THE ACTORS IN MY LIFE

     Most of the actors in my life I can only describe from memory, as how I conceived them to be and try to understand from their perspective why they acted the way they did towards me.  Though I have talked with others in these last few years who knew some of these actors in my life and who in most cases concur with my memories and opinions.  I have nothing else but my memories of them and the records I was so fortunate in obtaining.  I can not prove what they said and what they did to me actually occurred, they don't keep records on that sort of  thing and that makes me wonder why if they thought it was so right.
     The three foster homes that my brother and I were taken to when we were taken from our mother was only briefly mentioned in the book.  To describe them I can only do from memory and a sketchy event mentioned in my records.
     The first foster home that my brother and I were placed in was in Des Moines, Iowa, about forty miles from where we had lived with our mother.  It had been on July 5, 1940, when we had arrived at this foster home, my brother was four and  I was six years old.  My memory of this home was that it was a very strict and sterile environment.  To me it was only a place to keep my brother and I until it was decided as to what to do with us.
     Shortly after we had arrived in this home, I had crawled out one of the first floor windows with my brother, telling him we were going to go and find our mother.  We had only went about a block before we were caught by one of our foster parents and brought back.  From my recollection we never received a whipping for running away but only had to go to bed for the rest of the afternoon.  It was here in this home that I was to celebrate my first and last Halloween as a child by going out and "Trick or Treating."  It was here that there had been a fire late in the night while my brother and I had been upstairs sleeping.  It was here that our foster mother had gone through the fire and up the stairs to rescue us, thus possibly saving the lives of my brother and I.  The house had been so extensively damaged, we had to be transferred to another foster home shortly before Thanksgiving of 1940 after having lived about three and a half months in this first foster home.
     The second foster home was with Mr. and Mrs. Roy McCleary in Bonderant, Iowa about ten miles or so northeast of Des Moines.  My brother and I stayed here for about the next seven months, until about the end of June of 1941.  By now I  was seven and my brother had just turned five.  Here I easily had adjusted to the change but it had been a change that I had to adjust to.  It may sound strange but the younger that children are the easier it is for them to adjust to the changes in their lives.  In a matter of a few short weeks I had adjusted to the loss of my father but then I still had my mother and brother.  I had adjusted to the loss of my mother before I was transferred to my second foster home.  Within days I had readjusted to my second foster home but then I still had my brother and the first foster home had not been any great loss to me.
     My impression of this second foster home was more like a normal home but the closeness of parents to their children was missing.  The people were christens and taught my brother and I to say our prayers each night before we went to bed.  At meals prayers were always said before we ate.  I don't remember ever getting a whipping from them but my brother did for something I had done.  That was to be a memory I was to have to carry all of my childhood, when I had thought of my brother so many times wondering where he was.  There had been the time my brother had gotten sick during the night and I was made to clean it up.  That had made me sick and I also had to clean that up.  There had  been that time on the Twenty-forth of June, my brother's birthday, my brother had to sit in a kitchen chair all afternoon when he couldn't remember the date of his birthday.  I had tried to tell him but our foster mother wouldn't let me near my brother.  Even though I had gone to school here I had no friends other than my brother.  It was at this foster home that my mother had been allowed to visit for the first time after losing us.  It had been a few days before Christmas.  About five months after we had lost her.  Our mother had brought each of us a Bible story book which I cherished.  Though I couldn't read very well I enjoyed the book very much, especially the story of "Joseph and his coat of many colors."  It was this first and only visit my mother was allowed to see us during the period we were in foster homes for it had been on this first visit that it had been noted that my mother had been drinking.  In my records it says, "Intoxicated" which I feel was an overreaction of smelling beer on my mother's breath.  The people that we were staying with were quite religious any drinking by a woman would be sinful.  I understand the reason that my brother and I were transferred to our third and last foster home, was because our foster parents in our second foster home was found to be leaving my brother and I alone at home while they were away.  There were other memories but I feel that our life at this foster home had been somewhat sterile.
     This third foster home was the most loving of all of the homes I had been in and it had been the hardest for me to readjust from when they had taken us from there and placed us in the orphanage.  We had lived in this last home for about eight months before my brother and I were committed to the Iowa Solders' Orphans' Home in Davenport, Iowa.
     In the story of my book I had stated that by the age of ten I had not been physically punished, that was not quite true for let me relate my first day at the orphanage, somewhat a trying experience for both my brother and I.
     My brother and I had first seen the orphanage on January 27, 1942, one day short of three years after my father had died.  Less that two months after "Peal Harbor" the start of The Second World War.  It had been a cold January day and my brother and I had been dressed in warm coats.  We were taken to the admitting office where we were told to sit in chairs.  After we had been there for a few minutes a woman had come to me asking me to give her my Bible story book which I had refused to do and she had forced it from my tightly closed arms I had wrapped around the book.  She told me that I could have it back when I left the orphanage.  I had cried for it was the only thing I had of my mother.  I was never to see the book again.
     We had waited a little longer there in the office when a man came  in and took us to the orientation building where he handed my brother and I over to the woman in charge there.  She had taken my brother and I through the building to a room on the south side where there were two showers, here she told us to get undressed and had fixed the shower for us to take a bath.  Then handing each of us a bar of soap and a small hand brush she had told us to get in the shower and take a bath.  My brother had gotten in one shower and I in the other but there was one little problem, the bristles of the brush hurt when I had tried to scrub my chest.  I wasn't doing too good when the woman had grabbed the brush and soap from me and said in an angry voice, "If you don't know how to take a bath I'll show you."  Then she began to scrub me with that brush.  I had resisted her some and she had slapped me causing me to slip and fall to the floor.  She had gotten down and continued to scrub me even though now I was laying on the floor.  When I had gotten up I had glanced at my brother and had seen him crying for he had just seen his brother hurt.  Then there had been that little spanking my mother had given me with a ping-pong paddle right after my fourth birthday for after going to the bathroom, taking all of my clothes off and not being able to get them back on, I had returned to a little girl's birthday party nude, carrying my clothes over my arm.  For some reason my mother was quite unhappy about something.  Other than that I had never been physically punished.
     The cottage I had been in prior to my placement for adoption had a kindly woman for a cottage mother, she had been like a grandmother to me.  Tuesdays had been her day off and I had always played sick on that day so I could go to the hospital for the day.  Her relief had been Ms. Toothfarber, I didn't like her, though she had never done anything to me that would make me dislike her.
     I feel that up to the time of my placement for adoption I had adjusted very well to each change in my life.  By now I had given up ever being with my mother again and I had accepted that as a way of  life.  I never understood nor did I ever question why I was in the orphanage.  I never knew then that most children lived with their parents.  Yes I had adjusted very well to the orphanage prior to my placement for adoption.
     I had been eight years old on February 16, 1943 when I had been placed for adoption with Ross H. and Peal Potter of Leeds, Iowa and eleven months later I was nine when I had been returned to the orphanage on January 6, 1944.  My prospective adoptive mother had died seven months after my placement on September 21, '43.  I look at the failure of this adoption as the main cause in my not being able to adjust to any more changes in my life.  I had learned that it was normal for children to have parents and a home with them.  At first there had not been any point in me readjusting to the orphanage for I felt I wouldn't be there very long before my "daddy" came for me.  It took several weeks, several months before I finally realized or accepted the fact my "daddy" would never be coming for me.
    In my book, I Cried For A Little Boy Who Once Lived There, I did not go into a lot of detail as to my experiences while I lived in my adoptive home, a farm north of Leeds, Iowa.  Though in my memoirs I dealt with it quite extensively.  I was quite a normal boy then, into about everything an inquisitive mind of an eight and nine year old boy's mind could get him into.
     From the time I had reentered the orphanage to the time I had  left, some nineteen months later, I never had anyone that I felt was close to me except for my friend that worked in the kitchen.  I had tried to be close to Mr. Guold but I never could.
     I have spent many hours looking at and trying to understand the people that dealt with me as I grew up.  I know at times they were very angry at me, I must have been very frustrating to them.  I have tried to put myself in their place and ask myself what I would have done based on what I know today.  The answer came out quite different than what they had done to me.

Ms. Gruber

   I guess the first person I feel actually abused me would be Ms. Gruber.   Well there had been the man in the kitchen but I have had a lot of trouble feeling he abused me.  I guess technically he did but I will deal with this type of abuse later in more detail as to what effect I believe it had on me.
     Ms. Gruber, based on her name I would say was a first or second generation German.  A strict disciplinarian.  She tolerated no freedom of expression in any manner.  She demanded full control of her cottage almost to the extent of controlling our minds.  I think in a way she did control my mind, I was so afraid of her I was afraid to even think badly of her or anything else.  After meeting her I developed a fear that adults could read my mind, it was another very good reason why I wouldn't look them in the eyes.  A habit, a fear I have never been able to get over, a fear as to what I might read there in other's eyes.
     Many people in my life, not only as I grew up but also afterwards have commented on how pleasing my personality was.  About the good attitude I always had.  I always spoke properly to all adults.  I never talked back to any of them no matter how wrong they had been in what they were saying to me.  If I said anything I was very polite and very scared.  If all of this was good and everyone liked my personality then they can thank Ms. Gruber for it, for she had sent me a message the time she had me pinned in the window I was never to forget.  Even to this day I can see the effects of it.  If this had a positive effect on others and they feel it was a lesson I needed to learn then I guess it was right in what she did to me but to me it has made my life fearful to say what I really think and feel.  Saying things only to satisfy others.  What would I have done if I had been faced with a defiant eleven year old boy that had thrown a comb at me?  Thankfully I don't have to make that decision but I know one thing I wouldn't have lost my temper and did what she did.  But then I only learned that from what she had done to me.

Mr. Vance Guold  (last name may be spelled wrong)

     Mr. Guold in time must have been fairly frustrated with me too.  At times even angry with me but not like Ms. Gruber.  He always gave me a whipping whenever I ran away.  I don't know if he knew that Ms.  Gruber followed him with another whipping, I want to believe he didn't but I don't know.  I was to again meet Mr. Guold several years later, after I had grown up.  He told me then if he could have gotten me into his cottage he thought he could have gotten me to quit running away.  I don't think that he meant with the razor strap.  I believe he understood what I needed, what was missing in my life and at least in part he could have helped me but then at the time, without being my cottage father and thus a closer relationship developing between us, I suppose he felt he couldn't have responded to my running away in any other way than what he did.  I hope that I am not making excuses but only reasons as to why Mr. Guold treated me the way he did.  Though Mr. Guold died some years back and it has been several years back since I was in the orphanage, I still have those fond feelings for him I had then as a child.

Mr. Daines

     I know that Mr. Daines, superintendent of the orphanage was not only frustrated with me but very angry at me.  To his way of thinking I would not conform, he didn't understand I couldn't.  It wasn't I was being defiant to him and the rest of the staff at the orphanage, by running away, I couldn't conform due to the emotional problems I was having, problems not even I was aware of at that time, not in the sense I could name them.  The letters [see state juvenile records] that he wrote on July 7 and 18, 1945 in regards to me were very spiteful and untrue letters.  They had been written only to get me transferred out of the orphanage and to the juvenile home, some one-hundred-fifty miles from Rock Island where I had complained to the police of abuse.  I was never to know that my mother ever lived in Rock Island, as stated in that letter, not until I received my state records some forty-five years later.  Anyway at the time of that letter it was known that my mother was "out west" from a letter [see state juvenile records] dated July 2, 1945.  In the July 18th letter he states my mother lives in Des Moines, a hundred sixty miles away.  In the letter of July 7 he mentions that I ran away with another boy.  When I was given my records the name of the boy was deleted.  At first I was very puzzled about this boy that was suppose to have ran way with me.  Could my memory have slipped in this area?  Could I have taken another boy with me as the letter stated?  As I read on I realized that his entire letter was untrue.  In this letter he said I was a "expert shoplifter" "played with matches and feared I would become a fire-bug" and that I had "an obsession for knives."  At first I thought maybe he had mistaken me for another boy for I had not shoplifted for I never went into stores when I ran away.  From my memory I never had matches to play with.  Where would I get those in an orphanage?  As far back as I can remember I have always had a fear of knives, only to carry a small pocket knife in my mid-teen years.  He stated that I had ran away "six or seven times."  He apparently hadn't reviewed my records prior to writing this letter but was writing from his memory.  So I view those letters as a job done on an eleven year old boy who could not defend himself and who Mr. Daines thought would never know.  I remember that period of my life very well and the visit he made to me in the hospital.  I remember his anger and what he said to me during that visit.  Yes he was frustrated with me and very angry with me.  He had condoned corporal punishment and it had failed.  He had met a boy that he couldn't make conform because he had used the wrong methods.  He had used pain and fear to try and control me only making matters worse for all.  He didn't look for the real problems I was having only at the problems I was causing him.  At that time he could have easily helped me with my problems and thus eliminating his problem, then all of us would have been winners for then there wouldn't have been any more story to write, anyway not the way I had to write it.

Mrs. Beebee (Yes, that is the sadistic, pervert, abuser of little boys, real name.)

     On August 17, 1945 I was transferred from the orphanage to the  State Juvenile Home in Toledo, Iowa.  I don't believe that I ever really adjusted to that transfer not in the sense that I felt better about life.  I don't believe at first I actively thought about running away.  I wasn't very outward going except with my childhood friends, then I would laugh and play with them but if an adult was nearby I was very conscious of them.  At that time there was no favorable interaction  between any adults and myself.
     Mrs. Beebee, my first cottage mother in the juvenile home, to me was the hardest for me to understand.  Though I do not have any good feelings about Mrs. Beebee it has been hard for me to see what I believe to be the obvious.  Whenever I think of her I feel dirty in some way that is hard for me to explain.  What she had said to me about her opinion of orphan boys was to scar my mind for life.  Knowing what little I do of her I feel that her marriage somehow failed and from that she hated men.  She had raised two daughters on her own without anyone's help, meaning any child in an institution was unwanted.  She had no sons and she seen little boys growing up to be men.  I believe in all that she did was sadistically and sexually motivated.  The beatings she gave all boys she had made them strip naked in front of the other boys prior to applying her horse reins to them.  Standing or sitting naked in front of her for hours or days.  The way she had looked at me when I stood or sat naked in front of her.  Exposing us boys to the girls.  Ms. Gruber at the orphanage had instilled in me a fear of any authoritarian figure, this woman, Mrs. Beebee was to instill in me an unrealistic belief that girls were of such high moral character boys were not worthy of speaking to them.  It would have been Mrs. Beebee that would have been the first to have given me a feeling of unworthiness, more than any prior to or since her.  It would have been her that all but wiped out any modesty I may have had.  My modesty was replaced by the fear of what others would think of me if they saw me naked.  No my feelings of Mrs. Beebee are not good and I try to understand those feelings I have within me.

John and Jessie Urquhart  (the most feared people in my life)

     My next cottage parents, the Urquharts were first generation Scottish people and they strongly believed in discipline in the form of corporal punishment and other stern measures.  As Ms. Gruber and Mrs. Beebee before them they also believed in absolute control of the boys in their cottage through the use of fear.  There was no freedom of expression, to do otherwise was an invitation to some form of stern reprimand, it could be standing against the wall or only a slap or two but it could easily have been "The Board of Control."  Ms. Gruber had given me my second worst beating in my life, whereas Mrs. Beebee had given me my third worst beating, this man, Mr. Urquhart was to give me my worst beatings.  In the fourteen months I was in their cottage Mr. Urquhart used the board on me something like sixteen or seventeen times.  I still cringe in thinking of some of the things he did to me.  Was I polite?  Did I have a "pleasing personality?"  Was I a "likable young man?"  As it has been stated in my records.  You better believe I was, I was too scared to be otherwise.  My fear of adults was at it's peak in this cottage.

Unknown Cottage Parents (last cottage I was in, in the Toledo, Iowa State Juvenile Home)

     In the autumn of 1947 when I was thirteen years old I was transferred out of the Urquhart's cottage and I suddenly quit running away.  I didn't run away for the next eleven months.  I never gave this much thought until I started researching for this book, when I did, it gave me the first clue as to why I had been running away so much.
     This last cottage I was in at the juvenile home, the cottage parents had been good to me.  For some reason their name and the name of the cottage has been blocked from my memory since I left the juvenile home.  They had showed they cared about me.  They showed me attention I so desperately needed.  They had made me feel I was important.  I guess more than anything they made me feel good about myself.  Maybe it had been wrong but I fell in love with them as though they were my real parents for it had set me up for a bad fall when I felt my cottage father had turned his back on me.  To put it simply, I had overreacted from a small setback.  But that was typical of my nature not only then but through a lot of years that were to follow.

Mr. R. H. Ladd

     Mr. Ladd, the superintendent of the juvenile home, I have always had mixed feelings for.  In the first years of my stay in the juvenile home, if anyone could have helped me, it would have been him.  Even though we had first met under unfavorable circumstances when I had  ran away the second time from the juvenile home and I had seen him whip a girl, I had a respect for him.  Not a respect out of fear, though I knew that he could use a board on me but respect if only he would have spent some time with me, as he untruthfully stated in his letter of August  15, 1947, (see state juvenile records) I would have possibly opened up to him.  In that letter I stated I was going to keep running away until I got to Canada.  I remember the incident that he writes of, I was not being defiant when I told him that.  It was common knowledge I was going to run the first chance I got so I wasn't telling him any secrets.  No this was a point where I had slightly opened up to him.  He stated in the letter that I had told him I got "excitement and pleasure" in running away.  I may have told him something but I doubt very strongly if those had been my words, for those two words did not fit my vocabulary of that time in describing my running away.  I may have used the word "fun" though running away was never any fun to me.  I will deal with this letter in more detail as I will others in my comments on my records.  I will note though that he never mentioned corporal punishment confirming my belief that he knew that it was against the policy of the State of Iowa and that he was very wrong in condoning it in the institution.
     When Mr. Ladd and I had that conversation where I had stated I was going to try for Canada, we had been standing on the sidewalk on east side of the administration building, except for that second time I had ran away we had never talked in his office.  Oh he had talked to me a few times elsewhere but I will say those were one-way conversations, he did all of the talking and I kept my mouth shut.
     There was one instance of interaction between Mr. Ladd and myself  that I failed to note in the book but I think is worthy of noting at this time to show the effect that he had on me.  There was one food that I could not stand, if I tried to eat it I would throw-up and that was liver.  This one day when I was still twelve years old and was sitting alone at my table (During the period of time, about 14 months,  I was isolated from other boys.) we had liver, mashed potatoes, white gravy (my favorite gravy) green beans, milk etc.  As soon as I was served the liver I knew that I was in trouble for if I didn't clean my plate up I would be on restrictions in my cottage for the rest of the day.  I was sitting there with my hands on my lap, looking down at my plate when Mr. Ladd had walked up to my table and asked, "What's wrong Larry?  Why aren't you eating?"
    I had looked up at him, with a feeling I was about to cry and I told him, "I can't eat liver Sir."  Not explaining to him why.
    I don't know if he knew that I liked white gravy and potatoes so well but he told me to put my potatoes and gravy on top of my liver and I would find that I would like liver a lot better.  I did as he had told me and I found that I did like liver.  To this day if I find it on the menu in a restaurant I will order it.  Power of suggestion?  Mind control?  Or a strong desire to please him?  I think that it was the latter.  I  think my desire was so strong to please him that it had overcome my revulsion of liver.  I think that many things could be made of this.
     During those years I was eleven and twelve, I feel that Mr. Ladd  could have helped me a great deal if he had spent more time in talking with me rather than to me.  If he had become that person I needed so desperately.  I know at that time in my life he was the only adult that could have for I was open for him to step in.  In a subconscious way that is what I wanted, for him to come into my life and take away the terrible feelings I was having about life.  In those years more than any other years I needed a male adult to look up to and there was no one there.

Mrs. Ladd

     Mr. Ladd's wife was a stern woman, I can not remember ever seeing her smile.  No sympathy, no caring was to ever reveal itself in her eyes nor upon her lips.  She was strictly business at hand.  Of course in the first two years I was in the juvenile home, sympathy and caring  was not a trait of anyone.  People that work in children's institutions do not normally become involved with their charges.  They seem to go out of their way to be unsympathetic and uncaring, which makes an institution such a terrible place to be for a child of any age.  A child needs loving attention and a feeling that someone cares.  Though I do realize that it is an emotional strain on adult staff members of institutions and that they feel that they could lose some control of a child if they were to show any of these traits. (Thankfully parents don't think that way.)  Based on my experiences of those times where I had attention and I felt that someone cared about me, I think that it is inexcusable the way that many adults that work in institutions interact with the children they are paid to care for.  Later on in this commentary I will go into much greater detail as to my thoughts and feelings of institutions in general.

Mr. Ladd  (again)

     The last letter (Dated July 28, '48.) that Mr. Ladd wrote was despicable.  A quote from my memoirs which I wrote several years ago shortly after I had received my records and read this letter.  Quote: "I don't wish to sound bitter but it is so aggravating to see a letter like this so many years later, knowing the author is probably dead or too dam old and feeble to understand what I thought of him."  Later in my commentary I will go into much more detail as to my feelings and thoughts about this letter.
     The day I was transferred to the training school was to become  the most terrifying day of my entire life.  The men that came into my room and fought me with their fists to the point of knocking me down across the bed so they could put the handcuffs on me I never knew.  I didn't know their names.  I had never seen them before nor since that day.  Their actions had been quick and to the point, not wanting to discuss my fears nor to investigate the cause of them.  There had been no forewarning of the transfer and it had taken me by complete surprise.  Maybe if I had been prepared more for the transfer, if someone would have only talked with me about the transfer, the transfer would have gone more smoothly.  Maybe I wouldn't have been so terrified.  Maybe I would have viewed the transfer in a more realistic frame of mind rather than the terrifying world I imagined I was going into.  To me those men were the ones who were going to literally kill me and that was by beating me to death.  A child's mind, even at fourteen can come up with some very terrifying and unrealistic pictures as to what will be unless someone will take the time to understand and calm those fears, which wasn't done in my case.  At this point I might point out, I had no hearing, I had not been convicted of any crime, unlike most boys I was transferred to the training school and not sentenced.  I could have been kept in the training school or at a later date sent back to the juvenile home until I was twenty-one years of age. Unbelievable?  Remember in those years of my life I was committed to institutions not sentenced they could have found reasons to have kept me for my entire life if they had wanted to.

Mr. and Mrs. Leaper

     At the training school there had been no consideration shown to me by the staff members in the orientation unit.  To them, if they even knew my history, I had been a bad boy in the orphanage and was given a chance when they sent me to the juvenile home and I had continued my bad ways and now I was in the reform school.  I was a "Bad Boy" and they were going to make me regret I ever came there.  If I had murdered someone they couldn't have made me feel any worse about myself.
     Mr. Leaper, he was to give me my last whipping and that had been when I was near my fifteenth birthday.  In the book I feel I have described their character and my feelings about them fairly accurate so I will go on to the person that was (still is) the most difficult for me to understand, Mr. Parker.

Mr. Murray Parker

     Today, some forty-seven years later, if someone was to ask me, did they still beat boys when I went to the training school, I wouldn't be able to give them an honest answer for I don't know, other than what Mr. Leaper did.  I was never put to a post or tied to some other device nor did I know of any boy that was.  But to me the fact as to whether they did or didn't isn't important, to me, in my mind, all of the time I was in the training school I believed they did.  Even though I was strongly believing this I would have still ran away except for two factors that entered my life shortly after I became an "inmate," a prisoner in the Iowa Training School for Boys.  Possibly because of those two factors my life was saved for I fear that I would have been shot and killed during one of my escapes from the
training school, for if during one of my escapes I had been ordered to stop, I wouldn't have obeyed their command but turned and ran and they would have shot and possibly killed me.  One factor was the chance of going home to my mother, the other was Mr. Parker.
    Mr. Parker:   How can I possibly describe my feelings I had of Mr. Parker?  I came to love Mr. Parker so much that when it came time for me to leave the training school and go home to my mother I didn't want to go.  I wanted to stay with him but because I was told to go and it was expected of me I went home with my mother. This was quite a change that had come over me from when I had first entered the training school, all because of my love for Mr. Parker.  I was fourteen years old when I had met Mr. Parker.  I was starved for love and attention.  I was desperately in need of someone that would show me that he cared.  There was an open spot in my heart and he stepped in to fill it.  We talked together, we laughed together, we ran foot races together.  (Which he always won.)  To me, in my mind he was my father in every sense of the word.  I adored him, I worshiped him.  If he wasn't near I became uncomfortable even to the point of being frighten that I might lose him.  The day that he turned his back on me, denying me any love, any consideration, all but destroyed me for life.  It would be years before I would open up to anyone else, then only to eventually to lose that person also.  A person in my adult life I will later mention in the adult section of my commentary.
     If I was to say who was the one person in my childhood that had the most effect on my life it would have to be Mr. Parker.  His love for me and his eventual turning from me was to burn deep into my mind that there was no love out there for me.  A feeling I was to carry all of my life, a feeling that no one loved nor cared about me.  From that period of my life onward I have never but in some very rare instances have I been able to feel love from others.  How could anyone love or even care about a person like me.  A feeling that was to grow to such a point all I could do was to give anything I had or of my being to attain what I couldn't feel, the love radiating from others.  As it was so apply put by  someone I loved, I tried to buy love from others.  My love for others was to magnify to such a point that it was destroying my mind, I had to love them so much more than normal to make up for the love I couldn't feel from them.  I couldn't function logically but only through my emotions.  All of this will be discussed later in my commentary but was brought forth at this time for I believe that it was when Mr. Parker turned his back on me that this problem of love, not love, first surfaced, sort of "The straw that broke the camels back."
     In my book I had mentioned before I had ran away from the training school some rules that I hadn't quite followed had been overlooked.  There seemed to have been some consideration shown me where I had broken some of the minor rules which were not overlooked when other boys did the same.  I never thought much about it then but mostly I noticed this during my research for the book.  I believe now that most staff members at the training school that were directly involved with me knew of my past history, I was orphaned at four and I had essentially grown up in institutions and because of this they had given me more consideration than they would have given a boy that had gotten into trouble and had come from their home.  But running away had destroyed all of this and my relationship with Mr. Parker and his family.
     At the time I was in the training school I never talked to adults or other boys about my life before I went to the training school.  I think you can understand my feelings of not being too proud of who I was and where I came from.  Though I had never talked about this to others I did start to write my memoirs when I was fourteen years old and it had been Mr. Parker that had told me that I needed to wait until I was much older for I hadn't lived long enough to have anything interesting to write about.  When he had told me that I had felt what he had said was true and had thrown my writings away. From there on though, when I sat alone in the day or as I went to sleep at night my thoughts would always be of the past, never of the future.
     I had been fifteen years old and in the training school for the second time when I lost Mr. Parker, before that I had been home and I had met my stepfather on a personal basis for the first time.  Oh I had known him since I was twelve years old but this was the first time we had come together on a one-to-one basis.

Edgar Chance  (my first stepfather)

     My stepfather's real name was Edgar Chance.  Most people called him "Ed" I called him "Sir" into my late teens.  There were a lot of things I didn't understand in those years when I knew him.  In the first weeks after I had come home from the training school you could of handed me a three dollar bill and I would have thought that it was real.  I had to read what was on the nickel and dime to tell which was worth more.  My uncle Howard (One of my mother's older brothers.) was paying me twenty-five cents an hour, minimum wage at that time was about seventy-five cents an hour but I didn't know that and I thought I was being paid a fortune.  Working forty hours a week for him I was getting ten dollars a week.  Came right out of his pocket.  I didn't know anything about income taxes or social security, seems that he overlooked that matter too.  Of course that way he didn't have to pay minimum wages either.  I guess it was all right though, I being very naive, happily thinking I was earning a fortune every week and him being happy that he was getting by so cheaply.  Of course I being so naive I didn't think that all out then, only when of late I have sat down and tried to understand him did I discover that little jewel.
     It had been the same with my stepfather, I had been very naive, I didn't understand why he was treating me the way he was.  At that age, right after my fifteenth birthday, I felt everyone knew everything about me and I wasn't feeling too good about myself and some of the things I had been involved in.  I had been told on many occasions, “If you don't like whippings, then all you have to do is to quit running away and conform.”  Meaning the physical abuse was my fault, I was to blame for it.  With feelings like this, then I also viewed sexual abuses, sexual assaults upon my person as my own fault, or I was to blame for that.   So it had only been natural for me to think that everyone else felt the same way about me as I did.  I had to prove to them I wasn't that type of boy.  I wanted them to love me but as I had already mentioned by now I was having difficulty in recognizing someone's love for me or even that they liked me.  That made me want to work doubly hard to prove my worth and gain their respect and acceptance.
     My stepfather, and as much as I hate to say it, nor my mother ever expected me to come home from the institutions.  My stepfather seen it as an intrusion into his life.  He wanted me out and I don't  think he cared how I went.  What he thought he could prove by acting the way he did towards me, I'm not too sure.  Maybe he thought I would run away or do something to be sent back to the reform school.  If that is what he thought then I guess it worked for I had done both.  Was he a sexual deviate?  No I don't feel that he was.  I now realize that he knew nothing of my life in the institutions other than what he saw on visiting days.  (which were very rare)  He was harassing me as some adult men will do to mid-teen- age boys, only in a more spiteful way.  I was naive and very impressionable, I believed anything I was told.  When he told me he was going to get me in bed and have sex with me, I believed him.  I felt there was nothing I could do about it to defend myself.  There was no one to tell even if I had thought someone would have helped me.  I surely couldn't go against him for I had been conditioned never to strike out at an adult.  The only time I had done that had ended in disastrous results for me when they had put the handcuffs on me to take me to the training school.

     I have pretty well covered all of the people that had direct contact with me as I was growing up in my pre-teen and into my teen-age years, the ones who had the most effect on my life.  There were some in the book, Mr. Cosgrove, Mr. Ramsy and others that were mentioned that I don't feel need any further description.  There were others in my life that had a lot of control as to the fate of my life but I will more or less cover them in my detailed commentary of my state juvenile records and other data.