Son Reunited with Mother

For the next 40 years, the paper languished in a pocketbook, folded, hidden away, waiting. For Wilma, that skinny slip of paper provided the only connection, the only memory, the only evidence of a son she had and lost; a boy who eventually wound up in Racine.

Growing up poor

Daniel Eugene Lipps was born Aug. 9, 1962, into the abject, starving poverty of Ben Hur, Va., a tiny hamlet of a few hundred people in the belly of coal-mining country.

He lived with and was loved by his mother, Wilma, who was born deaf and mute. They lived with his grandparents. The grandmother stayed home, the grandfather mined coal and they both drank uncontrollably. In all, about 15 relatives survived in a dilapidated, two-room shack.

“We didn’t live well,” Danny recalled. “But my mom always made sure I got something to eat, even if she had to beg for it. She knew how to survive. And she saw to it that I survived, too. I was her only child and I believe she cherished me.”

The prospect of better-paying jobs in the automotive plants of Detroit sent the family north. But soon after arriving, the grandmother drank too much one night and got killed in a car wreck.

The family broke up and scattered, with no one taking in Danny or Wilma. Danny, 8, was sent to an orphanage. Wilma, with no husband, no schooling and no skills, was sent to a group home. She had almost nothing, except a battered pocketbook with that small, folded slip of paper.

A fresh start

Danny turned incorrigible. Wrested away from his mother, he was shuttled between foster homes. He had trouble staying in school and keeping his temper. Finally, his anger boiled over and he clobbered a classmate with a baseball bat.

That incident almost landed him in the reformatory. Instead, he took stock of his life and knew he had to change. Hope appeared when he was 14. A couple adopted him and gave him a new name: Kenneth Calvin Nicolai.

“I wanted to start all over,” he said. “What better way to do that than to change your name? I had my fresh start.”

By high school, Ken was on a righteous path. He calmed down. He studied and attended school. The love, the kindness, the nurturing his mother felt for him in the days of poverty started to glow inside him.

In his senior year in high school, Ken volunteered to ring the bell for the Salvation Army Red Kettle Drive. Soon he was working as a lifeguard at a local pool, letting poor children who couldn’t pay the fee to swim for free. His boss didn’t like it, but he nonetheless recommended Ken for a job at a local community center.

Ken liked it and decided to become an officer in the Salvation Army. He trained and held various positions in various cities before being assigned to the church in Elgin, Ill. He married Cindy, who also was with the Salvation Army, and they had three children.

Ken hardly talked about his birth mother, nor made any serious attempt to find her. When his adopted mother died in 2005, the urge to find his real mother couldn’t be ignored.

“There was a time when I let it die,” he said. “But deep down I think I always really wanted to know what happened.”

Searching the family roots

Cindy Nicolai was a genealogy buff. She loved tracing the roots of her relatives, finding connections, filling in the blanks. The combination of his wife’s loving persistence and his own feelings prompted Ken to make an exhaustive search for his mother.

The Nicolais put his name and his mother’s name into several online genealogy sites. A relative in Kentucky recognized both names and contacted Kenneth. She told him his mother was alive and living in Alabama.

Ken had no idea if his mother wanted to see him, could see him, or even recognize him if she did.

His wife and three children wanted him to see go see her. His Aunt Melody — the relative who made the critical connection — told him: “She loved you very much and would love to know you are alive.”

Finally, in August 2007, Ken decided to make the 657-mile, 10-hour trek by car to Arab, Ala., to reconnect with his past, to reunite with his lost mother.

The reunion

After Detroit, Wilma was shuffled from nursing home to group home to nursing home. Her brother, Carl Lipps, finally became her guardian and provided some care.

In 1992, Carl and his wife Barbara, brought Wilma to Alabama to live with them. Four years later, the couple placed Wilma into the Golden Living Nursing Home in Arab.

Every now and then, Wilma would pull that folded piece of paper out of her pocketbook and hold it tight. Soon, tears would swell and overflow. The sobbing sometimes lasted for minutes.

Nursing-home workers didn’t know the reason for the outbursts. “They never knew she had a son. They never knew who Danny was or what it meant,” Ken said.

Anxious and nervous, Ken went to the nursing home. Doubt still hung heavy in him that he was doing the right thing. “It was scary,” he said. “It would have crushed me emotionally if she had rejected me.”

Rejection became an utter afterthought when Wilma saw Ken and leaped from her chair. The barriers of communication between the two melted away into a tight embrace that lasted almost five minutes as tears, emotion, devotion and relief overwhelmed both of them.

“She didn’t hesitate at all,” he said. “A mother always knows her son.”

A short time later, the Nicolais decided to bring Wilma back to Elgin with them. She lived with the family for about a year and a half, before she needed to have more constant care. Kenneth placed her in a nursing home in Elgin.

In August 2014, Ken was assigned to the Racine Salvation Army church on Washington Avenue. Today, he and his wife both work at the church. He is in charge of the day-to-day operations of the local group’s charitable activities and programs. He, his wife and children visit Wilma as much as they can.

These days, she keeps that tiny, faded slip of paper in a small wooden chest on a table next to her bed at the nursing home in Elgin.

“I know that she never, never let me go. She always had me with her,” Ken said. “She never forgot me. That’s the best kind of mother you could have.””

Mother and son reunited after 40 years [The Journal Times 5/8/16 by Mark Feldmann]

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