He was indeed heir to a great fortune

 On December 16, 1922, in the evening, a baby was placed in the back seat of the car of Dr. Frank Cullen in downtown Dallas, with a note: "This boy's name is J.D. Take good care of him as he is heir to a great large fortune. His mother is in great trouble and can't keep him now. You will be watched. Put him in a good orphan's house if you don't keep him. I am coming back after him when I can. I have your no. Anything you do for him you will be made rich." 

The baby was placed by his biological mother, an unwed girl of 19, named Josephine. The baby was my Dad. 

This note was the first thing I read when I opened the files of  case 4014 of Hope Cottage Orphanage in Dallas. I finally had in my hands the file my dad always wanted to see, but never did, the story of his adoption. It answered many questions about his birth and circumstances and of course created new ones. "Why this?" and "Who is that?" But that is a writing for another time. The intimate details of the circumstances that led Josephine to do what she did are lost to time and passed with her death in the late 1980's. 

My father was adopted by Thomas and Elizabeth Welch of Goliad, Tx.  Elizabeth told the story many years later of a long train ride to Dallas, and an appointment at Hope Cottage. All references and paperwork in order, she was escorted into a room with 28 babies in cribs. 

"Pick one", was the simple instruction that would change so many lives. And she did. She picked the one with the bluest eyes and the biggest smile, the one who cried when she walked away from his crib. He was named Thomas Benjamin Welch, Jr., after his new father. 

He grew up in small town Texas in the 1920's and 30's. Played football, was in the band. Had a little sister, Ada Sue, the long desired biological child of Tom and Elizabeth. In his youth he suspected he was adopted, which was confirmed when an aunt left him off a family tree. He wrote years later, "I was nonplussed - numb and rooted to the floor and couldn't have moved if I had tried." 

He left high school in 1941 before graduating. War was brewing. That spring he enlisted in the Navy and in the summer found himself on the USS Neosho headed for Pearl Harbor. By a twist of fate or fortune he was out of harm's way on December 7th. As he told it to me, he was not there, but "close by". 

He was in the Navy for six years. During this time he was drawn deeper to his Christian faith. In a hospital bed in Australia, he confided to a nurse that after the war he wanted most of all to be a minister, but didn't think he'd be a very good one. She thought the idea was wonderful and fitting and encouraged him during his weeks of recovery from an injury. Her name, like many others in this story, is lost, but to her lasting credit, she pushed him to hang on to this dream.   

After the war he spent his last months at the Navy Yard in Chicago. He was discharged and finished his high school diploma at the YMCA while working nights as a guard at Continental Illinois Bank. (He loved to relate that "that bank never got in any trouble as long as I was guarding the vault!'). 

He returned home to Texas where he graduated from the University of Corpus Christi and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He met my mom there and they were married during the time in Fort Worth. Josephine lived in Fort Worth then as well. After she was notified of his adoption, there is no record that she ever attempted to find him. Perhaps she pictured him lost in the war, as so many men were who were born in 1922. But I also imagine that as our family gathered around his birthday cake each year with smiles and laughs and goofy presents, there was a woman in Fort Worth who always shed a tear and wondered. 

He was a pastor, and a good one. He led churches in various locations across the South, mainly Florida and the Carolinas. Always small, always paying just enough salary for us to get by (when combined with mom's salary from teaching school and giving piano lessons). But for thousands and thousands of people it was from his lips that they heard the message of Christianity proclaimed clearly and lovingly, with a gift for expressing truth that came from his heavenly Father. He was a prolific writer and left behind dozens of articles in Christian publications and hundreds of pages of notes, essays, musings and outlines on faith that his descendants will cherish. 

He had three sons and though he left this earth much younger than we wanted, at 76, he lived long enough to know all of his four grandchildren very well. 

Elizabeth Welch was certainly pleased at the choice she made when called on to "pick one". Josephine must have always wondered, but never knew, of the man who grew from the baby she believed she had to let go. She would have been very proud. 

In the note she left behind, Josephine scratched out "great" and claimed the boy was heir to a "large" fortune. Like many things in the story, this is puzzling. What caused that little scratch of a line and a quick change. A passing thought, perhaps, "I have to be quick, but I want to get this note just right". Call it large, call it great, but one hundred years later it now rings so very true. It was a fortune indeed. One of faith, family and friendships. A legacy that I am heir to, as are all his offspring and everyone who ever felt the warmth of his smile and the shake of his hand. 

From a blanket in the back seat of a car, from the arms of a troubled teenager, from the arms of a kindly doctor, from the protection of an orphanage... to the arms of a new mother, to the call to arms of a nation, to the cuddly arms of grandchildren. What a life. And now he knows.