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Comments:
addiann - 2004-09-20 19:41:58 Great info--their play Orphan Train looks great.* * * * * * * * * * * * Anna - 2004-09-20 20:22:57 What appears to be a link (they tell their stories) doesn't link to anything.... (I'd love to read their stories!).* * * * * * * * * * * * addiann - 2004-09-20 20:26:48 except that they don't name the playwright! * * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2004-09-20 20:34:20 Oops, sorry, Anna, I fixed & checked it--working now. The stories are way at the bottom of that page--poems, too.* * * * * * * * * * * * Anna - 2004-09-20 20:35:58 Oh! Wow! The Children's Aid Society -- as a kid, we all used to ice skate on a flooded field in their summer camp. I grew up with a kid whose family directed the place. I had no idea what a past they (the society) had!* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2004-09-20 20:38:17 Addiann, the playwright's name is Dennis North. Anna: Really? That's interesting! Yes, the Children's Aid Society appears to have been a very active group. * * * * * * * * * * * * lynne - 2004-09-20 21:14:11 Wow, that is really cool. I had never heard of the Orphan Train before reading this post. * * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2004-09-20 21:21:57 Lynne, I'm not surprised to hear you say that--it's still a somewhat little-known chapter in history, although no fewer than 200,000 children total traveled the trains.* * * * * * * * * * * * addiann - 2004-09-20 21:41:45 yup, that's the one I was thinking about. He's a Detroit-area former lawyer who decided he wanted to write plays. * * * * * * * * * * * * Jane Irwin - 2004-09-21 08:48:04 I saw "Orphan Train" when it was at the Purple Rose. It was very, very good. Highly recommended and very well staged.* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2004-09-21 08:56:52 One of the scenes appears to be the children sitting in a boxcar, and from what I read last night that was indeed how the early orphans were transported...just thrown into a boxcar, good heavens.* * * * * * * * * * * * Jane Irwin - 2004-09-21 11:40:05 Another heartbreaking Orphan Train song is written by David Massengill and recorded by Tom Russell (and others). Rider On An Orphan Train * * * * * * * * * * * * Anna - 2004-09-21 13:42:13 I read through a bunch of the stories just now, and I have to say that I'm not sure that being an orphan these days is better. In some cases, it may be a good deal worse. Foster homes are all too often nightmarish, and group homes for teenagers are often just shy of a minimum security prison. I read the one story about the orphan who lived with his brother on Hope Farm before finding a loving home in the midwest. Sounds like what some of them escaped was far worse -- though knowning what we know now about kids and what they do and don't understand, I'm sure that things could have been handled differently vis a vis what they were told about why they were separated from their birth parents, etc.* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2004-09-21 13:46:44 That song sounds very good--I'll have to check it out once I'm home; thank you Jane. That's an interesting observation, Anna. A lot of those orphan train stories are reasonably happy. Some aren't. But seems the majority reflect an average or good experience--would you say that's right?* * * * * * * * * * * * Anna - 2004-09-21 16:44:27 In my admittedly non-scientific study, I would say that's true :) Some sad stories, some regrets about not being able to contact birth relatives, but many found happiness. Foster homes are often horrible (not that I have any first-hand experience with them, but it seems to me it would be lonely to be tossed in with a family you didn't know rather than other kids, and there are so many weird motives, like the extra money from the state that the worst of foster parents go into it for. And I do have first-hand experience with group homes for teenager -- as a volunteer, not a teen -- and they are AWFUL! ).* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2004-09-21 16:47:56 Well, it sure sounds as though you have stories too...what about them made them so bad, if you don't mind my asking?* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2004-09-21 19:09:04 Jane, that is such a beautiful song; thank you so much for posting that mp3. Talk about a good example of why I bother to blog. Rider on an Orphan Train Once I rode an orphan train, and my brother did the same. They split us up in misery; James was 5, and I was 3. He got taken by some pair, but for me, they did not care. We were brave, and did not cry, when they made us say goodbye. That was the last I saw of him, before some family took me in. But I swore I'd run away, find my brother James someday. I went back when I as grown, to see the old Children's Home, And I asked for to see my file, when I was an orphan child. It's sad, they say, there's been a flood, far washed away in Missouri mud. Sometimes life is a stone wall, You either climb, or else you fall. In every town, on every street, oh, the faces that I meet. And I wonder, could one be my brother James come back to me. Though I don't know where he's gone, I have searched my whole life long. Now I roam from town to town, but there's no orphan Lost and Found. Sometimes a dream, a pleasant sight, my brother James and I unite, Remembering our last goodbye, no longer brave, we start to cry. I hope he lives a life of ease, and all his days are soft warm breeze. May he sit upon a throne, may he never sleep alone. Once I rode an orphan train, and my brother did the same. They split us up in misery; James was 5, and I was 3.* * * * * * * * * * * * raymond - 2004-09-21 19:35:34 My dad's father died of ague when my dad was 5 and his sister was 3. Times were tough up on the west coast of Michigan. The kids were shipped off to an orphan asylum in Greenville, Ohio. It really fucked them up, and they passed the problems along to their children. It wasn't their fault. Yet they made a point of revisiting the place where they lived some miserable years.* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2004-09-21 19:59:22 Wow. Thank you for that gripping, terribly sad story, Raymond. It is amazing to read about a local connection to the orphan situation back then; thank you for sharing it.* * * * * * * * * * * * add your comment: |