When Ivan Alderman came back from serving in World War II, he faced a daunting challenge: three children he could not care for.
Ivan and his wife, Ann, decided that, rather than raise the children in poverty, they would place them with the Ashtabula County Child Welfare Board. Verne, 3 at the time, and Margie, 2, were adopted by the Campbell family of Williamsfield. Little Ann Louise Alderman, 1, went to a different family.
Ivan and Ann divorced shortly after placing the children. Unknown to Ivan, when they divorced, Ann was pregnant with twins, Donna and David. They, too were adopted, but their adoption was to a Pennsylvania couple, the Foglebochs, and did not go through the county children’s home.
When Donna was 37, she began a search for her biological parents. The courts were about to close access to adoption records and Donna made her petition for the original birth certificate. Her third phone call led her to Ivan, who asked Donna, “Are you Ann Louise?”
Donna thus became the person to break the news to her father — Ann, who had remarried and was living in California, had five children by him.
“He did not know about the twins,” said Donna Fogleboch Foster, 65, in a telephone interview Thursday. “Ann never told her husband that she had put them up for adoption.”
After making a connection with her father and the other two children he knew about, Verne Campbell and Marge Weese, Donna flew to Ashtabula for a reunion.
Ivan, who died Feb. 5, 2008, lived in Ashtabula most of his life. He went to his grave not knowing what became of Ann Louise, who would turn 68 today.
Foster and her brother, who lives in Michigan, hope they can celebrate their sister’s birthday by learning of her whereabouts. They are doing more than hoping; they are praying and have placed an advertisement in the classified section of this newspaper.
“I figure someone may recognize her name,” Foster said. “And she may still be alive. All of us are still living and healthy.”
Foster said her sister’s adopted name may be Sharon Lee Young. She suspects that Ann Louise/Sharon Lee was adopted by a local family. The story that was passed down by the Campbells stated that three children were in the car that delivered Verne and Margie to the Campbells. The youngest child was going elsewhere, but where?
“She could not have gone too far,” Foster said. “(The caseworker) was not taking that baby too far if she had her in the car with her.”
The children were delivered by the late Helen Butler, a caseworker for the Ashtabula County Child Welfare Board. Butler was indicted for embezzlement in 1959, a charge later dismissed. But mystery and scandal have hovered over Butler, who allegedly sold babies to families and worked with local authorities to falsify or seal the court records. Over the years, numerous claims have been made by both children and mothers who gave up their babies that Butler profited from the adoptions. The children have been referred to as “Butler babies.”
Foster feels that Ann Louise, Verne and Margie are among them. She has been on a mission to find her sister ever since first learning about her. Foster said she even hired a private investigator, but he could not find her. And Foster’s efforts to gain information through the Ashtabula County Probate Court have been met with “request denied” letters.
“Whoever did this did it well,” Foster said.
She welcomes any leads that could lead her to the whereabouts or status of the lost sister. Call Foster at (727) 543-0815.
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