Thursday's Internet Edition, September 09, 2010.
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| Joe Felts found his mother, Lena Minor, at Woodland Place in Clemmons. |
Lena was sitting in her room at Woodland Place, unaware that the little boy she named Jerry Wayne was about to walk through her door. For years she had wondered about the fate of her child, who had been taken from her one fateful night 61 years earlier.
The Beginning
The year was 1945, and little Jerry Wayne Payne was three years old. His mother, Lena, had gone to work the night shift at Hanes Knitting Mill and left Jerry in the care of his father, Charles Clayton Payne.
When Lena returned home the next morning, Jerry was gone. His father had left him alone in the house, and neighbors heard the baby crying and called the sheriff. When the sheriff discovered Jerry in the empty house, he notified Social Services and Jerry was put into foster care.
With no money for an attorney and no help from Clayton, Lena was unable to retrieve Jerry from Social Services. He was first taken to the home of Jesse and Mabel Briggs and later adopted by Mabel’s sister and brother-in-law, Anne and Carl Felts of King. They changed Jerry’s name to Joe Felts.
Joe went on to attend college and earned two master’s degrees. He married, had two children, and retired from the U.S. Army. Now 64, he still lives in King and drives a truck for HFCS Transport in Winston-Salem.
In January 2006, he set out on a quest to find his birth mother.
The Search
“I had wanted to find my mom for over 60 years,” said Joe. “I always knew I was adopted and had been told my birth name was Jerry Wayne Payne. I looked up people with the last name of Payne in the phone book and called them and also searched the North Carolina room at library, but I had no success.”
Then came the night that would jump-start Joe’s search and ultimately change his life. He and his wife, Jeannie, were watching a television show on the Public Broadcasting Station (PBS). The show was about National Geographic’s “Study of the Human Journey,” a project dedicated to determining how humans migrated throughout the world from man’s beginnings in Africa and how various surnames spread around the globe.
The show’s commentator mentioned that National Geographic was collecting DNA samples from as many people as possible for the study and that a side project involved testing people with the same surnames as members of the Lost Colony. One of those surnames was Payne.
“Henry Payne was a member of the Lost Colony, and DNA tests were being done in America and England to find his descendants. Jeannie is computer-oriented, so she looked the project up on the internet and decided to enter my name for testing. We were referred to www.FamilyTreeDNA.com and they sent me some cheek swabs to use and return for analysis.”
When the results came in, they showed that Joe was connected to 31 people in the study. His DNA was an exact match to a man by the name of Robert Lee Hawks in Montana, a genealogist in charge of the Hawks family DNA project at FamilyTreeDNA.
“We got in touch with Robert, and he told us he knew of a Payne connection in the Hawks family,” explained Jeannie. “Abraham Lincoln Hawks (1865-1942) had an affair with Jestine Payne which produced an illegitimate son named Charles Clayton Payne (1887-1971).
“As we looked more closely at Clayton’s dates and history, and Joe’s birthdate of 1942, we realized he was the only Payne who could have been Joe’s father.”
Robert Hawks gave Joe and Jeannie the name of Charles Porter Payne, who lived in Winston-Salem. Charles was one of four children born to Clayton Payne and Clayton’s second wife, Amanda Williams.
Joe called Charlie, told him of his search and then dropped the bombshell: “I think I might be your brother.”
Charlie was both stunned and excited by the news.
“I knew Joe existed and had been searching for him but didn’t know where to go,” said Charlie.
Charlie and his wife, Pat, met up with Joe and Jeannie at a local restaurant. When Joe told the story of his adoption as he knew it, Charlie quickly put the pieces together and realized that his own half-sister, Lena, was Joe’s mother.
“I remembered seeing Lena with Joe when he was a baby,” Charlie said. In fact, Charlie had looked up the police record of Lena’s baby being taken by Social Services in an effort to find Joe some years earlier.
Charlie also informed Joe that he had a half-sister, Dorothy Payne Younts, in Salisbury. Dorothy had been taken to a foster family by Clayton after Amanda died. She had no idea Joe existed and was skeptical when he contacted her, but when they met in person she greeted him with a hug.
Just like that, Joe had two new siblings. “Charlie teased me and told me I had to do what he said because he’s older,” Joe said with a laugh.
Armed with a crucial piece of the puzzle- his mother’s identity- Joe continued on his quest. He knew that Lena’s mother was Amanda Williams and that her father was Burt Ward of Lamsburg, Virginia. Carrie Jennings, another historian in the Hawks family, told Joe that Burt Ward had a daughter named Kathleen Hawks who still lived in Lamsburg and might know Lena’s whereabouts.
In August 2006, Joe and Jeannie drove to Lamsburg to meet Kathleen and her husband, Charles. Kathleen was shocked to learn that she had an older half-sister. She had no idea that her father, Burt, had sired a child before marrying her mother, Della Bobbitt.
Despite her initial shock and disbelief, Kathleen agreed to do all she could to help Joe find Lena.
“Both Kathleen and her husband were very nice and really took an interest,” said Jeannie. “Kathleen called her two sisters, Alice and Dorothy, and told them about Lena. Charles then gave us the name of Ernest Williams, who was Lena’s cousin. He thought Ernest might know what had happened to her.”
Joe called all the “Ernest Williams” in the local phone books until he found the right one. Ernest confirmed that he knew Lena and that she had married someone with the last name of Moser. He then gave Joe some devastating news.
“Ernest said Lena had died two years earlier and was buried at Immanuel Baptist Church in Clemmons.
“I was so disappointed,” Joe said. “All I could think about was ‘ if only I’d started searching for her sooner’.”
Joe and Jeannie came to Immanuel to place flowers on Lena’s grave, but once there they could not find her grave marker. They found the grave of her husband, Walter Ketner Moser, who had died in 1969, but no one was buried beside him.
Confused, Joe called and visited the church during the week but could not find anyone with a definitive listing of the graves. On Sunday, September 10, he decided to attend the morning worship service at Immanuel and ask the preacher if he knew where Lena was buried. As it turned out, he did not have to wait that long.
“When I walked in the sanctuary there were two people there, so I asked them if they knew anything about Lena Minor,” Joe explained. “They knew right away who she was and told me she had moved to Woodland Place Assisted Living eight months earlier.
“It was exciting, wonderful- almost indescribable. I called Jeannie and told her I was coming to get her and we were going to see my mother. Then I called my brother Charlie and asked him to meet us there.”
The Reunion
When Joe, Jeannie and Charlie arrived at Woodland Place, they decided to let Charlie visit with Lena- now 86- first since she had known him when they were children. Lena recognized Charlie, and he asked her if she remembered her little boy. Lena replied that the child was dead.
Charlie told Lena that her baby was not dead, and added, “I have someone for you to meet.” Joe and Jeannie walked in, and a tearful Lena ran to embrace Joe.
“I asked Lena what she named her baby,” said Jeannie, “and she looked at me and said ‘Jerry Wayne.’ Charlie then told her, ‘This is Jerry Wayne Payne!’ She cried and hugged Joe even tighter.”
“That first meeting was very emotional,” added Joe. “I think when she saw me she knew right away that I was her son.”
“Everyone was crying,” said Charlie. “I told them if they’d stop for a minute then I’d introduce everyone.”
For Lena, the reunion with her only child was an answer to her prayers.
“I had prayed every night that God would let me see my son again,” Lena said. “I think I went a little out of my mind when I saw him that day.”
Joe and Jeannie had brought along some family photos to help jog Lena’s memory. When Lena saw a picture of her mother, Amanda, and her stepfather, Clayton, she tearfully asked if Joe understood the circumstances of his parentage.
“We told her that we did [understand] and that she didn’t have to talk about it if she didn’t want to,” said Jeannie. “Clayton, who was Lena’s stepfather, had been molesting Lena since she was 12 years old.”
The abuse continued after Lena’s mother, Amanda, died in 1937. Five years later, 22-year old Lena gave birth to Joe.
“In a way, Joe being taken by Social Services was a blessing, because it allowed Lena to escape from a very bad situation,” said Jeannie.
A Happy Ending...
and a New Beginning
Together again after six decades apart, both Joe and Lena are ready to put the painful memories of the past behind them and focus on a brighter future.
Lena has introduced Joe to all her friends at Woodland Place, telling them proudly, “This is my son.” She has also met her grandson, granddaughter and three half-sisters.
“We’ve all been having a great time, going out to dinner and getting to know each other,” said Joe. “Everyone is so happy, and there are no bad feelings at all. Her half-sisters have told me, ‘You don’t know what you’ve done for us’ [by finding Lena].”
“She’s such a sweet lady,” added Jeannie. “How could anyone not love her?”
Joe and Jeannie try to visit Lena every day, and Joe plans to buy his mother a cell phone so they can keep in constant contact.
“I’m going to have him wrapped around my finger,” Lena predicted.
After 61 years of separation from her son and a lifetime of heartache, Lena now has a family filled with people who love her and will ensure she is never alone again.
“I had my birthday in August, and then Joe found me in September,” said Lena, tightly clasping her son’s hand. “It was the best present ever!”
“Just to find her alive was awesome,” stated Joe. “I mean, she’s 86 years old! I’m so happy to have found her, and I also have those other 30 family connections to investigate!
“There have been a lot of family skeletons to come out of the closet, but everything had a happy ending.”