When a Rose is Just a Rose!

Nice to visit the old crypt after all these months. Notice a few cobwebs here and there but thankfully no hidden bodies. Reminds me that we need to hire a new cleaning service and keep a good bail bondsman on speed dial just in case. Wondering where we have been all this time? Well I am sure you have as anyone reading this must have had very little social activity and been waiting eagerly with baited breath for the next story. This one is called When a Rose is Just a Rose! A great deal of adoptees fantasize that their "real" mother or birth mother or natural mother, bio mom is more than human. She takes on a mystique that eventually if located would make the reality pale in comparison. Perhaps one thinks they were conceived while their parent was escaping a South American overthrow or was fleeing the revolution in Russia or maybe they are the long lost offspring of Colonel Sanders. Who knows? Well I guess that inheiritance would be finger licking good, no? Our story about Rose (not her real name) originates in the ficticious city of Chicago in the state of "Illinois". Story has it that Rose was a good catholic girl who had been born and reared in a midwest state but not Illinois. She was supposedly a nurse in her early 30's and never married. A post WW2 romance with a lover who was married or had married culminated in an unplanned pregnancy leaving Rose without a husband. Arrangements were made by a priest to send her to a maternity home in Chicago through Catholic Charities. It's really unclear whether Rose ever went to the home or her stay was short lived as she was eventually placed with a private family and called "Rose Bush". The identity of the birthfather was never shared with the agency who knew very little about her and unfortunately their own records through the years have either been purged, diminished, burnt, flooded, discarded or just plain thrown out. There exists no file on Rose Bush or her daughter. Except for the file on the adoptive family which lists a paragraph or two on the bio mother. ONE small clue that Rose's father had been killed in an accident when she was 10 years old. Last but not least the original birth certificate which lists Catholic Charities as Rose's legal address also gave the place of birth for Rose which was a very small city in another midwestern state. Next checking the 1920 and 1930 census for the United States inparticular her state of birth and Illinois (Chicago too) turned up no appropriate Rose Bush or any connection with a Bush that would have led us to believe this was her real name. We did however notice the county of Rose's birth was Bushman County - coincedence? Going to her city of birth - Lupners Corners we located the small catholic parish which originated as a mission and combing baptisms for Rose's 1913-1918 turned up only two. One for a Rose Dickinson whose parents died when she was in her 50's and a Rose Helen Lattimore. Rose Lattimore had 5 other siblings baptized at the same parish. On the 1930 US census her mother was listed as a widow. Revisiting the catholic church once more unearthed a record of death for Rose's father James Lattimore who died when she was exactly 10 years old and that he had been killed in an accident while at work. Checking further records located a death for her mother in 1975 and those for siblings. It was later determined that Rose had never married and had lived in Chicago for years as a nurse and was now retired in Texas at the age of 94! Once her daughter received the completed information on her case she made telephone contact shortly thereafter and was received warmly with open arms by the mother she had never known. It turns out that she had a love affair with her daughter's father but he was married and she appeared to still be in love with him and speak fondly of him. He was unfortunately killed many years ago. She hopes to meet her birthmother soon.