Donna Wilhelm - A Life of My Own: A Memoir

A Life of My Own

A LIFE OF MY OWN

A Memoir

Donna Wilhelm

Dallas, Texas

La Reunion Publishing, an imprint of Deep Vellum

3000 Commerce St., Dallas,Texas 75226

deepvellum.org @deepvellum

DeepVellum is a 501c3 nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 2013 with the mission to bring the world into conversation through literature.

2019 Donna Wilhelm. All rights reserved.

First edition November 2019.

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN: 978-1-941920-91-6 (cloth) 978-1-941920-92-3 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019947675

Cover Design by Justin Childress | justinchildress.co

Cover Photo: Kim Leeson and KERA, North Texas Public Broadcasting

Interior by Kirby Gann

Text set in Bembo, a typeface modeled on typefaces cut by Francesco Griffo for Aldo Manuzios printing of De Aetna in 1495 in Venice.

Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution.

This book reflects the life experiences of the author, and for privacy concerns, some names of persons have been changed or abbreviated.

CONTENTS

To readers everywherecelebrate your lives and share your stories with those you love while there is still time.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to the generous supporters of my memoir. Eminently, Kristin vanNamen, for more than a decade, has mentored me in the craft of storytelling and encouraged me to confront my truths with compassion, for myself and others. Her patience, skill, and fortitude during relentless editing revisions has nourished the manuscripts coherence and essence. She rescued when computer technology thwarted my ineptness, and she conceived the reliable format and documentation that kept us on track and productive. I am grateful to members of the Forest Lane Writers Group, especially Rita Juster, Lauren Embrey, Trea Yip and Jane Saginaw, for their honest, cogent critiques, their encouragement and most of all, their friendship. My son Nicks adviceJust write your truths, Momallowed me to reveal my parental angst without fear of invading his privacy. The input of beta readers, notably Bridget Boland, helped me define the narrative arc and deepen character development. In joint editing sessions, Beatriz Terrazas contributed journalistic skills, clarity, and best practices that fine-honed the manuscript for publication. Kay Cattarulla, a friend of more than fifty years who shared affinity as international corporate wives, generously read my entire manuscript pre-publication. Her feedback was perceptive and poignant. On the path to publication, my friends and published authors Jaina Sanga, Julie Hersh, and Rena Pederson gave wise counsel and magnanimously shared their networks. My publisher Will Evans and Deep Vellum have enabled a unique collaboration of mission and vision. Our partnership focused on the power of the literary art form to connect authors and readers across all geographic and cultural boundariesan intent that superseded the core financial goal of commercial publishing and created an ideal match for my philanthropic identity. Finally, and with deepest gratitude, I acknowledge Julia Brown, my treasured personal assistant. Nothing in my daily life, my philanthropic life, and my writers life would be manageable without her loyal discretion, her compassionate efficiency, and her line-by-line proofing along with down-to-earth feedback.

A Life of My Own

A Note about the Journey

When my teenage daughter was away for a year at boarding school, she began to ask questions about my past. I sent back edited answers that I hoped would inspire her to trust herself and feel the support of a nurturing family. When I became a mother, I vowed to give my children every comfort and concern for their wellbeing. A promise meant to reverse the neglect and disparagement of my childhood.

I grew up in an immigrant boarding house run by my Polish mother in Hartford, Connecticuta bizarre outcome for Mother, who had once been the privileged daughter of a patrician family in the Old World. My father Juzo, whod grown up in Poland among hardworking farmers, emigrated to the New World and forged his way into working class America.

When I was a teenager, my much-older sister lured me from Hartford with promises of a liberated life with her in the Arizona desert. However, Arizona brought trauma and instability, along with one joyful year and the kindness of remarkable strangers. At age nineteen, I fled from my dysfunctional familyand arrived in the New York City of the 1960s.

There my reinvention beganfirst as a stereotypical Madison Avenue office girl and then as a glamorous Pan American Airways stewardess. When I accepted a marriage proposal from a promising young executive, I returned to my parents to share my joyful news. Instead, they delivered a diabolic wedding giftthey were not my birth parents. My true birth mother had been a young, pregnant, unmarried boarder. After she gave birth, she surrendered her newborn to the care of her landlady. There was nothing official or legal about it.

For the next three decades, I buried my parents revelations deep in my psyche. And I poured myself into all-consuming roles: international corporate wife, aspirational career woman, and mother of two adopted children. Until all sense of my authentic self nearly disappeared. At age fifty-seven, I made the hardest decision of my lifeto leave my thirty-two-year marriage in order to save myself. When aloneness overwhelmed me, I finally began to search for the one person who might love and rescue me. My birthmother.

Letters to my daughter had revealed only the surface of my past. Plagued by unfinished business, I spent years examining, writing, and reckoning with flaws and weaknesses, adversity and growth, vulnerability and strengthin myself and others. Revelations shaped into stories. Confronting truths deepened my compassion and helped make sense of my peripatetic life. Revisiting my past gave me the chance to fulfill longings: to hold the small hand of the lonely child in an adult world; to hug the courageous young woman who fled and reinvented herself; to comfort the unfulfilled wife who nearly lost herself. And to nurture the insecure mother who dismissed her self-worth. Ive honored my journey by giving my stories a place to belongin A Life of My Own, A Memoir.

Today, I give away millions of dollars of my personal money to humanitarian causes. Why Ive pursued altruism as a mission remains a mystery to me. I have no guidelines to offer, only stories to share, and a message to the reader:

If you choose to travel with me, I hope my journey will inspire you to celebrate your life. By acknowledging the people, the experiences, and the transformations that shaped us, we honor who we are, we confirm why we are here, and we define where we are going. These are gifts that only we can give to ourselves.

Boarding House Life

360 Fairfield Avenue

Hartford, Connecticut, where I grew up, was founded by immigrants who never stopped coming. In the 1600s, Dutch and English settlers arrived, and for three centuries, others followed from all over Europe and beyond. In the early 1900s, my father Juzo and my mother Hania, more than a decade apart in age and from different social backgrounds, joined streams of refugees fleeing oppression in the Old World and seeking freedom in the New World. At Ellis Island, New York, they were processed, documented, and sent forward to their unknown futures. Many traveled onward to nearby cities like Hartford, where broad industries and small business opportunities flourished, and where immigrants found work and clustered by ethnic affinities. Hartford was the city where Juzo and Hania would meet and eventually marry.