Byrdis

Byrdis Oyler Sutor was my father's adoptive mother. She had and continues to have a profound influence on my life. She graduated from Knox College in 1930. We grew up on the farm with our grandparents living on the west side of the road and us living on the east side. There were very few days that we didn't see each other. Growing up I cannot remember a time when she wasn't gently telling me and my brothers that we were going to go to college and graduate. It was entirely fitting that before she passed away we all did manage to accomplish that goal.
I have written in the past about adoption and about how my grandmother Byrdis had been contacted by her birth mother. She had wanted nothing to do with her birth mother and had in no uncertain terms rejected her attempts. It was very hurtful to her when her adoptive daughter, my Aunt Sally, had contacted Dora, her birth mother. Sometimes when you explore family history you find things that give you a tiny glimpse into what Paul Harvey would have called, the rest of the story. I am in the process of scanning pictures from my mother's house and have a couple of boxes from the attic of Byrdis and John my grandparents. The other day while scanning I decided to start reading a stack of letters that was in one of the boxes from Byrdis. The majority of the letters were from her mother Laura Byrd Oyler and were correspondence regarding Byrdis' freshman year at Knox College in 1926 and 1927. Interestly enough Byrdis resided at Whiting Hall which is now apartments for the elderly. Carol's mother lives there. The letters got interesting when I found one from her father George Oyler dated January 1929.

"My Dear, Georgea Byrdis,
Just a few lines. You know your mother does all the writing but I have been and always am thinking of you when not busy, and now especially when I think of the terrible ordeal you have had to go through the last month or more and I do feel greatly grieved for you. But now that the truth is out I want you to be just as you always have been, just happy and care free and know that we love you and if possible love you more than ever for the big way you have taken this great big surprise and I know you are big enough mentally and every other way to throw this to the wild winds and to know you are more dear to us than ever."

The letter then moves on to other issues having nothing to do with what I am writing about today. The next letter in the stack was one from her mother.

"Darling, I had not taken your letter down to the hall box we usually mail them there in the eve after Dad comes from office he's read what I had to say, bless him he is so interested too. Honey it seems to me I can detect a note of sadness now and then in your dear letters and I am not surprised. I have my sad moments too. Darling we wish you did not know and you should not, I am your mother, nothing can change, some one else did give birth to my baby, some one who did not want her even after she had had you 28 months, had all that chance for pleasure, and to know how sweet and darling you were; walked off and left you, had nothing whatever to do with placing you where you are loved and cared for. There after all these years to show up and bring nothing but disappointment to you. True dear, the secret was something for us to think and talk about. O how willing we were to suffer for you and your happiness and now I feel as you do, I wish no one knew.... But darling you are our darling daughter. No parents could love a child more. It is the biggest thing we have for you dear, just love. You must not allow this to cheat you out of the happiness that is yours.... You had not one thing to do with the whole arrangement, you started being ours because we wanted you, Now we want and have each other, we must stay happy. We are all homesick for each other, Dad, you and I, we want to see you and I'm sure you feel the same."

The letter goes on about other trivial issues but I found the P.S. at the end interesting. Apparently her mother was so upset that she put her own address on the letter and it showed back up in her mailbox the next day.

Where am I going with all this? It gives us a tiny glimpse into what happens when a birth parent shows back up in the life of an adopted child. Byrdis didn't know she was adopted when her birth mother showed up out of the blue and dropped that bomb on her. She is a college student about 20 years of age and discovers that she was not born to the couple that raised her. I have read the letter she wrote to her birth mother telling her in she was nothing to her and the Oylers were her parents. I think when you look at the two letters from the Oylers you get an idea how painful this experience was for all of them. It opened my eyes to why she was so strongly opposed to adoptive children and parents finding each other. Her personal experience had left a wound that I think never completely healed.

The picture below is  from left,Byrdis Oyler Sutor, Laura Byrd Oyler, John G Sutor and George Washington Oyler. It was taken around 1937 when John and Byrdis adopted my Dad. She is with the family that was hers in every way except DNA. It is a legacy of love passed from her parents to her and then on to my father. I owe them my thanks and understand more fully why Byrdis felt as she did.