80 And It's My First Birthday Party

I would love for you to meet my friend Ginny. She is a soft spoken happy go lucky person. She is very sweet and she laughs all the time. I met Ginny a couple of years ago when I was doing business with her husband Bob. We spoke and said hello to each other, but it ended there. Over the coarse of two years each time I seen her our conversations got a little longer. Then back in October Ginny told me her heart wrenching life story!

In 1935, her father left her mother and three children, they were devastated! She said her mother worked what jobs she could find, but she had to pay someone to watch her 3 children. The youngest was 5, Ginny was 6 and her brother was 7. Her mother paid someone $1 a day to watch them. By the time rent and utilities were paid there was nothing left over for food. She said her mother struggled for two years. Then in 1937 after the great flood Ginny's mother made the decision to put the children in an orphanage.

Ginny was 8 years old, she said she cried day and night for two solid weeks and would not eat a bit of food. The orphanage called her mother to come pick her up. She said it was one of the happiest days of her life. But it was short lived, her mother kept her for about two months but just didn't have the money to feed her. So back to the orphanage Ginny went. She lived out the rest of her days at the orphanage until she became an adult. She said they worked every day at the orphanage doing all the chores that needed to be done. Every month they changed jobs. The children at the orphanage went to public school, but were shunned by all the other students.

When Ginny became an adult and left the orphanage, she said she had one skirt, one shirt, one pair of shoes, two pairs of panties and two pairs of socks. She said she was determined to make something out of herself and show the world she was not a piece of trash! Her very words! She retired after 30 years working for The Federal Reserve Bank.

The part of the story that stuck in my mind the most, was the fact that she had never had a Birthday Party in her life!! She said when she and her brothers were in the orphanage and it was their birthday, they would stand at the window hoping to see their mother. As night fell they realize she was not coming and they would cry their self to sleep! I am crying as I write this because I can imagine the loneliness and disappointment these poor children must have felt!

Not having any children of her own, I decided I would do everything in my power to give a her a birthday she could remember. So yesterday Craig and I went to see Ginny and Bob, and we had a small birthday party for her. I wish you could have seen the look on her face! And yes she cried! She told me no one had ever done anything like this for her! She ask me why I would do such a thing and I told her that she had touched my heart in a special way and I could not forget her story.

Sometimes I forget how blessed I was as a child. We were poor but my mother always made our birthdays as special as she could.

Happy 80th Birthday Ginny!

Isn't she a doll?

Theresa