April
19, 1957
Los Angeles
Your name is Jay. You are 55. You grew up in the San Fernando
Valley–15224 Willard Way in Van Nuys, to be specific.
You were adopted at birth by a couple named Strickland: Jane and her husband,
Edward, a fourth-grade teacher at the Isabelle Buckley School, 4477 Woodman
Ave., in Van Nuys. There were other children in the home: Danny, who would be 61
now; Cynthia, 58; and Celeste, 52.
As far as your foster parents were concerned, you were an exceptionally bright
youngster. "I defy anyone to find a smarter little boy than this one," your
father, Edward, said. "He’s really adopting us," your mother said.
There’s one other thing we know: You were a little harder to place than other
foster children because one of your biological parents was white and the other
was Chinese.
The rest is guesswork, because I can’t seem to find any trace of you. So I’m
left to wonder what it was like for you growing up in the 1950s. Was it the
standard baby boomer childhood with a coonskin cap, a hula hoop and trips to
Disneyland? How was high school? Did you get drafted and go to Vietnam or
have a student deferment? And how about a family?
Maybe someone reading knows the rest of the story. I’d like to know what became
of that bright 5-year-old named Jay.
ladailymirror.com 