February 13,1997

Story by Nancy Owen

The 14-year old boy told his long widowed mother he wanted a little sister with "blue eyes and brown hair, One month later Frank Kemper had his baby sister. Mary Jane Baade, age 2 years, 2 months, came to Grand Island on the orphan train to meet her new family.

Her story, by her own admission, is a "long, poignant one." And only she can tell it properly. She will talk about the orphan train at the North Platte Public Library Friday at 4 p.m. "I think her story is an intriguing one," says Mitzi Mueller, children's librarian.

Of the nine traveling west that summer of 1912, Mary Jane was the "littlest one of the whole bunch,," she says. She remembers bits of the journey. It was the first time she had ever been outside.

Placed in a New York orphanage when she was 2 weeks old she lived inside the walls of the Catholic institution for the first 26 months of her life. The nuns there stitched the children's clothing from old bed-sheets.

Mary Jane left the orphanage to travel thousands of miles to a new home.

After the 2 1/2-day train journey, Mary Jane was anxious. The other children pushed her to the back as they scrambled outside at their final stop.

Agents who traveled West to arrange placements had selected the Kemper home for Mary Jane. Many of the orphan-train children had to line up for inspection when they got off the trains. Farmers would check their teeth and overall health before choosing them.

"I was spoken for before I got to Nebraska. They didn't line me up," she says.

"When I got off the train, my brother was looking for me," she says. "There she is," she heard Frank yell. And from that day forward she was, at last. part of a family.

Frank carried his little sister everywhere. "They were such wonderful times." she says. Indeed she was lucky. Mary Jane had been chosen.

Of the nine kids sent to St. Libory, two asked to return to New York. One family "worked the sam hill out of their adopted boy," Mary Jane says.

Fortunately, the orphanage kept close tabs on the children it placed in homes. At that time, widows were allowed to adopt children. Once a year, each July, "they would visit, to check on us, " she says.

"The sisters and Grandpa, who was really a priest, would always come to my house first. I'd sit an his lap and he'd ask me where all the other children are living?--as if he didn't know! He would always give me a dollar bill before leaving. That was big money.

Frank and his mother, Adelaide, took the little girl home to St. Libory. The official town population was then 110 people. "But when I arrived. they changed, it to 110 and a half." she says. Smiling.

Scared in her new, surroundings, Jane didn't say a word for two weeks. Soon her mother grew worried. Perhaps the little girl could not hear or speak. She resolved to take Mary Jane to the doctor the following week. That Sunday, Adelaide asked her son, "Do you have a clean handkerchief for church?"

"TAHASAKEE!" yelled little Mary Jane.

"What did you say?" asked her mother.

"TAHASAKEE!" she replied. Her mother, relieved, corrected her, "Handkerchief, Mary." "And from that day on, I never, shut my mouth," Mary Jane says. In childhood, "I counted myself very happy," she says.

"I had 14 curls and Mother wouldn't let me cut my hair until I was 14," she says fondly.

Her mother and brother told her they always wanted a little girl to love. "My mother always made me promise not to search for my birth mother while she was still alive. I never did," says Mary Jane.

At 19, Mary Jane needed identification to get married. She sent to the orphanage for her papers. She received her original baptism certificate, which bypassed the orphanage.

"It was a big sour mistake - it should have come directly from the orphanage," she says. For the first time in her life, Mary Jane knew the town she was born Waterbury, Conn., and the name of her mother, Mabel Collins.

When she told the others who had come from the orphanage, they were angry and jealous, asking, "Why can't we find out where we're from?" Mary couldn't answer that.

Mary Jane was married with two young sons. As she was listening to the radio, a winner was announced in a "Why do you like Tide?" contest. The woman's name was Etta Collins from Waterbury, Conn.

Mary Jane jotted down Collins' address. On a whim, she contacted her. "Are you one of my relatives?" Mary Jane wrote.

"No, but I know your relatives and the doctor who delivered You," Collins wrote back. Their correspondence might have ended there, but fate intervened.

Mary Jane was renting out the family basement to a GI's pregnant wife and child. One day, the renter, nicknamed "Slugger" for her large frame,, approached Mary with the chance of a lifetime. "I need a companion to travel back East. My husband will pay for your ticket if you'll come with me," she said.

Mary Jane hesitated. "I had always wanted to go back to New York," she says. But she wasn't sure she could handle the emotional trip. Her husband settled the matter. "You're going," he said.

When she arrived in New York, she was thinking, "What am I doing in this ungodly big town all alone? I was so sorry I'd come."

Mary Jane's radio friend, Etta Collins, insisted she stay at her home. Etta and her husband arranged for Mary Jane to meet the doctor who delivered her 37 years before. "I can only hurt myself now," she thought.

When she arrived for her 10 o'clock appointment, the doctor, a "big, fat man with bushy beautiful gray hair," greeted her with, "What brought you here? After all these years, why would you stir up all this trouble?"

"I didn't come here to hurt any one," Mary Jane replied.

'The doctor kept "digging me about coming," she says. Finally she could take no more abuse. "Did you ever have a mother?" she asked the doctor. He smiled. She knew she had gotten through to him.

"The doctor gave me all the dope. He as much as told me Mabel Collins was my mother," she says.

Later that day the doctor called to give her the address of her half brother, Joseph. The Collines drove her to his home, a huge mansion with a Cadillac parked out front. "All this beauty and they put me in an orphanage?" she remembers thinking.

Mary Jane gathered her courage. She walked to the door, picked up the door knocker and let it fall loudly.

A woman in her 50s answered. "She looked at me. I looked at her," she says. Finally, the younger woman spoke. "Is Joseph home?" she asked.

"No he's not. I'm here taking care of my grandchild. I'm Joseph's mother. May I help you?," the older woman asked.

Mary Jane knew then she was looking into the eyes of her mother. She froze. What could she say to the woman who had given her away nearly four decades earlier? Mary Jane turned to leave, but thought better of it.

"Yes, maybe you can help me," she said. The two women went inside to talk. Mary Jane got right to the point, "Does Joseph know he has a half sister'?" she asked.

"Oh no, Joseph never had a half sister," the woman replied.

Mary Jane paused. "Yes he did, and I am that half sister," she said.

The older woman began crying slowly and softly. Mary Jane began crying, too. But neither said anything.

Mary Jane kept thinking: "Why doesn't she tell me she's my mother?" It was a question Mary Jane would ask herself for 30 years. Mabel Collins never admitted Mary Jane was her daughter, wouldn't admit she'd had an illegitimate child marriage.

Before returning home to her family, Mary Jane called her mother. I know who you are. Here is my address. Maybe someday you'll wish you had it."

She boarded the same train she had ridden as an orphan and "cried all the way home to Grand Island." When she got home, a letter from her mother was waiting. The two corresponded for 30 years until Mabel's death in 1978.

Today, at age 85, Mary Jane still gets emotional talking about the woman "who looked just like me, and "never admitted she was my mother."

Mary Jane has saved each of her 70 letters, now yellowed with age, The letters all begin "My dear Mary" and are full of newsy, everyday happenings. They are her only connection to the woman who refused to claim her. A few letters contain various claims and excuses why Mabel is not Mary Jane's mother; a few hint at the truth of their relationship. But never did Mabel write the words Mary Jane longed to see, "Mary Jane, I am your mother."