During the month of January, Sherry and I began to talk. Her adorable Texas accent, spunky charm and excitement that we have connected came across right away. We spoke about 45 minutes late Friday afternoon on January 12th where she let me know a little more about who my Dad was (which was confirmed based on the ancestry tree that Mary had put together), where she lived during her pregnancy and why she has been looking for me the past two years. When she discovered she was pregnant, she told my father. He was a young man she met and dated during the summer on the rebound from her first love break-up a couple months before. He was heading to college so having a child was not in his plan. Sherry’s parents decided the best place for her to continue schooling, protect her brother David Richey (my uncle) who was only ten years old at the time, and maintain her reputation, was to live with her Aunt Frances and Uncle Pete in Plano. Sherry would go to a local college where they taught high school classes for unwed mothers during the week while her aunt and uncle would go to work. On March 23, 1965 she went into labor. Sherry said she called her Aunt telling her she had horrible pains to which her Aunt replied “Oh my word you are going into labor!” Aunt Frances was working this day so Sherry had to wait for her to come home and then take her to the hospital. St Paul University hospital, which is now no longer having been torn down in 2015 and replaced by a new medical center under UT Southwestern, was where she went to have me. When she started to give birth they gave her laughing gas to put her to sleep which was done to ensure the adoption was followed through. When Sherry woke up she asked the nurse who came in to check on her what she had to which the nurse replied ‘a baby girl’ but she was not allowed to see me and know anything about me. After a week in the hospital, Sherry went back home where the birth of her ‘baby girl Richey’ was never to be spoken of again until Sherry was much older.
In 2015 Sherry decided to tell her husband Gary about the baby girl born on March 23 and it was with his encouragement that she reached out to an agency to start searching. Later in Sherry’s life, she asked her Mom if she knew what happened to me. Her mom said she didn’t know, but wasn’t sure I even made it after birth. Unclear why her Mom said this either because she just didn’t know or because she didn’t want Sherry to look for me, this statement made her even more determined to get some closure and find out if I was still alive or not. Very little progress was being made with the agency so Sherry was ready to call a woman who had helped someone locate her parents when she received my letter.
The next day, January 13th, we had our first FaceTime call while I was in between my son’s volleyball games at McCormick Center. I found a quiet place on the 2nd floor to meet her via video chat and it was during this conversation that I learned she had reached out to all of her adult kids (Angi and Tony) who lived nearby and asked that they come over to her house that Saturday morning. When Sherry called, they all asked ‘what is wrong, Mama’ because it was a little odd that she wanted them to come to the house together. The one sister Kristen who is in Virginia, was told via the phone later that morning since she lives so far away. When she told them all about having another sister, they were pretty excited, very supportive of their mom and were curious to learn more about me. I was equally relieved how well they took the news. The one question that they asked was why their mom never mentioned it before. The main reason she explained was that she wasn’t sure if I was even alive and what would she say without knowing this?
We FaceTime’d for a good 1 1/2 hours and I knew I needed to get to the next volleyball game but we kept coming up with more questions about each other. Can you imagine having 52 years of catching up to do? I made it to his next game leaving it that we would speak again in a couple days.