really great attitude because he will accept people very easily. He won’t see them for the fact that they’re in a wheelchair or that they walk with a cane or crutches.

Theresa:
And of course having a new grandson— sometimes it’s more than I can take. I’m just so happy—it actually makes me feel younger. My blood pressure has gone down a lot, and the nurse said, “What are you doing different?” And I said, “Well, I don’t think I’m doing anything different.” And she said, “I know what it is—it’s your new grandson!”

Dennis:
I guess that it’s just kind of the luck of the draw. Some people aren’t so lucky, and some people are very, very fortunate. And I’m one of them.

Theresa
: You’ve been a wonderful son. I couldn’t ask for any better.

Ray Martinez:
I was raised in the Colorado State Children’s Home in Denver. They kept kids from infancy to age eighteen or nineteen years old. I was there from infancy to age five.

I remember that the orphanage had this practice where they would allow potential parents to check you out like a library book: they could borrow you for a couple of weeks, take you home, and see if you were a fit for their family. A couple of times I remember riding in the car, leaving the orphanage with potential parents, and them just trying to make me happy and make me laugh, and me sitting in the front in these little booster seats cars had back then in the fifties. But I never remember being at their homes. What I do remember is getting returned to the orphanage, riding back in the backseat of the car with no one talking to me. So I sensed right then and there that for some reason or another they didn’t like me. I couldn’t put it into words; I just felt it. I can distinctly remember riding up to the orphanage, which had an oval road in the front, and always feeling like I was back home. When I got out of the car, I can remember a couple of times running in the orphanage saying to myself,
I never want to leave this place again!
And I think that was a lesson that I carried with me in law enforcement and as mayor—that I believe that you should accept everybody for who they are and reject nobody.

The second lesson was how you share things, because in the orphanage you really didn’t own anything—nothing was yours; everything you had was shared. If it was cold outside, they’d bring out a table of coats and everyone threw on a coat, and every day you had a different coat when you went outside to play. You didn’t know anything about Santa Claus because they never brought Santa Claus to the orphanage. They would bring military people who would hand you gifts, and you’d take turns opening your gifts. You’d put them in the center of the room, and then everybody could play with all the toys. So I had more than just one toy; I had hundreds of them—you just shared everything that you had.

Finally, I was adopted. I was five years old. The matron sat me on the front counter, and my dad looked at me and my mom looked at me, and I looked at them—we just kind of stared at each other. My dad shoved this blue stocking cap over my head, and my mom shoved this little toy stuffed dog in my arm. They swept me off the counter, and away we went.

My mother said, “We never brought you home on a trial basis because they told us, ‘We think Ray is experiencing rejection. ’” So they came for several weeks just to observe me. They were enamored with me, I guess, and they said, “That’s who we want.” They picked me up and they never took me back.

So here I was with the first two things I ever owned in my life—the stocking cap and the toy dog—and off to home I went. I didn’t have a suitcase—there was nothing else to take but the clothes on my back. They took me to my new home on Sycamore Street, and they said, “This is your home.” I looked at it and I thought,
Okay, whatever that is.
They took me to my bedroom and said, “This is your bedroom, this is your toy box, this is your closet, and everything is yours.” This was all kind of confusing to me. They put me in my bed, which looked like a giant bed. It was just a single bed, but back in the orphanage you slept on small cots. And then they closed the door and shut the lights out. Well, I wasn’t used to that. I was used to sleeping in a room full of kids and the matron walking down the hallway checking up on you every hour—I used to watch her come down the hallway and hear her heels clicking. I was used to all this noise and raucousness and people around, and all of a sudden it was dead silent.

As my mother remembered, “Within the hour, you jumped out of bed, came to our room, and jumped in bed with us and slept with us for the night.” They suddenly realized,
He’s not used to being alone.
So they let me stay for the night with them. Then the next morning was interesting, because that’s when they tried to explain to me that we’re your mom and your dad. I just kind of looked at them like,
What’s that?
I didn’t understand.

My adoptive mother died in 1994, on Easter night, and my adoptive dad died in 2000, on Father’s Day night. I loved them dearly—they live in my heart just like they’re alive today. They taught me so much and cared for me so much. When my mother passed away, I went through her cedar chest and I found my stocking cap and the toy dog that they gave me—the very first things I ever owned. Each year, I keep them under the Christmas tree as a reminder of where I came from. I never knew my mother held on to those things, and I’m very thankful to her for hanging on to me.

 

 

In April of 2005, I filed for my records from the orphanage. Six months later I received a big package with microfiche film of all my adoption records, but they redacted everything about my biological mother’s identity, her name, and my biological father’s name.

There was a two-page document, and at the very top edge of that second page, where it overlapped with the first page, they had forgotten to white out my biological mother’s name. So I had her name, and I thought,
I’ve got a lead here,
and the search was on.

All of a sudden,
bam
! I had an address, and I had a phone number. I had this feeling:
My gosh. I am so close, so quick
. I started the search in October, and November second I was making the phone call. When I first made that call, my heart was racing. I thought,
Well, she has to be elderly at this point
. And I felt,
I don’t want to scare her. I don’t want to turn her world upside down.

All these things were racing through my mind.
What am I going to say
? Then she answered the telephone, and I said, “I’m looking for a Gloria Quintana.You may not be the right one.” I was trying to give her wiggle room in case she decided she didn’t want any part of this. I asked if she was born down in the San Luis area, and she said she was. So I started conveying the story that I was doing a genealogy search and I was trying to see if she was part of my family or not. So she was answering a few questions, and I told her that I was born in Grand Junction and relinquished to an orphanage. When I got to the point, she hung up the telephone.

Persistent as I am, I called right back, and she hung up the telephone again. So I thought,
Well, she’s persistent like me: she
must
be my mother.
I ended up calling again that evening. She answered the phone, and I said, “Gloria, this is Ray. Don’t hang up. I just wanted to share a couple of things with you.” I said, “I want to thank you for giving me life.” She listened, and I kind of reviewed what my life was like: being adopted from the orphanage by my parents and becoming a shoeshine boy and always having the dream of being mayor someday. I used to shine the mayor’s shoes, and I used to tell myself,
One of these days I’m going to wear those shoes
.