This article was published in the Akron Beacon Journal May, 14, 2017
It's been 20 years since Mark Eckenrode opened his Akron Beacon Journal on Mother's Day and learned he was adopted.
A front page story featured the tale of a southern doctor who sold unwanted babies from the back door of a small clinic in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1950's and 60's.
At least 49 of of the infants delivered by Dr. Thomas Hicks were traced to Akron, where a local woman funneled them to desperate, childless couples.
For Eckenrode, the story would have ended there if he hadn't spotted the name of Hick's town, McCaysville, Georgia.
Eckenrode had spent his whole life in Akron's Ellet neighborhood, but McCaysville was the city on his birth certificate, a curiosity his parents explained by saying he was born on vacation.
In a heartbeat, Eckenrode was stripped of the world he knew. Suddenly, he didn't know another human being on the planet that shared his blood. But time is the great healer. DNA technology advanced. The internet and its uses expanded. Social media was invented. And last month , after two decades of trying to put together the puzzle of his life, Eckenrode found the last piece he needed; The name of his mother.
HICKS'' story
Some have described Dr. Hicks as a black marker baby dealer, but Eckenrode 56, sees a man who provided a valuable service at a difficult time.
Most of the girls who went to the Hicks Clinic were young, unwed and poor, trapped in a depressed mid-century Appalachian mining community. Many were teenagers whose parents were struggling to feed the mouths already under their roofs. An unplanned pregnancy had serious consequences, even beyond the obvious social stigma.
Hicks' supporters say one family's crisis became another family's blessing. Each time the doctor delivered a baby, a hopeful couple in another state would get a phone call and given 24 hours to drive to Georgia and pick up the child. The exchange was made at the back door. A bouncing baby and a forged birth certificate for a few hundred dollars.
It was a secret closely held by those involved until 1997, when Jane Blasio of Jackson Township - who had learned the truth of her birth earlier while searching for her biological family - shared her story and created a registry for other "Hicks babies" with the hope of reuniting children and birth mothers who wanted to find each other. Eckenrode joined others in adding his DNA to a database, but the registry only made one match, linking a pair of sisters. Years passed before another resource became available. Genealogy websites began offering to share contact information for willing participants who matched other subscribers.
In 2012, Eckenrode ordered a kit from Ancestry.com, spit in a tube and sent it off to be compard with saliva from more than 1 million other souls. A handful of matches came back, all second cousins based on a number of shared DNA indicators. Eckenrode was able to contact two of them, but not knowing the names of his own parents, there was no way to know how they were related.
Soon after, Eckenrode was able to upload his Ancestry .com DNA file to a pair of genealogy websites that offered to compare his data to their own list. One of the sites, Family Tree DNA, offered him a nephew on his fathers side.
"Wow!" Eckenrode thought as he read the alert from Family Tree DNA. He's been waiting for this moment for 15 years. Now he was one conversation away from learning the identiy of his biological father. "So I typed up this frantic message to him, told him who I am and what I'm doing. Apparently at the very same time he's seeing the same message in St Louis MO and he's typing a message saying, "who are you? Our emails must have crossed just a minute after sending mine, Eckenrode said" Two minutes after that, Eckenrode was on the phone with Larry Cravens. "If you are my uncle, that means your father is Wayne Cravens", he told Eckenrode.
Wayne Cravens was born in 1926 in Monterey, TN , and Army veteran who worked in Detroit auto factries and as a Nashville truck driver. He married twice, and had at least three children that he spent little time with. He died in 1992 . Having heard tales about his Grandpa Wayne's drinking and carousing, Larry Cravens wasn't suprised to hear there was another child out there.
Eckenrode said he wished the report on his father's character was "nicer" but meeting Larry Cravens made up for it. They both agreed to drive to Monterey that weekend - Cravens from Missouri, Eckenrode from his home at the time in Georgia. Eckenrode arrived at the Cracker Barrel first and gave the name "Cravens" to the hostess so Larry would hear it called if they missed each other in the crowd. "I'll need a first name," the hostess said matter-of-factly; "There are already three Cravens on the list." The Cravens roots are long and deep in the region and Eckenrode learned the restaurant was already filled with distant relatives he would likely never know.
The two men remained glued to their restaurant chairs for over two hours, sharing stories. A couple of days later, Eckenrode heard from his sister for the first time. He was still coming to terms with the fact that after more than 50 years of being the only child of the late Harry and Mae Eckenrode, he had three half-siblings. He met Gail Cravens a few days later at the same Cracker Barrel, where she showed him a picture of his father for the first time. "I didn't see a resemblance. It was a picture from the 50's. But Gail said, "When I walked up and saw you for the first time, it was like Wayne Cravens was holding the door for me." She was almost tearing up about it Eckenrode said.
Gail Cravens, who lives in Tennessee, was thrilled to find a new brother. She was raised by her grandmother since infancy, only grew close to her father later in life, and didn't have a great relationship with her brothers, "so I thought maybe this will be the one." She just whishes Eckenrode had found them in time to meet his parents and grandparents; "I told Mark, "lord have mercy, they would have loved you."
Eckenrode has met several other relatives, and there is a consensus that Wayne Cravens probably never knew he existed. Eckenrode was born in 1960, between two marriages, and the Tennessee Cravens have no ties to McCaysville, GA.
"He was a truck driver,. Maybe he was driving through town a=when he met my mother," Eckenrode said. Gail Cravens later confirmed her relation to Eckenrode by taking her own DNA test. He talks to her regularly, as he does his half brother Gary Cravens (Larry's dad), but his other half-brother Douglas died years ago.
In honor of his new family, Eckenrode briefly toyed with the idea of changing his name to Cravens. "There's nobody alive on the Eckenrode side who would care," he said. "But the parents who raised me did a great job. I grew up happy - good home, good schools. For my peace of hind, I don't want to remove that name from who I am."
Finding Mom
Two years after confirming his father's identity, Eckenrode didn't know the identity of his biological mother. He signed into his Ancestry.com account monthly to see if any matches were made with new DNA submissions but all he kept getting were distant cousins unlikely to know about some top secret baby-selling scheme more than half a century ago.
And then one day he opened his account to see a new match listed as a first/second counsin. Eckenrode quickly fired off an email. That started a chain of events over several months, culminating in a phone conversation with a woman who offered to be a family fo-between. That's because unlike everyone else he's reached out to during his 18 year search, she knew exactly what he was talking about.
"Her mom was one of four sisters, , and according to family roumor, two of the sisters had given a child to Dr. HIcks," eckenrode said. It seemed Eckenrode had narrowed his options to two sisters. But which two?
The go-between contacted the only living sister - one who did not give a baby to Hicks - but she wasn't about to give away the family secret. "Water under the bridge and all that", Eckenrode said.
Edith Botts
Eckenrode was put in touch with the son of one of the two sister who had given up a baby, and that man was quiet eager to learn if he had a new half-brother. Eckenrode mailed him a DNA kit, he sent it off, and the test results came back; First cousin.
"I was disappointed," Eckenrode said, But just for an instant. Because in this case, failure meant success. He'd just narrowed the list of potential mothers from two to one. Her name was Edith Botts.
"When Edith was young, she was wild", Eckenrode said, recounting the stories he's since learned of his mother. She married and had four children, but struggled with alcoholism. She put three of her kids in a Georgia childern's hone and never returned for them. The fourth child she kept with her as she divorced and went to look for work in a city far from her hometown. She found a job in a rubber factory. In Akron.
Eckenrode gets chills when he things of his biological mother and half brother living almost most of his life just a few miles from where he was raised. There's no way of knowing if she had a clue that the baby she delivered in McCaysville in August 1960 had seen sent to Akron.
She was died in 1999, meaning she was alive for two years after the Hicks story was first publicized. "It's a imxed thing, knowing they were here all the time." Eckenrode said. "Obviously I would have liked to know my mother, but at the same time the life she lived is probably not something I could have handled for a long time. She drank a lot. She was rowdy.."
Last month, a surviving some of Edith Botts agreed to take a DNA test to confirm what Eckenrode had deduced. The test confirmed the two men were half-brothers.
Mark Eckenrode looks over material at his home in Lakeland, FL, that he has collected in the search for his newly discovered family.
Eckenrode, who now lives in Florida, is thrilled to have pieced together his family story. His passion for genealogy reignited, he's already traced some of his new roots to Plymouth, Mass, in 1673 and other branches to European royalty.
Still knowing what he's learned about his biological parents, he's positive thinkgs worked out for the best. "I', absolutely blessed to have been adopted," he said.
Marks adopted parents memoiral are:
FATHER: Memorial Number 96525855
MOTHER" Memorial Number 96525871
The article states he did not want to remove the last name of his adopted family because he grew up in a good and happy family. He did begin using the Cravens surname as his hyphenated last name after locating and connecting with siblings and family although I am not sure he ever took steps to legally do so. Doing this after solving this big mystery of who he was, seem to give center him a sense of connection to the roots of where and how he came about.
It's been 20 years since Mark Eckenrode opened his Akron Beacon Journal on Mother's Day and learned he was adopted.
A front page story featured the tale of a southern doctor who sold unwanted babies from the back door of a small clinic in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1950's and 60's.
At least 49 of of the infants delivered by Dr. Thomas Hicks were traced to Akron, where a local woman funneled them to desperate, childless couples.
For Eckenrode, the story would have ended there if he hadn't spotted the name of Hick's town, McCaysville, Georgia.
Eckenrode had spent his whole life in Akron's Ellet neighborhood, but McCaysville was the city on his birth certificate, a curiosity his parents explained by saying he was born on vacation.
In a heartbeat, Eckenrode was stripped of the world he knew. Suddenly, he didn't know another human being on the planet that shared his blood. But time is the great healer. DNA technology advanced. The internet and its uses expanded. Social media was invented. And last month , after two decades of trying to put together the puzzle of his life, Eckenrode found the last piece he needed; The name of his mother.
HICKS'' story
Some have described Dr. Hicks as a black marker baby dealer, but Eckenrode 56, sees a man who provided a valuable service at a difficult time.
Most of the girls who went to the Hicks Clinic were young, unwed and poor, trapped in a depressed mid-century Appalachian mining community. Many were teenagers whose parents were struggling to feed the mouths already under their roofs. An unplanned pregnancy had serious consequences, even beyond the obvious social stigma.
Hicks' supporters say one family's crisis became another family's blessing. Each time the doctor delivered a baby, a hopeful couple in another state would get a phone call and given 24 hours to drive to Georgia and pick up the child. The exchange was made at the back door. A bouncing baby and a forged birth certificate for a few hundred dollars.
It was a secret closely held by those involved until 1997, when Jane Blasio of Jackson Township - who had learned the truth of her birth earlier while searching for her biological family - shared her story and created a registry for other "Hicks babies" with the hope of reuniting children and birth mothers who wanted to find each other. Eckenrode joined others in adding his DNA to a database, but the registry only made one match, linking a pair of sisters. Years passed before another resource became available. Genealogy websites began offering to share contact information for willing participants who matched other subscribers.
In 2012, Eckenrode ordered a kit from Ancestry.com, spit in a tube and sent it off to be compard with saliva from more than 1 million other souls. A handful of matches came back, all second cousins based on a number of shared DNA indicators. Eckenrode was able to contact two of them, but not knowing the names of his own parents, there was no way to know how they were related.
Soon after, Eckenrode was able to upload his Ancestry .com DNA file to a pair of genealogy websites that offered to compare his data to their own list. One of the sites, Family Tree DNA, offered him a nephew on his fathers side.
"Wow!" Eckenrode thought as he read the alert from Family Tree DNA. He's been waiting for this moment for 15 years. Now he was one conversation away from learning the identiy of his biological father. "So I typed up this frantic message to him, told him who I am and what I'm doing. Apparently at the very same time he's seeing the same message in St Louis MO and he's typing a message saying, "who are you? Our emails must have crossed just a minute after sending mine, Eckenrode said" Two minutes after that, Eckenrode was on the phone with Larry Cravens. "If you are my uncle, that means your father is Wayne Cravens", he told Eckenrode.
Wayne Cravens was born in 1926 in Monterey, TN , and Army veteran who worked in Detroit auto factries and as a Nashville truck driver. He married twice, and had at least three children that he spent little time with. He died in 1992 . Having heard tales about his Grandpa Wayne's drinking and carousing, Larry Cravens wasn't suprised to hear there was another child out there.
Eckenrode said he wished the report on his father's character was "nicer" but meeting Larry Cravens made up for it. They both agreed to drive to Monterey that weekend - Cravens from Missouri, Eckenrode from his home at the time in Georgia. Eckenrode arrived at the Cracker Barrel first and gave the name "Cravens" to the hostess so Larry would hear it called if they missed each other in the crowd. "I'll need a first name," the hostess said matter-of-factly; "There are already three Cravens on the list." The Cravens roots are long and deep in the region and Eckenrode learned the restaurant was already filled with distant relatives he would likely never know.
The two men remained glued to their restaurant chairs for over two hours, sharing stories. A couple of days later, Eckenrode heard from his sister for the first time. He was still coming to terms with the fact that after more than 50 years of being the only child of the late Harry and Mae Eckenrode, he had three half-siblings. He met Gail Cravens a few days later at the same Cracker Barrel, where she showed him a picture of his father for the first time. "I didn't see a resemblance. It was a picture from the 50's. But Gail said, "When I walked up and saw you for the first time, it was like Wayne Cravens was holding the door for me." She was almost tearing up about it Eckenrode said.
Gail Cravens, who lives in Tennessee, was thrilled to find a new brother. She was raised by her grandmother since infancy, only grew close to her father later in life, and didn't have a great relationship with her brothers, "so I thought maybe this will be the one." She just whishes Eckenrode had found them in time to meet his parents and grandparents; "I told Mark, "lord have mercy, they would have loved you."
Eckenrode has met several other relatives, and there is a consensus that Wayne Cravens probably never knew he existed. Eckenrode was born in 1960, between two marriages, and the Tennessee Cravens have no ties to McCaysville, GA.
"He was a truck driver,. Maybe he was driving through town a=when he met my mother," Eckenrode said. Gail Cravens later confirmed her relation to Eckenrode by taking her own DNA test. He talks to her regularly, as he does his half brother Gary Cravens (Larry's dad), but his other half-brother Douglas died years ago.
In honor of his new family, Eckenrode briefly toyed with the idea of changing his name to Cravens. "There's nobody alive on the Eckenrode side who would care," he said. "But the parents who raised me did a great job. I grew up happy - good home, good schools. For my peace of hind, I don't want to remove that name from who I am."
Finding Mom
Two years after confirming his father's identity, Eckenrode didn't know the identity of his biological mother. He signed into his Ancestry.com account monthly to see if any matches were made with new DNA submissions but all he kept getting were distant cousins unlikely to know about some top secret baby-selling scheme more than half a century ago.
And then one day he opened his account to see a new match listed as a first/second counsin. Eckenrode quickly fired off an email. That started a chain of events over several months, culminating in a phone conversation with a woman who offered to be a family fo-between. That's because unlike everyone else he's reached out to during his 18 year search, she knew exactly what he was talking about.
"Her mom was one of four sisters, , and according to family roumor, two of the sisters had given a child to Dr. HIcks," eckenrode said. It seemed Eckenrode had narrowed his options to two sisters. But which two?
The go-between contacted the only living sister - one who did not give a baby to Hicks - but she wasn't about to give away the family secret. "Water under the bridge and all that", Eckenrode said.
Edith Botts
Eckenrode was put in touch with the son of one of the two sister who had given up a baby, and that man was quiet eager to learn if he had a new half-brother. Eckenrode mailed him a DNA kit, he sent it off, and the test results came back; First cousin.
"I was disappointed," Eckenrode said, But just for an instant. Because in this case, failure meant success. He'd just narrowed the list of potential mothers from two to one. Her name was Edith Botts.
"When Edith was young, she was wild", Eckenrode said, recounting the stories he's since learned of his mother. She married and had four children, but struggled with alcoholism. She put three of her kids in a Georgia childern's hone and never returned for them. The fourth child she kept with her as she divorced and went to look for work in a city far from her hometown. She found a job in a rubber factory. In Akron.
Eckenrode gets chills when he things of his biological mother and half brother living almost most of his life just a few miles from where he was raised. There's no way of knowing if she had a clue that the baby she delivered in McCaysville in August 1960 had seen sent to Akron.
She was died in 1999, meaning she was alive for two years after the Hicks story was first publicized. "It's a imxed thing, knowing they were here all the time." Eckenrode said. "Obviously I would have liked to know my mother, but at the same time the life she lived is probably not something I could have handled for a long time. She drank a lot. She was rowdy.."
Last month, a surviving some of Edith Botts agreed to take a DNA test to confirm what Eckenrode had deduced. The test confirmed the two men were half-brothers.
Mark Eckenrode looks over material at his home in Lakeland, FL, that he has collected in the search for his newly discovered family.
Eckenrode, who now lives in Florida, is thrilled to have pieced together his family story. His passion for genealogy reignited, he's already traced some of his new roots to Plymouth, Mass, in 1673 and other branches to European royalty.
Still knowing what he's learned about his biological parents, he's positive thinkgs worked out for the best. "I', absolutely blessed to have been adopted," he said.
Marks adopted parents memoiral are:
FATHER: Memorial Number 96525855
MOTHER" Memorial Number 96525871
The article states he did not want to remove the last name of his adopted family because he grew up in a good and happy family. He did begin using the Cravens surname as his hyphenated last name after locating and connecting with siblings and family although I am not sure he ever took steps to legally do so. Doing this after solving this big mystery of who he was, seem to give center him a sense of connection to the roots of where and how he came about.
This article was published in the Akron Beacon Journal May, 14, 2017
It's been 20 years since Mark Eckenrode opened his Akron Beacon Journal on Mother's Day and learned he was adopted.
A front page story featured the tale of a southern doctor who sold unwanted babies from the back door of a small clinic in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1950's and 60's.
At least 49 of of the infants delivered by Dr. Thomas Hicks were traced to Akron, where a local woman funneled them to desperate, childless couples.
For Eckenrode, the story would have ended there if he hadn't spotted the name of Hick's town, McCaysville, Georgia.
Eckenrode had spent his whole life in Akron's Ellet neighborhood, but McCaysville was the city on his birth certificate, a curiosity his parents explained by saying he was born on vacation.
In a heartbeat, Eckenrode was stripped of the world he knew. Suddenly, he didn't know another human being on the planet that shared his blood. But time is the great healer. DNA technology advanced. The internet and its uses expanded. Social media was invented. And last month , after two decades of trying to put together the puzzle of his life, Eckenrode found the last piece he needed; The name of his mother.
HICKS'' story
Some have described Dr. Hicks as a black marker baby dealer, but Eckenrode 56, sees a man who provided a valuable service at a difficult time.
Most of the girls who went to the Hicks Clinic were young, unwed and poor, trapped in a depressed mid-century Appalachian mining community. Many were teenagers whose parents were struggling to feed the mouths already under their roofs. An unplanned pregnancy had serious consequences, even beyond the obvious social stigma.
Hicks' supporters say one family's crisis became another family's blessing. Each time the doctor delivered a baby, a hopeful couple in another state would get a phone call and given 24 hours to drive to Georgia and pick up the child. The exchange was made at the back door. A bouncing baby and a forged birth certificate for a few hundred dollars.
It was a secret closely held by those involved until 1997, when Jane Blasio of Jackson Township - who had learned the truth of her birth earlier while searching for her biological family - shared her story and created a registry for other "Hicks babies" with the hope of reuniting children and birth mothers who wanted to find each other. Eckenrode joined others in adding his DNA to a database, but the registry only made one match, linking a pair of sisters. Years passed before another resource became available. Genealogy websites began offering to share contact information for willing participants who matched other subscribers.
In 2012, Eckenrode ordered a kit from Ancestry.com, spit in a tube and sent it off to be compard with saliva from more than 1 million other souls. A handful of matches came back, all second cousins based on a number of shared DNA indicators. Eckenrode was able to contact two of them, but not knowing the names of his own parents, there was no way to know how they were related.
Soon after, Eckenrode was able to upload his Ancestry .com DNA file to a pair of genealogy websites that offered to compare his data to their own list. One of the sites, Family Tree DNA, offered him a nephew on his fathers side.
"Wow!" Eckenrode thought as he read the alert from Family Tree DNA. He's been waiting for this moment for 15 years. Now he was one conversation away from learning the identiy of his biological father. "So I typed up this frantic message to him, told him who I am and what I'm doing. Apparently at the very same time he's seeing the same message in St Louis MO and he's typing a message saying, "who are you? Our emails must have crossed just a minute after sending mine, Eckenrode said" Two minutes after that, Eckenrode was on the phone with Larry Cravens. "If you are my uncle, that means your father is Wayne Cravens", he told Eckenrode.
Wayne Cravens was born in 1926 in Monterey, TN , and Army veteran who worked in Detroit auto factries and as a Nashville truck driver. He married twice, and had at least three children that he spent little time with. He died in 1992 . Having heard tales about his Grandpa Wayne's drinking and carousing, Larry Cravens wasn't suprised to hear there was another child out there.
Eckenrode said he wished the report on his father's character was "nicer" but meeting Larry Cravens made up for it. They both agreed to drive to Monterey that weekend - Cravens from Missouri, Eckenrode from his home at the time in Georgia. Eckenrode arrived at the Cracker Barrel first and gave the name "Cravens" to the hostess so Larry would hear it called if they missed each other in the crowd. "I'll need a first name," the hostess said matter-of-factly; "There are already three Cravens on the list." The Cravens roots are long and deep in the region and Eckenrode learned the restaurant was already filled with distant relatives he would likely never know.
The two men remained glued to their restaurant chairs for over two hours, sharing stories. A couple of days later, Eckenrode heard from his sister for the first time. He was still coming to terms with the fact that after more than 50 years of being the only child of the late Harry and Mae Eckenrode, he had three half-siblings. He met Gail Cravens a few days later at the same Cracker Barrel, where she showed him a picture of his father for the first time. "I didn't see a resemblance. It was a picture from the 50's. But Gail said, "When I walked up and saw you for the first time, it was like Wayne Cravens was holding the door for me." She was almost tearing up about it Eckenrode said.
Gail Cravens, who lives in Tennessee, was thrilled to find a new brother. She was raised by her grandmother since infancy, only grew close to her father later in life, and didn't have a great relationship with her brothers, "so I thought maybe this will be the one." She just whishes Eckenrode had found them in time to meet his parents and grandparents; "I told Mark, "lord have mercy, they would have loved you."
Eckenrode has met several other relatives, and there is a consensus that Wayne Cravens probably never knew he existed. Eckenrode was born in 1960, between two marriages, and the Tennessee Cravens have no ties to McCaysville, GA.
"He was a truck driver,. Maybe he was driving through town a=when he met my mother," Eckenrode said. Gail Cravens later confirmed her relation to Eckenrode by taking her own DNA test. He talks to her regularly, as he does his half brother Gary Cravens (Larry's dad), but his other half-brother Douglas died years ago.
In honor of his new family, Eckenrode briefly toyed with the idea of changing his name to Cravens. "There's nobody alive on the Eckenrode side who would care," he said. "But the parents who raised me did a great job. I grew up happy - good home, good schools. For my peace of hind, I don't want to remove that name from who I am."
Finding Mom
Two years after confirming his father's identity, Eckenrode didn't know the identity of his biological mother. He signed into his Ancestry.com account monthly to see if any matches were made with new DNA submissions but all he kept getting were distant cousins unlikely to know about some top secret baby-selling scheme more than half a century ago.
And then one day he opened his account to see a new match listed as a first/second counsin. Eckenrode quickly fired off an email. That started a chain of events over several months, culminating in a phone conversation with a woman who offered to be a family fo-between. That's because unlike everyone else he's reached out to during his 18 year search, she knew exactly what he was talking about.
"Her mom was one of four sisters, , and according to family roumor, two of the sisters had given a child to Dr. HIcks," eckenrode said. It seemed Eckenrode had narrowed his options to two sisters. But which two?
The go-between contacted the only living sister - one who did not give a baby to Hicks - but she wasn't about to give away the family secret. "Water under the bridge and all that", Eckenrode said.
Edith Botts
Eckenrode was put in touch with the son of one of the two sister who had given up a baby, and that man was quiet eager to learn if he had a new half-brother. Eckenrode mailed him a DNA kit, he sent it off, and the test results came back; First cousin.
"I was disappointed," Eckenrode said, But just for an instant. Because in this case, failure meant success. He'd just narrowed the list of potential mothers from two to one. Her name was Edith Botts.
"When Edith was young, she was wild", Eckenrode said, recounting the stories he's since learned of his mother. She married and had four children, but struggled with alcoholism. She put three of her kids in a Georgia childern's hone and never returned for them. The fourth child she kept with her as she divorced and went to look for work in a city far from her hometown. She found a job in a rubber factory. In Akron.
Eckenrode gets chills when he things of his biological mother and half brother living almost most of his life just a few miles from where he was raised. There's no way of knowing if she had a clue that the baby she delivered in McCaysville in August 1960 had seen sent to Akron.
She was died in 1999, meaning she was alive for two years after the Hicks story was first publicized. "It's a imxed thing, knowing they were here all the time." Eckenrode said. "Obviously I would have liked to know my mother, but at the same time the life she lived is probably not something I could have handled for a long time. She drank a lot. She was rowdy.."
Last month, a surviving some of Edith Botts agreed to take a DNA test to confirm what Eckenrode had deduced. The test confirmed the two men were half-brothers.
Mark Eckenrode looks over material at his home in Lakeland, FL, that he has collected in the search for his newly discovered family.
Eckenrode, who now lives in Florida, is thrilled to have pieced together his family story. His passion for genealogy reignited, he's already traced some of his new roots to Plymouth, Mass, in 1673 and other branches to European royalty.
Still knowing what he's learned about his biological parents, he's positive thinkgs worked out for the best. "I', absolutely blessed to have been adopted," he said.
Marks adopted parents memoiral are:
FATHER: Memorial Number 96525855
MOTHER" Memorial Number 96525871
The article states he did not want to remove the last name of his adopted family because he grew up in a good and happy family. He did begin using the Cravens surname as his hyphenated last name after locating and connecting with siblings and family although I am not sure he ever took steps to legally do so. Doing this after solving this big mystery of who he was, seem to give center him a sense of connection to the roots of where and how he came about.
It's been 20 years since Mark Eckenrode opened his Akron Beacon Journal on Mother's Day and learned he was adopted.
A front page story featured the tale of a southern doctor who sold unwanted babies from the back door of a small clinic in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1950's and 60's.
At least 49 of of the infants delivered by Dr. Thomas Hicks were traced to Akron, where a local woman funneled them to desperate, childless couples.
For Eckenrode, the story would have ended there if he hadn't spotted the name of Hick's town, McCaysville, Georgia.
Eckenrode had spent his whole life in Akron's Ellet neighborhood, but McCaysville was the city on his birth certificate, a curiosity his parents explained by saying he was born on vacation.
In a heartbeat, Eckenrode was stripped of the world he knew. Suddenly, he didn't know another human being on the planet that shared his blood. But time is the great healer. DNA technology advanced. The internet and its uses expanded. Social media was invented. And last month , after two decades of trying to put together the puzzle of his life, Eckenrode found the last piece he needed; The name of his mother.
HICKS'' story
Some have described Dr. Hicks as a black marker baby dealer, but Eckenrode 56, sees a man who provided a valuable service at a difficult time.
Most of the girls who went to the Hicks Clinic were young, unwed and poor, trapped in a depressed mid-century Appalachian mining community. Many were teenagers whose parents were struggling to feed the mouths already under their roofs. An unplanned pregnancy had serious consequences, even beyond the obvious social stigma.
Hicks' supporters say one family's crisis became another family's blessing. Each time the doctor delivered a baby, a hopeful couple in another state would get a phone call and given 24 hours to drive to Georgia and pick up the child. The exchange was made at the back door. A bouncing baby and a forged birth certificate for a few hundred dollars.
It was a secret closely held by those involved until 1997, when Jane Blasio of Jackson Township - who had learned the truth of her birth earlier while searching for her biological family - shared her story and created a registry for other "Hicks babies" with the hope of reuniting children and birth mothers who wanted to find each other. Eckenrode joined others in adding his DNA to a database, but the registry only made one match, linking a pair of sisters. Years passed before another resource became available. Genealogy websites began offering to share contact information for willing participants who matched other subscribers.
In 2012, Eckenrode ordered a kit from Ancestry.com, spit in a tube and sent it off to be compard with saliva from more than 1 million other souls. A handful of matches came back, all second cousins based on a number of shared DNA indicators. Eckenrode was able to contact two of them, but not knowing the names of his own parents, there was no way to know how they were related.
Soon after, Eckenrode was able to upload his Ancestry .com DNA file to a pair of genealogy websites that offered to compare his data to their own list. One of the sites, Family Tree DNA, offered him a nephew on his fathers side.
"Wow!" Eckenrode thought as he read the alert from Family Tree DNA. He's been waiting for this moment for 15 years. Now he was one conversation away from learning the identiy of his biological father. "So I typed up this frantic message to him, told him who I am and what I'm doing. Apparently at the very same time he's seeing the same message in St Louis MO and he's typing a message saying, "who are you? Our emails must have crossed just a minute after sending mine, Eckenrode said" Two minutes after that, Eckenrode was on the phone with Larry Cravens. "If you are my uncle, that means your father is Wayne Cravens", he told Eckenrode.
Wayne Cravens was born in 1926 in Monterey, TN , and Army veteran who worked in Detroit auto factries and as a Nashville truck driver. He married twice, and had at least three children that he spent little time with. He died in 1992 . Having heard tales about his Grandpa Wayne's drinking and carousing, Larry Cravens wasn't suprised to hear there was another child out there.
Eckenrode said he wished the report on his father's character was "nicer" but meeting Larry Cravens made up for it. They both agreed to drive to Monterey that weekend - Cravens from Missouri, Eckenrode from his home at the time in Georgia. Eckenrode arrived at the Cracker Barrel first and gave the name "Cravens" to the hostess so Larry would hear it called if they missed each other in the crowd. "I'll need a first name," the hostess said matter-of-factly; "There are already three Cravens on the list." The Cravens roots are long and deep in the region and Eckenrode learned the restaurant was already filled with distant relatives he would likely never know.
The two men remained glued to their restaurant chairs for over two hours, sharing stories. A couple of days later, Eckenrode heard from his sister for the first time. He was still coming to terms with the fact that after more than 50 years of being the only child of the late Harry and Mae Eckenrode, he had three half-siblings. He met Gail Cravens a few days later at the same Cracker Barrel, where she showed him a picture of his father for the first time. "I didn't see a resemblance. It was a picture from the 50's. But Gail said, "When I walked up and saw you for the first time, it was like Wayne Cravens was holding the door for me." She was almost tearing up about it Eckenrode said.
Gail Cravens, who lives in Tennessee, was thrilled to find a new brother. She was raised by her grandmother since infancy, only grew close to her father later in life, and didn't have a great relationship with her brothers, "so I thought maybe this will be the one." She just whishes Eckenrode had found them in time to meet his parents and grandparents; "I told Mark, "lord have mercy, they would have loved you."
Eckenrode has met several other relatives, and there is a consensus that Wayne Cravens probably never knew he existed. Eckenrode was born in 1960, between two marriages, and the Tennessee Cravens have no ties to McCaysville, GA.
"He was a truck driver,. Maybe he was driving through town a=when he met my mother," Eckenrode said. Gail Cravens later confirmed her relation to Eckenrode by taking her own DNA test. He talks to her regularly, as he does his half brother Gary Cravens (Larry's dad), but his other half-brother Douglas died years ago.
In honor of his new family, Eckenrode briefly toyed with the idea of changing his name to Cravens. "There's nobody alive on the Eckenrode side who would care," he said. "But the parents who raised me did a great job. I grew up happy - good home, good schools. For my peace of hind, I don't want to remove that name from who I am."
Finding Mom
Two years after confirming his father's identity, Eckenrode didn't know the identity of his biological mother. He signed into his Ancestry.com account monthly to see if any matches were made with new DNA submissions but all he kept getting were distant cousins unlikely to know about some top secret baby-selling scheme more than half a century ago.
And then one day he opened his account to see a new match listed as a first/second counsin. Eckenrode quickly fired off an email. That started a chain of events over several months, culminating in a phone conversation with a woman who offered to be a family fo-between. That's because unlike everyone else he's reached out to during his 18 year search, she knew exactly what he was talking about.
"Her mom was one of four sisters, , and according to family roumor, two of the sisters had given a child to Dr. HIcks," eckenrode said. It seemed Eckenrode had narrowed his options to two sisters. But which two?
The go-between contacted the only living sister - one who did not give a baby to Hicks - but she wasn't about to give away the family secret. "Water under the bridge and all that", Eckenrode said.
Edith Botts
Eckenrode was put in touch with the son of one of the two sister who had given up a baby, and that man was quiet eager to learn if he had a new half-brother. Eckenrode mailed him a DNA kit, he sent it off, and the test results came back; First cousin.
"I was disappointed," Eckenrode said, But just for an instant. Because in this case, failure meant success. He'd just narrowed the list of potential mothers from two to one. Her name was Edith Botts.
"When Edith was young, she was wild", Eckenrode said, recounting the stories he's since learned of his mother. She married and had four children, but struggled with alcoholism. She put three of her kids in a Georgia childern's hone and never returned for them. The fourth child she kept with her as she divorced and went to look for work in a city far from her hometown. She found a job in a rubber factory. In Akron.
Eckenrode gets chills when he things of his biological mother and half brother living almost most of his life just a few miles from where he was raised. There's no way of knowing if she had a clue that the baby she delivered in McCaysville in August 1960 had seen sent to Akron.
She was died in 1999, meaning she was alive for two years after the Hicks story was first publicized. "It's a imxed thing, knowing they were here all the time." Eckenrode said. "Obviously I would have liked to know my mother, but at the same time the life she lived is probably not something I could have handled for a long time. She drank a lot. She was rowdy.."
Last month, a surviving some of Edith Botts agreed to take a DNA test to confirm what Eckenrode had deduced. The test confirmed the two men were half-brothers.
Mark Eckenrode looks over material at his home in Lakeland, FL, that he has collected in the search for his newly discovered family.
Eckenrode, who now lives in Florida, is thrilled to have pieced together his family story. His passion for genealogy reignited, he's already traced some of his new roots to Plymouth, Mass, in 1673 and other branches to European royalty.
Still knowing what he's learned about his biological parents, he's positive thinkgs worked out for the best. "I', absolutely blessed to have been adopted," he said.
Marks adopted parents memoiral are:
FATHER: Memorial Number 96525855
MOTHER" Memorial Number 96525871
The article states he did not want to remove the last name of his adopted family because he grew up in a good and happy family. He did begin using the Cravens surname as his hyphenated last name after locating and connecting with siblings and family although I am not sure he ever took steps to legally do so. Doing this after solving this big mystery of who he was, seem to give center him a sense of connection to the roots of where and how he came about.
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