I liked Springfield, Ohio, just fine while I lived there, but after my family moved to Columbia, S.C., in May 1976, I soured on my hometown. In fact, in pretty short order, the only thing I remembered fondly about the rust-belt burgh in Ohio’s southwest quadrant were the relatives we left behind — my Papaw Kidd, my uncles Pat and Elvis, my Aunt Bernice, my cousin Joyce and her family.
I suppose a lot of my disdain for my original hometown had to do with the time of year we typically visited. I started playing baseball in fourth grade — my sister took up softball a few years later — and from that point forward, our summers were devoted to the diamond. Visits to relatives were relegated to the bleak and dreary Midwest winters, for Thanksgiving or Christmas gatherings or more somber occasions, like Papaw Kidd’s funeral in February 1983.
I soon associated my hometown with gray skies and slushy snow blackened by car exhaust. Unlike Rowan County, Ky. — where most of Mom’s relatives still lived and which could be breathtaking beneath a blanket of snow — winter seemed only to accentuate Springfield's sad decay.
Once-gleaming factories that cranked out Champion farm reapers and editions of Collier’s magazine now glowered with soot-caked faces crackled by age and disuse. Nothing new ever seemed to sprout there, save dismal plumes from a few remaining smokestacks, smoldering like scorched tree trunks in a wildfire’s aftermath.
Pump manufacturer Robbins & Myers — where Aunt Bernice’s husband, Edgar, helped Dad land the job that brought him from Kentucky to Ohio, and then from Ohio to South Carolina — once operated two plants in Springfield. Both are now shuttered and one partially demolished. The Collier’s building has been razed, too, and was vacant when we departed, the magazine company having left town long before we did.
It was the same story with the Springfield Metallic Casket Company, which closed its doors in 1974 after nearly 100 years of continuous operation. With a factory situated prominently along one of downtown's main thoroughfares, it was once among the nation's largest producers of burial vaults and metal caskets. Company lore holds that Al Capone, President John F. Kennedy, and Buffalo Bill Cody are among those buried in its products. But apparently, not even a business predicated on death could escape Springfield’s spiral of demise.
It was not entirely doom and gloom during Springfield visits, however.
There was still my dear Aunt Bernice. Jen and I spent a lot of time at her house when we lived in Ohio, and she became something of a grandmotherly figure to me after Grandma Kidd died in 1973, when I was just 4.
And there was Bernice’s daughter, my cousin Joyce, who inherited her mother’s sunny stoicism, and her husband Kurt, who loved baseball as much as I did. He never tired of discussing the Cincinnati Reds’ offseason roster moves with his gibbering, little in-law.
Joyce and Kurt also had children. Andy was an infant when we moved to Columbia, and Kelly Marie was born two years later (incidentally, on the very day in May 1978 that we put my tear-worn mother on a plane to Kentucky, where my maternal Aunt Vada gave birth to her own Kelli Marie). Kara came along in 1982. Though they were not quite so close in age to Jen and me as our Kentucky cousins, we still had a lot of fun passing time with them when leaden winter skies trapped us indoors.
And in adulthood, I began to warm again to Springfield. Almost literally.
Diamond days long behind me, I occasionally ventured north during the summer, finding relief from the humidity that drapes the Deep South like a liquid overcoat. Debi and I now enjoy donuts from the bakery I frequented as a child, birdwatching in the park where Mom once twirled me on the roundabout, and touring sites like the Westcott House, a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home built in 1908 for a Springfield industrialist.
Since converted to a museum, Westcott House is situated on High Street, among a cluster of renovated and restored mansions of stately 19th-century architectural styles. Drive through slowly enough, and it is as if Springfield’s boom never went bust.
Indeed, recent redevelopment brought Springfield’s downtown a facelift and a modest economic upturn just a few years after a Pew Research Center study revealed that the city experienced the nation’s steepest decline in median household income between 1999 and 2014.
But while rejuvenation is evident, it also is precarious.
The U.S. government dumped nearly 20,000 Haitian immigrants into a city of about 60,000 in the early 2020s, and the town’s infrastructure strains against the influx. Housing prices shot up, traffic fatalities spiked, and schools and hospitals were overwhelmed. The situation became a presidential campaign issue in September 2024, after former President Donald Trump repeated uncorroborated reports about Haitians eating the house pets of Springfield residents during a debate with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
But that debate and that controversy were still more than two years away in summer 2022.
And now that I had found my birth mother, there was one more good reason to look forward to coming to Springfield.
Lynette was with her husband, Vince, at their second home in Fort Myers, Fla., when we made contact but would be flying back to Ohio for the summer in a few days. It seemed fitting that our first face-to-face encounter should take place in Springfield. Beyond the obvious — a chance to meet several blood relatives for the first time — the trip there would allow me to stop in Kentucky on the way home to visit with family I had not seen in a couple of years. Lynette and I planned the trip over the phone for weeks, mapping out the four days we would spend together in early June.
In the meantime, Lynette seemed ecstatic to share the story of our reunion with friends and family, particularly her brothers, Steve and Tim. She was anxious about telling her son Cain — he had no idea I existed, after all — but she called me one Sunday evening shortly before the trip to tell me her son had graciously accepted the news.
Lynette was not the only one relieved by Cain’s reaction. Debi and I had wondered how he might respond — why did she have to name him Cain, I joked nervously — and the weight lifted when Lynette reported that he was curious to find he had a brother. I am unsure I could have mustered such clemency had I received similar news from Mom. Would I instead be distrustful? Jealous? Resentful? Such responses would certainly be understandable.
But my half-brother and I first interacted on his birthday in late May, exchanging friendly-if-awkward texts. That no one in Lynette’s family seemed aggrieved by my sudden appearance was another blessing in a process that brimmed with them.
So with great excitement and anticipation, Debi and I packed her car after work on June 2 for a trip nearly 53 years in the making. Before leaving the house, I stopped in a rear bedroom that we converted into a study. I took a long look at a small shelf, which contained a photo of Mom and a miniature urn of her ashes. I smiled at the picture and thrust the container into my pocket — “Linda needs to make this ride, too,” I thought.
We rolled into Springfield on June 3, making good time and arriving at our hotel in the late afternoon. Lynette and Vince would be in Columbus attending a niece’s graduation the next day, so we planned to meet Sunday morning. That gave me about 36 hours to squeeze in as many visits with Dad’s side of the family as I could.
We started with an early dinner with Joyce and Kurt at a Mexican restaurant near our hotel.
There was much to catch up on. Joyce had been through the wringer in the past year. For some time, Kurt had been battling a genetic ocular disorder that left him almost completely blind and unable to drive. Then, in his late 60s, dementia set in. His ability to communicate and to follow a conversation grew increasingly impaired, and it was getting risky for Joyce to leave him unattended.
Aunt Bernice’s cognitive state was deteriorating rapidly, as well. Also showing signs of dementia, she had spent the past year or so in an assisted living home. She was joined there a few months later by her oldest sibling, my Uncle Elvis, after he suffered a fall, then took ill. And as his health deteriorated, Elvis’ only child, Charlotte, who lived her entire adult life with her widowered father, suffered a stroke that largely confined her to a wheelchair.
Joyce was the only nearby, able-bodied relative to look after her mother, cousin and uncle, and she did so without complaint, even while tending to her husband.
This saddest of seasons had grown yet more mournful the previous October, when Elvis died. Joyce was left to help Charlotte plan his funeral, dispose of his estate and learn to live alone for the first time in her life.
As we slid into a booth in the Mexican restaurant’s dining room, I told Joyce how sorry I was for all she had to shoulder and how much her family 600 miles away admired the way she held things together.
“Well, you do what you need to do,” Joyce said, deflecting. “It’s sad, but Elvis had a long, happy life, and so has Mom.”
Meanwhile, Kurt unwrapped his silverware and spooned salsa straight into his mouth. He seemed to think it was soup.
“Here, let’s try that with a chip,” Joyce said, smiling patiently and replacing his spoon with a tortilla.
“Now, tell me about Lynette,” Joyce said, returning her attention to me. “You’re meeting her Sunday? Are you nervous?”
“Not really,” I replied. “Excited, but not nervous. I’m probably more nervous about meeting her son, Cain. We’re having dinner Sunday.”
Joyce’s head cocked in surprise.
“She has a son named Cain? What is his last name?” she asked.
“Baugh.”
“Cain Baugh? No way! We know him! He’s one of Andy’s best friends!” Joyce said. “They even lived together in college for a while.”
My thoughts flashed to the scene at Dad’s kitchen table that past February, when we discovered Lynette lived in Springfield, not Columbus. We might never have passed in the grocery store aisle, as I imagined that afternoon, but this seemed an even more providential brush. Joyce also explained that Kurt once coached Andy and Cain’s youth baseball team and that Kelly worked for a while in the Perkins restaurant where Lynette was a bookkeeper and business manager.
“She is a fun gal,” Joyce said. “You’re going to like her.”
We went back to Joyce and Kurt’s house after dinner, and she pulled out her old yearbooks to show us pictures of Lynette. They attended the same high school, although Joyce was a few years ahead of her and did not know her back then.
The next morning, I visited Aunt Bernice — I do not think she recognized me, but she was in a terrific mood — then spent a few early-afternoon hours catching up with my Uncle Pat’s widow, Evelyn. In between, Lynette called to tell me she would likely be home earlier than anticipated and to suggest we meet that evening at her house, rather than waiting until the next morning.
“Yeah, let’s do it!” I said.
Debi and I made a quick stop at the hotel to freshen up. Before departing, I slipped Mom’s ashes into my pocket.
The drive to Lynette’s was less than 10 minutes, although it took me to an unfamiliar area north of town. Even though I was only 6 when we left Springfield, I retained a reliable mental map of the areas my family frequented — the house on East Madison, the playground at Snyder Park, Ferncliff Cemetery, Bernice’s old house on Plum Street, which had long since been demolished to make way for a hospital.
But there were parts of town to which I never ventured as a child. Lynette’s old house on Parr Drive, for example, was less than three miles from my house on East Madison, but I do not remember ever driving beyond my elementary school, which was about midway on the route between them. Lynette’s current condominium in the Kenton Woods area was also beyond my usual range and would still have been an old farm field when we moved to Columbia, anyway.
So I drove a little more slowly than usual — I was trying to remember landmarks and give my suddenly nervous stomach a chance to settle — as I turned off the U.S. 68 exit and took a right-hand turn toward Derr Road. Then, we turned onto the white concrete streets of Lynette’s neighborhood and cruised among the rows of nearly identical brick, slab-foundation one-stories.
As we pulled into her driveway, she came out onto the walkway leading to her porch. I do not remember getting out of the car or walking across the yard to her. My feet seemed to pull me toward her without giving my mind any say in the matter. But I remember giving a quick tap to the pocket of my shorts to make sure Mom’s urn was still there, then locking my gaze upon the woman who gave me over to her.
I tried to think of something witty to say — “Long time no see” crossed my mind and might have been funny. But that seemed too flippant for the occasion. So I just flew open my arms and drew Lynette tight to my chest as time, silence and distance collapsed around us and reordered our worlds.
She is so tiny, I thought, and I imagined her again as a dainty 14-year-old sneaking to the nursery to steal a glimpse of me that she thought might have to do her for a lifetime. We held our embrace, two halves of a wound finally stitched together.
When we separated, I shook Vince’s hand, and we all went inside to a clean, bright and well-ordered home. I was excited to tell her about Andy and Cain, a connection we’d had for perhaps 35 years without even knowing it. Lynette remembered my cousin very well. She also recalled keeping score for the team coached by Kurt, of whom she was quite fond.
We discovered other coincidences, too. For example, we realized Lynette’s brothers, Steve and Tim, both worked at Robbins & Myers while Dad was employed there, though they apparently never met.
Another of our small-world discoveries involved Andy, now part owner of the Mug & Jug Tavern, a bar in Springfield that had been around since the early 1970s. The original owner was the father of Lynette’s sister-in-law, Tim’s second wife, Kathy. We arranged to meet Joyce and Kurt there the following night. Andy would be there, as well. It would be both fun and convenient — Lynette and I made plans weeks earlier to watch a summer collegiate baseball game, and the Mug & Jug is directly behind the Champion City Kings’ field.
Debi calls these serendipitous discoveries “God moments,” and they made our new connections feel authentic and unforced. Lynette showed me boxes of old family pictures and animated them with family lore. Like when her parents drove her brothers several hundred miles to a family Thanksgiving gathering in a motorcycle sidecar. And how Tim’s son T.J. was a professional mixed martial arts fighter, Cain’s wife Beth is an identical twin and Vince’s younger sister, Mary Jo, was adopted when he was 20.
I suppose it also helped that Lynette seems geared for unconventional relationships. Tim’s first wife, Sharon, was Lynette’s best friend and remained so from their divorce in 1974 until her death in 2018. Lynette remains friendly, as well, with both her ex-husband and Vince’s ex-wife. She considers Vince’s children from his first marriage, Nick and Gina, to be her children, too, and their children to be her grandchildren.
One afternoon, after combing through several boxes of old papers and photos, Lynette presented a manilla folder and pulled from it the “Hospital Birth Record” she filled out for me in the hospital when I was no more than a day old. During our first phone conversation, she told me of her defiant march to the hospital nursery to find information to fill out the form. I had no idea she had managed to keep it all these years, though.
In the same folder, Lynette kept her correspondence with volunteers of Search Angels, the organization that provided her the list of possible matches when she considered looking for me nearly two decades earlier. I was right there — No. 2 on the list. They had tracked down my correct name, address and phone number. They even had Mom’s maiden name.
But in the emails with the volunteers, Lynette expressed her concerns about “barging in” on my life, and of course, ultimately, she sacrificed her longing for my interest … just as a good mother does.
I’m not sure how I would have reacted had Lynette started checking off the men on her contacts list. I'm sure I would not have treated her rudely. However, Debi and I were newlyweds, and my focus was on her and my new stepchildren, Ande and Tommy. I also had just moved from The Beaufort Gazette to The Island Packet newspaper, intending to build a sports section that was among the best of its size in the country. It took all of my energy.
The primary obstacle, though, would have been my sense of duty to Mom. I would not have countenanced any threat to our relationship, even if I knew then as now that affection for Lynette could not diminish my affection for Mom. I simply would not have risked her peace of mind, though.
The irony, of course, is that now that we have reunited, Mom is the one person I wish Lynette could have met. They would have loved each other.
I also know Mom would have had the same admiration for Lynette that I do. The bumper blessings she cultivated from the loamless soil of her youth — pregnant, listless and marginalized — is nothing short of remarkable. She found refuge, then encouragement and purpose in her work. Built a business. Raised a son. Achieved not only outward signs of success, but made genuine tenderness for friends and family the matrix of that success.
That part was clear from our visit.
We urgently squeezed as much into those four days as we could. We went hiking and birdwatching; ate ice cream at a dairy farm; met Steve, Tim and their wives for dinner at an Italian joint between Springfield and Columbus.
We spent our last evening together at a concert in the park listening to a Paul McCartney tribute band. Joyce and Kurt were there, too, joined by their daughter Kelly. She said they would devote their summer to giving Kurt as many pleasant experiences as they could muster — his dementia was bad and getting worse, and they all knew it.
Unfortunately, Kelly was prophetic. Another sad season loomed.
Aunt Bernice died over Labor Day weekend that year. Then, that November, Kurt simply stopped eating. Joyce admitted him to the nursing home where her mother and uncle had received such kind care, but he passed there two weeks later. Unlike Bernice and Elvis, who lived into their 90s, Kurt was just 70, younger even than Mom when she died.
Time is the most perplexing of all our gifts. It stumps physicist and theologian alike. Sometimes, it must be spent. Sometimes, it must be bided. But it is so devilishly tricky to know in what combination, since we never know how much we have been allotted. We are compelled to make up for that which was lost, to forget that which was bad, to cherish that which was joyful.
And of course, to memorialize that which has expired.
As the clock wound down on the final morning of our visit, Lynette took me to Ferncliff Cemetery & Arboretum to pay our respects to Gerald Arthur Rigel and Carolyn Addie Brooks Rigel. We knelt to wipe some grass clippings from their flat granite markers and stayed crouched there for a while.
“They really did the best that they could,” Lynette said wistfully, breaking a long silence.
Draping my arm across her back, I thought of the bewildering array of events — some of them awful, but many of them glorious — that brought us to this spot, at this moment. I had not unlocked the mystery of time, but I better understood its value.
An hour later, Debi and I stood in the hotel parking lot with Lynette, who was determined to spend every last moment with us before we looped back to Kentucky. Uncle Jack had arranged a family reunion, and I was excited to tell the people nearest and dearest to Mom what I had just experienced.
Yet, I did not want Springfield to end. I had not felt that way in so very long.
Sliding myself behind the wheel and the key into the ignition, I recognized a familiar lump forming in my throat. Forty-six years earlier, I peered through the back window of our black Chevy Nova to get a last glimpse of Aunt Bernice as we followed the moving truck to South Carolina. She was crying, and that made me cry, too.
Looking at Lynette in my rearview mirror got me misting again.
We pulled out, and Lynette shrank smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror, just as Aunt Bernice had, until finally, she vanished. On the road to Kentucky, I pondered not only time, but the sorrow of separation and of loss. Then these thoughts shrank, too, overwhelmed by my reflections on the many courageous women who showed me how to persevere by showing me how to hope.
None are more precious to me than the two who named me Jeffrey.
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