Finding Family

by Richard Hill

  Since those family members had refused to identify a relative rumored to be my father, Carol decided to hunt up some old family photos and make her own guess.

  She showed me a small snapshot of a man leaning against a car. He was tall and slender with nearly black hair. Although the photo was too small to see the details of his face, there was something about him that reminded me of myself.

  His name was Ray Bonie. He was the brother of Bill French’s first wife, Marie, whom Bill left to be with my grandmother, Marion. Carol described him as a handsome playboy known to date a lot of girls.

  I told Carol that my non-identifying information claimed my biological father was Polish. The Bonie family, originally spelled Boni, was Italian.

  Yet how could I know for sure that the name and nationality in my file were correct? The court staff would have recorded whatever Jackie told them. I was sure nobody checked this stuff. What if Jackie also had been protecting the same man?

  I thought Mr. Bonie was worth a look.

  Fortunately, Jeanette also lived in Lansing. So I dropped off Ray’s photo to her. About a week later, she called to report that she had tracked down Ray and had spoken with him by phone.

  She told me Ray remembered Jackie’s mother, Marion, right away because he once found her with Bill French at a bar on the corner of Plymouth and Stark. As Jeanette told me this, I thought that intersection sounded familiar. Then I remembered it was near Marion’s home.

  Since Bill was married to his sister, Marie, Ray was not happy finding him with Marion. He pummeled Bill, ran Marion out of the bar, and told his sister what happened.

  As his conversation with Jeanette continued, Ray admitted knowing Jackie. But he did not remember ever going out with her. Nor had he heard any rumor placing someone in his family with her.

  Ray was quite clear about one thing, however. If he thought for a minute that he had a son somewhere, he would be right there.

  After years of adoption search work, Jeanette could usually tell when people were lying to her. She was convinced that Ray was telling the truth. He was not my father and this was another dead end.

  Late in 1982, I was able to check off another item on my to-do list. I took what Aunt Lynn could tell me about her sister Joyce’s in-laws and tracked down my biological cousin, Linda. Speaking to her by phone, I learned she was divorced with three children and lived in a Detroit suburb.

  Linda’s father had never said much about the accident that killed her mother, Joyce, and my mother, Jackie. He was away in the Navy when it happened.

  In February 1983, I arranged a Hartzell reunion of sorts. Linda hosted the event at her home. Pat and I brought our kids and picked up Aunt Lynn. Mike brought his girlfriend. The day went well, but no one seemed as excited about it as I was.

  That same winter Eleanor obtained a current phone number for her brother, Leonard, in California. I wanted to confirm that he was not my father, so I asked Jeanette to call him for me.

  Leonard was hostile when he answered, wondering how she got his number. Anticipating a reaction like this, Jeanette gave him a line about Jackie’s second son needing medical information about his father.

  Leonard said Jackie dated a lot of guys and he had no idea who the father was. He had stayed on his side of town. His account matched what everyone else had said. So it seemed certain that Mike’s father was not also my father.

  When Eleanor heard about the call, she joked that it was a good thing Jeanette caught Leonard off guard. If he had time to think about it, her brother might have claimed to be my father just to hit me up for money. Remembering Mike’s comments about his father, I had to agree.

  Following a suggestion from Jeanette, I wrote a letter to the probate court in late 1983. I explained that I now knew the name of my birth mother and enclosed my original birth certificate as proof.

  I also informed them that Jackie was no longer living and included a copy of her death certificate. My letter mentioned the name of my brother, Mike, and noted that I had met him.

  My point was this: since my birth mother’s privacy was no longer an issue, they could reveal more about what was in my file.

  Eight weeks went by without a response. Then in late January 1984, I received a detailed letter from the probate court judge. He shared everything they had on Jackie’s life. It matched and confirmed what I had already learned from others. But he did provide some new information about the man Jackie named as my birth father.

  According to my file, he was a coworker at her place of employment. They dated for six months, she became pregnant, and, shortly after that, they split up. Jackie said he was not ready to marry after serving in the armed forces so long.

  The coworker reference was a big clue. I already knew some places in Plymouth where Jackie had worked: Wall Wire Products and Cavalcade Inn. At the time of her death, she worked at Burroughs. But I was pretty sure she only got that job after I was born.

  Now I could narrow my search to men with whom she worked. It was time for another trip to Plymouth.

  18

  PLYMOUTH

  On a Saturday in February 1984, I got an early start and made my second trip to Plymouth, the small town where my birth mother had lived. My first stop was the Plymouth Historical Library, where I browsed through city directories from the 1940s.

  I scanned each directory for men with Polish names who worked at Wall Wire. There were a lot of them. Most were plant or office workers. But I also found a vice president named Max Wachowiak.

  Wall Wire was gone by 1957. According to the librarian, the company had relocated to Tennessee. So that particular search came to an abrupt end.

  As expected, I confirmed that Tom Martin, the driver of the Jeep when Jackie was killed, was associated with Cavalcade Inn. But I didn’t find any obviously Polish names who worked there.

  The librarian was sure that a former Cavalcade Inn manager had a Polish name, but she couldn’t remember it. She said he later became manager of a restaurant called Nicki’s.

  While at the historical library, I got the idea of looking up classmates of Jackie’s in the 1944 Plymouth High School yearbook. That would have been her class, had she stayed in school. I compared names with the current local telephone directory to see who might still be in the area.

  I called a few of them. Some remembered Jackie, but no one knew anything about her after she left high school. That seemed reasonable. Jackie had jumped into adulthood quickly, getting married at sixteen and having Mike at seventeen. I doubt that she had time to stay in touch with friends who were still in high school.

  My next stop was Plymouth Township Hall. I wanted to know if there were any old records that would list owners of Cavalcade Inn. There were not. But someone suggested I talk to Ralph Lorenz, owner of the Mayflower Hotel. A longtime Plymouth resident, Mr. Lorenz had been active in the local business community for decades.

  I had noticed that big old hotel as I drove through downtown. Since it wasn’t far away, I decided to pay Mr. Lorenz a visit. Fortunately, he was in and someone directed me to his office. A large man in his seventies, he invited me to sit down.

  Mr. Lorenz told me that brothers Walt and Earl Smith once owned Cavalcade Inn. Walt had died. But Earl was alive and now a wealthy man who owned bars, theaters, and a bowling alley. He would probably know the history of prior owners. He gave me Earl’s phone number.

  As for Wall Wire, Mr. Lorenz had known some of the company’s executives. Most were deceased now. But Max Wachowiak was still alive and had retired to Sun City, Arizona.

  As I drove home, I wondered again if the description of the short, blond Polish man in my file might refer to my legal father, Leonard Bojanzyk, instead of my birth father. Since the judge had responded so freely to my last inquiry, I decided to write him a follow-up letter.

  In March 1984, the judge wrote back with the following, definitive answer:

  “The records are absolutely clear that this is the description of your biological father. If that
were also the description of Leonard Bojanzyk, it is a remarkable coincidence and one which I cannot explain.”

  I was glad to clear that up. Maybe the coincidence was not so surprising after all. Men and women are often drawn to new partners who have the same physical traits that attracted them before. And there was certainly no shortage of Polish men in the suburbs of Detroit.

  On a Monday night in April, I decided to call Earl Smith, whom Ralph Lorenz had said was a former owner of Cavalcade Inn.

  By then, I had developed a simplified introduction for interviewing people outside the family. I avoided the entire adoption story and just said I was researching my family history. My mother had died when I was a baby and I grew up outside the area. So I was now contacting people who might have known her.

  After listening to their memories of Jackie, I would casually mention that my father’s identity was unknown and I was hoping to meet him or at least learn something about him. That comment opened the door to discuss the men in her life.

  Earl told me he had worked at Lingeman Products, a small manufacturing company next door to Cavalcade Inn. He remembered that Jackie’s sister, Joyce, also had worked there for awhile.

  He spent a lot of time at Cavalcade Inn and remembered Jackie working as a waitress. He also remembered the accident that killed her and Joyce.

  Tom Martin, the driver of the Jeep, was then the owner of Cavalcade Inn. After the 1947 accident, he sold the bar to a couple named Robinson who, in 1952, sold it to Earl and his brother, Walt. Tom Martin eventually moved to California, where he did extremely well in the furniture business.

  I asked Earl if he remembered Lou (possibly Louise) Green, the fourth passenger in the Jeep. He did. She was part of a clique of girls—including Jackie and Joyce—that ran around together. She married a local guy and moved to California.

  Then I asked Earl if he knew the name of a Polish guy from Cavalcade Inn who later managed Nicki’s. He knew that, too. The man’s name was Art Kopersky.

  Earl suggested I call Ronnie Phillips, who used to work for Tom Martin and was still in the area.

  That was my next call and I caught Ronnie at home. He remembered Cavalcade Inn well. It was the place to go in the forties and a regular crowd was there two or three nights a week.

  He said Jackie only worked at the bar part time. That made sense to me, since I knew she also worked at Wall Wire.

  Ronnie said Jackie and Joyce were constant companions and both were especially attractive. Unfortunately for me, he could not remember Jackie dating anyone who worked at the bar.

  Ronnie remembered Lou Green, too. She married a man named Norm Niles. Ronnie thought they’d lived in California once, but he was sure they had returned to the Northville area.

  This got me excited. Lou Green was a friend of Jackie’s and a survivor of the Jeep crash that took her life. I called information and got a phone number for Norm Niles in Northville.

  Lou answered the phone. Yes, she remembered Jackie. How could she forget, having been a passenger in the crash that took her life?

  She, Jackie, and Joyce had been together that day. They ran into Tom Martin at the Northville Hotel bar. He invited them to ride with him to Walled Lake, which had a big bar and was about ten miles north of Northville. That was how they happened to be together in the Jeep that day. Lou was pretty sure that Jackie and Tom were not a couple.

  Lou described Jackie as a wonderful, beautiful girl with blue eyes and hair that was almost black. Both Jackie and Joyce were exceptionally nice people.

  She had not known Jackie long, but knew she was divorced. Lou added that Jackie never mentioned anything about having kids.

  Lou also confirmed Aunt Lynn’s recollection that Jackie had dated Lester Barney, the man who, Aunt Lynn had told me, died in a motorcycle accident. She remembered Jackie seeing a couple other guys who rode motorcycles: Mark Russick, who also died riding, and Jerry Jarskey, who was later electrocuted in his basement during a thunderstorm.

  Lou could not remember when she first met Jackie. But the overall impression I got was that Lou only knew Jackie after I was born and Jackie had returned to Plymouth. The men she associated with Jackie had dated my mother too late to be my father and were too dead to be interviewed.

  After all this research, I still could not determine who Jackie was seeing in August 1945 when she got pregnant with me.

  I asked about Art Kopersky, the Polish man from Cavalcade Inn. Lou remembered him from Nicki’s. He now had a nice place in Northern Michigan. Although Art was a short Polish man, he was pudgy and not at all handsome. Lou could not imagine Jackie with him.

  Lou suggested that her husband, Norm, might know more. So she put him on the phone and I brought him up to date on the reason for my call.

  Norm said Jackie was the most beautiful girl around. But he knew nothing about her social life.

  However, he knew a great deal about the bar business. Art Kopersky was a shrewd businessman. He acquired the liquor license from Cavalcade Inn and, with partners from Northville Downs racetrack, built a place called Thunderbird. Norm had heard that Art then moved north where he got involved in a “really nice” restaurant.

  I mentioned to Norm that Earl Smith thought that he and Lou were in California. Norm and Lou had indeed lived there for awhile, but they liked it better back here. Then Norm surprised me with this question.

  “Did you know Earl Smith murdered his wife in the Cavalcade Inn?”

  I had just talked to the man earlier that evening. Not surprisingly, he had not mentioned that incident.

  From what Norm then told me, Earl’s wife was running around with another man. Earl, learning they were together at the bar that evening, walked in with a shotgun and shot her dead in front of witnesses. Earl had a good lawyer, however, and managed to avoid jail. Today he is a multimillionaire. Go figure.

  “Well,” I said. “He seemed like a nice guy on the phone.” As far as I knew, Earl Smith was the first murderer I’d spoken with.

  I then asked Norm about Wall Wire Products. Norm recommended that I call Bill Fann. Bill had been a foreman and union leader at the plant. He followed the company when it moved to Tennessee. He gave me Bill’s home number and told me to tell him that Norm and Lou suggested I call.

  I had been on the phone all evening. So I waited until the following Sunday, April 15, 1984, and made the call. I reached Bill Fann’s wife. She had grown up with Norm and Lou. She told me Bill was in Michigan visiting a sister who was ill. I left my number and asked that Bill call me collect after he returned to Tennessee.

  Bill never called me back and I soon forgot about my attempt to reach him.

  Numerous other things pushed their way to the top of my personal to-do list. Before I realized it, five and a half years slipped by. It would take another surprise phone call to light my fire again.

  19

  FAMILY BONDS

  In spite of my success in reuniting with and learning about my birth mother’s family, I still didn’t know the identity of my birth father. Yet from 1984 to 1989, the activities of the present once again consumed my life.

  My career was going well. I had become a vice president at my ad agency and had earned Certified Business Communicator status through the Business Marketing Association.

  Our family was growing up and staying busy. In 1989, Jenny turned sixteen and the twins were eleven.

  Whenever possible, I was molding my work schedule to fit around our kids’ activities. Whether it was sports, concerts, Scouting events, or parent-teacher conferences, I was in attendance 90 percent of the time. If I was not out of town, I was there.

  My perseverance probably sprang from the lack of such fatherly involvement when I was a child. Dad’s afternoon shift in Lansing prevented him from attending any of my weekday activities in Ionia. Plus, there were a lot of years when the auto industry was booming and he worked overtime on Saturdays, as well.

  Mom did her best to make up for Dad’s absence. A full-time homemaker unt
il I was in high school, she never missed anything I was involved in. And Mom didn’t just show up to watch. She pitched in to help.

  She was a room mother in elementary school and a den mother for my Cub Scout troop. During my four years of high school band, she found time to manage the care and storage of 140 band uniforms.

  My wife, Pat, was also a full-time homemaker in an era when that was far less common. So between us, we spent a lot time at the kids’ schools and athletic fields.

  Besides keeping up with our children, I wanted to build a relationship with my new brother, Mike. Yet his schedule was just as packed as mine was. Besides teaching elementary school physical education, he ran his school’s latchkey program, keeping dozens of kids busy in the gym before and after school.

  At certain times of the year, he also taught driver’s training on evenings and weekends. Beyond that, Mike’s bachelor life was full of ongoing commitments to golf and softball leagues in the warmer months and bowling leagues and ski club trips in the winter.

  In addition to our enormous scheduling conflicts, it was a two-and-a-half-hour drive—each way—between our homes in the suburbs of Detroit and Grand Rapids. So visits to each other’s homes continued to be rare.

  To ensure at least a minimum relationship, Pat and I started meeting Mike and his girlfriend for dinner once or twice a year at some midpoint, often in Lansing.

  I still didn’t feel like I really knew my brother. So I found a way to build the relationship I wanted. I took up golf again.

  Golf had never been my thing. After learning the sport in college, I had played about a dozen times in my life. I had given it up completely many years before I met Mike.

  Knowing Mike loved the game, I decided that I would learn to love it, too. I made a couple trips to a driving range and called Mike to tell him I was ready to play. Mike then planned a three-day golf trip for the two of us in northern Michigan.