The Suitcases; Three Orphaned Sisters In The Great Depression in The South

Washington DC: Acropolis Books LTD, 1982. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Richard Thompson. 184, [8] pages. Inscribed by the author on the half-title page. Inscription reads "For Kay Titus--All good Wishes. Anne Hall Whitt." DJ is price clipped. Minor bend to title page. Includes Foreword by Charles Kuralt, who had a role in the story unknown to him at the time. Illustrations by Richard Thompson, the author's son. Preface by the author. Having lived the orphan life described in The Suitcases, her home and family count most with Anne Hall Whitt. Raising her two sons has been her first concern, but with time available at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where her husband was an administrator. Now that her children are grown, she can disappear into the gardening and needle work she loves. She can also speak out, as she does in this book and will do in other writings, on the injustices done to children, who have so little defense against these wrongs. On the death of their mother, the three little girls--at ages five, six, and almost eight--are taken from their father to become wards of the state. With the cardboard suitcases given them by the social worker, they are moved from Catholic Home to orphanage to foster homes, waiting for their father to come and claim them. But they realize at last this will not happen and the hope that had sustained them turns to grief and anger. Betty, the oldest, is their uncomplaining leader. Carolyn is the youngest, tiny and doll-like. Ann is the middle sister, striking out whenever she thinks or the others have been wronged. It is Anne who tells the story. Anne Whitt Thompson was an advocate for foster children and orphans who wrote about her own experience as an abandoned child in the 1983 book "The Suitcases." Mrs. Thompson's book was published under her maiden name, Anne Hall Whitt. A condensed version was distributed by Reader's Digest in 21 countries. It was recorded in English and French by the Library of Congress. It told of the lives of Mrs. Thompson and her two sisters as they were moved about as young children in orphanages and foster homes in North Carolina, after the death of their mother and abandonment by their father. As an adult, Mrs. Thompson served on the Maryland foster care review board, and she was a trustee of North Carolina's Crossnore School, an orphanage where she had once lived. As an advocate for children, she supported the concept of well-supervised group homes over loosely supervised foster care. In 1990, she initiated an informal 'bring back the orphanage' campaign that helped focus national attention on problems in foster care. Derived from a Kirkus review: Plain as pigtails and inescapably moving is this account of the piteous childhood of the author and her two sisters--whose anxious route through orphanages and foster homes did, at last, have a happy conclusion. Mother had died in 1936 when Betty was almost eight, Anne six, and Carolyn four. Anne remembers Father before Mother's death, reciting Scottish poetry and singing "Annie Laurie." Then Father, "now in his own world," kept them in the house--where amid the curious silence of neighboring relatives, the "woman in the black suit" knocked on the door. She would arrange for them to be "wards of the state". The bewildered children stayed two months at a Catholic home where the dour routine and discipline gave them some sense of security. But day after day, while Betty was at school, Anne and Carolyn sat on top of the playground slide and "watched for our father." Surely he would come. The next place they tugged their state-issued suitcases to was the Thompson Orphanage, which had toys, outdoor games, even friends. But friends disappeared mysteriously into adoption, so Anne checked suitcases under the beds to make sure a sister hadn't been taken away. Once, in the hospital recovering from an appendectomy, she did see her father--he gave her a red balloon, which she put in her suitcase with the two walnuts and a picture of a Sonja Henie doll. There were other moves, other short stays--including six months of horror, Dickens-style--before the girls found a real home with the kindly Nyes, who became forever "Mother" and "Father." Yet Anne recalls, too, the many painful steps to reach through the walls the children--scarred by change and lost--had built up. With a foreword by Charles Kuralt: a touching reminder of the injustices to which orphans were (and still are) subject.