ABILENE - George Meason choked back tears because he had to tell his story and he won’t "smooth anything down."

Standing before a class of at risk middle school students at Project PASS, the 79-year-old Odessan was recounting the day in 1920 when a train loaded with orphaned youngsters screeched to a halt in northeast Texas. The children were sent west from New York City in search of new families.

Although only 5 years old at the time, Mr. Meason said he clearly remembers that two Brooklyn boys stepped off the train in Whitewright, Texas. "I was one of them," he told the students in a cracking voice, "and my brother Julius was the other. I knew something was going to happen, but I didn't know what. I grasped my brother and he grasped me. They pulled him back on the train and I was crying, "Don't take him. Please, don't take him." .

"My new mother yielded me a good licking right there in the railroad station."

 Mr. Meason is among the estimated 500 survivors who rode the Orphan Trains in the early 1900s. More than 100,000 orphans are said to have ridden the rails west between 1854 and 1929. According to historical accounts, some landed in the homes of families eager to embrace children. Others were placed with farmers and ranchers who searched for indentured servants on the depot platforms when the children were displayed - "white slaves," one train rider called the tots. Mr. Meason said he fits into the latter category.

He was invited to campus by teacher Shannon Conley, who introduced her at-risk students to stories of the orphan Trains in hopes of encouraging the teens. "We're trying to let students see that the horrible realities of life can be overcome," Ms. Conley explained. "It's accomplished what I hoped because this man speaks from the heart. They can feel his pain."

Mr. Meason, like most of the Orphan Train riders, refused to discuss the episode for almost 70 years. Finally in 1987, during the first annual reunion of the Orphan Train Heritage Society of America, a reporter persuaded him to talk. "We were supposed to keep our mouths shut about what went on---talk about nothing," Mr. Meason said. Everyone was bottled up with it. If you keep things secret, it makes it a little rougher later on. When I said the first three or four words, I couldn’t stop."

In 1920, Mr. Meason and his four siblings arrived on Texas soil and were split in five different stops. Young George was adopted by a nomatic preacher and his wife on his sixth birthday. He said he learned his place on the family tree that Christmas when his grandmother gave each of his cousins a shiny quarter and a hug, and he got a stinging slap.

 His parents weren't much better, he said. They refused to help him with his schoolwork, blamed him for his father's always losing his pulpit (though he said he later learned the man's inability to pay rent and his mother's big tongue" were the culprits), and lined up jobs for him to make them money.

"That young in life, you don't know what to expect," he said. "I couldn't understand why they treated me the way they did. I just learned to live and cope with it.

"At first," he continued, "I thought they got me for love. When I was older, I found out it was to make a living for them. They had no mercy. They were always asking, 'Did you make any money today?' and the hand would go out. They got me for more than just love."

After high school, his parents, without his permission enlisted him in the Civilian Conservation Corps so they could receive a $25 monthly pension. They also asked for a portion of his $5 monthly salary. He said he re-enlisted for a second 18-month tour with the CCC simply to stay away from his family.

Still he cared for and tended to his adoptive mother and father’s needs until their deaths. "We orphans were loyal to the people who took us in through thick and thin," Mr Meason said, struggling to explain why. "There's a feeling of obligation, I guess I’ve never seen a train rider yet who cast his parents aside. They had adopted me and gave me a place to sleep. I guess they did the best they could for me in that particular time in history.

Today, the retired postal worker with the white crewcut, crow face and fading blue eyes spends much of his time searching for and counseling Orphan riders. More than 1,300 children were placed in Texas and many in Lubbock, so he suspects a few may have gotten off in the Abilene area.

"If we don't tell the truth, the world will never know how it really was," Mr. Meason said. "It's important because it's a part of history. A lot of people may not believe it, but it really happened. I'm not ashamed to say, "'I'm an Orphan Train rider."