"They never got around to adopting me, but I didn't mind," he told CNY. Did he feel he was one of the family? "You bet."

Keefe, who was sent to Nebraska under the auspices of the New York Foundling Hospital, was one of a group of people from all over the country who attended a reunion n Manhattan last month of children, and their descendants, who were sent out West in the late 1800s and early 1900s on "Orphan Trains."

At a time when there were no child welfare laws or government agencies to deal with abandoned children. Private agencies like the Foundling, established in 1869 by the Sisters of Charity, sent thousands of children to waiting families on Midwest farms.

To set up their orphan train program, the Foundling's nuns worked with parish priests in selected Western towns who screened prospective families and personally visited their homes before children were sent. Social workers or other professionals made quarterly evaluations after the children were placed.

The nuns' goal was to relieve pressure on over-crowded city orphanages and to ensure that the children-most of them from immigrant Catholic families-would be raised in the Catholic faith.

Keefe, asked if he was raised in the Catholic faith, said, "I sure was. That's the only way they could get me. The Foundling only placed children with Catholic families. "

The trains stopped running in 1929, when legislation restricted placements from New York state. There were misgivings about the orphan train system even then. But there was no disagreement that home care was better than institutional care.

Keefe, who was taken in by a family that already had two girls and a boy, learned about his background from "a nosy aunt who let it out one time."

"All the kids in school knew I was from the orphan train. I was the only one who didn't know," he said, adding that he wasn't at all disturbed by the news. "I never talked about it with Ma," he said. "I figured if she wanted to talk about it she would talk. Otherwise, I was well satisfied."

Keefe, who moved to Los Angeles at age 28, said he doesn't "have an inkling" about how he came to be placed on the orphan train. He said he's been stymied in attempts to learn about his birth family other than the name and birthplace of his mother: Nellie Callaghan, born in Manhattan at 419 E. 48th St.

"If you were in the U. N. building, you'd be sitting on it," he said of the address.

Note: Bill Keefe passed away in 1998