Reunion revisited

Andrew Glazer

For Mother’s Day, Melinda Mason traveled back to the children’s home in

Kansas where her mother reluctantly left her and her siblings 50 years

ago.

The Newport Beach real estate broker wasn’t too eager to return to

Wichita, Kan., with her two brothers and mother, who back then was a

24-year-old single parent unable to provide for her four children.

Mason’s older sister, Melody, who served as a surrogate mother for the

three during their five years at the Wichita Children’s Home, died of

cancer in 1972.

“My brother Randy really wanted us all to go out there as a unit,” said

Mason. “But I was looking for excuses. I thought it would be too much. I

got a cold and hoped I would get a temperature so I couldn’t go. But I

really thought he needed it for some closure. And I love him so much.”

Mason’s memories of living in the children’s home are vague snapshots,

mostly unpleasant ones. She was only 18 months old when she first arrived

there.

She remembers being fed oatmeal every morning -- a food she hated so much

she ran off to vomit after every bite. She remembers being spanked in

front of her 23 bunkmates by one of the caretakers and wetting herself in

horror.

“I remember seeing the light under the door of my dormitory, where the

women who took care of me played cards,” she said. “My friend and I would

throw ourselves on the floor every night and they would come running. I

guess it was for attention. We wanted some human contact.”

Despite her years of unhappiness at the home, Mason said she was thankful

her mother kept the children together. Mason said her mother could have

separated them, sending each child to live with relatives who could only

afford to care for one. Or she could have allowed them to be adopted

separately by strangers.

“I was very young and optimistic,” said Mason’s mother, Betty Rosness,

now 76 and living in Santa Barbara after recently retiring from her

self-started advertising agency.

“Each job I got was a stepping stone to getting my kids back. It was all

very carefully planned.”

The four visited the small Kansas home in which the family eventually

lived after Rosness bought it for $8,400.

Rosness said she waited until Mason, the youngest child, was enrolled in

the first grade before taking her children back because she couldn’t

afford to hire a baby-sitter.

“I knew it was going to be nostalgic,” Rosness said of the trip. “But I

had no idea what deep-rooted feelings would be brought out.”

Mason said that she, her brothers and their mother subconsciously snapped

back into the family roles they played 50 years ago.

“My mother started acting very motherly,” she said. “My brothers were

bouncing jokes off of each other and I was the quiet little sister. I’m

pretty assertive and haven’t played that part for a while.”

The four spent roughly three hours leafing through scrapbooks and photo

albums and walking the halls of the new building that houses the

children’s home, chatting with teenagers taken from abusive homes.

“They seemed very angry and ready for hurt and pain,” Mason said. “I

wanted them to see us as a unit -- and let them know that this can be

their future.”