Julie Mannix von Zerneck - Secret Storms: A Mother and Daughter, Lost then Found

Praise for

SECRET STORMS

A riveting andheart-breaking but ultimately life-affirming mother-daughter storythat defies fiction. Every plot twist, every emotion touches achord, even for those of us who have not had to endure such abrutal separation. Read it and weepand then finally rejoice. Anode to the enduring power of family ties.

Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey,author of

A Woman of IndependentMeans

In mywriters' workshops, the greatest gospel I can preach is the obviousoneto tell the truth, whatever form it takes. This am-azingmother-daughter writing team exemplifies the concept to themax. The plot is Dickensian, rife withvillains and struggle, the revealing of it, breathtaking in itssimplicity and heartbreaking in its courage. What astory.

Ernest Thompson, AcademyAward-winning

writer of On Golden Pond

What an extraordinary andcompelling story, all the more so because its trueand told sobeautifully by its two heroines.

Alice Maltin, producer& Leonard Maltin, film historian and

correspondent forEntertainment Tonight

[This] story will breakyour heart, bring on tears of joy, and make you believe in thehealing power of love, forgiveness, and family."

MeredithRollins, Executive Editor, Redbook Magazine

This is a story about alove affairon so many levels. Very unique, verysoulful.

Susan Picascia, LCSW,BCD,

psychotherapist andExecutive Coach

Ive always known that ittakes a courageous woman to give a baby up for adoption, and aneven braver woman to tell her story with an uncompromising, rawhonesty. Reading this book was like finding the note Id alwayswished my birth mother would have left in my file; it shined alight on shaded places in my heart I didnt knowexisted.

Kerrin Adrian, ExecutiveDirector, BER inc and adoptee

I cant believe this is atrue story one that will make you cry. And what a happyending.

Lynn Pleshette, filmproducer and literary agent

S ECRET

S TORMS

_______________________________

Julie Mannix vonZerneck

Kathy Hatfield

Blue Blazer

2013

SECRET STORMS. Copyright 2013

by Julie Mannix vonZerneck and Kathy Hatfield

All rightsreserved.

For information, contactBlue Blazer:

4355 FormanAvenue,

Toluca Lake, California,91602

www.secretstorms.com

Gestational developmentnotes, which close the State Mental Hospital

chapters in Part I, are amedley of facts gathered from various

websites, paraphrased andcombined.

An excerpt from TillThere Was You, written by Meredith Willson

in 1957, appears inChapter 34 The Vow.

A portion of this work,edited by Meredith Rollins,

originally appearedin Redbook .

Acknowledgements Treecreated on www.tagxedo.com

Published by Blue BlazerProductions

Printed in the UnitedStates of America

ISBN-10:0985735814

ISBN-13:978-0-9857358-1-4

Edited by AidaRaphael

Cover photo by BryanHatfield

Book designed by AndrewJordan

The events, places andpeople in this book are rendered as accurately as possible, whilecolored by time, memory and emotion.

Some names and identifyingfacts have been changed.

Dedicated to the man Ilove.

-JMvZ

Dedicated to myfathers:

one gave melife,

the other gave me anappreciation of it.

-KH

The strength ofmotherhood is greater than natural laws.

BarbaraKingsolver

If I have learnedanything, it is that life forms no logical patterns. It ishaphazard and full of beauties which I try

to catch as they fly by,for who knows whether any of them

will everreturn?

Margot Fonteyn

PART I

Julie

One

STATE MENTALHOSPITAL

__________

The world will alwaysremember the shots being fired on November 22, 1963 at 12:30 in theearly afternoon. But Philadelphia is one hour ahead of Dallas, sofor me the event took place at 1:30 p.m. I was in the middle ofbeing transferred from the Psychiatric Institute of Philadelphia,then known as a first-class sanatorium for the more prosperousclass of patients, to the Eastern Pennsylvania PsychiatricInstitute, or, as I got to know it, EPPI, a state hospital andhome to people ranging from mentally challenged to the criminallyinsane.

I was nineteen, blonde withblue eyes, five feet, four inches tall, 102 pounds, and aPhiladelphia Main Line debutante. And I was three and a half monthspregnant.

Sit here, I was told by alarge man in a stark white nurses uniform, who was responsible forescorting me from the private hospital to the one run by thestate.

I wrapped myself tightly inmy wrinkled camels hair coat and sat on an orange vinyl chair thathad some peeling tape covering up slash marks. Peering out throughmy long veil of unwashed hair, I saw that the waiting room wassmall, the walls a grimy green. A few feet away, there was an openwindow smudged with fingerprints, behind which sat two admittanceladies dressed in street clothes. When you have been confined to amental hospital, even a private one, you dont get to see streetclothes too often, except on visitors. In my anger at being there,I had refused any visitors.

An old black and whitePhilco television was hanging from the soiled wall in a corner ofthe waiting room. The picture was on, but the volume was turneddown low. All four of us heard it, though. All four of us sawWalter Cronkite take off his glasses and state, President Kennedydied at 1 p.m. some 38 minutes ago. All four of usa mentalpatient, a male nurse and two admittance ladies heard the newsbulletin at the same time.

It was then that I felt avague stirring in my stomach. Seconds later, a soft flutter, andthen a definite trembling. I reached down and covered my belly withmy hands and took a deep breath. Up until then it had just beensomething I had been told about. You arepregnant. You are expecting a baby. You are going to have achild . Unexpectedly, in this room thatsmelled of vomit and floor cleaner, surrounded by strangers, mybaby had decided to announce itself for the first time. Suddenly itwas real. Something warm burst through me, a kind of euphoria. Isat there in the tight little admittance room and closed myeyes.

This is reallyhappening , I thought to myself. Oh my God, this is really happening.

By the end of the thirdmonth, all of your babys organs are present. The arms and legsbegin as small buds off the body, and tiny fingers and toe budsbegin to form. Even at this early stage, your baby already hasindividual fingerprints. The genital organs are still forming. Yourbaby will even move as the muscles begin to function. Your baby hasa sucking reflex already in place, and may suck on his or her thumbor fist. At the end of the sixteenth week your baby will be around3.5 inches long and weigh 1.7 ounces.

Two

BEFORE ME, MYPARENTS

__________

Yes, I was a PhiladelphiaMain Line debutante, but my parents were not exactly conventional.When my mother first set eyes on my father, he was standing on asideshow stage, all six-feet-four-inches of him, holding twotorches, and great streams of fire were pouring out of his mouth.He was wedged between Daisy the Fat Lady and Percilla the BeardedWoman. My father traveled with the carnival as the fire-eater and asword swallower in the sideshow, because he was doing research.Later, he would write three books about carny life; Step Right Up , Memoirs of a Sword Swallower and Freaks: We Who Are Not AsOthers .

My mother, who was a radioactress at the time, was horrified when her friend pointed out myfather, the man she was supposed to go out with that night inbetween shows. Family legend has it she was not appalled because myfather was eating fire and about to down two metal swords set upnearby, or because of Daisy on his left or Percilla on his right.She was totally horror-stricken because my father was naked fromthe belt up. In her opinion, no polite, well-mannered, civilizedman should ever appear with his shirt off in public. In a matter ofseconds, my mother turned her back on my father and then allfive-feet-two-inches of her walked straight out of the sideshowtent, away from the circus, and went directly home to TheSquirrels. Located on Sabine Avenue in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, TheSquirrels was a huge stone home where my mother, her parents, foursisters and four brothers lived.