Little Girl Lost: A Night in the Woods at Age 7

When I was a child, I loved hearing stories from my parents of their own childhoods. They had such interesting ones. Childhood was different back then. More innocent.  But both my parents were in scary, news-making events as a child that were covered by the national media. 

Today, I'm sharing my Mom's story.  When my mom was 7 years old, her family moved to a new house in the neighboring county.  They lived out in the country down a long dirt road. On her first day at the new school, my Mom took the wrong school bus home.  She got off the bus with other kids at the first stop. It looked familiar - woods, dirt road - but it wasn't the right stop.  Mom knew it was a long walk from the bus stop to home, so she walked and walked and walked.  At some point, she remembered there was a shortcut through the woods and she tried to find the path. She didn't. It was the wrong woods and she was lost overnight.

The story was covered by the national media.  In this photo, which was widely distributed, my Mom is still missing. Newspaper photographers took this photo of my mom's parents holding a photo of her and pleaing for her return.

The story does have a happy ending. More than 1,000 volunteers searched for my Mom and a fireman found her the next day.  His first name was Richard and Mom later named her first born son after him.

I made a layout about this story last year, based on an interview with Mom, which is in the journaling block.

I couldn't blog this last year because the layout was picked up for publication.  It was published in March/April 2012 issue of Creating Keepsakes.  Mom got a kick from the article because the editor's note talked about ways to preserve the oral histories of your "ancestors."  

Here's a closeup of the newspaper article that's tucked under the photo:

Now that I am a Mom, her story is heart-stopping to me. I can't imagine my fear if my little boy were to go missing.  But when I was a kid and Mom told this story to me, it was always as a fun adventure and I loved for her to tell it to me over and over.  One good thing that came from Mom's unexpected adventure were some great family photos and news clippings from all over.  There was television coverage of this too and I hope to recover it someday.