P a g e 6 G h o s t T o w n s a n d H i s t o r y o f M o n t a n a N e w s l e t t e r Clara each Saturday evening. The following year, Alonzo again tried to keep them. Unfortunately, the youngest five were sent back in 1916. Mae and Ruth by then were married and did not go with them. Clara told of how she was disciplined because she wouldn’t make the sign of the cross during the religious education class. Her mother had told her emphatically she was not Catholic long before she arrived! Her determination to obey her mother cost her dearly. She also said she felt lucky that she didn’t die in the 1918 flu epidemic that killed many of the orphans. As the years passed, she grew to accept her station in life. Growing up, my grandma was placed in several homes. At the age of 10 she went to live with a French-Canadian family in Cascade, where she became fluent in French. She had to change her name in another because the hosting family already had a daughter named Clara. Where one was placed only to work, a somewhat sad existence took place. There were good homes too, she admitted, full of love and laughter. Ones she longed to be called “daughter” permanently. In 1920 she became nanny and housekeeper for Jim and Mary Redfield on the Redfield ranch south of Twin Bridges. Her new “family” not only provided a new life for her, but the romance and courtship of her future husband, Ralph Redfield. She married Ralph on Dec. 12, 1923, in San Jose, Calif. The story goes she lied about her age to marry him. She was 15 and he was 30! In the conversations with my beloved Grandma Red, the stories she told of her childhood were not racked with bitterness as one would expect, but rather as a fact of life. There were many articles printed about the abuse of the children who were placed there. Children who were whipped for wetting their beds and the long hours of chores before and after school. She was employed there after she was married, providing love and encouragement to the abandoned children. She often told me she wanted to adopt orphaned children to give them a stable home. Clara wanted them to belong to someone, as she wished she had growing up. After raising 7 children alongside her husband, she felt it wouldn’t be fair to add Photo Courtesy of Phyllis Nettik Photo Courtesy of Phyllis Nettik more children in the mix. My Grandmother was a survivor of a childhood no one should ever have to endure. The quote “Let your past make you better, not bitter” certainly exemplifies Clara’s lease on life. She had to make a choice. As others turned to alcohol and drugs to make vanish the painful memories of past trauma, Clara turned to her Savior and provider, Jesus Christ, introduced to her by her mother. She allowed Him to take the sorrow, the hardship and pain she was given at such a young age and trusted Him to get her through it. I am sure at times, she did ask “why me?” Jeremiah 29:11 gave her comfort: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
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