The Secret of Lois

Sometime during World War II, a lady named Henrietta came into my family’s
life. She was a single woman from Michigan who worked for the Methodist
Church as a missionary in southern and south eastern KY. She was living in
Corbin, KY at a Methodist Society in a house they had built. All the women in
the missionary lived there together. A minister from Chicago was the President
of the society. He and his wife would attend meetings with the missionaries
several times a year. My grandmother and most of her family lived around
Conway and Brodhead, Ky. Two of my great aunts ran businesses at Boone and
Roundstone. They became acquainted with the mysterious Henrietta when
she showed up, pregnant, at my aunt’s tourist camp to rent a cabin. She didn’t
tell my aunts very much about herself. They were curious about where the
baby’s father was and wondered how she was going to be able to raise the baby
without the help of a husband or family. Henrietta was also wondering how she
was going to manage. She arranged for my great aunt Hallie to watch the baby
while she continued to do missionary work. Her work took her from Corbin, to
Berea, Richmond and Versailles.

The story has been told and retold over the years and most of the people who
were around then have since passed away. My mother was 18 years old in
1945. She was living at home with her parents in Conway. My grandparents
and my mother first learned about Henrietta and the little baby girl when they
visited relatives at Boone. The baby, whose name was Marloa Joy, was living
with my great aunt Hallie at the tourist camp she owned and ran on old highway
25, just before you crossed the Madison County line. Henrietta couldn’t make
it home every night, so my aunt was taking care of Joy almost full time. My
great aunt Margie was asked to take care of Marloa Joy for awhile. Aunt Margie
ended up taking care of Joy for months, not just weeks, that Henrietta and my
aunt had agreed upon. Aunt Margie had her own business and children that
needed her care. She was preparing to move to Louisville to be close to her
daughter. Everything about Henrietta and the baby was out of the ordinary for

Conway, KY in 1945. Before Aunt Margie left for Louisville, it was decided that
my grandmother would take over caring for the baby. Henrietta made a deal
with my grandmother that if Joy could stay with her, she would pay her seven
dollars a week. My grandparents agreed to this, Joy was about six months old
by now. She had spent those six months jumping from one family to another.

My Granny and my momma took Joy back to Brodhead with them. My
grandfather was a humble man who had no problem with having the baby
around. The poor little thing didn’t have any choice but to live with strangers.
They were good to Joy and began raising her in their home. When baby Joy
came to Brodhead to live with my family, there was a lot of gossip about whose
baby she was. Some said she must be my mom’s baby. She had probably
gotten herself pregnant, went away to have the baby, and was now back with
the baby. About the time Joy was born, Momma had to have an appendectomy,
so that really added fuel to the fire. No one in my family answered to the
rumors so my momma lived in disgrace when she hadn’t done anything wrong.

When Joy was about a year old, my grandmother was in contact with Henrietta.
Henrietta knew where Joy was living, but didn’t come very often to see her. She
would, however, write letters to my grandmother asking about Joy and Granny
would write her back. Granny kept writing letters to Henrietta, whose return
address indicated that she was living in Corbin again. Granny liked to tell her
how much Joy was growing and other things Granny thought Henrietta would
want to know. Granny had no idea what trouble those letters would eventually
cause.

Henrietta’s secret finally came to light. While she had been living in Corbin at
the missionary camp, she had become acquainted with a Methodist minister
and his family. Henrietta had become good friends with the minister and his
family. She was best friends with one of his daughters. She was close to the
whole family and called the minister and his wife, Mom and Pop. Although Pop
was several years older than Henrietta, she found herself caught in an affair
with him. When Henrietta could no longer hide her pregnancy, the minister’s
wife began to suspect that her husband and Henrietta had grown too close.

Other people at the camp had started whispering that the father of Henrietta’s
unborn child was the minister. The wife went through Henrietta’s private
possessions where she found the letters that Granny had written to Henrietta.
Apparently, Granny had given just enough information that the wife decided
she would travel to Brodhead to see this child for herself. She didn’t want to
accuse her husband and Henrietta of having a child together until she herself
was convinced. Henrietta had Marloa Joy’s named changed to Lois June hoping
to make it harder for the minister’s wife to find Joy, now Lois. Henrietta got in
touch with my grandmother to tell her that the minister’s wife had found out
about her affair with her husband and was threatening to come to Brodhead
to see if Lois even existed. So momma and granny hid anything that would
indicate that an infant was in the house. They covered the baby bed with
clothes and blankets, hid all of her baby clothes, bottles and toys. They had no
idea when or even if the wife would show up, but they were ready to deny the
existence of a baby in their home.

Shortly after receiving word that the minister’s wife may be coming to
Brodhead, someone knocked on my grandmother’s front door. Without having
to be told, my momma, who was helping my grandmother grind sausage and
had sausage grease all over her hands, grabbed up Lois and ran out the back
door to the barn loft to hide. Momma said although Lois was just a baby, she
seemed to know that she had to be quiet. She didn’t make a noise the whole
time she and Momma were hiding. Momma tried to wipe the sausage grease
off her hands, but it had gotten cold and hard and she only managed to get
some of it wiped off on her dress. Lois had it on her dress too. After awhile,
Granny came to the barn to tell Momma that the wife was gone; she and Lois
could come back to the house. The wife had looked in every room of the house
for a baby. She had also questioned my grandmother about Lois, but Granny
convinced her that she didn’t have a baby in her house and that she didn’t know
anyone named Henrietta.

After that day, the wife never tried to find Lois again.

My family moved several times through the years, always taking Lois with them.
Lois was a toddler now and had quite a temper. I’ve heard my family tell “Lois”
stories my whole life. She was very stubborn and would not do anything she
was told. She would have crying, kicking and screaming fits every time she
didn’t get her way. By 1948, my family was living at what would later become
our family farm on highway 1505. The post office listed the area as Hiatt, Ky.
Momma had met and married my Dad by then. Daddy was a construction
worker, so he and momma were living in different places, just wherever his
work took him. Granny enrolled Lois in school, first at Oak Hill, a one room
school close to their house, then later at Brodhead School. She was still a
handful, but going to school seemed to be helping some. Lois knew that my
granny wasn’t her mother, but she called her momma. She called my
grandfather by his given name, Tom. She knew Henrietta was her birth mother
and was always excited to see Henrietta the times she came to see her.
Henrietta had long since quit paying my grandparents the seven dollars a week
she agreed to pay them in the beginning. On one visit, she told my
grandmother that she had met a man who sang in the choir at the Methodist
Church in Versailles and she thought she might marry him. My grandmother
was prone to suffer from depression most of her life. Raising Lois was taking a
toll on her mentally as well as physically. When Granny learned that Henrietta
was now married, she felt that she had no choice but to write Henrietta and tell
her that she wasn’t able to care for Lois anymore and that she felt Lois needed
to be with her real mother. Henrietta responded by saying, “I don’t have to
take her.” This statement didn’t sit well with my Granny. She knew that
Henrietta didn’t want Lois, but Granny insisted that it was time she did right by
Lois. Granny told Henrietta that she and her new husband could give Lois more
than her and grandpa could, so in 1955, Henrietta agreed to come and take her
child to live with her in Wisconsin.

The day that Henrietta was to come and get Lois had arrived. Lois was so
excited that she was going to be living with her mother that she just sit on
the porch steps with her suitcase and waited for her real mother to drive up.
The time that Henrietta was to be there came and went. Both Lois and my

grandparents were getting upset. Just as it was getting dark, Henrietta and her
husband showed up. Lois ran and grabbed her suitcase and left the only life
she had known in her short ten years behind. She told the couple she called
Momma and Tom goodbye and drove off in the darkness with her mother and
stepfather.

Henrietta and her husband moved to Lexington, KY where Lois went to high
school, graduated and later got married. She gave birth to twin girls and came
to visit us on a regular basis. I thought those two babies that looked just a like
were the greatest thing in the world. I hadn’t been around babies and now I
had two to play with.

Lois and Henrietta didn’t have a healthy mother/daughter relationship. They
never became close. Lois has told me how much she missed my grandparents
when she first went to live with her mother. Henrietta seemed to resent Lois
until the day she died. She told her own family that she and her husband had
adopted Lois. Lois questioned my grandmother about who her father was and
why she hadn’t always lived with her mother. Granny told her some things,
but most of the questions she told Lois to ask her mother. Lois had a lot of
questions to ask her mother, but Henrietta wasn’t willing to answer. She finally
gave her a picture of her father and told her his name.

Lois still visits mamma and me. She’s been there for us whenever we’ve needed
her. She comes and sits with me in the hospital if momma is sick or having
surgery. She eats holiday meals with my family since her daughters now live
in other states and don’t visit her often. She was there when my grandparents
passed away. Her life has been like no one else’s. Most of the main characters
have died and taken their secrets to the grave with them, but the secret of Lois
remains one that has been with me most of my life. It’s one that is dear to me
and is also dark and mysterious at the same time.

We all come face to face with strangers in our lives, whether it be a fellow
shopper, someone sitting next to you on a plane or in a waiting room, or the
salesman that comes to your door. We can’t tell just by looking at them what

their lives have been like. People see Lois everyday and others like her and
have no idea what they’ve been through. I like the old saying, “You never know
someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” When I meet someone
new, I have made a habit to give them a smile. It may be the only smile they
have received that day. God has blessed me with so many things and I thank
him daily for them. My family is one of my greatest blessings and I include Lois
as my family and one of my blessings.