Globusz^® Publishing 

I was born in 1937 in East Chicago, Indiana. My parents were Nellie and Angelo Milazzo. From the start of their marriage, things did not go right. My mother, of English descent, was a notorious bar maiden and had several previous marriages and children. She was carrying my brother when she married my father and it was not his son. She had many run in problems with the State Children’s Welfare Department. How many children she had? I am not sure, but am aware of at least five counting my brother and I. She was never allowed to keep any of them very long. I no longer try to find her and have no anger against her. It is her cross to carry.

After thirty five years, I did manage to see her again and only because a half sister, who I just met for the first time, asked me to go to visit her. It was a strange meeting as she asked her who her friend was! When she found out she was both surprised and somewhat glad to see me. There were a few awkward moments at that meeting.

My father was of Sicilian descent and came here as an immigrant with other family members. He married my mother around 1936. I’m not sure of the exact date. He was a simple, quiet man and wanted very much to have a nice family like all his family had at that time. When he met my mother, he fell in love with her. Many family members did not want him to marry her, as they did not like her and her past. He did not listen and married her anyway. It was a disaster for him in the end.

All that happened between my mother and my father is from what little I was told by the State of Illinois and some relatives later. What ever actually happened is lost from my memory, perhaps from the trauma of events. I was told that my mother after separating from my father loved to tout both of us around where he could see us. But he could not have anything to do with us. He went into a serious round of mental depression over all this.

Somewhere around 1941 my father moved to be with his brother in San Francisco. He was always trying to contact my mother and see if he could come back to be with her and his two sons. My brother became my brother since my father had the county records show he was the paternal father, even though he was not. Our mother simply dated other men and played the barmaid and was very loose. When I saw her the last time she told me the men called her ‘Nellie Bell’.

The trauma and problems from all this caused my father to hang himself in my uncle’s garage in San Francisco and finally for the State of Illinois to issue a court order to take us away from our mother and placed in ISSCS. There were several attempts by family members on my father’s side to adopt us and take us away from the state home. None were financially qualified to do so. A few local or close relatives on our father’s side did keep in touch with us while in the state home.

Another problem was that my brother was only a half brother and not of Sicilian decent and that side of the family did not want him, only me. In some ways I am glad we were not split up over that. I do love my brother and always will. My brother is just over one year older than me. If one sees a photo of us, it is hard to see the family tie we have. He follows our mother’s side, and I, my fathers side.

Whatever the trauma of all this did to me is lost and locked as a bad memory in my mind. My memory only recalls the time after I was placed in the state home. This did not include how and when it was done, just one day which I will discuss later. I did not even remember I had a brother until much later in the state home. Any hope for a family life faded when this happened. It was not until I was older that I realized fully what I had missed.

My brother was a stranger to me for many years and will explain that later. I still love him as my brother, but have a slight feeling we are not as close as regular brothers should be. We were not allowed to live in the same house while in the home. That policy was changed years after we left there. Although we live thousand of miles apart, we still keep in touch. He lives back in Illinois and I live in Hawaii now.

Currently my direct family is mostly a first cousin in San Francisco. He was one of the sons of the uncle where my father hung himself in their home. I have visited there many times and have a very close relationship with my first cousin, David. He and his sister are the only relatives – outside my brother – I have any contact with anymore. There is a foster family, which I will cover later in this book.

This is indeed a very bleak and unhappy sounding event for any child to go through. I cannot say why many of the children in this home are there. I know many were wards of the courts placed there. There were other reasons, but I cannot say what they are. This book is merely to state true and known facts by me to show what can happen in these type institutions and homes for children. If you read this, you may find it very difficult to understand how things happen there and even have doubts all this happened.