Please Mama Please

Please Mama Please is the story about years spent in an orphan’s home, and memories of a broken family. Part I For five years two brothers, three sisters and I were farmed out to an orphan’s home. There we were not only separated from our mother, but each other. I was being constantly told, “You’re nothing but white trash,” and in many ways the staff tried to prove it. Physical and mental abuse was the norm. Part II Six children make their escape from the home. Finally we are home with Mama, but we are still in reach of the supervisor of the home. Mama is arrested for kidnapping and taken to jail. In court she pleads with the judge to keep her children. The fear of being taken back to the home until I reach eighteen bring haunting nightmares. Part III I marry and begin my own family. My nightmares of the home keep following me. Moving to Tennessee I struggle to put those nightmares behind me, and then tragedy strikes compounding the nightmares to almost unbearable proportions. Please Mama Please ends with shocking truth of why we were “Throw Away Children.”

“Please, Mama, Please is a vivid and moving account of the author’s life and will give others insight into the complex, fragile world of children. It will also, let’s hope, inspire them to see that children in their own spheres never suffer such trails and tribulations.“ —Judith McCulloh, Executive Editor, University of Illinois Press