Posted on 01/22/2015 9:49:35 AM PST by Morgana
ST. LOUIS -- Toni DiPina has been trying to solve the mystery of her unknown family since she was abandoned as a baby.
The reality is DiPina, at 51, still has no clue where she came from. She does not know why one or both of her parents abandoned her at 9 months on May 26, 1963, on a vacant lot in St. Louis. No one has ever come forward. Not then and not in 2008 when the Post-Dispatch first wrote extensively about her.
For decades, the only details she had from a day she was too young to remember came from a typewritten police report based on details provided by St. Louis police officer George Leuckel. After the baby was discovered by two boys around 5:30 p.m., Leuckel was called to the lot off Bell Avenue, an ailing area that used to be the city's most exclusive neighborhood, Vandeventer Place.
He found a baby in a blue-checked dress with a pink sweater and cap sitting on a pink blanket amid weeds and rusting cars and appliances dumped on the lot.
The report chronicled the basics: The baby seemed well cared for. There were no witnesses. No one knew the child. Doctors at City Hospital No. 2 estimated her age at 9 months. Officers canvassed the neighborhood but found no leads. Leuckel and a city social worker drove the child to an emergency foster home on Hodiamont Avenue on the western edge of the city.
But what Leuckel's report did not convey was the connection forged that day between a white man in his 20s who had grown up in Catholic orphanages, and a black baby also destined to walk the world as an orphan.
(Excerpt) Read more at semissourian.com ...
People who want to learn who their biological parents are can get a tremendous lead by taking a DNA test. They are offered by several companies, including 23AndMe and FamilyTreeDNA, but the best site for linking DNA results to family trees appears to be ancestry.com.
Lovely story, but I wish that they had included pictures.
So much going on right now personally and in America. I really needed this today. We are under tremendous Watchcare from above never forget it.
And I always forget.
Something’s caught in my eye... not sure what’s happening here.
Thank you!
I do not look forward to the day that my child finds out that her birth mother is actually my loser, meth head sister-in-law.
There is nothing I can say or do to prep her except to be a good and loving parent.
Oh, and don't do meth. I have that going for me!
Lovely pictures. Thanks.
I agree with all jmaroneps37 wrote about quizzing older relatives to begin your family tree, keeping careful notes, and not being derailed by minor spelling differences.
Genetic genealogy can support traditional genealogy research. It costs less than $100 and it is exciting to find a somewhat distant cousin whose research into mutual ancestors confirms or supplements yours.
Yet this is a case of “Don’t ask the question if you can’t stand the answer.” Genetic testing can also provide surprises. For example, you may your legal father or grandfather is not your biological ancestor. In such cases careful analysis of your DNA results might still take you on an amazing journey. Once you locate genetic fifth, fourth, third, second, or even first cousins, discussions with these close genetic matches can lead you to your genetic ancestors.
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